Idiotprogrammer Blog

Month: October 2009

  • Docbook, Pandoc, Rants and Some Decent Free Fonts

    I’m working on a user manual and am in the process of discovering several tools to do the job.

    Here’s RSTA,  an online restructured text editor which lets you output into HTML and PDF. This is mainly of interest to people in the plone and python world.

    Python programmer extraordinaire Mark Pilgrim explains why he codes in HTML and not Docbook. From the comment section, I learn about Pandoc, a great program for converting different forms (LaTex, RST, markdown, HTML, Docbook, gosh – just about everything!).

    Here’s the Pandoc user guide and an online converter. The key, I’m guessing is how it handles unicode and document fragments, but I look forward to finding this out.

    Pilgrim also does a rant about the restrictive fonts:

    I know what you’re going to say. I can hear it in my head already. It sounds like the voice of the comic book guy from The Simpsons. You’re going to say, “Typography is by professionals, for professionals. Free fonts are worth less than you pay for them. They don’t have good hinting. They don’t come in different weights. They don’t have anything near complete Unicode coverage. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t…”

    And you’re right. You’re absolutely, completely, totally, 100% right. “Your Fonts” are professionally designed, traditionally licensed, aggressively marketed, and bought by professional designers who know a professional typeface when they see it. “Our Fonts” are nothing more than toys, and I’m the guy showing up at the Philadelphia Orchestra auditions with a tin drum and a kazoo. “Ha ha, look at the freetard with his little toy fonts, that he wants to put on his little toy web page, where they can be seen by 2 billion people ha h… wait, what?”

    Let me put it another way. Your Fonts are superior to Our Fonts in every conceivable way, except one:

    WE CAN’T FUCKING USE THEM!

    Soon — and I mean really fucking soon, like “this year” soon — there will be enough different browsers in the hands of enough different people that can use any possible font on any possible web page. And then a whole lotta people will start noticing fonts again — not just Your People, just also Our People. People who couldn’t tell a serif from a hole in their head, but they’re gonna be looking for new fonts. People who are just savvy enough to be tired of Comic Sans will be looking for a new font to “spruce up” their elementary school newsletter, which, in an effort to Love Our Mother (Earth), they now publish exclusively online.

    A typeface designer responds:

    As a type designer I feel like I have to step in and say something here. First off the majority of typefaces designed in the past twenty years haven’t been made by big foundries but by individuals working on type in their spare time. Second, typefaces receive no copyright protection in the United States so copying font files and renaming them for sale is pretty much legal. Third, fonts have been available on peer-to-peer networks since before the days of Napster and in 2000 it was estimated that only one out of fifty instances of a typeface file (postscript or TrueType files) was paid for, and it has only gotten worse.

    I have over forty commercial typefaces available for sale through various type re-sellers around the world and my average yearly income off the typefaces is $115, even though I regularly see my typefaces in use on the web, on TV in print and in video games. I used to think that one day I’d have a nice supplemental income from my typefaces but the reality of the situation is that people like you don’t value the effort that goes into making a typeface. I haven’t designed a new typeface in eight years now and I have no desire to do so. Why should I when you’re going to be a big bitching twat you greedy self-centered tantrum throwing teenager?

    Actually, the whole thread has a lot of expletives and rants, but lots of issues come up.  Actually, the most valuable information I gleaned from the threads were the names of some decent free fonts: Gentium, Day Roman, Yanone Kaffeesatz, Yanone Tagesschrift, Delicious, Aller, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, Junicode,  Linux Libertine, the Liberation and Droid families, and Computer Modern (or, more likely, its Type 1 version, Latin Modern).

    See also the Open Font library (here’s the beta version, which seems buggy—the search results only gives 1 result). Here’s a general list of the most famous free fonts, separated by license type.

    Here’s a good (and indispensable) article about how to use the font-face css rule to use any of these awesome free fonts. Here’s another how-to. Here’s a nice demo.

    Update: This browser support table shows that Chrome 3 (the current version) does not support embedded fonts, and that Chrome 4 will be released in 2010. Also, Internet Explorer only supports EOT fonts. (I’m not 100% sure what that means; according to the link in the previous paragraph, EOT is a Microsoft implementation of fonts. Certainly there has to be a conversion tool? Update 2: this font wiki has this information and more).

    The free font issue is important for distributing ebooks. (Here’s a mobileread discussion). The .epub standard supports embedded fonts (I think), and having a unique font makes reading a more enjoyable experience when reading on a  Kindle or Nook.  I am growing weary of the same font on my Sony PRS 505 reader.

    I guess I haven’t mentioned it yet, but I’m working on two creative commons ebooks and am working on a user guide to publish on Booksurge and possibly as an ebook as well. For that reason, I’ve been learning a LOT about docbook. Overall, I’m happy with its flexibility even though the learning curve was steep –and also I’m depending a little too much on a on a noncommercial license of Oxygen XML editor. If I wanted to do something commercial, I’d have to pay $349 for a full version and $199 for an Author version (which lacks some  XML/XSLT tools but has an easier interface). Frankly, Oxygen is incredible, but I’m close to making commercial use of it.

    Serna XML editor (the free version) is good for authoring, but I haven’t figured out how to validate it using various  schemas and DTDs. Apparently, Serna uses python plugins to enable validation of various XML languages like docbook and DITA. It looks like Serna only supports 4x versions of Docbook; I could be wrong.

    By the way, after I finish one or two ebook projects, I plan to write an article about using docbook for ebook creation.

  • Literary Linkdump

    D. G Myers argues that Toni Morrison’s Beloved is not a masterpiece:

    The truth is that the stream-of-racial-consciousness interlude is a display piece, a verbal stunt that is connected to the rest of the novel by the thinnest of fictions—and by the ambition to leave a monument to the suffering caused by black slavery. The odd spacing and lack of punctuation, the fragmented phrases, are little more than an attempt to defamiliarize what are, to be honest, scenes and images that have been familiar since the first photographs of Hitler’s death camps were published in the United States. The dead, heaped in a pile, are nothing new. Only the typography is new.

