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Explain it to me like I'm ten

timharford.com

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Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#71

Post by ahazred8ta »

SoftTalker wrote: post #45
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harford, the author of the OC, is a learned man of at least middle-age (sorry!). He has been a journalist for decades. I suspect he may have had an education including Latin (per-lucid => pellucid) making that word choice far more natural. But really it's a poetic pairing of punchy adjectives amplified by alliteration! I'm a fan of his work generally. This piece landed well with me, I like to read less used vocabular…

> But really it's a poetic pairing of punchy adjectives amplified by alliteration! Silence! You bubble-headed boobie! -- Dr. Smith

Jonathan Harris gave an interview where he described the suit-wearing stuntman Bob May as "A very strange individual, even by the standards of the 1960s. Whenever I said 'you bubble-headed booby', I wasn't talking to the robot."

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#72

Post by stillpointlab »

temporallobe wrote: post #26

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

This brought to mind the often quoted assumption that intelligence and compression are intimately related.

A well edited letter may therefore be a sign of intelligence.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#73

Post by madcaptenor »

necovek wrote: post #56
asdfasvea wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite quote for 10 years was from my 1993 college math professor: You will never go wrong attributing a pithy quote to Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain. And then the internet became popular.

I think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?

Franklin couldn't predict the future. It was Twain, saying you'd never go wrong attributing a quote to Franklin.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#76

Post by sixsevenrot »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #65
temporallobe wrote: post #26

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. Indeed, brevity and clarity actually take time and analysis. I find this to be very true when writing requirements or documentation. Some of the worst requirements I’ve read have been extremely wordy and unnecessarily over-technical or jargon-heavy when it could have been explained in plain language. As u…

Yes, but it can be worth it as I've generally found that the most effective professional writing has your high-level request appear within the very first sentence. This is because it as quickly as possible puts the reader into the context of what you need from them making your rationalization of the request reinforce it, whereas if you try to rationalize before getting to your request a busy reader (think customer su…

It works in all cases except the important ones, where you expect that your request will be denied upfront and you have to present all the compelling arguments for your request along with the risks of not honoring your request, before you go to formulating what you need as the lesser evil of all the unpleasant alternatives.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#77

Post by esikich »

basscomm wrote: post #47
esikich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I've got 38 years of reading experience and have never seen that word.

If you can't glean the definition from context, anyone 10 years old or older should be able to use a dictionary.

Can a 10 year old do that? Wtf are we talking about.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#78

Post by esikich »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #52
esikich wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I've got 38 years of reading experience and have never seen that word.

You know how you'll see people talking about the difference between having five years of experience, or having one year of experience five times in a row?

Yes.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#79

Post by defrost »

esikich wrote: post #78
thaumasiotes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know how you'll see people talking about the difference between having five years of experience, or having one year of experience five times in a row?

Yes.

Could be your sphere of reading and / or age - it's common enough in (say) the British Ripping Yarns genre of boys own colonial adventures.

So UK, Canadian, Australian boys who were ten years old in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s would have encountered it. Anything that featured older school British Empire toy soldiers would have likely used the word, along with other military terms.

Rudyard Kipling is a typical kind of author who'd be read by ten year olds and who'd use that word and others of a similar pedigree.

Re: Explain it to me like I'm ten

#80

Post by necovek »

madcaptenor wrote: post #73
necovek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your professor took that one from Franklin... or was it Mark Twain?

Franklin couldn't predict the future. It was Twain, saying you'd never go wrong attributing a quote to Franklin.

Respecting a timeline only matters in some universes, and in the Universe of Quotes, it certainly does not!
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