Which half? One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, "Do you have any controls?" Well the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, "Do you mean did I not operate on half of the patients?" The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room hesitantly replied, "Yes, that's what I had in mind." Then the visitor's fist really came down as he thundered, "Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death!" God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, "Which half?" E.E. Peacock Jr., Seeing With Fresh Eyes science
Self-publishing, self-exemplifying I sought to design [my first book] so as to make it self-exemplifying – that is, the physical object itself would reflect the intellectual principles advanced in the book. Publishers seemed appalled at the prospect that an author might govern design. Consequently I decided to self-publish the book. ...[Howard Gralla and I] spent the summer in his studio laying out the book, page by page. We integrated graphics into the text, sometimes in the middle of sentences, eliminating the usual segregation of text and image – one of the ideas Visual Display advocated. My view on self-publishing was to go all out, to make the best and most elegant and wonderful book possible, without compromise. Otherwise, why do it? The next 4 books were financed by the previous books. I have never written a grant application. Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes To enact visually the message craft