    And that, finally, is the trouble with Beloved. The central idea of the novel is arresting and memorable, although Sethe’s murder of her child may only be a variation on Sophie’s Choice, but nothing else about it is. Beloved has been called a ghost story, but it has neither of the “two ingredients most valuable in concocting a ghost story,” according to M. R. James, the genre’s best-known practitioner—it has neither atmosphere nor the “nicely managed crescendo.”[7] It has, in fact, no pace at all; it is, at best, a series of tableaux. Morrison is more interested in disrupting the chronological narrative than in telling a story. And her ghost is not really a ghost; she is the Oversoul of black folk. My guess is that, secretly, few readers believe in her reality. They claim to believe otherwise because the novel’s monumental pretensions and rhetorical self-importance—to say nothing of the overwhelming scholarly backing—suggest the presence of greatness where nothing of the sort is to be found.

    Luckily Myers has been blogging only a year, so it won’t be difficult to catch up on his great literary commentaries. Will report back later.

    Chandrahas Choudhury covers contemporary Indian fiction written in English. This essay appears in Foreign Policy! His blog Middle Stage has some essays and book reviews. Will report back.

    In contrast, some of the best Indian novels of the last two decades, whether in English or in translation, are largely unknown to American readers. A classic example is Kiran Nagarkar’s Cuckold (1997), which is set in the royal court of the 16th-century Rajput kingdom of Mewar and told in a rich and powerful English that is easily the equal of the best Indian prose writing in English today. Another example is Fakir Mohan Senapati’s Six Acres and a Third, first published more than a hundred years ago but only recently translated into an English worthy of its original Oriya. A riotously satiric village comedy, it is one of the earliest and greatest Indian novels, but it appeared in the United States in 2005 to no reviews and no press.

    …

    India is so multilingual and multicultural that it might be more truthful to think of every Indian novelist, whether writing in English, Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, or Gujarati, as a kind of translator. No novelists, whatever language they work in, can be said presumptively to be "authentic," as they sometimes are in the literary-critical wars in India today. Rather, novels earn their authenticity through their attention to specific details of character and situation and through the ingenuity of their problem-solving.

    Lizok’s Bookshelf, a contemporary Russian fiction blog.

    TV Tropes, a wiki/encyclopedia of TV plots. This resource is really becoming amazing. I found out about this site from MaximumPC’s 50 kickass sites you need to know about.

  • Funny TV Commercials

    I love this comic TV commercial for a California county fair.

    Here’s a commercial for a totally bizarre board game called Ballbusters. 

  • Climate Change Linksdump

    Erik Pooley eviscerates the Superfreakonomics book.Seth Borenstein reports statisticians who refute the “Earth is cooling” meme.

    Ken Caldeira talks about the possibilities of geoengineering (something hyped by Superfreakonomics).

    Kate Galbraith reports on how Texas is leading in terms of wind power development:

    Texas’s secret, besides strong winds and lots of land, is its lack of regulation. Wind developers rave about the fact that, in essence, they need few state permits to build a turbine farm. They deal mainly with local officials, who are generally permissive (energy, after all, is a well-loved commodity in Texas).

    California, by contrast, has all but stifled wind developers. The state built several big wind farms in the 1980s — but has added very few since, because of the cost and delays of complying with stringent state environmental regulations. The early turbines killed thousands of birds, for instance, and that memory lingers.

    Such snags are a key reason California has turned to solar power. It’s more expensive than wind, but plastering rooftops of homes and businesses with panels takes up no extra land. There is still plenty of paperwork involved, but rooftop solar largely avoids regulatory snarls (although there is the occasional only-in-California court battle between tree lovers and solar-energy lovers).

    The regulatory hurdles are also why the state has aggressively pushed energy efficiency, which is the most cost-effective way to reduce dependence on oil and gas. Strict building codes and energy-saving requirements for home appliances and light bulbs — measures that have been largely ignored by Texas — make an excellent fit for California, where residents are used to being regulated.

    Despite their vast differences, Texas and California do share one approach: each has a renewable electricity mandate, requiring that a certain amount of their electricity come from renewable sources by a given year. This policy, clunkily called a “renewable portfolio standard,” is in place in about half the states. Congress is considering one for the nation too: In June, the House passed a bill that would require 20 percent of utilities’ electricity by 2020 to come from a combination of renewable sources and efficiency improvements. The Senate is considering an energy bill that includes a somewhat weaker requirement (along with a separate, hotly debated climate bill).

    Market resource, a free market energy blog (pretty much opposed to the climate change bill).

    Here’s a contrarian view about Texas’ wind power initiative. The commenter seems to have many interesting opinions about energy and conservation.

    Robert Bryce on how Texas wind power is overhyped. Note that I don’t agree with the premises or the conclusions of this article, but I’m still learning.

    PR Watch talks about how to spot a front group.

    NYTimes discussion about the carbon footprint of using a clothes dryer. One activist comments:

    Speaking of cold, make sure you turn your washing machine and dryer dial to the low temperature setting, as this will also save you a tremendous amount of energy. There is little evidence that washing in warm or hot water (140 degrees) or drying at high heat can kill the viruses and bacteria about which we should be most concerned. There is plenty of evidence that running power plants and mining for natural gas in order to power domestic hot water heaters is causing asthma and climate disruption at the micro and macro level.

    Greentech, a CNET blog about environmental technology.

    Danielle Fanelli reports:  A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

    Here’s a good reference guide to how much wind power is being produced and consumed in the USA. Here is a reference to state wind power  incentive programs inside Texas.

    Candace Lombardi reports about where the green jobs are.

