Sturgeon's Law, n.

[Mark Kohut]

We are the 10%...........


From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
To: Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> 
Cc: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, November 24, 2011 10:15 AM
Subject: Re: Sturgeon's Law, n.

Well, yours are. Mine are all glittering gems of witty, cogent analysis.

Sometimes, I read them aloud just to hear the soothing sounds of my
own voice reading something so brilliant.



On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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