Quotes

Think big

In Quotes on 27 April 2010 with no comments

If you’re think­ing any­way, think big

From What Logos Do and How They Do It

Like, embarrassing.

In Quotes on 15 January 2009 tagged guardian, Quote with Comments Off

I have respect for broad­sheet journ­al­ists because they haven’t suc­cumbed to degrad­ing them­selves, to writ­ing pidgin Eng­lish with all these ter­rible col­lo­qui­al­isms, the phras­ing of which is just, like, embarrassing.

- Peaches Gel­dof

Me love cookies

In Quotes on 13 December 2008 tagged cookie monster, Quotes with Comments Off

Me love cook­ies. Me tend to get out of con­trol when me see cook­ies. Me know it not nat­ural to react so strongly to cook­ies, but me have weak­ness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn’t nor­mal. Me see dis­ap­prov­ing looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.

Cookie Mon­ster searches deep within him­self and asks: is me really monster?

(Some­what unre­lated, but me really want to write whole Stat­ist­ics assign­ment in style of Cookie Mon­ster now: “Me run ana­lysis. Me look at graph and say sample not nor­mal. Me know it because of skew. Me hurt inside.”)

I have an innie

In Quotes on 20 November 2008 with Comments Off

You only have to look at Michael Jack­son to real­ise it’s prob­ably best to live with what you’ve got.

Who doesn’t have a belly button?

Please remove the poo from your fingers

In Quotes on 18 November 2008 tagged germs, hygiene, illness with Comments Off

In the toi­lets of a ser­vice sta­tion Dr Val Curtis is waging a one-woman war on dirty hands that spread dis­ease:

Curtis, the dir­ector of the Hygiene Centre at the Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, a co-founder of the Global Part­ner­ship for Hand­wash­ing with Soap, and all-round hand-washing afi­cion­ado, has not col­lated the final res­ults yet. But even the most dis­gust­ing elec­tronic mes­sage she could think of, “Soap it off or eat it later”, has failed to eli­cit a scrum for the soap. “I think what we need to do next is put up a poster with a big photo of poo on it,” she sighs.

Just in case any­one needed any fur­ther encour­age­ment (!) to wash their hands:

Absentee num­bers have plummeted at one school, George Watson’s Col­lege, in Edin­burgh after it intro­duced man­dat­ory hospital-style hand­wash­ing for all its pupils in January.

I do have to admit to hav­ing pre­vi­ously thought that the com­puter labs at uni could do with a decon­tam­in­a­tion cham­ber at the door. I’m not bothered by dirt in the slight­est, but germs are another mat­ter alto­gether given my com­plete lack of any­thing approach­ing a func­tion­ing immune sys­tem, and you only need to look at the state of the mon­it­ors to deduce the state of the key­boards. Maybe I’ll just bor­row that poo poster…

Outliers may well be excellent, but they still skew your results

In Quotes, books on 16 November 2008 tagged malcolm gladwell, Quote with Comments Off

This idea — that excel­lence at a com­plex task requires a crit­ical, min­imum level of prac­tice — sur­faces again and again in stud­ies of expert­ise. In fact, research­ers have settled on what they believe is a magic num­ber for true expert­ise: 10,000 hours.

This extract from Mal­colm Gladwell’s next book, Out­liers invest­ig­ates what it takes to become the best. In short, it appears to be tal­ent, drive, time, prac­tice — and a massive amount of luck.