I think they never got past the second page, neb.
By then they were already fully enlightened.
But what is it, that it does efficiently?
That's actually awesome, neb. Congrats.
But wait, "efficient" wasn't a back-handed compliment, was it? Was it code for "boring"?
No, but it was sort of back-handed, being code for "you don't give the reader any help by, e.g., repeating or even highlighting as such the important parts".
Ah. Okay. So is that a problem as such?
"Let us review: ..."
Heh. But yeah, I don't know if I'd take that seriously or not. On the one hand, it can be helpful to you, the writer, to revisit the outline, so to speak. On the other hand, well, it can be helpful to the reader as well.
I was told back in the day that I moved too quickly, that I could use some shorter sentences (!), and/or transitional paragraphs providing review and setting the stage for the next onslaught section. Good advice overall.
It may mean that your 55 pages, if not your individual sentences, are too dense, as in tightly-packed. Unpack more.
He went over in greater detail what it means, parsimon.
Your prose is efficient at achieving its intended purpose.
11. Funny. I was thinking of exactly that a few hours ago. Heck, when AFOE did one recently with a similar title,m I felt they should have linked that masterpiece.
12: Least necessary advice ever.
The 55 pages were his complete, unabridged translation of Das Kapital.
complete, unabridged
See, that's the kind of redundancy that an efficient writer eschews.
Not really. You could have the unabridged first volume or something.
I suppose, but it would be rather odd to do an unabridged translation of only one part of a work.
Usually, but most people only read the tennis school part of Das Kapital.
I assume the beginning of the piece was "Call me neb."
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
You could print it double spaced, and cut the density in half.
These comments are pretty efficient, and not 55 pages long.
These comments are pretty efficient
The thread should just be closed now.
25: Right. Lest we start belaboring and repeating points in a foolish and inefficient manner. So yes, I'd like to highlight the fact that the suggestion to close the thread now is the most important part of thread.
I think "efficient writing" describes perfectly what I dislike about the Bible, in a literary sense. People are always telling you (well, they're telling me) that it's an excellent story apart from its religious connotations, but don't you believe them.
Everything that happens in the Bible gets one verse -- nothing is so insignificant that it's condensed, and few are so important that they're expanded on even slightly. In the Passion in Matthew 27 for instance, it's just a staccato series of events (...and then they took him to Golgotha and then they gave him vinegar to drink and then they crucified him and then they cast lots for his clothes...
I know it's supposed to be a chronicle of sorts, but it gets to the point where you want to say "tell me more about this, if it's supposed to be so important! Enlarge."
(And then they go and give you 4 biographies of Christ and two creation stories that parrot one another half the time, and contradict one another the other half. That is not what I wanted guys.)
I don't really understand 27. The Bible is a huge document written by many people over the course of centuries in a wide varieties of genres and styles. I don't think it's possible to generalize much about its literary style.
Then let's say the gospels in particular?
I think yu could say that about the Gospels. Even the times Jesus is telling stories he does it in a really barebones way.
Sure, I suppose that's a reasonable take on the Gospels.
Efficiency is next to godliness. The trinity is the highest example example of the division of labor.
I don't know. It seems to me like a triune god is just another way of saying "heavy multitasker."
My professional school hammers in the need for incessant signposting: "First, tell them what you're going to do. Then, do it. Then, tell them what you just did." This is with lazy/busy readers in mind, though.
Did you just say something, Minivet?
Executive summary: takeaways first, reasoning next, details last.
A German professor once wrote in comments on a paper that my writing is "klar und einfach, ohne Schnörkel." (Paper in English, comments in German.) Ohne Schnörkel! I was pretty proud of that comment.
I want to work at one of those companies where they condense the important books that all the ceo's are reading into just ten pages. even such masterpieces as who else moved my cheese? or whatever. executive summary. they advertise on the plane.
The busy CEO only needs to know where the cheese is now, not who moved it or why.
Well, and where it will be, going forward.
If you use the cheese as collateral, you don't have to worry about where the cheese is after the loan papers are signed.
And the bank doesn't need to worry about where the cheese is because it can buy default insurance.
43: sure, until the proliferation of synthetic cheese products triggers a collapse in the subprime nacho market.
Once the loan papers are signed you have a duty to the lender to maintain the cheese, so you need to worry even more about where it is.
Of course, the market collapses always end with the GSEs taking on all the private cheese loans and ultimately foreclosing. Where do you think government cheese comes from?
That government cheese is guaranteed!
Orange you glad it didn't gouda zero?
You win. I can't think of a better cheese pun.
I actually don't give edam either way, comte think of it.
52: Just for that, I'm going to put the hose in the storm sewer and run it for an hour if you don't post a pun in the next ten minutes.
Fortunately, you are in a far away Oakland, where I'm told that water is plentiful.
I have a cousin somewhere in the bay area (San something), I'll have him do it.
Whereas I fail at not being prickly. Does Sifu Cranky need a snack? I think so!
Storm sewers are the lowest form of water usage.
Sure, use puns, but then fail to defend them against the infidels. The economists call that being a free rider.
I'd never make it as a CEO. I'm still stuck on the going-forward basis part of the lingo. I guess a person could talk about battle plans. There'd be front lines, maybe rear guards (or is that football?), tactics versus strategy, and powerpoint presentations, for sure. Arrows and circles can be done.
There's also the long and short (-term). Going long and going short. This sounds like football again, actually.
Going with this somewhat idle train of thought, because why not: I don't think I'd noticed before the apparent parallels between football talk and corporate-ese. Back in the day, one noticed, well, Missile Envy (Dr. Helen Caldicott). We are not so much with that kind of language any more; now it's all about teams. I hypothesize.
