- The spectacle part of New Orleans second lines in funerals has for a while seemed to me reaching uncomfortable levels. Turns out I’m not alone. New Orleans jazz player Nicholas Payton has an eloquent dissent to the recent second line for brass band leader Lionel Battiste.
- Really fascinating Errol Morris essay about fonts, of all things. Morris a writer/filmaker interesting enough that I’d follow him pretty much anywhere. In this one, he convinces me that I should be printing my briefs in the Baskerville font. What do you think about that, Anderson? Really, folks. Read it. Don’t let the phrase “essay about fonts” put you off.
- I’m going to try to post more later, but I can’t really oversell the to-do list app WorkFlowy. It’s powerful and intuitive. You can be using it immediately, but then get really incredibly sophisticated stuff out of it. I’ve been looking for something like this for years, and “to do list” grossly understates its capacities.
- Boston mobster/ FBI informant Whitey Bulger has fired an interesting shot across the Government bows: His lawyers have announced an intention for Bulger to take the stand and testify about his life-of-crime while an FBI informant, when he used information he gleaned from the agents “running” him to run his mob. And kill folks. I would love to know, procedurally, how this revelation, months before trial, occurred. H/t Ace Atkins.
- WTF is National Public Radio doing consulting Glenn Reynolds as an expert about space law? In an article about preserving the first landings on the moon, NPR decides to look to Instapundit for expertise. One small step, indeed.
Justice Scalia advocates the use of Century, so I would have loved to have seen a comparison of Baskerville to it as well as the other fonts. The solicitor general uses Century.
http://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2009/03/12/why-century-school-book-is-better-for-your-brief-than-times-new-roman/
Interesting. My computer has Baskerville Old Face, which always looks a tad precious to me, even brittle. But I’m not sure how it differs from Baskerville.
Georgia’s good results only confirm me in my preference for it. Now, if only the MSSC would quit with the page-length limits and go to word counts instead. I had to do a pleading in Mongolian Baiti once, when even Times New Roman wouldn’t come in under the page limit.
Century is also what the Supreme Court Reporter uses in the bound volumes. When you read a PDF of a newly-handed-down SCOTUS op, it’s in Century. (Or Century Schoolbook; the only difference I recall is that semicolons in Century “float.”)
I like it, but the very qualities that make it readable also make it a space-hog, so I seldom use it.
(Btw, Century Gothic is a very nice sans-serif font, for those who swing that way.)
… The guy at the Colonel’s link is wrong about why the Times of London used its eponymous font: not for “a quick read,” but to get the max text onto a sheet of paper, to control costs.
Thanks for pointing me to these. Off to read and ponder. You find great stuff!
An open thread just in time to say:
Au revoir, Miel Blaireau.
Too subtle for me, Pike, I had to google that one.
But yeah, I’m waiting for Kingfish’s reaction.
Headed to Clarksdale to hear some Bland and Plant . . .
I’m a devotee of Palatino Linotype!
Just so long as comic sans is banned from use anywhere, anytime.
I’ve been tempted to use it in a motion for rehearing, DLM.
Palatino … Cambria … Book Antiqua … good fonts. Easy on the eyes. Space conservative.
When I first got to know Glenn Harlan Reynolds almost 30 years ago at the old Dewey Ballantine, he was fresh out of Yale and already writing a textbook (I believe it was the first textbook) on space law. It would not surprise me if NPR couldn’t find anyone more qualified, or anyone else who was qualified at all.