Michael directs us to Hemingway's non-fiction

Ernest Hemingway (left) is a name that doesn’t come up often in any discussion of non-fiction.

That’s a shame.

His writing for various newspapers and magazines in the early part of the twentieth century is full of eyewitness accounts to some of the most exciting events during that period. He witnessed war and its aftermath. He saw Paris during the wild years between the world wars. He palled around with many of the era’s most interesting characters. And he wrote about it all.

Much of this early writing is gathered together in the volume "By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades" from Charles Scribner’s Sons Publishing. It’s a great example of just how creative newspaper journalism can be. (There are even some good first person articles for those of us who enjoy that kind of thing!)

Another title worth reading is "Hemingway on Writing" compiled by Larry W. Phillips, also from Scribner’s. Although Hemingway maintained that it was bad luck for a writer to talk about writing, he spent a lot of time and energy doing just that.

-- Michael Rowe

Rathnakar finds good advice on science writing

In last Tuesday's class we had a good discussion around scientific writing and there were lot of good suggestions.

After the class I started browsing the net to find out who are the pros at scientific writing. It looks as though there are many, but one writer who grabbed my attention was Thomas Henry Huxley (left). I think the quote below from his essay "On the Study of Zoology" sums up the gist of scientific rhetoric:

"Therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon the eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term."

-- Rathnakar Shetty

Leesa introduces us to TED and Sir Ken Robinson

After class this week I was thinking about how to weave the different themes of my 800-word paper into a coherent, interesting, told-in-plain-language piece. I still haven't found an elegant way to do this, but in thinking about one of the themes -- how our educational systems often stifle creativity -- I remembered a great talk by British educator Ken Robinson that I heard on TED awhile back.

TED is a non-profit whose self proclaimed mission is "spreading ideas." TED began as a conference held each year in Long Beach, Calif., where folks get together to discuss new ideas in science, business, arts and global issues. Each presenter is allowed an eighteen minute (or less) speech on their topic. Beginning in 2007 the conference was recorded and made available on the World Wide Web.

Here's what TED has to say about TED:

"Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole."

I don't know how you all feel about the education you received -- for the most part I'm satisfied with mine (minus the gaps in proper writing skills) -- but I often dream about how much more we could achieve if we could find a way to allow for more encouragement of creativity in our curricula.

Ken Robinson said it much better than I ever could when he said, "If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything creative . . . we are educating people out of their creativity"

Please sit back and enjoy this short clip of Ken Robinson on TED. Apparently it is one of the most watched clips on their Website. And that says a lot. Consider yourself warned: TED is addictive.