Use Proportional Spaced Type, Please

The White House released the emails about Benghazi, and Kevin Drum has excerpts.

I'm back on my hobbyhorse: for once and for all, proportional spaced type is more legible than the old monospaced pica and elite type, familiar to some of us from the SmithCorona/Remington days. So why Gen. Petraeus and the NCTC are using monospaced only shows how backward some in the intelligence/foreign affairs community are.  Get with the program, join the 21st century.

Another Pet Peeve--Obama Disappoints

The Post puts up Obama's latest memo on reorganizing trade and competitiveness functions.  But, much to my chagrin, it's in monospaced type, not proportionally spaced.  Way back in 1970-1 I was researching a replacement for the IBM MT/ST (magnetic tape selectric typewriter), which got me into CRT displays (like 7x9 pixels) and into the difference between proportional spacing and monospaced.  The NIST article which convinced me said that type designers over the centuries since Gutenberg had figured out how to maximize readability by controlling spacing, using serifs to lead the eye, etc., but that typewriters, because of the mechanical constraints sacrificed that readability.  Ever since I have objected to using monospaced type on PC's and the Internet. It's too bad the word hasn't reached all of Obama's staff--I had expected better from him.

Most Surprising Sentence Today

From a description of a visit to MIT (yes, that's Massachusetts Institute of Technology): "During the conversation, I asked the MBA students if they knew where the library was and received many blank stares

$2,000 for a Meal?

The sports pages report an NFL rookie got stuck paying for dinner for 20 of his teammates (because he didn't do the usual rookie duties).  The bill was close to $50,000.  That's a bunch of food, and I suspect a bunch of pricey wine. Reminds me of an infamous dinner in London back before the crash: some financial types if I remember.

Bill Signing Ceremonies

Bill signing ceremonies are one of the rituals of our democracy.  I remember one ceremony for a bill GWB signed, forget which one, but the picture was above the fold on the front page of the Times. Showed the audience arranged in a big crescent, facing the President and maybe a handful of bigwigs: Cheney, et.al.  Best I could tell everyone in the room was a white male of a certain age, or above.

This post on the White House blog shows Obama signing the small business bill yesterday.  Some nice diversity on the dais watching the signature, but below the dais seem to be a group of white males of a certain age, almost all of whom are displaying their shirt cuffs, simply because they're holding their cellphone/cameras above their head to capture the historic moment.

Manual Dexterity on the Band Saw

Via John Phipps, the end result is incredible, at least to a klutz.

Megan McArdle Reveals a Mystery

Ms. McArdle is usually interesting and often sensible, even though she's a bit too libertarian for my tastes.  But today she revealed something--I quote the full post:

"Designer handbag rental.  Terrifyingly, this actually seems rather sensible to me.  I mean, if I didn't buy most of my bags at Target.  In fact, I largely moved out of Manhattan so that I could buy most of my bags at Target.  But if you're going to try to stay at the forefront of fashion, this seems like a cost effective way to do it."

 

I'm sure every male will see the mystery: why does a woman need multiple handbags?

The Sudan Contributes

This is the best slogan for my blog.

K Street Lobbyists and Other Trivia

Time for my dentist visit today.  His office is in DC near K St and 20th.  As usual I got downtown with time to spare, so I spent it people-watching.  My impressions:

• K street lobbyists and their support staff and the others who work in the K street area are not obese.  I may have seen more women who could put on 5 pounds than people who were obese.
• the briefcase is totally passe.  Mostly I saw canvas bags which could have been laptop carriers, sometimes carried by the handle, sometimes with a shoulder strap. That's probably mostly male.
  
• backpacks are in.  Saw a lot on both men and women.
• suits and ties are an endangered species. There were some men in the full getup, but it wasn't the majority.  Add in men with tie but no jacket and men with jacket but no tie and you'd get closer to a majority.

Other items--the Metro train was more crowded than on previous visits, there was almost universal violation of the HOT-2 rules on I-66, and there seem to be more acorns this year than last.