So I Was Wrong About the Double-Space

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Because I learned to type on a manual typewriter back in the dark ages I’ve been doing the period-space thing all wrong for 30 years and didn’t know it:

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left. Every major style guide—including theModern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren’t for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine’s shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do. (Also see the persistence of the dreaded Caps Lock key.)

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks “loose” and uneven; there’s a lot of white space between characters and words, so it’s more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here’s the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we’ve all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

I hereby officially apologize to every design professional upon whom I’ve inflicted my double-spaced prose.

Hunger in Northwest North Carolina

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Through my organization’s annual food drive I’ve become very familiar with the work of Second Harvest Food Bank of NWNC. Unfortunately that familiarity is why the recently released results of a study on food insecurity provides little in the way of surprises, but does serve to help remind me of why we’re so passionate about our efforts on behalf of the organization. If, after reading the following numbers, you feel like helping out you can make a financial contribution at our food drive’s online donation page at  www.helpsecondharvest.com 

Here are just a few of the sobering statistics:

  • Nearly 300,000 different individuals turn to our network of more than 400 partner programs for food assistance annually – or 1 in every 6 people living in our region.
  • Despite Second Harvest Food Bank’s continuing success in sourcing more food for our partner agency network (in the past five years, distribution has more than tripled from 7.9 million pounds to more than 25 million pounds), 44 percent of programs report having less food than needed to meet the needs of those requesting assistance.
  • 32% of those who receive food assistance through our partner agency network are children under the age of 18. Because programs that serve only children were not eligible to be sampled for the Client Survey, for example our BackPack and Kids Cafe programs and summer meal sites, this percentage underestimates the actual number of children being reached by Second Harvest Food Bank.)
  • 10 percent of those who receive food assistance through our partner agency network are seniors age 65 or older. (30 percent are age 50 and older.)
  • 78 percent of those who seek food assistance from Second Harvest Food Bank’s network live in households at or below the poverty level.
  • 57 percent of households have monthly incomes of $1,000 or less.
  • Over the past year, 72 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying for medicine/medical care; 31 percent of these households are making this choice every month.
  • 73 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying
    for utilities.

    • 30 percent of these households are making the choice every month.
  • 72 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying
    for medicine/medical care.

    • 31 percent of these households are making the choice every month.
  • 72 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying
    for transportation.

    • 31 percent of these households are making the choice every month.
  • 64 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying
    for housing.

    • 24 percent of these households are making the choice every month.
  • 24 percent of households report choosing between paying for food and paying
    for education expenses.

    • 9 percent of these households are making the choice every month.

Remember, there’s an easy way to help at www.helpsecondharvest.com.

Meet the Ultimate Beer Bureaucrat

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Who knew? If you want to sell beer in the US you have to get the label approved by one guy:

Any brewery that wants to market its wares in this country needs to get it through Kent “Battle” Martin, giving the federal official extraordinary power. With only vague regulations outlining what is and isn’t permissible, he approves beer bottles and labels for the Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, a section of the Treasury Department…

This year, Battle has singlehandedly approved over 29,500 beer labels, the only fact his press handler would provide…

Most government departments are nebulous and anonymous. But because of the sheer volume of his interactions with brewers, Battle has become a symbol for the TTB’s nonsensical rules…

Battle has rejected a beer label for the King of Hearts, which had a playing card image on it, because the heart implied that the beer would have a health benefit.

He rejected a beer label featuring a painting called The Conversion of Paula By Saint Jerome because its name, St. Paula’s Liquid Wisdom, contained a medical claim—that the beer would grant wisdom.

He rejected a beer called Pickled Santa because Santa’s eyes were too “googly” on the label, and labels cannot advertise the physical effects of alcohol. (A less googly-eyed Santa was later approved.)

Information is Power, Sharing it is Trust

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“Information is power. When I have it and won’t give it to you, it signals that I don’t trust you to know what to do with it. In turn, it erodes your trust in me.” John Robinson

The quote above is from an excellent blog post by John Robinson that argues for more transparency from our government. It’s not long and it’s worth the couple of minutes it will take you to read it.

