Stephen Heard

Lovely post - even a row of spruces on a golf course has a lot to look at, if you stop to look. www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2025/08/09/a...

(Which does get close to one of my pet peeves about the Discourse, which is the assumption that writers only use LLMs to turn off their brains, rather than to feed them...)

To me, if a thoughtful writer begins to use more em dashes because an LLM has shown them examples of appropriate use, that's a GOOD thing, right? Just exactly as if you, or I, or my Aunt Linda, did the same?

What our new book looks like: “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” About a year ago, I posted some basic information about my new book, coauthored with the brilliant Bethann Garramon Merkle. It’s time for an update: as books grow up, they change and presumably imp…

(This book BTW: scientistseessquirre...). Haven't checked for "delve" in my other ones, but I know they have em dashes :-)

In checking proof, realized we used the word "delve" three times in our forthcoming book on teaching/mentoring scientific writing. Em dashes too. Can't wait for people to tell us ChatGPT wrote it... when it happens I guess I'll just link https://xkcd.com/3126/

A brown stuffed moose lying on its side in long grass and other plants. It's fur is matted from the rain.

I've walked past this discarded stuffie-moose dog toy about 100 times so far this week. 65 of those times, it's startled me, because I learn slowly. The other 35 it's merely creeped me out, because...well, because it's creepy!

The guidance I try to give (webinars, course, 2 forthcoming books) is similar: know what a tool can and can't do; and use a tool to help you become a better writer, not to avoid your having to think about writing.

This is a great take. "If and when students use LLMs it should be agentic and personal, where they conceive a challenge in what they're trying to do and then deploy the tool to meet that challenge." It's worth reading everything @biblioracle.bsky.social has to say on LLM tools and writing.

What our new book looks like: “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” About a year ago, I posted some basic information about my new book, coauthored with the brilliant Bethann Garramon Merkle. It’s time for an update: as books grow up, they change and presumably imp…

(This one: scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com/2024/12/10/w...)

This morning's task was reviewing some indexing notes for our (with @bgmerkle.bsky.social) new book. I know nothing about indexing - good thing our amazing indexer does! I'm also happy that there will be some glints of humour in the index. Hope people enjoy finding them.

this is a good summary of how i feel about AI

Endemic is out now

It’s the big day! After four years of research, writing and editing (and procrastination, terror and imposter syndrome), Endemic has now been released to the world.

Cannot possibly agree with this more. The 2nd round of review is almost always a waste! As an editor, at first I sent revisions back out... but the I realized I should put my big-boy pants on and make a decision. That was why I was in the role!

Wonderful Latin Names: Friendship in plant naming Latin names of plants and animals can do a lot of things. To name just a few: they can describe species or their habitat; they can honour someone the namer admires (even, rarely, himself*) or insul…

Friendship (and some gentle teasing) in the Latin names of a pair of trees. Can a name be descriptive, eponymous, and a joke all at once? Yes! scientistseessquirre...

And a couple of pages later, what if you think the Great Flood brought seashells up into the hills to become fossils?

"Of the stupidity and ignorance of those who imagine that these creatures were carried to such places distant from the sea by the Deluge..."

(This is from MacCurdy's 1938 translations, page 356. Which book, by the way, is a rabbithole of great depth, to be avoided like the plague if you have anything else you are SUPPOSED to be doing)

Ad hominem attacks don't belong in scientific arguments, right? Right.

Here's Leonardo da Vinci:

"Such an opinion cannot exist in brains possessed of any extensive powers of reasoning"

(pushing back at claims fossil shells were formed in situ by Neoplatonic mechanisms, through cosmic forces)

Monarchs on the bridge! Public art by Gary Crosby, on the rail-to-trail walking bridge in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

This is interesting. Game theory strongly suggests it won't work (any individual library pays no cost for defecting -- but then society functions in part because we refuse to do things game theory suggests we should do (eg, not vote). So, interesting experiment.

Also many years of student Entomology collections, zero scorpionflies. And my partner, also an entomologist, zero scorpionflies. So I'm fairly confident that they're at least uncommon here. So stoked!

Just got landed on by a scorpionfly! I could have sworn those weren't around where I am (New Brunswick, Canada) - in fact, a year ago I saw some in Italy and did an exotic-creature-found-overseas happy dance. 23 years here, my first scorpionfly!!

Bag of words, have mercy on us OR: Claude will you go to prom with me?

This, on AI from Adam Mastroianni, is very good. It's so easy to anthropomorphize an LLM (and the companies make it very easy for us to do that), but that way lies all manner of misuse. www.experimental-his...

Great, thanks! Very interested in seeing what you have to say.

A photo of a fossilized trilobite. The animal somewhat resembles a horseshoe crab and has an oblong, multi-segmented body. It is tannish in color.

Welcome back to Trilobite Tuesday! Pictured is a Dalmanites danae specimen from the Niagaran Limestone of Wisconsin. On occasion, trilobite fossils have been uncovered in the midst of molting, like the example pictured here.

Martin, I'm eager to see this! Will there be a hardcopy option? The evil corporate giant only shows Kindle now.

Alma mater of Maceo Pinkard, composer of 'Sweet Georgia Brown"! Isn't Wikipedia wonderful 🙂

Congratulations!

Where I'm writing. This does not suck.

Also featuring Georg Pawer, who Latinized his name to Georgius Agricola. "Pawer" meant "farmer" in vernacular German, which is what Agricola means in Latin, so that makes sense. But "Georg" means - guess what - "farmer" too (this time from Greek). So hail, "Farmer Farmer".

Plate of a fossil crab, with Latin and German caption "Pagurus lapideus", or "crab of stone". The crab is seen from underside and has well preserved claws and leg bases.

Writing about early-modern understandings of fossils today. This is from Conrad Gessner's 1565 monograph. The key story here: why scholars at the time thought this was a crab-shaped stone, and not a remnant of a real crab!