Re: [LINK] How the Climate Kids Are Short-Circuiting Right-Wing Media
On Sun, 2019-10-06 at 08:41 +1100, Tom Worthington wrote: > Ms. Thunberg's message was very carefully crafted, with > sophistication underlying its apparent simplicity. > [...] I (sort of) disagree. People start out able to say what they mean, and learn (or are taught) to communicate poorly. Children are generally pretty damn clear. I suspect Thunberg's message might be clear because she *doesn't* do too much crafting... There's is an art to deciding what to say and what to leave out. But how to say it? Take out everything that gets in the way. Shorten sentences. Get rid of padding. Drop the impressive adjectives. Use the right words, not the longest words. Get to the nub of it. Kids do all that naturally, until we teach them not to. We as adults find it hard to do. We have spent our lives learning (or being taught) to cover our arses. We try to impress. Whole scientific papers are written in the passive voice just to avoid mentioning the author. Politicians smother their messages in Latin derivatives because they think it gives their words more weight. We utilise instead of use, we require instead of need, we negatively impact instead of hurt. "The initial activity decided upon by the primary stakeholder at the inception of the construction phase was to arrange more suitable illumination of the site; the proposed activity was duly carried out, resulting in the required level of illumination being achieved." Regards, K. -- ~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: 8D08 9CAA 649A AFEF E862 062A 2E97 42D4 A2A0 616D Old fingerprint: A0CD 28F0 10BE FC21 C57C 67C1 19A6 83A4 9B0B 1D75 ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
Re: [LINK] How the Climate Kids Are Short-Circuiting Right-Wing Media
On 28/9/19 11:34 pm, Stephen Loosley wrote: Young people like Greta Thunberg ... By Charlie Warzel Sept. 26, 2019 ... waste very little of their time, energy and focus work-shopping their message or bulletproofing it against criticism ... Ms. Thunberg's message was very carefully crafted, with sophistication underlying its apparent simplicity. Also she sensibly didn't waste time responding to attacks, as that would just give attackers publicity. These are lessons which scientists need to learn. Presenting a clear message for the general public on a complex issue is difficult. You have to spend a lot of time and effort crafting what looks like a very simple message, in easy to understand language, in a way which appeals to your audience. -- Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP http://www.tomw.net.au +61(0)419496150 TomW Communications Pty Ltd. PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia Liability limited by a scheme approved under Prof. Standards Legislation Honorary Lecturer, Computer Science, Australian National University https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research/profile/tom-worthington ___ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