    National Academy of Science:

    A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates "hidden" costs of energy production and use — such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health — that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation. The figure does not include damages from climate change, harm to ecosystems, effects of some air pollutants such as mercury, and risks to national security, which the report examines but does not monetize.

    (Joe Romm provides commentary).

    Joe Romm also explains a recent Nature article about the thinning ice sheets of Antartica.

    I feel compelled to defend my constant citations of Joe Romm (who is argumentative). He is uniquely qualified to understand policy issues, science issues and filters lots of climate change articles. The recent critiques he wrote about Superfreakonomics (not cited here, but easy to find) were both comprehensive and timely.  I feel comfortable citing his commentary all the time because he is a stickler about accuracy, blogs often and responds quickly (and ferociously) to his critics. For a blogger, he is my hero!

    Here are some amazing photographs of pollution scenes in China by photographer Lu Guang.

    image

  • A Secret Dream

    I don’t how to explain this, but I just had a dream about Joyce Carol Oates!

    I had dined with her during a student function at Trinity University. I wasn’t the only student at the luncheon, but I certainly felt as though I talked to her the most (even though it wasn’t much).  I remember ordering steak (the English department paid for it), while Ms. Oates only had salad. She was vegetarian, and now that I think about it, having a light meal was probably wise for her.   Certain professions have to watch what they eat, and visiting writers could be invited to too many parties (and gain weight)  if they are not careful. On the same day Ms. Oates had critiqued one of my short stories for a class (a great honor for me), and two years later, I stumbled upon her again at Rice University after a lecture.

    But a dream! What a surprise!

    I was at a  bookstore cafe and was in the middle of writing a reply to two young girls who had written me a strange and flirtatious letter. I have no idea what this strange subplot was about, except that I remained hopeful that it might lead to a date although I had no idea who these girls were and had never actually met them).

    At the same cafe was Joyce Carol Oates,  apparently working behind the counter. I wanted to say hello to her, but was a little shy about it; plus, I was busy writing my reply to that flirtatious letter. Eventually I talked to Ms. Oates after she returned from the backroom. When I started talking with her, she informed me in a low voice that she was undercover and didn’t want her identity exposed. I said I understood perfectly, and we strolled out into the mall. We didn’t talk about literary things, only random things that came to mind. No, she hadn’t remembered me from before (although I could hardly blame her!) We talked about our surroundings and maybe a random point of politics (what would you talk about if you were with her?) I did most of the talking, but I never got the sense that Ms. Oates was being taciturn. She made clear that she didn’t want to talk about her situation, and I guessed that she was doing some research for a novel or simply wanted a break from academia (which she spent too much time in). I didn’t mention my fondness for her fiction; (I hadn’t read anything by her until several years after meeting her. I particularly enjoyed Because It Is Bitter, Because It is My Heart and have a stack of her other volumes on my bookshelf right now).  But I did mention my secret writing project. She listened politely, clearly not interested in having shop talk with me (and I did not pursue it). In fact, literary shop talk sort of bores me too. Writers have to do it with one another occasionally (for most writers, they have nobody  around them to have shop talk with), I find it more interesting just to hear about the unfolding of mundane events occurring in all of our lives: the car repairs, the family problems, the ephemeral enthusiasms. Ms. Oates never told me her reasons for going uncover, but I suspect she just wanted to hang around real people for a while and just wanted a sinecure which let her come in contact with all kinds  of random characters (as a distinguished professor, doing that can be a challenge). The dream did not last long, but it was pleasant enough. I was about to ask her about my current literary research on author Jack Matthews (curious if she had an opinion about him) and throw out a comment about Because it is Bitter, but I never got around to it; I woke up – completely startled by this imagining.

    I almost never have dreams I remember, and even if I do, I rarely talk about them. I guess I enjoyed the feeling of talking with another writer about anything unrelated to writing.

    Awake in my bed, I pondered that dream for a few minutes. Amazing! What should I have said to her? Why didn’t it occur to me to ask her opinion about Jack Matthews?  Finally I arrived at what I should have said to her. I should have said, “Ms. Oates, I have enjoyed the opportunity to spend this time with you. I don’t know your reasons for being  here under such circumstances. Even though I of course would be all too happy to spend the rest of the afternoon with you, I of course would fully understand why you should want to return to your  retail job and continue doing what you had been doing before.”

    An hour later, I couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if I had had a long enough to ask her this; how would she have replied?  Would she have given me a polite brush off?

  • Misrepresenting Science

    Liberal activists stage a fake press conference claiming to be the US Chamber of Commerce. One commenter said, “The official U.S. Chamber of Commerce position is that it is unacceptable to misrepresent the Chamber, but it is perfectly acceptable to misrepresent science.”

    In other news, 2 middlebrow social science writers who wrote a bestseller learn that faking an in-depth understanding of global warming is a lot harder than it looks.

  • How Not to Make a Marriage Proposal Video for Youtube

    This wedding proposal video has so many things wrong with it I don’t know where to begin.

    Some lessons can be learned:

    1. Don’t call your video “Greatest Wedding Video of All Time.” Everyone says that.
    2. Don’t bring the girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend along!  And don’t let the ex suggest things  to say!
    3. If you are videotaping, please don’t talk a lot  and keep  using the F word!! Stop making fun of the future bride’s hat!
    4. Also, if you are videotaping, don’t scream, “We love you!” before the girl has time to say yes.

    To summarize: Make sure that the microphone is recording the proposal, not the people in the other car!

    (Seriously, for all its nuttiness, I hope it worked out in the end).

    For more pointers, check this list of the best youtube marriage proposals.

    Update: This video was taken down. Tragedy!  A friend who is a policeman decides to stage an arrest of the man proposing. Odd idea, but the execution is just atrocious. The policeman brings along one of the girl’s ex-boyfriends  ( to hold the camera). The people in the police car are drunk and tossing off profanities while laughing. The man’s friends have good intentions and were just trying to be funny, but they are absolutely clueless about how the video will appear later on.  There’s a lesson to be learned here: what might strike you as funny at the time will seem ridiculously tasteless years later.

