National Petition for Libel Reform

I don't usually jump on bandwagons but a while ago, I was shocked to discover from Dr Ben Goldacre's* Bad Science blog that certain unscrupulous 'sciency' types are using English libel law to silence their critics. A campaign called Sense about Science was started to persuade the government by petition that the law had in effect become a form of censorship and therefore needed reform. Sense about Science has now joined forces with English PEN and Index on Censorship to set up The Libel Reform Campaign, a more powerful and urgent campaign to preserve our much-cherished freedom of speech. This website gives shocking examples of how our libel law is being abused.

Please read the National Petition for Libel Reform statement on the website and sign it if you feel strongly that this type of legal abuse constitutes a real threat to one of our fundamental freedoms.

*Ben Goldacre is the author of Bad Science, a book whose title speaks for itself.

Make Your Own Academic Sentence

This is such fun to play with (thanks to Dr. Syntax's books and publishing blog). Here are two sentences I generated earlier:

The reification of post-capitalist hegemony replays (in parodic form) the historicization of pedagogical institutions. The epistemology of normative value(s) functions as the conceptual frame for the discourse of the gendered body.

It comes from the University of Chicago's Writing Program where you can also find examples of real academic gobbledegook.

Here's one for generating business jargon.