"Mathematics practically applied to the useful and fine arts" by Baron Charles Dupin is a neat one, it shows some application.
(but the math teachers in our school were all sworn to the idea that we should do it because we just should:)
Also, remember *Captain Brassbound's Conversion*? Lady Cicely was my Rhetorics Ideal for a while...
I think rhetorics can be "friendly" and "adversarial", and the two things require different skills (and of course there is "art".)
**About friendly rhetorics:**
at the meetings of our team for bioconservation, being the "scribe" meant you have fewer chances to put in your own five cents, and kind of more desire for others' clarity of thought:) so in practice it meant mutual training:
Not an expert; I think a better question would be not "why aren't we dying" but "what we can actually see if...". We're not dying on "this" scale due to very many reasons. Here's just some thoughts I had, all "weak hypotheses".
So, maybe:
1) we need better studies, and simply cannot say anything from "undifferentiated insect biomass" (seriously, what part of it was pollinators, what part - predators, etc?)
2) due to some weird thing, most of the effect is happening in the sea, not on land (how much organic matter is washed out now, and how it compares to 50 years before?)
3) it's not extinction we should be looking out for, but rapid... (read more)
cough quality of ingredients cough :)
Thank you for providing an example!
And sometimes, it's about money.
-----
Me: "There was a patch of forest here."
Internal voice: "There are other places, some of them defendable."
Me: "They burned it down."
IV: "Yeah, but you don't get to see the success stories. You know there are success stories."
Me: "The ground's still hot."
IV: "And that's what will certainly happen to those other places if you don't survey them first."
Me: "It's about money."
IV: "...okay, let's go get a life."
In a scientific text, a good illustration is simple and necessary. Forget the second part for now. What is "simple"? Some things are better presented not as diagrams or graphs, but as detailed images that never are fully discussed because that would distract the reader.
For example, X-rays of broken bones or scans of stained electrophoretic gels are a step more detailed than doodles: they tell something about quality of the process of picturing. They can be blurry or crisp, maybe unevenly, and it matters. They have context, and people who routinely read the literature will be looking for it without thinking, while people who only start... (read 299 more words →)
My favourite trick is "noticing when I am not actually upset/angry/tired with someone or something". I started doing it before I learned about LW - back then I called it "don't fall down before you're hit" in my head. For example, I come to visit a friend who has a young child, and have to sit outside for half an hour before she picks her phone - but the weather is fine, and I notice I'm not actually annoyed by having to wait.
Also, I feel like people should snowclone "X is not a special snowflake" more. "My textbook is not a special snowflake [and I may buy a better one]" (it really sticks if you have to offload a hundred such textbooks), "my pen is not a special snowflake [and I can write with it, dammit]", "my notes are not special snowflakes [and don't have to be perfect or legible]". Just imagine things being manufactured , as in there being hundreds of thousands of them.
If we don't have media threads anymore, let's just post links in comments to your posts? with a separate thread for"DiscussinGwern" ))