[ Wednesday, September 28, 2005 (9:10 PM) ] ( link )
Destroyer of life and hope: I leave to others the easy task of praising Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the classic treatise on good writing. Its most important and least followed advice is to write plainly and clearly, a principle to which I heartily subscribe. Here is one of my favorite passages on clarity; it's a masterpiece of humor, hyperbole, and (at the end) haughty disdain for the hapless reader. (You may have others: Though under a hundred pages, the book is endlessly quotable.)
Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Usually we think only of the ludicrous aspect of ambiguity; we enjoy it when the Times tells us that Nelson Rockefeller is “chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, which he entered in a fireman’s raincoat during a recent fire, and founded the Museum of Primitive Art.” This we all love. But think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity; think of that side, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair. (pp. 79-80)
Amen.
[ Thursday, September 22, 2005 (10:40 PM) ] ( link )
Three beautiful Internet tools: Here are three Internet tools that have become the mainstays of my surfing.
1. Gmail: This is a no-brainer. But I didn't realize until I started work how much this service has changed my thinking about email. It's almost impossible for me to use other email systems now. I hate deleting messages, I hate having to scroll around to find conversations, and I hate not being able to find a damned thing. Older style email programs have grown obsolete without my even noticing.
2. Bloglines: Keep all your RSS feeds on one webpage. I tried lots of RSS aggregators, but this one is the best because you can check it from any computer (such as, hypothetically, your work computer). Software-based RSS aggregators are unusable unless you use only one machine all day long.
3. If you've never tried del.icio.us, you should do so right away. I don't particularly care about the social aspect of del.icio.us, but I love the fact that it provides a permanent, online, taggable, searchable list of bookmarks. It's the perfect repository for all those links you'd like to keep as a reference, but don't need to check every day. See my list of iPod sites and miscellaneous "how to" sites (including how to twirl pens).
Best of all, it's accessible from anywhere. Have you forgotten that neat trick you once saw online on how to fold a t-shirt? Go to any computer, look under clothes, and you'll find it as my first entry (at the bottom of the page).
You can see my own bookmarks here. At 445 items and counting, it's become kind of rid.iculo.us.