  • Best Marriage Proposals Videos on Youtube

    I spent a good 10-15  hours surfing through  1000+ videotaped wedding proposals on youtube.  Here are my favorites.  I am not including  professionally-shot wedding proposals or proposals that are fake or student films or things filmed at sports stadiums or Disneyland.  Here’s just some charming or funny videos that made my day.   I hope they make your day too.

    1. chicken dance proposal (my fave). Everything about it — the kids, the wacky camera angles, the surprised reaction — is just priceless. I could watch this video a zillion times.
    2. Proposing with an eggbeater . Stupid comic causes a real proposal surprise.
    3. Man tells girlfriend he’s away on a business trip, but then calls her at a restaurant and shows up by surprise. Good subtitles, and I like how her back is facing the man so the girl is completely surprised. I just love this video! Short, simple, entertaining as heck!
    4. Karaoke in the car surprise proposal. Apparently this boyfriend and girlfriend do karaoke videos on youtube, and so they are used to singing to well-known songs.  (By the way, the songs are really entertaining!) The guy plans it pretty well, and it’s wacky and fun, and then there’s an incredible twist in the middle! I mean, I’ve seen everything, but this one floored me. Warning: this is a 9 minute video, but it’s so entertaining that it’s worth savoring every second of.
    5. Bananagrams Proposal. A bunch of people are playing a game (sort of like Scrabble, where you place letters to make words).  The man is sitting next to his girlfriend and makes the phrase “Will you marry me?” while the girlfriend is obliviously trying to make her own words.  This was a great proposal and video (and I like that it captures the party atmosphere and this unusual game). On the other hand, it must have been extremely nerve-wracking to form the words and wait for the girlfriend to notice them.
    6. Love at the icerink .  Short and unscripted, and the people are very shy, but I found this genuine and lovely.
    7. Man proposes at the top of a mountain.  The girl seems out of breath; is she overcome with emotion, or could just be the thin air? This is one of the more eloquent speeches by the proposers I’ve ever seen, and a touching video; this one is a good model to follow.
    8. New Year’s Day Freeze.  A small group of friends have a New Year’s Eve party and everybody but two people freeze when the clock strikes midnight. Simple, stylish, comic, all the hallmarks of a great memorable video. (It helped to have more than 1 camera!)
    9. sometimes you just make mistakes . One of my favorite videos. The mom is holding the video camera! (Unavailable? A man brings his girlfriend to a country western bar/cafe with his family. He proposes awkwardly and diffidently to the girl while other family members are chatting away and children are running around. Then it becomes clear to everyone that the man is in the middle of proposing, so everyone turns their attention to the couple, both surprised and overjoyed. But a hitch; the man has somehow misplaced the ring. The person holding the camera — who turns out to be the man’s mother — starts laughing and making comments, then the man realizes that he must have switched boxes, and the “real” box was still in his  Mom’s purse. So the mother — while laughing and holding the camera, dumps out the purse’s contents, and both she and her son try to locate the “right” box. Luckily the “right” box is found, and so everybody is happy. I realize that this whole set up sounds staged, but believe it, it just happened as I described it. The mom who was shooting the footage was quiet until the son looked at the camera and said, “Mom, did you put the ring in another box?”)
    10. Trumpeter for college marching band takes a break from trumpeting to propose to his girl. I love how the boyfriend uses a marching routine through the auditorium to accost his girlfriend. Btw, great camerawork…probably the best I’ve seen.
    11. Film Student prepares proposal as a student film, and then invites girlfriend to a theatre to watch it. I normally balk at videos which are so elaborate and polished, but this video was impeccably choreographed and presented so naturally in real time (with split screen no less!) that I fell for it completely. Good job! And great camerawork in the darkened theatre. Guess that Advanced Lighting class paid off.
    12. Yet another film student prepares proposal as a wacky trailer in a movie theatre.  (This was put on Youtube AFTER the preceding one, but has already received 25 million). I love this trailer — truly I do, but imagine the unsuspecting audience member who actually paid to see the movie getting riled once more people start this same stunt. “OH, not another godamn fake trailer– proposal. I long for the days where all I had to sit through were sappy commercials to buy more popcorn?”
    13. Boyfriend hides in an refrigerator box to propose at her mom’s birthday. “This better not be an appliance,” the mom says.
    14. College proposals can be extremely fun, because you have a lot of potential social events,  friends who will be loud and supportive, and nothing seems too risque or strange on a college campus. Here’s a drawing for a prize at a BYU cafeteria which ends up leading to a proposal. Here’s an comedy improv group who selects volunteers to play a silly game.  The great thing about this game is that it involves blindfolds.
    15. guy proposes to a girl by cell phone! The nerve of him! (Seriously, those people are totally in love with one another!) UNAVAILABLE! A girl is talking to her boyfriend whom she thinks is out of town. She goes to her friend’s house, but is shocked to find her boyfriend there with a ring.
    16. Proposal on a bus Definitely one of the most charming. A man takes a woman on the bus route where he first met her and gave a sincere testimony about how happy she has made him. UNAVAILABLE!
    17. proposal after a bungee jump . Me Tarzan, you Jane.UNAVAILABLE!
    18. talkative girl gets confused. Oh, son of a bitch! What a clever and romantic proposal.
