Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Advice to Authors
My dissertation focuses upon a technical subject so I tend to avoid delving into the specifics of my research on this blog for fear of scaring away my already meager audience. Every so often, however, I stumble upon something during the course of my work that is worthy of sharing. In this case, it's a poem of sorts included in the back of a technical journal from 1968, perhaps intended to ensure better submissions from the engineers who made up its primary audience. As someone who just received comments on the first draft of what will (hopefully) be his first scholarly publication, I believe it will resonate with anyone whose work is subject to editorial scrutiny.
Advice to Authors
If you've got a thought that's happy---
Boil it down.
Make it short and crisp and snappy---
Boil it down.
When your brain its coin has minted,
Down the page your pen has sprinted,
If you want your effort printed,
Boil it down.
Take out every surplus letter---
Boil it down.
Fewere syllables the better----
Boil it down.
Make your meaning plain---express it,
So we'll know---not merely guess it,
Then, my friend, ere you address it,
Boil it down.
Skim it well---then skim the skimmings---
Boil it down.
When you're sure 'twould be a sin to
Cut another sentence in two,
Send it in, and we'll begin to
Boil it down.
(Published in RCA Engineer, Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 94; reprinted from Canadian Public Health Journal, 1936)
(0) comments
My dissertation focuses upon a technical subject so I tend to avoid delving into the specifics of my research on this blog for fear of scaring away my already meager audience. Every so often, however, I stumble upon something during the course of my work that is worthy of sharing. In this case, it's a poem of sorts included in the back of a technical journal from 1968, perhaps intended to ensure better submissions from the engineers who made up its primary audience. As someone who just received comments on the first draft of what will (hopefully) be his first scholarly publication, I believe it will resonate with anyone whose work is subject to editorial scrutiny.
Advice to Authors
If you've got a thought that's happy---
Boil it down.
Make it short and crisp and snappy---
Boil it down.
When your brain its coin has minted,
Down the page your pen has sprinted,
If you want your effort printed,
Boil it down.
Take out every surplus letter---
Boil it down.
Fewere syllables the better----
Boil it down.
Make your meaning plain---express it,
So we'll know---not merely guess it,
Then, my friend, ere you address it,
Boil it down.
Skim it well---then skim the skimmings---
Boil it down.
When you're sure 'twould be a sin to
Cut another sentence in two,
Send it in, and we'll begin to
Boil it down.
(Published in RCA Engineer, Vol. 14, No. 1, p. 94; reprinted from Canadian Public Health Journal, 1936)
Friday, December 24, 2010
A Good Day
Greetings from New England, Invisible Readership!
As some of you may have noticed, blogging diminished even more than normal over the past month due to the pressures associated with composing a new dissertation chapter. The good news is that I finished the draft, the fourth of a planned five chapters! The bad news is that having finished with one chapter, it is time to begin working on the next. This will likely entail the same combination of isolation and frustration I experienced the last go around, and I am not really looking forward to it.
Still, there is some time before I absolutely have to start work, and so I have decided to take advantage of a rare opportunity to go back to the Invisible Homestead and spend time with friends and family. It was a rather spontaneous decision. I packed light, and with one rule in mind: no dissertation work allowed. In fact, no work at all. This was going to be a vacation of sorts, an effort, even if ultimately futile, to regain at least some bit of balance in my life.
Yesterday did not quite live up to this expectation since most of the time was spent:
a. traveling (I was worried about traffic and woke up early...)
b. resting up from traveling (Perhaps earlier than was wise...)
c. eating (And my parents thought I was starving...)
But today was better. In fact, I would say it was one of the most balanced and all around fun days I have had in a long time. The day's events included:
1. Learning how to use a slide rule
2. Disassembling a videodisc player to see if it could be repaired
3. Lunch, electronics shopping, and a trip to the supermarket with my father
4. Preparing roast beef purchased at the store for slow cooking in anticipation of dinner
5. A father-son discussion over ping pong
6. Walking the family dog around the neighborhood
7. Watching a movie (The Coen Brothers' True Grit) with my good friend, The Baron.
8. Returning home and enjoying a good South Philly style roast beef sandwich on a gravy soaked Portuguese role for supper.
9. Reading an electronic copy of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book "from cover to cover" (if the expression applies to e-books)
10. Holding my own in a Scrabble match against my mother...and even scoring a seven letter word (languor!)
11. Making plans to see a movie tomorrow with another high school friend.
As I write this before bed, I feel more relaxed and genuinely happy than I have in a long while. I would call it a Christmas miracle if I believed in either part of that concept, but instead I will gladly settle for referring to it as a truly good day. Here's to many more in the future!
