Sturgeon's Law #093
25 August, 2008

http://www.sturgeonslaw.com/
RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SturgeonsLaw
Email: sturgeonslaw, gmail, you know the drill
Intro Music by Enter the Haggis
Bumper featuring Redboy and Absolute Amy
Promo for PMC Top 10

I seem to have successfully provoked a bunch of messages in my last episode, although admittedly one of these is just coincidence and wasn't directed at Sturgeon's Law specifically but I wanted to pass it along, anyway. In fact, we'll just start with it. Richard Jenkins, expat Oklahoman comic artist in Boston -- not to be confused with Jeffrey Rowland, expat Oklahoman cartoonist in Boston, but anyway -- dropped a line to say that he's got a new textbook out. You see, when Richard isn't doing wacky stuff like the art on the various Sky Ape books, he teaches art, and it turns out he also puts some effort into teaching teachers to teach art, or in this case, more specifically, how to include comics in their teaching. The name of his new textbook is Comics in Your Curriculum, and it's for sale through http://www.piecesoflearning.com as well as teacher outlet stores, so if you teach or if you know people who do, have a look. I've seen a few preview pages that he attached to his email, and it has a certain McCloud sort of vibe, even making a reference to Understanding Comics in one of the preview pages, but I think is aimed less at philosophy for those already involved, or at least interested, in comics and more towards getting the word out to students. Frankly, mainstream comics are in a bad place right now. I'm not afraid to say it, although it does make me sad. Sort of. Because there's no time like the present for reinventing comics -- as Scott McCloud might say -- and this is the way it happens; not by comic fans talking to each other over and over but by bringing in people without our biases and historical baggage.

Moving on, we've got this voicemail from Doug Rapson of Geek Acres.

Thanks for the congratulations, Doug, and the kind comments as well. You know, a friend who listens to the show compared the last episode to drunk dialing, and I've decided to take that as meaning that I didn't resist speaking my mind about what was nagging at me, in which case I think you can look forward to plenty more of that. If you want actual drunk dialing, well, just listen to many of your favorite podcasts during the PMEs each year, am I right? Okay, never mind that. Thanks again, Doug.

Listener Laura used the Contactify link on the Sturgeon's Law web site to share a list of her favorite web comics, which I'll link in this episode's show notes, but in brief her list includes User Friendly, General Protection Fault, The Devil's Panties, Ctrl Alt Delete, Penny Arcade, Get Medieval, Girl Genius, Sinfest, XKCD and Chasing the Sunset. Some of those have been mentioned here before, some of them I read regularly, some of them you couldn't pay me to read, and at the end of the day I'll just leave you with Laura's list and let you decide what you enjoy and don't enjoy for yourself, although I encourage you not to judge Jennie Breeden's The Devil's Panties too quickly; while she is crown princess of misspellings and sometimes what she finds funny may leave you wondering why, this is all connected to the vibe of the comic, which is goofing on her own experiences as a nerd artist on the road, and if you give it time it will very likely grow on you like it has for me. And, as Laura reminds us, it's not satanic porn, so give it a glance.

http://www.userfriendly.org
http://www.gpf-comics.com
http://www.thedevilspanties.com
http://www.cad-comic.com
http://www.penny-arcade.com
http://get-medieval.livejournal.com
http://www.girl-genius.net
http://www.sinfest.net
http://www.xkcd.com
http://www.fantasycomic.com

Listener Chris, while recognizing that I'm not an XBOX 360 owner, which indeed I am not, makes sure I'm aware of the game Braid, which, if I wasn't before, I certainly would be since Tycho of Penny Arcade decided to talk about it at some length. However, Chris mentions it for a different reason, and one that I had in fact heard elsewhere -- in fact, from John Buckman, founder of Magnatune, and that reason is that Braid uses Magnatune music as its soundtrack in accordance with Magnatune's reasonable and convenient and, I must add, very fair to the artist licensing plans. Chris also points out that a PC version of Braid is in the works for later this year and I'll be tempted to shell out a few bucks just to support someone who supports the excellent folks at Magnatune.com. First we had Portal with Jonathan Coulton, and now this; looks like a great time for both innovative game designers and independent recording artists.

And finally, I had a brief email exchange with listener, and I'm not making this up, Peter Sturgeon, who clarifies that he is not the brother of Theodore Sturgeon, who does indeed have a brother named Peter who founded the American branch of Mensa, thank you Wikipedia, and at any rate, Mr. Sturgeon writes to remind me that "90% of everything is crud" is not, in fact, the original Sturgeon's Law; in fact, that was called Sturgeon's Revelation early on to distinguish it from the original Sturgeon's Law, which read "Nothing is always absolutely so," and indeed, Sturgeon himself -- Theodore, not Peter -- referred to THAT quote as Sturgeon's Law, and, as I say, the 90% quote as Sturgeon's Revelation. So what do I do with this? Well, to answer that I went context diving, specifically into the Sturgeon story "The Claustrophile" where the quote originated, and I'd like to read you some context:

"Nothing is always absolutely so," he said again. "Once you know that, know it for sure, you can do things, go places you never thought about before. Everything there is gives you some place to go, something to think about. Everything. Take a -- a brass rivet, say. It's brass; you start with that. And what is brass? An alloy. How much change of what metal would make it not be brass? Given enough time, would radioactive decay in one of the metals transmute it enough so it wouldn't be brass any more? Or take the size. How big is it? Well, doesn't that depend? It's smaller after it's been used than when it was new. What color is it? That depends, too. In other words, if you're going to describe to me exactly what that rivet is, you're going to have to qualify and modify and get up a list of specs half as long as a tide chart and half as wide as Bowditch. And then all I have to do is sweat one drop of sweat on that rivet and wait twenty-four hours and you'll have to revise your specs."

One of the things I learned early on about online communication, a topic with which I have some 25 years of familiarity back to electronic BBSes in 1983, is that if you state a viewpoint, a belief, or an opinion, someone will be there to make you feel like an idiot for having said it. What I get from the original Sturgeon's Law is this: there's no reason in the world for you to worry about that, because we're all idiots to one level or another, simplifying a complex universe so we can even begin to talk about it. We describe things in ways that are good enough, whether we're Archimedes or Newton or even Einstein. We approximate. We generalize. We see things filtered through our own world views so that we have any hope at all of making sense of what we are seeing. And these are not character flaws; these are how intelligence works. Sometimes either alone or in concert with diverse others we see things in a new way and that becomes great art, or important science, or maybe nothing that anybody ever cares about but special just the same. And the underlying mechanism was the realization that you don't have to have all the answers to speak. You don't have to be 100% sure to comment. You don't have to fear being wrong or feeling like an idiot because nothing is always absolutely so. You just need to keep your mind open and accept that you don't have all the answers and that's what makes it worth thinking and talking and learning until the day you die. It's a statement of optimism, and by the way, so was Sturgeon's Revelation: no matter what you do, you can aspire to do it and do it well, because while 90% of everything is crud, doesn't that imply that 10% of everything isn't?