Sadly the lack of science terms is probably a reflection of whatever sources Apple trawled to build their dictionary, which is to say, you see fewer scientific terms recognized because fewer people type them on ios. As to the conspiracy: exactly, not only does it change your innocently spelled words to pop culture…

It’s funny, the Sense of Style was recommended to me months ago by an editor friend of mine, and when I read it I was really struck by how thoughtful and thorough it is, really a great book on the mechanics of written communication. I’m in computational linguistics, and I guess I could say I cherish writing where I…

As much as I want to be leery of guilt by association, it seems clear that while Pinker cares a great deal about the integrity of institutions of higher learning (which I agree with), he doesn’t pay basically any attention to the optics of unequivocally and loudly espousing things like free speech, unbiased…

Oops, I missed your link; thanks for providing specifics. For an academic, its frustratingly hard to find anything in his own words — apart from clickbaity, inadequate retweet captions. I guess I’d like to believe that, if you asked him about these issues, he’d give you a sensible, scientifically grounded answer that…

Thank you in turn for a gracious and detailed reply. “Dear Muslima” was a stupid, stupid thing for Dawkins to do, but did Pinker really explicitly say that was a good idea? I haven’t found tweets or quotes from him of the other incidents you cite, but if they are out there, ... damn, that is just so disappointing (and…

Wait, *what* is Pinker up to? If he is personally going after students for expressing what they believe is appropriate for their campus, that would be appalling and incredible given his long history as a humanist, rationalist scientist. There are a couple of retweets of articles about free speech on campus on his…