(0) comments
Greetings from New England, Invisible Readership!
As some of you may have noticed, blogging diminished even more than normal over the past month due to the pressures associated with composing a new dissertation chapter. The good news is that I finished the draft, the fourth of a planned five chapters! The bad news is that having finished with one chapter, it is time to begin working on the next. This will likely entail the same combination of isolation and frustration I experienced the last go around, and I am not really looking forward to it.
Still, there is some time before I absolutely have to start work, and so I have decided to take advantage of a rare opportunity to go back to the Invisible Homestead and spend time with friends and family. It was a rather spontaneous decision. I packed light, and with one rule in mind: no dissertation work allowed. In fact, no work at all. This was going to be a vacation of sorts, an effort, even if ultimately futile, to regain at least some bit of balance in my life.
Yesterday did not quite live up to this expectation since most of the time was spent:
a. traveling (I was worried about traffic and woke up early...)
b. resting up from traveling (Perhaps earlier than was wise...)
c. eating (And my parents thought I was starving...)
But today was better. In fact, I would say it was one of the most balanced and all around fun days I have had in a long time. The day's events included:
1. Learning how to use a slide rule
2. Disassembling a videodisc player to see if it could be repaired
3. Lunch, electronics shopping, and a trip to the supermarket with my father
4. Preparing roast beef purchased at the store for slow cooking in anticipation of dinner
5. A father-son discussion over ping pong
6. Walking the family dog around the neighborhood
7. Watching a movie (The Coen Brothers' True Grit) with my good friend, The Baron.
8. Returning home and enjoying a good South Philly style roast beef sandwich on a gravy soaked Portuguese role for supper.
9. Reading an electronic copy of Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book "from cover to cover" (if the expression applies to e-books)
10. Holding my own in a Scrabble match against my mother...and even scoring a seven letter word (languor!)
11. Making plans to see a movie tomorrow with another high school friend.
As I write this before bed, I feel more relaxed and genuinely happy than I have in a long while. I would call it a Christmas miracle if I believed in either part of that concept, but instead I will gladly settle for referring to it as a truly good day. Here's to many more in the future!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
The Curse of the Holiday Movie Quote Contest!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's time once again for this blog's annual contribution to winter revelry and seasonal good cheer. Below you will find fifty quotations from fifty films. See how many you can identify. As always, I'll accept answers via e-mail or comments. Get the most and you'll win an Invisible Medal to grace your mantle. Best of luck and happy holidays!
And now...the quiz:
1. “This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pieta. It's completely elegant, it's bafflingly beautiful, and it's capable of reducing the population of any standing structure to zero. I call it 'The Ex-Wife.'”
2. “You are D Squad. D for 'dirtbags.' When I say: ‘Hey, dirtbags!’ that means you! You people are going to hate my guts for the rest of your lives. I am going to make you sorry that you ever came here.”
3. “88 Keys the piano man set you up. Big Boy paid him to get you out of the way.”
4. “Well, sir, I ain't a for-real cowboy. But I am one helluva stud.”
5. “Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
6. “Is there an F-5? What would that be like?”
7. “You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am, to believe in you as much as I do or love you as much!”
"I know that."
“Well then, why?”
8. “As head of security, it is my job to keep you alive. I will not succeed. Not with all of you. If you wish to survive, you need to cultivate a strong, mental attitude. You got to obey the rules. Pandora rules.”
9. “LaBoeuf, if you get crosswise of me you'll think a ton of brick had fell on you! You'll wish you was back at the Alamo with Travis!”
10. “I'll take that, thank you. Professor Marcus, this is another black mark against you. I shall certainly tell the police.”
11. “I wanted to do something outrageous, and it felt really good, to be needed, and to be trusted. It's just there's so much I want to do with this life and it feels that I haven't done any of it. You know, the sand is running out of the hourglass, so I want to look back and say, 'See, I did that, that was me, I was reckless and I was wild, and I fucking did it!'”
12. “So you're worried, not because you'll be in a house full of vampires, but because you think they won't approve of you?”
13. “We poured gasoline all over the place, then left a trail of it out the door. Then lit the whole thing up and watched it burn. But he's dead, Nancy. He can't get you because Mommy killed him. I even took his knives. So it's okay. You can sleep now.”
14. “You know who that is? That's Mr. Evil Knievel. He snuck in my back door, son, when I wasn't lookin'. You better flip-flop back here and gimme a hand, son, or we gonna be in a heap of trouble. Please roger that transmission!”
