The phrase “it isn’t rocket science” has become such a cliche that I eventually began to wonder what it meant. What is rocket science? And is it really so difficult?

The answer to the first question was provided by my esteemed colleague Tony Nixon, who is a physicist and knows about these things. “Wait here”, he said, and reappeared a few minutes later brandishing his copy of Space Dynamics, Volume 1 by Prof. Ir. Dr. J.M.J. Kooy, opened at the page which gives the equations for “powered flight of rocket through terrestrial atmosphere with prescribed thrust direction as a function of time, considered as a system of reference rotating with the earth”. So here, in summary form, is the central piece of knowledge of ‘rocket science’.

Nothing to it, eh? Wouldn’t it be nice if everything could be summarised so succinctly.

From the Clongowes class photograph of 1888, the year Joyce entered the college. It’s reproduced in Bruce Bradley’s lovely book, James Joyce’s Schooldays (St Martin’s Press, 1982). Now long out of print (though the wonderful abe.com points to some booksellers who have copies for sale), and a generous gift from my friend, Sean O’ Mordha.

I’m a fan of Edward Tufte’s work, not least because he and I see eye-to-eye about the evils of PowerPoint. But I knew very little about him as a person — until I read this piece in New York Magazine…

Edward Tufte is most likely the world’s only graphic designer with roadies. “We own two of everything—amplifiers, digital projectors,” other A/V gear, he says. “One set moves up and down the West Coast, and one stays in the East, to keep the FedEx charges down.” He plays 35 or so dates a year, at $380 per ticket. Today’s is in a raddled old auditorium on 34th Street, over the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Like a musician’s tour to promote an album, this one—which will hit New York again in the fall—exists partly to sell Tufte’s four design books, the newest of which is titled Beautiful Evidence. But Tufte, through his own Graphics Press, is the book’s publisher, and he doesn’t do the usual quick month of hard promotion before heading back to his desk. He keeps going on the road, selling steadily, a few gigs a month, year after year. That may be why there are 1.4 million copies of his titles in print—a staggering figure for self-publishing. (The top seller, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, has been a reliable mover since 1983.) And at these six-and-a-half-hour presentations, the audience starts cheering when he hits the floor, clamors for their books to be signed, buys posters at the table out front. As soon as the applause stops, Tufte bolts backstage, enthusiastically draining a Corona. “There are usually about 500 people who want to talk afterwards, and I’ve exhausted myself,” he says sheepishly. “I have to go hide out. Otherwise it takes hours.” This is all a good deal more lucrative than many author tours. “Thirty-five, forty dollars a book, 1.4 million copies?” he says, with a quizzical smile, when I ask about money. “You can multiply.”

And who are these fans who won’t leave? The majority are male, and wearing expensive rimless eyeglasses. Many are Web designers, creative directors, art directors, editors, architects. They come in knowing Tufte’s obsessions and coinages: Content-light splashy graphics, or “chartjunk,” are bad. Little repeated graphics displaying variations, or “small multiples,” are good. Microsoft’s PowerPoint software is an all-conquering monster of crumminess, a threat to life as we know it. Most of all, if you are making a presentation, you can probably say everything you need to on a single folded sheet of eleven-by-seventeen copy paper, and you ought to. Pretty much anyone who writes or presents can learn from Tufte, and those who have studied his work often speak of him as a kind of prophet. The iPhone is going to be the most talked-about object in America later this month, and the endless praise of Apple’s pared-down aesthetic is, in a way, his triumph…

Lovely piece, well worth a read. Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for finding it.

103 years on.