Thursday, August 11, 2005

"[N]obody is going to earn any points for slogging their way through a book they aren't enjoying but think they ought to read"

Nancy Pearl, author of "Book Lust", and former librarian

Source: Christian Science Monitor interview with Nancy Pearl, Todd Crowell, 11 August 2005

Quote in context:
Pearl says she is a strong believer that no one should ever finish a book
they are not enjoying, no matter how popular or well reviewed it is. "Believe
me," she says, "nobody is going to earn any points for slogging their way
through a book they aren't enjoying but think they ought to read
." She finishes
probably one book for every five she starts.

She expounds what she calls the "50 page" rule: If a book doesn't grab
you in the first 50 pages, put it down and try something else. Life is short,
and there are many books to read. (She often returns to finish books she set
aside. Reading enjoyment is as much a matter of the reader's mood as it is the
style and content of the book, she says.)

Sunday, August 07, 2005

"When new technologies come along, they provoke a political question."

Source: Paul Starr, author of The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications, On the Media Interview with Brooke Gladstone, 30 April 2004, rebroadcast 7 August 2005.

Context from the transcript:

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Now, in your book, over and over again you demonstrate that, contrary to what I think is the popular opinion today, it wasn't the technology that pushed forward how we have our national conversation -- that the ground was already tilled for that kind of communication before the technology came along.

PAUL STARR: Well, what I suggest in this book is that when new technologies come along, they provoke a political question -- how is this new medium going to be handled? Is it going to be private? Is it going to be public? Is it going to be a military technology? What will be the basic purposes that it serves? And so Europe and America often dealt with the same technology in very different ways. When the electric telegraph first appeared, the Europeans treated it as a military technology. We treated it as a commercial technology. The telephone, same thing. There was a period in the 1890s, early 1900s when there were hundreds of little mutual telephone companies, independent telephone cooperatives that were established, and telephones spread much more widely, much faster in America than elsewhere.

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are

Source: Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, 2005, p61

Context: Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

--- Henry B. Adams

Source: The web, passim. No citation found.