Metrics Movie Quotes

And whenever I’d complain or was upset about something in my own life, my mother had the same advice: “Darling, just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.

just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.

His little piece-of-crap loft didn’t have books or movies, but he had a metric shit ton of weapons and ammo. He opened the door to the closet he’d made into his own private supply shop. Jake whistled. “Is that C-4? Are you fucking kidding me?” Jesse shrugged. Everyone needed a hobby. “I like to be prepared, sir.” “We’re not your superior officers, man. It’s just Jake.” Jake practically salivated. “Is that a fucking P90?” Jake caressed the Belgian made submachine gun. It was highly restricted. Jesse had spent a lot of money buying it on the black market. “You can take it. It might come in handy.” God, he sounded like a five-year-old trying to make a friend. Sean nabbed his SR-25 and an extra cartridge. “This should do it.

I had always thought there wasn’t time for beauty anymore. That there was something frivolous about it—the pursuit of it, the mindless worship of it as laid out in the old movies we liked to watch. I had thoroughly internalized the notion that usefulness was the only metric of whether something had value. A carabiner was useful. A multitool was useful. Schedules were useful, as were cages and bars. Tranquilizer darts were regrettable but useful. A flower could be useful but only because it might provide food or diversion for a bird or animal, not because it was beautiful. Its beauty was incidental and easily dismissed. But then Sailor arrived, and I realized that even the smallest sliver of beauty matters and can be useful. Not because it makes a difference on some cosmic level, but because it quiets our restless hearts for a moment. It whispers to us that joy is still possible.

It was tradition, albeit a bad one, in mechanized units, to steal and hoard spare parts. It was certainly tempting. Possessing extra parts gave a driver or unit the ability to repair a vehicle rapidly, without going through the Army Repair Parts system with its paperwork and time lag for delivery. For a commander, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant better vehicle readiness reporting - a positive metric of performance. For a solider, fixing a vehicle rapidly meant finishing work earlier and having more time off. In countless movies over the years, Hollywood glamorized the "scrounger" who could come up with scarce parts quickly. But Graney knew it killed the system we ultimately depended on, and he taught us why. Besides the obvious theft involved, stealing or hoarding parts meant vehicles were fixed without forcing the repair system to work. The more we went around it, the less responsible it was. It was basic, but getting the basics right was Graney's brilliance.

His little piece-of-crap loft didn’t have books or movies, but he had a metric shit ton of weapons and ammo. He opened the door to the closet he’d made into his own private supply shop. Jake whistled. “Is that C-4? Are you fucking kidding me?” Jesse shrugged. Everyone needed a hobby. “I like to be prepared, sir.” “We’re not your superior officers, man. It’s just Jake.” Jake practically salivated. “Is that a fucking P90?

Darling, just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker. Don’t replay the bad, scary movie.

Meaning “by way of the anus.” “Per annum,” with two n’s, means “yearly.” The correct answer to the question, “What is the birth rate per anum?” is zero (one hopes). The Internet provides many fine examples of the perils of confusing the two. The investment firm that offers “10% interest per anum” is likely to have about as many takers as the Nigerian screenwriter who describes himself as “capable of writing 6 movies per anum” or the Sri Lankan importer whose classified ad declares, “3600 metric tonnes of garlic wanted per anum.” The individual who poses the question “How many people die horse riding per anum?” on the Ask Jeeves website has set himself up for crude, derisive blowback in the Comments block.

Similarity. Analogy is one of the most powerful creative tools. We’ll dig deeper into the power of analogy in the next chapter. Here, consider parallel contexts at one end of the dial and completely unrelated ones at the other. To think of good analogies to try, start with the intended outcome. Want to make ice cream faster? “Who or what is built for speed?” Want to delight your customers? “Who or what delights people?” The brain solves new problems in this way, using its understanding of a familiar topic to grapple with one that appears very different on the surface. You might apply the lessons of high school football to your first job managing a team, or transplant one of Napoleon’s battlefield strategies to a product launch. Consciously or unconsciously, we distill principles from observations and then see where else they might fit. How might we make ice cream like a therapy session? How might an Olympic sprinter serve up an ice cream cone? How might Apple design a container for ice cream sprinkles? How might eating ice cream feel like a roller coaster? Like a magic show? Like a horror movie? HMW questions can be silly or serious.

Because they have zero price, these services are virtually invisible in the official statistics. They add value to the economy, but not dollars to GDP. And because our productivity data are, in turn, based on GDP metrics, the burgeoning availability of free goods does not move the productivity dial. There’s little doubt, however, that they have real value. When a girl clicks on a YouTube video instead of going to the movies, she’s saying that she gets more net value from YouTube than traditional cinema. When her brother downloads a free gaming app on his iPad instead of buying a new video game, he’s making a similar statement.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about thirty-two gallons.)46 Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes—and here I am being kind—like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon. The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, “a loose watery bowel movement may result.” This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.