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In the interest of never letting the brilliant light of Douglas Adams fade, I'd like to drop his original observation of the phrase "it turns out." The words o
by jaysonelliot 16y ago
In the interest of never letting the brilliant light of Douglas Adams fade, I'd like to drop his original observation of the phrase "it turns out."
The words of the sadly late, eternally great Douglas Adams:
“Incidentally, am I alone in finding the expression ‘it turns out’ to be incredibly useful? It allows you to make swift, succinct, and authoritative connections between otherwise randomly unconnected statements without the trouble of explaining what your source or authority actually is. It’s great. It’s hugely better than its predecessors ‘I read somewhere that...’ or the craven ‘they say that...’ because it suggests not only that whatever flimsy bit of urban mythology you are passing on is actually based on brand new, ground breaking research, but that it’s research in which you yourself were intimately involved. But again, with no actual authority anywhere in sight.”
- arctangent 16y agoI used this exact phrase in a presentation today and it helped me gloss over technical details that my non-technical audience did not need to listen to. DNA's books are full of other good advice, although I have yet to try his approach to flying ;-)
- jaysonelliot 16y agoI have to confess to, just once, when I was about twelve, trying to "throw myself at the ground and miss."
- alexfarran 16y agoWhen I first understood how spacecraft stay in orbit I remember thinking "Throw yourself at the ground and miss"
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- psykotic 16y agoTry to do a word count for 'it turns out' in Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Anyone who's read that doorstop knows the prose is dreadful, and that phrase is especially conspicuous.