15. “Neil Patrick Harris stole my car tonight.”
“Hey! NPH wouldn't do that, all right? Now let me see some I.D.”
16. “By Grabthar's hammer, by the sons of Worvan, you shall be avenged.”
17. “I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!”
18. “I don't know what they've told you down at the USO, but you're going to be meeting a lot of strange men. Men in uniform. Boys a long way from home. Lonely. Desperate. They really have one thing on their minds. Show 'em a good time.”
19. “Kelp, people just don't like teachers blowing up their kids!”
20. “I was like one of the bad kids in your class. Somebody told me a lie and I believed it. One's as bad as the other.”
21. “We don't have none of this stuff in the boy's room! Wait a minute! We don't got none of this... we don't got doors on the stalls in the boy's room, we don't have, what is this? What's this? We don't have a candy machine in the boy's room!”
22. “We are Sex Bob-Omb and we are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!”
23. “It's buried under a big W. Say, what is a big W?”
24. “So, I'm a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.”
25. “I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!”
26. “Ogata, if the oxygen destroyer is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they'll want to use it as a weapon. Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all! As a scientist...no, as a human being...I can't allow that to happen!”
27. “I want to be alone. I think I have never been so tired in my life.”
28. “In the past year, over 800,000 Americans have died. Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be our nation's number one killer.”
29. “Well versed in the natural sciences and mathematics. She speaks seven languages proficiently. Were she not a woman one would consider her to be an intellectual.”
30. “Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here but it sounds better in French.”
31. “It was just my old disappearing pig trick!”
32. “We're not gonna get rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished! We're finished! All of us!”
33. “You can have any kind of a home you want. You can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stucco.”
34. “Okay, you're used to the top talent. What are you wasting your time working *me* over for?”
“I like the way you swing a guitar.”
“Yeah, I guess I *did* get a lot of wrist action into it, didn't I?”
35. “Broken Sword said 'The people have suffered years of warfare. Only the King of Qin can stop the chaos by uniting all under Heaven.'”
36. “You'll find a slight squeeze on the hooter an excellent safety precaution, Miss Scrumptious.”
37. “You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter, because we'll be together.”
38. “Ma, I've got it! I've got the idea, the angle, the lead. I'll be Jewish! Why, all I've got to do is just say it!”
39. “It has nothing to do with Satan, Mama. It's me. Me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can move things.”
40. “We decided to make it female so it would be more docile and controllable.”
“More docile and controllable, eh? You guys don't get out much.”
41. “Mr. Maryk, you may tell the crew for me that there are four ways of doing things aboard my ship: The right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way. They do things my way, and we'll get along.”
42. “We're either in a café in Paris or a coffee shop in New Jersey. I'm pretty sure I just came back from the doctor with life-changing news.”
“We do a lot of improv here. Just stay loose, have fun. You'll be fine!”
43. “That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, Homeskillet.”
44. “This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs.”
45. “Hide a stone among stones and a man among men.”
46. “There is no secret ingredient. It's just you.”
47. “I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, I tip when somebody really deserves a tip. If they put forth an effort, I'll give them something extra. But I mean, this tipping automatically, that's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned they're just doing their job.”
48. “Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, 'What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?' We have to hear that question from them, now.”
49. “One more question. You're watching a stage play. A banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog...”
50. “Hold me closer, Ed, it's getting dark...Tell Auntie Em to let Old Yeller out...Tell Tiny Tim I won't be coming home this Christmas...Tell Scarlett I do give a damn...Pardon me...Thank you! You love me! You really love me!”
(2) comments
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's time once again for this blog's annual contribution to winter revelry and seasonal good cheer. Below you will find fifty quotations from fifty films. See how many you can identify. As always, I'll accept answers via e-mail or comments. Get the most and you'll win an Invisible Medal to grace your mantle. Best of luck and happy holidays!
And now...the quiz:
1. “This is my Eiffel Tower. This is my Rachmaninoff's Third. My Pieta. It's completely elegant, it's bafflingly beautiful, and it's capable of reducing the population of any standing structure to zero. I call it 'The Ex-Wife.'”
2. “You are D Squad. D for 'dirtbags.' When I say: ‘Hey, dirtbags!’ that means you! You people are going to hate my guts for the rest of your lives. I am going to make you sorry that you ever came here.”
3. “88 Keys the piano man set you up. Big Boy paid him to get you out of the way.”