    19. Santa proposes. Actually the woman looks like she would be  a good elf. UNAVAILABLE! This proposal was very clever. A girl’s friend bought her to Santa’s booth without knowing that the man dressed in Santa’s costume was her boyfriend. They were joking and playfully flirting with him, and she even made a joke about wanting to get married. Then Santa took out the ring and gave the proposal. Wow!
    20. proposal at a military ball You’re an ass! Get a room,  people!
    21. love at the airport A classy romantic method
    22. Magician asks girlfriend to hold the camera while he performs a magic trick, but  proposes to her instead.  A low key and intimate proposal. What I love about this one is that other cameras were hidden and the plausible misdirection involved.  I appreciate the video production because it does not try to be grand or spectacular but just a private event between two special people.
    23. Another magician asks a woman to help perform a magic trick, has her pull out her own  ring out of a bag. Another clever stunt, but I wish the boyfriend could have been actually involved more.
    24. Family Reunion…God, I hate when old people get in the way!
    25. Love at the Hockey game.  I love her lack of hesitation in saying yes.
    26. Must love dogs . UNAVAILABLE! Love the girl’s reaction and the guy’s shyness.
    27. New Year’s Day proposal What? No!
    28. Man stages fake arrest by police to propose to his woman. Well, at least she wasn’t expecting it!UNAVAILABLE!
    29. Love and a saxophone. boyfriend flies to Brazil to surprise girlfriend. UNAVAILABLE. See the important note at bottom of this list.
    30. Bugs Bunny Proposes. Tip: the best way to catch a girl by surprise is to rent a furry animal costume.
    31. Price is Right marriage proposal.  This is their lucky day!
    32. Chemist does a comic scientific demonstration involving batteries to stage a proposal.  The first 7 minute of this video was plain science, but when the moment came, I was genuinely worried that it wouldn’t work out as it was supposed to.  But the man is a much more competent than he appears!
    33. This marriage proposal was broadcast live on NBC’s Today Show.  Well, it was a surprise all right!
    34. Man blindfolds girl, brings her to a favorite place surrounded by family and friends and pops the question. The girl was hysterically happy — apparently he was teasing her all day with fake proposals. Seriously, this is a classy proposal.
    35. Man proposes to cheerleader while she is hoisted in midair. I’ve watched way too many cheerleader/basketball/hockey stadium proposals, but out of them all, this girl had to be in the most uncomfortable position. Let that gal down!
    36. Actor proposes to his actress girlfriend while filming a fencing duel scene. Great reaction, but are you sure you want to immortalize your proposal as beginning with a  fight-to-the-death?
    37. Man arranges to have a surprise birthday party thrown for him which he uses as a pretext for proposing to his girlfriend. The girlfriend is supposed to escort him to his party, but the man drops down on one knee and gives an even bigger surprise. A brilliant and clever idea (though a ridiculously long intro). I  have to wonder how he persuaded his girlfriend to plan his own party! UNAVAILABLE! Oh, no, this was a very clever idea.
    38. Man proposes to his bank teller girlfriend … by going through the drivethrough and sending an “extra special check” through the pneumatic tub. This doesn’t really work as a video, but the concept and reaction shot is priceless.UNAVAILABLE!
    39. Guy proposes to a girl in a pet shop. He slips the message on the collar of a very cute puppy. The girl is totally shocked, and so are we!
    40. UNAVAILABLE! Here are two proposals that happen so quickly that you barely know what hit you. Under the guise of receiving an award, an army soldier proposes to his girl. I like how she responded immediately by nodding her head. (Most girls take forever!) Navy sailor proposes to his girlfriend, while she is walking to pick up her diploma. Well, that’s a fun graduation present!
    41. Man proposes to girl at the prayer for Thanksgiving Family. Dude, if you’re invited to the family Thanksgiving, it’s pretty much guaranteed she’s going to say yes.  UNAVAILABLE!
    42. A guy’s friend brings a girl to a park to watch her boyfriend’s music video on the big screen; turns out the music video is a marriage proposal, and at the end it switches to “live” video. This also is an elaborately planned video, but I like how it’s an original (and lowkey)  song, how we can always hear the girl, and how the “real” boyfriend surprises her at the end. Also, I like how it ends with just ordinary moments of the couple talking  (“Oh, so you WEREN’T at work  today but were planning this proposal video”).
    43. Boy proposes to girl at a college graduation karaoke party. Nifty concept, but 3  issues: 1)the guy should have taken out the ring while the girl was singing rather than break the rhythm. 2)don’t film it near a perpetual screamer and 3)while it’s good to have your college buddies cheering you on, make sure they’re not drunk!  This is another example of the do-it-when-she-least-expects-it genre.
    44. Man plans to propose in front of a handmade sand-castle at a beach. Despite the elaborate preparations, all does not go as planned. The woman’s small child is acting a little strange, but the man takes it in stride, and the happiness and the laughter is just so spontaneous that I can’t help but be moved. I normally dislike videos which look too polished and professional — and by the way the two people involved seem to have some romance/relationship coaching business, but nothing is fake here. I especially enjoyed the postscript where they reflect on the day and the planning involved. BTW, the man wrote a blogpost about how he planned it all.
    45. Man asks girlfriend to go together to audition for a fake eharmony commercial, but after the camera crew tells them they wanted a married couple, the man decides to pop the question. The woman’s reaction is priceless. Update: I have seen several variations of this idea already
    46. Man proposes to a concert violinist at a symphony performance. Strange, he warns the audience to take out the cameras.

