Often those who obfuscate their own language don't do it to raise the bar but shoot out ink like a fleeing squid to hide the fact that they really don't understand what they are talking about. Learning to speak like John Kerry is a simple trick and a bad habit, but it's a necessary one if one wants to talk but really has nothing worthwhile to say.

Ain't that the truth! I've generally found that people who communicate that way have a specialty in a subject of such trivial value that the only way that they can give it an aura of slight respectability as a pursuit is to obfuscate their words to such an extent that it just "sounds important and technical." I seem to recall a recent spat involving a professor at Yale who was attacked for wasting students' time and money by ranting about some sort of "French deconstructionist critique of science."

You know, something that is really going to help them when they get out of college.

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This is one of the pet peeves I have with Vox. He's a sharp guy, to be sure, but his use of the English language leaves a lot to be desired. He says he doesn't care if anyone understands him or not, and I can appreciate that to a degree, but the whole point of communicating is to communicate, not just listen to oneself talk.

I suppose I could throw around a bunch of nuclear engineering metaphors all the time just to make myself look more educated and sophisticated (or whatever), but that doesn't really do anybody else any good, and just makes me look like a tool.

Hope this posts this time...

I have always disliked it when people dismiss an argument based solely upon the person's ability to write or speak. I don't care if there are typos or slang, what I want to hear is the idea and the idea should stand or fall on its own, not on the ability or skill of its proponent.

An upside to people like Vox is that it has forced me to learn new words as I used to go to a dictionary on an almost daily basis jusst to be sure I knew what a word meant. That has slowed tremendously of late, for whatever reason.

I his defense, I have yet to see him throw around much of anything that a quick Google search couldn't explain away. Most of his references I have seen are to historical events and people that most people wouldn't know, but that they could easily read about and grok if they just looked them up online. Nuclear engineering, however, is far more complicated than that.

If you had difficulty posting before, it's probably because of a temporary hickup with the new version of Movable Type that I am using. However, your comments and Triton's seem to be working now just fine, and the spam log details about your comments don't seem to be an issue either.

I'm mostly talking about his tendency to make up new words like "scientody" and "omniderigence" that don't appear in anyone's dictionary. I don't think making up new words and then constantly using them in columns and blog posts is the best way to communicate. It certainly hasn't helped me any; I still have trouble keeping track of "scientage", "scientody", and "scientistry".

I just think that stuff is silly, is all. Better for everyone to communicate clearly.

I see where you are coming from, but I think it may have a purpose worth considering when dealing with some of the science fetishists.