Probably because you can't say "There is no 'i' in 'Missile Envy.'"
You've got to give 110% Assured Destruction, son.
Am I the only one who's thinking that Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, was on the verge of nervous breakdown, what with being held personally accountable, such that he had to break off, be relieved, and go to a yacht race?
It strikes me that high-level politicians are routinely subject to the kind of scrutiny Hayward was presented with. Turns out that public service is much more serious than you think it is, and the more the corporate world becomes enmeshed with it, if not downright standing in for it, the more it finds itself stunned by the repercussions.
63: I doubt it, but just in case, we should try to scrutinize more CEOs.
Parsimon, it's only effective if you use, say, half a football metaphor and finish it up with something about fishing. And now I have to get out of this conversation lets I find myself talking about my job.
And now I have to get out of this conversation lets I find myself talking about my job.
Oh dear. My sympathies.
I've found myself watching random episodes of The Office recently, which are not offensive but are also not particularly funny: my response is mostly, "Really? I don't think so. You people aren't actually doing any detectable work, and it's more alarmingly depressing than funny. I don't believe it."
I may not understand what the show's supposed to be doing.
You people aren't actually doing any detectable work, and it's more alarmingly depressing than funny. I don't believe it.
You know it's fiction, right?
Sure. I thought teh funny was supposed to trade on some resemblance to, some echo of, reality, though. The Office's scenario I just can't believe at all. I haven't seen the original British version, which I understand is hilarious.
The British version is better than the American, I'd say, but they're pretty similar in overall nature. If you don't like one I doubt you'd like the other.
Taken under advisement. The friend who most insistently recommends the British version also highly recommends other things about which I remain silent, so as not to have an argument.
70: Like mutual funds with very high fees and Florida real estate, or just TV shows that suck?
I like the way the Army trains people to deliver the most important bit of information first. Since it's the Army, they need an acronym and an ugly format, so instead of a plain old thesis statement or lede or whatever it's called in other sorts of English prose, you get the "bottom line up front", delivered thus: "BLUF: [thesis/lede]", and after that you don't have to organize or anything.
71: Like Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, of which I've seen half a dozen episodes, and it's okay, though it's been a few years, actually, since I've seen one, but I'm not inclined to rent the whole series to watch back to back, as has been suggested.
There is, I speculate, a certain consistent style in the sort of humor at hand in The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I find myself not quite getting or appreciating. An argument would ensue if I tried to articulate it, maybe.
There is, I speculate, a certain consistent style in the sort of humor at hand in The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I find myself not quite getting or appreciating.
Indeed, they are very similar shows. The humor comes from cringe-inducing awkwardness.
The humor comes from cringe-inducing awkwardness.
People talked about this recently here, no?
But those shows don't make me cringe; at least The Office doesn't. They just make me shrug: this is not believable in the first place. So apparently it's not working for, or on, me. In all honesty, Seinfeld worked better at the cringe factor.
I should say that I really haven't seen Curb Your Enthusiasm for several years, and given my general respect for Larry David, I should reserve judgment until I know what the hell I'm talking about.
you get the "bottom line up front", delivered thus: "BLUF: [thesis/lede]"
This made me laugh. BLUF indeed.
People talked about this recently here, no?
Yeah. The general upshot was that a surprising number of us have a strong aversion to this kind of cringe-humor. As you note, your reaction isn't that but something else. The cringe thing is definitely what the shows are going for, though.
People talked about this recently here, no?
People talked about how they had talked about this. Let's see how many more layers of self-referentiality it takes to make the blog implode.
Lately, I've been consistently annoyed by sit coms and by people trying to sell mutual funds, but only the people selling mutual funds can see me cringe.
The American version of The Office is different enough, owing to its longer running, that they're pretty much distinct shows by now. Episode by episode at the beginning, the British version is possibly better for certain values of better, though admittedly I never watched past the first six.
I'm not sure how I managed to get into the American version, given just how annoying Michael Scott can be in some of the earliest episodes*, but I thought it had a pretty good couple of years in the middle. I haven't seen a lot of the recent episodes, though I've watched what's been on Hulu since I got back to the US.
*Yes, he's almost always annoying at all times. But it was much more relentless in the earlier seasons, before additional plots & stories developed.
79: I think I haven't watched enough of it to get a sense of developing story lines, except for the occasional thing: the youngish man with a mop of hair comes to be in love with the youngish blondish woman, which seems a positive development. This is somewhat vague to me. The problem is that they're all so seemingly washed-out; and the office itself is colorless and washed out. It's rather shocking. I expect to see dust motes in the corners or something.
"First, tell them what you're going to do. Then, do it. Then, tell them what you just did." This is with lazy/busy readers in mind, though.
I must protest. Punchlines are overvalued in contexts other than "______ goes into a bar" jokes and horror movies. If you want people -- here I speak primarily of adults, because I know more about adult education -- to actually absorb information or an argument, it is far more efficacious and less frustrating to them when they know what's coming. Insisting on doing otherwise is often just showing off (or, to be fair, not understanding how adults learn).
Also, the cheese puns are hilarious.
If you want people -- here I speak primarily of adults, because I know more about adult education -- to actually absorb information or an argument, it is far more efficacious and less frustrating to them when they know what's coming. Insisting on doing otherwise is often just showing off (or, to be fair, not understanding how adults learn).
Oh, I agree it's efficacious, and I do it. It's just not in line with my own aesthetics - which I suppose could be described as "showing off."