Remembering Tanglewood

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I’d heard that our little public golf course in western Forsyth County had once hosted a major tournament, but until reading Ed Hardin’s column I didn’t know anything about the 1974 PGA. It’s an interesting read:

Tanglewood comes to life at this time of year, a reminder of golf’s fleeting seasons and cyclical nature. The 1974 PGA Championship played here 40 years ago this week was one of the best tournaments in golf history.

And almost no one knows it.

That’s probably in part because it was a PGA, the least of the four majors in stature and style, a tournament seemingly locked in the ’70s with a great little storyline that gets lost in the strangest of ways…

Yet somehow, the 1974 PGA produced a classic finish. It’s doubtful that you have any idea how good a tournament it was. Almost no one does.

Lee Trevino won by one shot over Jack Nicklaus. Sam Snead, at age 62, finished third. Let that sink in for a second.

Trevino, using a putter found in the attic of a home he was renting that week, held off Nicklaus, who had hired a local heating and air conditioning salesman to be his caddie. Snead, 10 years after becoming the oldest player to win a tour event at the 1965 Greater Greensboro Open at Sedgefield, shot a 68 on Sunday to finish in a four-way tie for third, one stroke ahead of Player.

Here’s the kicker: you can play that same course today for as little as $29 a round. Since I’m not a golfer I don’t take advantage of it, but every time I drive by on my way to the tennis courts (Tanglewood has a very nice public tennis facility) I think about how envious my golfing buddies back in DC would be if they knew I lived 10 minutes from a course that good…and inexpensive.

Dealing With Surprising Social Media Fame

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Update 8/2/14 – NPR has a story about this and in it mention that they are checking with the Justice Department to see if the restaurant’s policy is a violation of the prohibition against public businesses like restaurant’s discrimating based on religion. It would seem not since the discount is supposedly at the discretion of each server, but then again stuff like this is often not obvious or all that logical. I wouldn’t blame the restaurant for discontinuing the policy just to play it safe.

Mary’s Gourmet Diner on Trade Street in Winston-Salem just found out what it’s like to have something go viral. From a story on HLNTV:

The tab belonged to Jordan Smith, who had traveled to Winston-Salem for a business trip and stopped for breakfast at Mary’s with two colleagues Wednesday morning.

She tells HLN the group “prayed over our meal and the waitress came over at the end of the meal and said, ‘Just so you know, we gave you a 15% discount for praying,’ which I’d never seen before.”

Impressed, Smith shared a photo of the receipt on her Facebook page. A mutual friend then posted the pic on the page of Orlando Christian radio station Z88.3 and it’s taken off from there, being shared more than 1,700 times as of Thursday afternoon.

Well, apparently things heated up on Facebook thanks to all the attention, causing Mary to post the following on her business’ Facebook page:

MarysFB

Here’s the text in case that’s hard to read:

There’s a lot of craziness going on in regard to the 15% discount. I will not respond to all the posts. I will say that it is not a “policy”, it’s a gift we give at random to customers who take a moment before their meal. This could be prayer or just a moment to breathe & push the busyness of the world away. Who you talk to or meditate on etc. is your business. I have lived in a 3rd world country, there are people starving. We live in a country with an abundance of beautiful food. I NEVER take that for granted. It warms my heart to see people with an attitude of gratitude. Prayer, meditation or just breathing while being grateful opens the heart chakra. It’s good for everyone!!!! Thanks to my local community for your support…you know who I am. As for all the people posting negative comments about me & my restaurant who have never met me or been to the restaurant, thanks for sharing, it’s your right to speak out, just as it is mine. Peace, love & happy eating!!!!

It’s a sign of our times that doing almost anything positive can be turned into a negative. Sheesh.

We were talking about this at work and we all had the same thought before Mary posted on Facebook: if we know they’re giving 15% off just for praying we’d bow our heads in a heartbeat. Of course that kind of defeats the purpose, but I wonder how many people around Winston were thinking the same thing?

