Category: thought

“You’re not delivering the facts, you’re delivering emotion and weak opinion. The best data in the world is useless if your means of conveyance is suspect.”

Rands on making excuses.

Saving these words for every future argument I get into.

This midwestern farm country is in my blood. By build and by disposition, I am a prairie schooner.

We’re so ecstatic to get that single useful email out of hundreds that we can’t keep ourselves from compulsively pressing the new email lever over and over and over, hoping it will happen again soon, like the caged rats in Skinners’ experiments.

So many great quotes and ideas here that I chose this one because it is so provocative especially when taken out of context.

I think what I like most about this, YAEIER™ (yet another email is evil rant), is that while all the right notes are hit about the problem, the solution offered is just as smart:

Instead of abusing email as a “one size fits all” conduit for communication, be smart. Know when to escalate your communication to the right medium for the particular message you’re trying to deliver.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. Stop every email you are reading and go here now.

Been meaning to link to the beautiful redesign of the personal site of my friend Jorge Quinteros for a while now. Check it out. Understaded elegance at work here.

Let me sum it up this way. Science fiction has slowly and ineluctably settled into a monotonous death: it has become inbred, derivative, stale. Suddenly you people have come in, some of the greatest talents currently in existence, and now we have a new life, a new start. As for my own role in the BLADE RUNNER project, I can only say that I did not know that a work of mine or a set of ideas of mine could be escalated into such stunning dimensions. My life and creative work are justified and completed by BLADE RUNNER. Thank you..and it is going to be one hell of a commercial success. It will prove invincible.

Philip K. Dick wrote this five months before he died, four months before film was released, and only having seen a short clip on TV. Yet, even he knew then what we know now. Every science fiction film made since owes a tremendous debt to Blade Runner.

Of further note, if you have not seen the Final Cut (not to be confused with the directors cut – see here) of the film you have not seen the film and, I would argue, you have perhaps seen one of the worst sci-fi films made, not the best.

Also, Letters of Note is one of my favorite diversions on all of the internets.