Friday, February 24, 2006
Sexing an alligator barehanded
Here are some colorful characterizations to inspire you to create your own - and become more well-known by being frequently-quoted.
Whether she's sexing an alligator barehanded or coaxing a bat to tangle in her hair, Diane Ackerman goes to unique -- and sometimes terrifying -- extremes to observe nature first-hand.
In her book “The Moon by Whale Light”, Ackerman forges visceral connections between the reader and the natural world.
To make your messages more memorable by involving sensory language, turn to any page in any book by Diane Ackerman to get inspired. Here are two of my favorite quotes from her book, “A Natural History of the Senses”
~ "The visual opium of sunset was what I crave."
~ "A neighbor fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move."
From “Punchlines, Pitfalls, and Powerful Programs: 10 Surefire Ways of Adding Humor to Your Presentations” by Scott Friedman (http://www.FunnyScott.com):
"Looking at John in a tux was like looking at a Volvo with a gun rack. It just didn't seem to fit."
"This is going to make the savings and loan crisis look like a child's bedtime story," said San Francisco attorney Joe Cotchett, in an interview on Channel Four in San Francisco.
Cotchett was suing Enron, Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, and the accounting firm Andersen, alleging that they defrauded investors.
Cotchett should know. He's the guy who won $3.3 billion in damages -- later reduced to $1.75 billion -- from Charles Keating's notorious Lincoln Savings and Loan a decade ago.
"Mimicking spider silk properties has been the holy grail of materials science for a long time," said Jeffrey Turner, president of Nexia Biotechnologies, in an interview on CNN.
His company is planning to produce spider silk on a commercial scale with goats that have been genetically engineered to secrete silk proteins in their milk.
He added, "The silk fibers we will produce can be used for everything from sutures for microsurgery and fishing lines to bullet-proof body armor as tough as Kevlar. Spider silk is a flexible and lightweight fiber, that, by weight, is five times stronger than steel."
From the February 18, 2004 issue of the New York Times:
"The skeleton is like riding the lid of a turkey roaster pan face first down a roller coaster rail after an ice storm. It returns to the Olympics after a 54-year ban."
From Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.,
“The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and Consciousness”:
"As Heinrich Zinner put it, '
The best things can't be said.' The second best are those things we can only refer to, such as God, transcendence, and inner knowledge. The third best are the things our language hemisphere actually talks about."
The opening lines of Kerry McGinnis' “Pieces of Blue: The Unforgettable Story of a Young Girl's Epic Journey”: "
The day she died I called my mother wicked. I was six, big enough to lift baby Patrick as he tottered, crying, across the green kitchen linoleum. I jogged him in my arms, feeling the cold of his wet nappy, nuzzling my nose into his soft neck."
The perhaps apocryphal story of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs' successful attempt to recruit then-Pepsi executive John Sculley to run Apple:
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water to children or help get a machine into their hands that will change their lives forever?"
In her book “Shiksa Goddess: Or, How I Spent My Forties”, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein described her friend Jamie Lee Curtis on a shared shopping excursion:
"Jamie Lee's attitude toward clothing is half negligent tomboy and half drop-dead glamorous woman."
Whether she's sexing an alligator barehanded or coaxing a bat to tangle in her hair, Diane Ackerman goes to unique -- and sometimes terrifying -- extremes to observe nature first-hand.
In her book “The Moon by Whale Light”, Ackerman forges visceral connections between the reader and the natural world.
To make your messages more memorable by involving sensory language, turn to any page in any book by Diane Ackerman to get inspired. Here are two of my favorite quotes from her book, “A Natural History of the Senses”
~ "The visual opium of sunset was what I crave."
~ "A neighbor fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move."
From “Punchlines, Pitfalls, and Powerful Programs: 10 Surefire Ways of Adding Humor to Your Presentations” by Scott Friedman (http://www.FunnyScott.com):
"Looking at John in a tux was like looking at a Volvo with a gun rack. It just didn't seem to fit."
"This is going to make the savings and loan crisis look like a child's bedtime story," said San Francisco attorney Joe Cotchett, in an interview on Channel Four in San Francisco.
Cotchett was suing Enron, Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, and the accounting firm Andersen, alleging that they defrauded investors.
Cotchett should know. He's the guy who won $3.3 billion in damages -- later reduced to $1.75 billion -- from Charles Keating's notorious Lincoln Savings and Loan a decade ago.
"Mimicking spider silk properties has been the holy grail of materials science for a long time," said Jeffrey Turner, president of Nexia Biotechnologies, in an interview on CNN.
His company is planning to produce spider silk on a commercial scale with goats that have been genetically engineered to secrete silk proteins in their milk.
He added, "The silk fibers we will produce can be used for everything from sutures for microsurgery and fishing lines to bullet-proof body armor as tough as Kevlar. Spider silk is a flexible and lightweight fiber, that, by weight, is five times stronger than steel."
From the February 18, 2004 issue of the New York Times:
"The skeleton is like riding the lid of a turkey roaster pan face first down a roller coaster rail after an ice storm. It returns to the Olympics after a 54-year ban."
From Richard E. Cytowic, M.D.,
“The Man Who Tasted Shapes: A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions, Reasoning, and Consciousness”:
"As Heinrich Zinner put it, '
The best things can't be said.' The second best are those things we can only refer to, such as God, transcendence, and inner knowledge. The third best are the things our language hemisphere actually talks about."
The opening lines of Kerry McGinnis' “Pieces of Blue: The Unforgettable Story of a Young Girl's Epic Journey”: "
The day she died I called my mother wicked. I was six, big enough to lift baby Patrick as he tottered, crying, across the green kitchen linoleum. I jogged him in my arms, feeling the cold of his wet nappy, nuzzling my nose into his soft neck."
The perhaps apocryphal story of Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs' successful attempt to recruit then-Pepsi executive John Sculley to run Apple:
"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugar water to children or help get a machine into their hands that will change their lives forever?"
In her book “Shiksa Goddess: Or, How I Spent My Forties”, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein described her friend Jamie Lee Curtis on a shared shopping excursion:
"Jamie Lee's attitude toward clothing is half negligent tomboy and half drop-dead glamorous woman."