    Note: **Love and the Saxophone” was a great proposal, but the man writes on the youtube comment section: “don’t mean to bust everyone’s bubble here, but the marriage never happened. I found out she was cheating on me. However, I’m very proud of the proposal as being the most romantic proposal ever. And I believe I’m going to outdo this proposal when I meet the one…”

    Now that we have gay marriages, it suddenly becomes a LOT more interesting and challenging to watch these proposal videos because conceivably the proposer or the proposed could be either sex!

    Finally, if a male friend of yours asks you to videotape the marriage proposal, I have two  pieces of advice:

    1. Resist the temptation to add sappy romantic music to the video later.  They almost never add anything to the video. Seriously, I’ve watched 100s of these videos, and the music is just a distraction.
    2. keep quiet! Let future generations hear the couple’s reactions, not your own. (For an example of what I mean, see the video I talked about in my post about how not to make a marriage proposal video).

    Dec 29 Update. Ringonherfinger is keeping track of some of the best proposals (I’ve stolen a few for my own list).

    I’ve decided to start compiling a list of wedding proposals which are not necessarily great videos, but fascinating concepts for marriage proposals.

    1. Woman  videotapes her boyfriend proposing to her in Times Square.  he videotapes her, then they switch,  and he gets out the ring while she is holding the camera. Amazing! Unfortunately the man is very nervous, so it takes 8 minutes to get the proposal out (points off for that), but still that’s a remarkable feat.
    2. Man videotapes himself proposing to girlfriend at Lincoln Park. I smell a trend here. But wait. It’s also a very talky/rambling thing (points off again), but still heartfelt and beautiful. It’s hard imagining a couple putting this kind of video on youtube (especially how formless and unscripted these things are). Would you really want to watch a private  proposal years or decades later? Some things are sacred, and don’t really deserve to be an object of ridicule years later.
    3. Man arranges for a nearby skyscraper to flash lights arranged in a pattern to pop the question. Did I mention that he was videotaping his girl at night when this was happening? Well, not everyone has a good friend who can do light shows, but this was a flawlessly executed video. Brief, well-planned and captured the private moment well. UNAVAILABLE!
    4. Man stages an elaborate dance routine  with 50+ close friends for his girl  on the street while lip-syncing the song “I think I want to marry you.” My problem is not with the choreography or production (which is perfect) but that the proposal looks like a promotional video for the song.  Call me skeptical, but I’m not convinced this staging is for an actual marriage proposal. From a performance point of view, I’m impressed how the whole thing was done in a single shot and how people made cameo appearances via laptops. Update: The other vids uploaded by Isaac Lamb seem music and performance-oriented, so I guess it makes sense to have such an elaborately produced video. Once again, it raises the question of whether going to all that trouble to make an outstanding proposal video actually portends a happy and successful marriage.

    I’m making a new rule. I no longer will feature proposals that require a lot of money to pull off. Folks, we are living in a recession; there’s no reason to spend on lavish things for a proposal to succeed. The simpler, the better. You can still be ostentatious without depleting the bank account. The more your proposal video looks like a music video, the less authentic it appears to someone like me.

    Now I’m making another rule. Ok, the bringing-the-girl-to-the-movie-theatre-to-show-her-a-proposal-video is cool and clever,  but I long for the days that you didn’t need to take a damn cinematography class and buy a non-linear video editor and rent the entire theatre and place hidden cameras everywhere  just to pull it off.

    Finally, a personal confession. This page is just one of those random web pages I started by chance on my blog — and it’s been fun to maintain. But alas, I am single, and I have only proposed to one person in my lifetime. And that occasion went horribly wrong — not only did she say no, but the circumstances of her saying no made it a nightmare. (No video, thank goodness!)  I toyed with the notion of describing that bad experience  on this blog, but these are secrets which don’t need to be made public (not at this time anyway).  Besides, I’ve already talked about it too many times to family and friends. That experience wounded me terribly, but that is my past, and I am over it — to the point  where I can even laugh about it (kind of). I mention this  only to show that proposals don’t always work out as intended. I certainly don’t begrudge the happy couples in these videos, but I guess I scoff at all the efforts to package  these  proposals so that they appear to be some idyllic fairy tale memory.  The event of proposing is  always  a risky emotional thing; it requires faith and trust and hope.  Nothing really matters about the event except if the girl says yes (and if her heart is in the right place to say yes).

    If given a choice, I’m sure all people would rather have a crappy proposal video and a great marriage than a great video and a crappy marriage.

    Postscript. I have noticed that some of the proposal videos have started to come down.  (The video which was the subject for my  How not to make a marriage proposal blog post came  down long ago).  Sadly, this probably indicates that the couple has divorced or separated. Ironically, this blog post may end up outlasting quite a number of these marriages.

    Postscript 2. Here’s a list of proposals which are interesting and amazing but concern me for one reason or another.

    1. Man arranges for girl to walk alone in Central Park, then surprises her under a bridge while a nearby band is playing her favorite song. A really sweet idea and well-put together. But a)the first part of the video seems too much  like a  creepy spy thriller video, b)the guy was sitting 20 feet below her at the crucial moment — I was seriously afraid that the girl was going to jump down! c)the guy actually threw the ring up to her on the bridge. She caught it, but what if she didn’t!?
    2. Youtube prankster shoots a messy practical joke on girlfriend, and then follows up with an actual proposal. UNAVAILABLE! This seems too much like a reality show, but on the other hand, both people are used to play-acting during their reality show stunts  on youtube, so it makes perfect sense to make their proposal a youtube moment.  “If this a prank, this is real frickin’ mean,” says the girl. There is a happy ending here, but it still is unsettling that the girl doesn’t really know for sure it’s real or fake.
    3. Man proposes at a party on a roof of a building, then stages a fall off the building to the girl’s dismay. UNAVAILABLE! Genuine fear is never sexy or romantic; maybe if the man’s gesture indicated that he was merely pretending to fall, I could appreciate that, but no one should have to witness a potentially horrifying moment — all for the sake of a visual gag. This is a very cute proposal otherwise.
    4. Man proposes to woman at a SXSW geek conference. I won’t spoil the surprise here (it’s fantastic), but this great moment is spoiled because  the idiot holding the cameraphone  didn’t hold the phone sideways. at a talk by the man who created the Post Secrets website, people were encouraged to send secret/anonymous messages which would be read aloud in front of a crowd of 200 people. Some were strange/humorous, but one was a marriage proposal. It was very awkward.  The man held the microphone but the girl was in the back of the audience — and it took a minute or two for her to come up to give her answer (she said yes, so all was well).   I was in the audience of that proposal!

