July 2010
1 post
“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without the...”
– Emile Zola
June 2010
8 posts
“We are in deep, deep gumbo.”
– Bob Herbert on the state of the union in today’s NYTimes.
“Man does not stand no chance.”
– Solomon Peeples, 86, a former director of the city’s Bureau of Pest Control Services on NYC’s never-ending battle with rats. via the NYTimes.
“Halfalogue: An overheard one-sided cellphone conversation.”
– From the ever entertaining Schott’s vocab. Via Bobulate.
Mac vs. Windows
From A Brief History of Times, which is a part of Matthew Butterick’s excellent Typography for Lawyers website.
“Despite the success of the font, legal wrangling was not far behind (is it ever?) The original font was designed by the Monotype company in England. But the font was soon licensed to Monotype’s rival Linotype in Germany, because the Times [of London] newspaper used...
May 2010
12 posts
Language Lesson 1976
By Heather McHugh
When Americans say a man takes liberties, they mean he’s gone too far. In Philadelphia today I saw a kid on a leash look mom-ward and announce his fondest wish: one bicentennial burger, hold the relish. Hold is forget, in American. On the courts of Philadelphia the rich prepare to serve, to fault. The language is a game as well, in which love can mean nothing, doubletalk mean...
“It was two-toned taupe. The color of see-through.”
– Bobulate on the color of her 1977 Honda hatchback.
“See, as tempting as it might be to divide history into the bad guys and the good...”
“Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds...”
– Edward Everett Hale
April 2010
5 posts
“Words are the dress of thoughts, which should no more be presented in rags,...”
– Lord Chesterfield (aka Philip Dormer Stanhope)
“I didn’t get none of nothing from nobody.”
– The quadruple negative - rumored to exist, but never before seen in the wild (as uttered by a high school basketball player and overheard by my friend, his couch, at practice).
March 2010
6 posts
“Happiness is an inside job.”
– Sylvia Boorstein
“Most of the brothers don’t make the kind of scratch I do.”
– Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell of the Celtics (in 1984) after he endorsed Jesse Helms for re-election and was asked by a reporter if he realized that he might be the only black man in North Carolina voting for Jesse Helms.
“Batman’s Gotham City is Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven...”
– Batman writer and editor Dennis O’Neil
Not sure when he said this, but he needs to add a “in the 1970s” to the end, otherwise I am left with an image of Gotham that involves lots of drunk college kids and rich folks.
“The most difficult adjustment I had to make was to let go of the idea of “the...”
– From ilivehere:SF. My new favorite blog.
“Since 1982, 2,958 elections have been held for individual Senate and Assembly...”
– From an article in the NYTimes.
Recently, I have started to notice pseudo stats. Numbers that seem to imply something profound, but are missing the data that matters. Take the quote above. On first read, the numbers above seem to indicate that ~ 99% of all incumbents win (or at least, that is...
February 2010
12 posts
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come...”
– Howard Thurman
“MISCHIEF, WILSON MILLS ROAD: Police spotted a man changing the letters on the...”
– From the police blotter of a local paper outside of Cleveland. This is how we do.
January 2010
5 posts
“I haven’t put on weight. Your eyes are fat.”
– From the sleep talkin’ man. I don’t buy that he uttered any of his brilliant quips while asleep, but even awake, he has more quotable lines than most script writers.
“Flight attendants will tell you to turn it off on take off and landing. You...”
– # 7 from 10 reasons to buy a Kindle 2… and 10 reasons not to
Just the highlights
Interesting article about the Air Force getting innundated with raw footage from Predator and Reaper drones in the field and how they are struggling to synthesize the data. Interestingly, they’ve been camping out in ESPN trucks during football games to learn how ESPN tags and retrieves highlight film.
“There is tremendous power in putting your ass where your heart wants to be.”
– Steven Pressfield
December 2009
3 posts
