XKCD tries to answer the question “At what point in human history were there too many (English) books to be able to read them all in one lifetime?”
Tag: reading
Improbable bizarre-studies performance at ARISIA this Saturday
Join us this Saturday, for the Improbable Research session at ARISIA, in Boston. Marc Abrahams will introduce an all-star lineup. The performers will do dramatic, two-minute readings from bizarre studies collected by the Annals of Improbable Research. Each performer will be unfamiliar with the study she or he is reading aloud, aside from skimming through it immediately before the […]
How to tell a story
Tim Radford, science editor of the Guardian ’til recently, mastered the art of telling a gripping, good story — no matter how tough the topic. One day Tim wrote some notes about how to do it. Here’s the start of his “Manifesto for the simple scribe” (to see the whole list, click on the link): […]
Gunning fog
“In linguistics, the Gunning fog index is a test designed to measure the readability of a sample of English writing,” says Wikipedia. Someone named Simon has put a Gunning fog calculator online. This and the preceding paragraph together have a Gunning fog index of 11.47, sayeth the calculator.