    Postscript #3 April 2018. As luck  would have it, yesterday my sister was proposed to  by her boyfriend (now fiance). He did it on a famous bridge in Australia. It was short, scenic and well photographed too.

    1. This compilation of best proposals contain some good ones. The first is excellent. A girl parachutes down only to see her boyfriend waiting with a ring.  The next one at 1:18 stars a surprise appearance of a saxophonist boyfriend at a girl’s concert. They are both charming! At 5:50 there is a bizarre video of a helicopter pilot and his girlfriend in midair. The boyfriend pretends that there’s a technical problem, so they need to do an emergency landing. The girl kind of freaks out and is asked to read an emergency procedure card. She reads all the steps, and the last one is a romantic one. The reason why this sucks is that the girl shouldn’t be forced to recite any words of a proposal. It’s a man’s job.  At 13:13 a guy goes into a court where the girl works as legal clerk. The judge reads out some silly accusations about being love-smitten with the girl, and then the judge asks, how do you plead? Do you wish to speak directly to the witness? This was an interesting idea, but ultimately you should not be asking anyone to do the narrator set up for a proposal. Your words — not the judge’s are what matters.  At 15:00 there is a long dance routine involving flags. 2 minutes later, one of the male dancers pops the question to another male (the first gay proposal I’ve seen). The last one (originally here)  shows two dancers doing a sexy dance video in front of a dance class. Two dozen kids are sitting down to watch and they go crazy when she says yes. The lesson here is that it’s always great to have kids in the audience of your proposal.

  • How to Make a Difference

    A reader asks Alex Tabbarok how he could make the biggest positive impact on society. A commenter says:

    1. Focus on preventing destructive people. In general it is easier for one person to destroy something than it is for one person to create something (e.g., it is easier to destroy the Mona Lisa rather than to paint it). Additionally, our criminal justice system is mostly focused on punishing crimes rather than preventing crimes (of course punishing crimes has a detering effect, but you get what I am saying) So if you can work on efforts that would help prevent people from causing destruction than you would have accomplished a lot of good (e.g., if you had stopped the Virginia Tech shooter or Bernie Madoff). The downside is that you will never know how successful you were at avoiding destruction because the destruction/massacre/bombing never happened.

    2. Focus on becoming a whistleblower or stoolpidgeon. While one person of modest intelligence and skill can’t make a large corporation or criminal organization by himself, it only takes one person to expose massive fraud or corruption or bring down a criminal enterprise. The strategy should be to get as high as possible into a criminal enterprise, gather evidence on the operations of the whole organization, and then turn it all over to the authorities in exchange for immunity. The downside is that you will betraying everyone that you have been working with for years and there is a good chance that you could be caught for aiding the same crimes while you are working you way to expose them. Additionally, to get really embedded into a criminal organization or to fully understand a complex fraud could take years or decades.

    3. Focus on helping those who are repugnant to society. If there is a breakdown it charitable works, I would guess that it is not on the side of medical research or helping widows and orphans. Instead, the biggest gap is probably in the area of helping out those that are seen to be repugnant to a society. You could focus your life on helping pedophiles, rapists, murders, or criminals which have mental disorders (which I understand is a relatively high population). Again, if you stop these criminals from re-offending, then you have already done a lot of good in society. The downside is that society at large may find your actions repugnant and you may never get any positive recognition for your help from society at large.

    Another person replies: put your money where you have an informational advantage.

  • Writing about other things

    The handful of people who follow this blog might find infuriating my reluctance to post on a regular basis, but I do write a lot elsewhere and privately. Also, I have been busy with technical things.

    Here I ask a blogger about the Honduras coup why the person doesn’t identify himself. Lots of good replies.

    Screed about the blandification of TV sci fi shows on a pro-male site. Don’t bother reading the comments. 

    Two articles about Netflix.   Daniel Roth writes about  how Reed Hastings accomplished Instant Watch and how it will revolutionize watching.  (Read my thoughts about the Roku—which I am still loving to death).

    Health insurance companies seeking a loophole to discriminate more in  rates: financial incentives to participate in wellness programs.

    A consensus is forming in the US Senate to support the Kerry-Graham climate bill. Gigantic news.

    Guide to backing things up on Vista.

    Ask the Headhunter articles. Good stuff. See basic job-hunting mistakes.

    New Yorker Review of Books has a podcast. My only complaint (if you can call it that) is that the people interviewed are usually literary biographers and historians..interesting but only up to a point.

    I am now reading Vivian Gornick’s End of the Novel of Love, an excellent discussion about love and relationships through the lens of 20th century literature. Here’s an interview. Here’s her statement regarding a pseudo-scandal where she is alleged to have faked parts of her memoir.

    Dating Videos: Lovedrop on bad male body language. See the essay on compliance and value.

    Brooks Jackson explains why medical malpractice is an overblown threat.

    Hitler finds the truth about Santa.

    Did Glen Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?  Maybe not, but a person attacks Glen Beck’s style of insinuation. Recommended: the lawyer’s brief defending him (PDF)

    Please cut the crap compiles some anecdotes about how health insurance mistreats customers. Part 1 and Part 2.

    Timothy Noah explores the reasons the US hasn’t yet been attacked by terrorists after 9/11. Among other reasons, he argues that 9/11 was a tough act to follow.

    Also here is a video of the USCC Naked Run 2009, (an annual tradition of students running naked in the rain in California). Totally safe-for-work, but the girl who videotapes is having a good time. Pity the poor company which unintentionally bears the same name.  I predict this tradition will NOT last much longer (now that everybody and their dog has a cell phones nowadays).

    A kilogram of beef is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution than driving for 3 hours while leaving all the lights on back home.

    Paul Ohm contends that Netflix aggregate customer data will enable individuals to be identified.