Where is the Internet?

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BoingBoing has an excerpt from the book “I Work at a Public Library” that is a prime example of far too many conversations I’ve had with people I won’t name (because I’m nice that way):

A man keeps wandering up to the desk to ask computer-related questions:

Man: How do I make the computer like a typewriter?

Man: There are squiggly red lines on everything I type. What do you suppose that means?

Man: The computer keeps asking me to save my work to a disk and I’m not interested.

Man: Now, eventually I want to make a website. Do I just get the framework up and going using the typewriter function? And do I just save it to a floppy to get it up on the website? And can I do any of this on one of your computers, or do I just take the disk home and do it there? Where is the Internet?

Man: Maybe you could help me make a website. How long do you think it would take? I have about an hour.

Friends and family, you know who you are.

Oh This Cynical World

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Someone left porcelain dolls outside of eight homes in California and because the dolls resembled little girls who lived in them it creeped out some of their parents. They called the police and of course the police investigated:

Orange County Lt. Jeff Hallock told KTLA that the pattern was “creepy or very unusual” so they began collecting the dolls and interviewing the affected families…

“Following conversation and questioning of several parents, information was learned that focused on a female adult who lived in the local community and attended church with many of the impacted families,” according to a release from the police department…

“Investigators have concluded that her motivation was out of goodwill and that she intended it as a kind gesture,” police said.

This truly says something about our society these days. You can’t blame the parents for being a little spooked by it, or the police for doing their jobs, but it’s hard to believe that a generation ago the first thought wouldn’t have been “I wonder who’s leaving these gifts around?” instead of, “Holy crap some creep’s stalking our daughter.” Again, not blaming the parents, just pointing out that it’s just one more way our society has changed. After all, who lets their 10 year old play outside all day unless they have some sort of GPS enabled locator in his pocket?

Insights from Ira Glass, Host of This American Life

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This interview on Lifehacker with Ira Glass about how he does his work ends with a great piece of advice:

I’d just say to aspiring journalists or writers—who I meet a lot of—do it now. Don’t wait for permission to make something that’s interesting or amusing to you. Just do it now. Don’t wait. Find a story idea, start making it, give yourself a deadline, show it to people who’ll give you notes to make it better. Don’t wait till you’re older, or in some better job than you have now. Don’t wait for anything. Don’t wait till some magical story idea drops into your lap. That’s not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it’ll show up. Begin now. Be a fucking soldier about it and be tough.

With some slight editing this could work for almost any line of work.

Airing of Grievances Coming to a Commission Meeting Near You

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A front page article in the July 15, 2014 Wall Street Journal makes the point that the recent SCOTUS ruling allowing prayers before public meetings is an opportunity for atheists too:

The former president of the Freethinkers of Upstate New York, Mr. Courtney says he plans to give a four-minute speech highlighting the notion that the country was founded on the authority of the people, and the importance of ensuring Americans of all types are heard.

He will be the first atheist to address the Greece town board. Before the Supreme Court ruling, the town board allowed a Wiccan priestess to deliver an invocation.

While Mr. Courtney disagrees with the Supreme Court’s ruling, he takes some comfort in his view that it weakened what he calls Christianity’s “de facto monopoly on invocations.”

“In a sense, it has opened the door for a bit of a free-for-all,” he says.

The article also mentions the Pastafarians who are planning to offer their own prayers. Personally I’d like to see observers of the Festivus holiday take their turn at the podium to air their grievances. Not familiar with Festivus? Check out the video clip below and you’ll get it.

Our own Forsyth County Commission’s case is mentioned in the article of course. That case has irked me long enough that I can’t stomach giving it another minute of my life to think about, but I will say this: the true test will be when the commission is faced with having to entertain an invocation from a hard core satanist. It’s one thing to listen to a non-believer offer up generic messages of inclusion and cooperation, but it’s an entirely different ballgame to listen to someone ask them to accept guidance from the devil. I wonder if they’ll take their own advice offered to the non-believers who’ve complained about the invocations in the first place – just step out of the room if you don’t like it?