Sturgeon's Law
Jun. 19th, 2008 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaNormally, the number in Sturgeon's Law is a metaphorical number, a stand-in for "a large proportion but not 1." The Canonical number is 90%, although I've seen it quoted with 95% or even 99%. (The Wiki page also cites 98%, which I think I remember seeing cited on Usenet, and 94%, which I can't remember ever seeing and starts to obscure its essentially being a random number.)
It's very rare that I encounter anything for which the proportion that I think is crud really is almost exactly 90%, but Penny Arcade qualifies. The proportion of their strips that I think are really, really dumb - or even offensive - is about 9 out of 10. And then they pop out with gems like this one for the 10th one. Or this.
*sigh* Why is it that jerks occasionally do such good stuff? Then again, these are the guys who called Harlan Ellison an asshole and then pointed out exactly what it meant that they did that.
It's very rare that I encounter anything for which the proportion that I think is crud really is almost exactly 90%, but Penny Arcade qualifies. The proportion of their strips that I think are really, really dumb - or even offensive - is about 9 out of 10. And then they pop out with gems like this one for the 10th one. Or this.
*sigh* Why is it that jerks occasionally do such good stuff? Then again, these are the guys who called Harlan Ellison an asshole and then pointed out exactly what it meant that they did that.
