Friday, July 18, 2008

the keen pleasure that comes from taking up a text and leaving it tighter, clearer, and more accurate

--- John McIntyre, Copy Editor of the Baltimore Sun, in a profile of him by Richard O'Mara, The Christian Science Monitor July 14, 2008

Quote in context:
“Those who do not edit do not understand the keen pleasure that comes from taking up a text and leaving it tighter, clearer, and more accurate. Working against deadline provides a structure and a stimulus. And it is far from widely understood how smart and funny copy editors are as a group.”

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

There are no side effects—only effects

--- John D. Sterman(2002) “All models are wrong: reflections on becoming a systems scientist: The Jay Wright Forrester Prize Lecture.” System Dynamics Review Vol. 18, No. 4, (Winter 2002): 501–531

Full quote: There are no side effects—only effects. Those we thought of in advance, the ones we like, we call the main, or intended, effects, and take credit for them. The ones we didn’t anticipate, the ones that came around and bit us in the rear—those are the ‘‘side effects’’.

Advertising is the price companies pay for being un-original

--- Quoted by designer Yves Behar in his TED Talk on February 29, 2008

Friday, July 11, 2008

There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but...

--- Lord Chesterfield, implicitly criticizing multi-tasking, in a letter to his son in the 1740s, quoted by Christine Rosen in "The Myth of Multitasking," The New Atlantis, Number 20, Spring 2008, pp. 105-110.

In full: "There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time"