4. “Well, sir, I ain't a for-real cowboy. But I am one helluva stud.”
5. “Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars.”
6. “Is there an F-5? What would that be like?”
7. “You'll never find anyone as good for you as I am, to believe in you as much as I do or love you as much!”
"I know that."
“Well then, why?”
8. “As head of security, it is my job to keep you alive. I will not succeed. Not with all of you. If you wish to survive, you need to cultivate a strong, mental attitude. You got to obey the rules. Pandora rules.”
9. “LaBoeuf, if you get crosswise of me you'll think a ton of brick had fell on you! You'll wish you was back at the Alamo with Travis!”
10. “I'll take that, thank you. Professor Marcus, this is another black mark against you. I shall certainly tell the police.”
11. “I wanted to do something outrageous, and it felt really good, to be needed, and to be trusted. It's just there's so much I want to do with this life and it feels that I haven't done any of it. You know, the sand is running out of the hourglass, so I want to look back and say, 'See, I did that, that was me, I was reckless and I was wild, and I fucking did it!'”
12. “So you're worried, not because you'll be in a house full of vampires, but because you think they won't approve of you?”
13. “We poured gasoline all over the place, then left a trail of it out the door. Then lit the whole thing up and watched it burn. But he's dead, Nancy. He can't get you because Mommy killed him. I even took his knives. So it's okay. You can sleep now.”
14. “You know who that is? That's Mr. Evil Knievel. He snuck in my back door, son, when I wasn't lookin'. You better flip-flop back here and gimme a hand, son, or we gonna be in a heap of trouble. Please roger that transmission!”
15. “Neil Patrick Harris stole my car tonight.”
“Hey! NPH wouldn't do that, all right? Now let me see some I.D.”
16. “By Grabthar's hammer, by the sons of Worvan, you shall be avenged.”
17. “I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!”
18. “I don't know what they've told you down at the USO, but you're going to be meeting a lot of strange men. Men in uniform. Boys a long way from home. Lonely. Desperate. They really have one thing on their minds. Show 'em a good time.”
19. “Kelp, people just don't like teachers blowing up their kids!”
20. “I was like one of the bad kids in your class. Somebody told me a lie and I believed it. One's as bad as the other.”
21. “We don't have none of this stuff in the boy's room! Wait a minute! We don't got none of this... we don't got doors on the stalls in the boy's room, we don't have, what is this? What's this? We don't have a candy machine in the boy's room!”
22. “We are Sex Bob-Omb and we are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!”
23. “It's buried under a big W. Say, what is a big W?”
24. “So, I'm a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman.”
25. “I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!”
26. “Ogata, if the oxygen destroyer is used even once, politicians from around the world will see it. Of course, they'll want to use it as a weapon. Bombs versus bombs, missiles versus missiles, and now a new superweapon to throw upon us all! As a scientist...no, as a human being...I can't allow that to happen!”
27. “I want to be alone. I think I have never been so tired in my life.”
28. “In the past year, over 800,000 Americans have died. Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be our nation's number one killer.”
29. “Well versed in the natural sciences and mathematics. She speaks seven languages proficiently. Were she not a woman one would consider her to be an intellectual.”
30. “Back home everyone said I didn't have any talent. They might be saying the same thing over here but it sounds better in French.”
31. “It was just my old disappearing pig trick!”
32. “We're not gonna get rid of anybody! We're gonna stick together, just like it used to be! When you side with a man, you stay with him! And if you can't do that, you're like some animal, you're finished! We're finished! All of us!”
33. “You can have any kind of a home you want. You can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stucco.”
34. “Okay, you're used to the top talent. What are you wasting your time working *me* over for?”
“I like the way you swing a guitar.”
“Yeah, I guess I *did* get a lot of wrist action into it, didn't I?”
35. “Broken Sword said 'The people have suffered years of warfare. Only the King of Qin can stop the chaos by uniting all under Heaven.'”
36. “You'll find a slight squeeze on the hooter an excellent safety precaution, Miss Scrumptious.”
37. “You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter, because we'll be together.”
38. “Ma, I've got it! I've got the idea, the angle, the lead. I'll be Jewish! Why, all I've got to do is just say it!”
39. “It has nothing to do with Satan, Mama. It's me. Me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can move things.”
40. “We decided to make it female so it would be more docile and controllable.”
“More docile and controllable, eh? You guys don't get out much.”
41. “Mr. Maryk, you may tell the crew for me that there are four ways of doing things aboard my ship: The right way, the wrong way, the Navy way, and my way. They do things my way, and we'll get along.”
