Sturgeon's Law, n.

[Keith Davis]

So then 90% of posts on the plist are crap?
On Nov 21, 2011 9:57 PM, "Dave Monroe" <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sturgeon's Law, n.
>
> Pronunciation: Brit. /ˌstəːdʒ(ə)nz ˈlɔː/,  U.S. /ˈˌstərdʒənz ˈlɔ/
>
> Forms:  19– Sturgeon's Law,   19– Sturgeon's law.
>
> Etymology: < the genitive of the name of Theodore H. Sturgeon
> (1918–85, born Edward Hamilton Waldo), U.S. science fiction writer +
> law n.1
> Compare the following earlier use of the term, referring to a
> different aphorism:
>
> 1957  T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Mag. July 78 One who has
> reduced the cosmos to Sturgeon's Law: Nothing Is Always Absolutely So.
>
>  A humorous aphorism which maintains that most of any body of
> published material, knowledge, etc., or (more generally) of everything
> is worthless: based on a statement by Sturgeon (see quot. 1957),
> usually later cited as ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’.
> Typically used of a specific medium, genre, etc., originally and esp.
> science fiction, and now freq. also of information to be found on the
> Internet.
>
> The aphorism was apparently first formulated in 1951 or 1952 at a
> lecture at New York University (letter to the O.E.D. from Fruma Klass,
> the wife of science fiction writer Phil Klass (‘William Tenn’), 5 Dec.
> 2001), and popularized at the 1953 WorldCon science fiction convention
> (see J. Gunn in N.Y. Rev. Sci. Fiction (1995) Sept. 20).
>
> [1957  T. Sturgeon in Venture Sci. Fiction Sept. 49 On that hangs
> Sturgeon's revelation. It came to him that s f is indeed
> ninety-percent crud, but that also—Eureka!—ninety-percent of
> everything is crud. All things—cars, books, cheeses, hairstyles,
> people and pins are, to the expert and discerning eye, crud, except
> for the acceptable tithe which we each happen to like.]
>
> 1960  P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding Sci. Fact & Fiction 162/2
> Theodore Sturgeon once attacked it from the other side with what has
> become known as Sturgeon's Law: ‘Ninety per cent of everything is
> crud.’ The remaining ten per cent is what we call ‘good’ and ten per
> cent of that—one story in a hundred—is ‘really good’.
>
> 1977 Washington Post (Nexis) 29 Aug. b1 What we're in for in movies
> and television is a deluge.‥ If I may I'd like to quote (sci-fi writer
> Theodore) Sturgeon's Law: ‘90 per cent of everything is crap’.
> Television seems to bear that out.
>
> 1984 Computer Magazines in net.flame (Usenet newsgroup) 3 Feb., Is
> anyone else disgusted with what is happening to the computer
> magazines? I realize that Sturgeon's law is a strong force‥but this is
> getting putrid!
>
> 1996 PC World (Nexis) Dec., ‘Ever heard of Sturgeon's law?’ He shook
> his head. ‘“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” If that's true of
> anything, it's true of the Web. Ninety percent of everything on it
> isn't even worth the time it takes to download’.
>
> http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/246938
>
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