42. “We're either in a café in Paris or a coffee shop in New Jersey. I'm pretty sure I just came back from the doctor with life-changing news.”
“We do a lot of improv here. Just stay loose, have fun. You'll be fine!”
43. “That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be undid, Homeskillet.”
44. “This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs.”
45. “Hide a stone among stones and a man among men.”
46. “There is no secret ingredient. It's just you.”
47. “I don't tip because society says I have to. All right, I tip when somebody really deserves a tip. If they put forth an effort, I'll give them something extra. But I mean, this tipping automatically, that's for the birds. As far as I'm concerned they're just doing their job.”
48. “Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, 'What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?' We have to hear that question from them, now.”
49. “One more question. You're watching a stage play. A banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog...”
50. “Hold me closer, Ed, it's getting dark...Tell Auntie Em to let Old Yeller out...Tell Tiny Tim I won't be coming home this Christmas...Tell Scarlett I do give a damn...Pardon me...Thank you! You love me! You really love me!”
Saturday, December 11, 2010
It's a gas, gas, gas...
A pair of quick history lessons, gentle readers.
166 years ago yesterday, a Hartford dentist named Horace Wells went to a show hosted by Gardner Colton, a stage performer who followed the lead of Humphry Davy and other Romantic-era natural philosophers by engaging in public demonstrations of various "airs." Wells, noticing that people under the influence of nitrous oxide did not seem to show pain upon being injured, started to ponder the medical applications of the substance.
166 years ago today, Wells recruited his partner John Riggs to assist in an experiment. While Wells inhaled large doses of nitrous oxide--supplied by Colton--Riggs removed one of Wells' molars, without any serious discomfort. With that single surgery, the modern discipline of anesthesia was born.
107 years later, a man was born who would later follow in Wells' footsteps to become a master gas-passer. What's more, this anesthesiologist par excellence would proceed to get married and sire two children, one of whom would also attend medical school while the other went on to become one of the Internet's least consistent bloggers.
Yes, that's right, through an odd twist of fate today, the anniversary of Horace Wells' fateful surgery, is also the birthday of the Invisible Dad who is, I would argue, at least partially responsible for my interests in history, science, and the intersection between them. As I've struggled my way through graduate school, he has supported of my efforts and continued to surprise me with his extensive knowledge of basically everything. Honestly, I can think of few other individuals who are equally comfortable discussing the history of television, the relative merits of various Marx Brothers movies, WWII military strategy, and the principles of electrical engineering. And even though he sometimes turns our conversations into pop quizzes, I always walk away learning something new in the process...for example, the historical coincidence alluded to above.
All of which is just a verbose way of saying thanks for everything, Dad...and happy birthday!
(And for those of you wondering about this year's holiday movie quote contest...stay tuned.)
(0) comments
A pair of quick history lessons, gentle readers.
166 years ago yesterday, a Hartford dentist named Horace Wells went to a show hosted by Gardner Colton, a stage performer who followed the lead of Humphry Davy and other Romantic-era natural philosophers by engaging in public demonstrations of various "airs." Wells, noticing that people under the influence of nitrous oxide did not seem to show pain upon being injured, started to ponder the medical applications of the substance.
166 years ago today, Wells recruited his partner John Riggs to assist in an experiment. While Wells inhaled large doses of nitrous oxide--supplied by Colton--Riggs removed one of Wells' molars, without any serious discomfort. With that single surgery, the modern discipline of anesthesia was born.
107 years later, a man was born who would later follow in Wells' footsteps to become a master gas-passer. What's more, this anesthesiologist par excellence would proceed to get married and sire two children, one of whom would also attend medical school while the other went on to become one of the Internet's least consistent bloggers.
Yes, that's right, through an odd twist of fate today, the anniversary of Horace Wells' fateful surgery, is also the birthday of the Invisible Dad who is, I would argue, at least partially responsible for my interests in history, science, and the intersection between them. As I've struggled my way through graduate school, he has supported of my efforts and continued to surprise me with his extensive knowledge of basically everything. Honestly, I can think of few other individuals who are equally comfortable discussing the history of television, the relative merits of various Marx Brothers movies, WWII military strategy, and the principles of electrical engineering. And even though he sometimes turns our conversations into pop quizzes, I always walk away learning something new in the process...for example, the historical coincidence alluded to above.
All of which is just a verbose way of saying thanks for everything, Dad...and happy birthday!
(And for those of you wondering about this year's holiday movie quote contest...stay tuned.)