    Two incredible videos by my favorite Albanian singer Eli Fara: Here’s a traditional folk song with Fara’s haunting voice (my favorite) and a delightful singing at a hotel for 2009 New Year.

  • Odds and Ends

    How to get more bicyclists on the road: make them more friendly to female cyclists.

    Ferdinand Bardamu on the provincialism of American literature:

    The acquisition of publishing houses by larger media corporations has worked to kill innovation and make everything safe and marketable. Novelists themselves have to remain safe and marketable if they want to be published. There’s no room for the characters of yesteryear who made writing interesting. If the womanizing spendthrift Lord Byron was writing today, for instance, no editor would touch him. Truly talented writers who upset popular shibboleths such as Maddox and Tucker Max had to go the indie route in order to get their books published at all. The Nobel literature prize judge Horace Engdahl accurately described [in a London Telegraph article … link apparently lost] American writers as too "insular" and "isolated," and the controversy-free nature of modern publishing has done its best to ensure this.

    How not to build a sidewalk.

    Sam Greenspun on Strange romance genres: medical, Nascar, Viking, Mail Order Bride, time travel. Brendon Kelley talks about medical romance:

    There was a marked preponderance of brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine; they were commonly of Mediterranean origin and had personal tragedies in their pasts. Female doctors and nurses tended to be skilled, beautiful, and determined, but still compassionate; many had overcome substantial personal and professional obstacles in their lives. Protagonists of both sexes had frequently neglected their personal lives to care better for their patients, many of whom had life-threatening illnesses from which they nonetheless managed to recover.

    These novels draw attention to the romantic possibilities of primary care settings and the apparent inevitability of uncontrolled passions in the context of emergency medicine, especially as practiced on aeroplanes. These novels suggest that there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses who intend working in these settings.

    4 articles on whether the male seduction community is all it’s cracked up to be. Counterproductive attitudes. From the same site: Basic Things No One Told Me about Sex (worksafe, but very explicit).

    An article I wrote about the horrors of graduate school still receives a steady stream of comments.

    I read an article about the 20 minute video called story of stuff almost a year ago, but I finally got around to watching it. It’s great.

    Cabel Sasser describes a funky Japanese restaurant where you never receive what you order.

    Pat Garofolo on how David Koch and other billionaires enlist the support of right-wing activists to keep their taxes low.

    Pew report on the inadequate way journalists cover the recession:

    Three storylines have dominated: efforts to help revive the banking sector, the battle over the stimulus package and the struggles of the U.S. auto industry. Together they accounted for nearly 40% of the economic coverage from February 1 through August 31. Other topics related to the crisis have been covered much less. As an example, all the reporting of retail sales, food prices, the impact of the crisis on Social Security and Medicare, its effect on education and the implications for health care combined accounted for just over 2% of all the economic coverage.

    …

    Fully 76% of the datelines on all economic stories were either New York (44%) or metro Washington, D.C. (32%). Only about one-fifth, 21% of the stories, originated in any other city in the U.S. And just 3% were reported from overseas locations.

    The New York-D.C. coverage axis was even more evident in the economic storylines that generated the most overall media attention. Fully 90% of stories about the No. 1 economic theme, the troubled financial sector, originated from either New York (50%) or Washington (41%). The numbers were similar when it came to the second-biggest theme, the $787-billion stimulus package, with 83% of the stories datelined New York or Washington

    This chart says it all:

    image

    By the way, what ever happened to global warming? Permafrost in Greenland?

    Other differences in media coverage:

    • Newspaper front pages stood out for devoting the most attention to the economy, offering more localized coverage, giving voice to a more diverse range of sources and producing a higher level of enterprise reporting than other media sectors.
    • The network evening newscasts distinguished themselves by focusing on the recession’s impact on the lives of average Americans, with all three major commercial networks airing regular features on the subject.
    • Cable television and talk radio, two platforms that rely more than others on ideologically driven debate, focused more on the Beltway-based political aspects of the economy, such as the stimulus package battle. And in both sectors, overall coverage of the economy plunged dramatically when the story became less Washington-centric.

    By the way, Paul Solman’s Business Desk blog stands out as one of the better places for coverage about the recession.

    Public Citizen sues Texas to enforce its Clean Air legislation.  Actually the comments from readers (rude and ill-informed as they are) speak a lot about the attitudes that Texans have about global warming.

    John McFarlane reports that Texas just started a massive wind farm (reported the biggest in the world).  From the great Green Tech blog on cnet, I see this article by Candace Lombardi (with a little more informed comments).

  • Nobel Predictions

    Nobel predictions: 1. Mario Vargas Llosa, 2. Milan Kundera, 3. Adonis, 4.Ngu~gi~ wa Thiong’o, 4. Umberto Eco, 5. Haruki Murakami. I think this year they will pick a well-known widely-selling novelist in an overlooked region. Personally, I would …love to see Kundera win (or if American), Joyce Carol Oates.

    I think this will start a trend of nobelists being relatively popular and widely available in English translation (in other words, household names).

    I would feel really stupid if Kadare wins though (given my knowledge of him by living in Albania)…don’t know if man booker awards have any influence on Nobel decisions.

    I wouldn’t mind terribly the harry potter lady winning, although if you’re going to go harry potter, you might as well pick Eco or Kundera….

    i also wouldn’t mind Oates winning, if only so I could say I have met personally 3 Nobel prize winners.

    it’s such a silly parlor game. And yet i love it!

    (I still remember checking the cnn site every 5 minutes in the middle of the night to see if Gore won the Peace Prize. I was exultant at that).

    Please note: I have predicted almost none of the Nobel prize winners correctly over the last 20 years.

  • Sava’s Feet – Echelon System Warning

    I served in Peace Corps Albania between 1995-7.  Here is an essay I wrote in December 1997  about returning home to Houston after being evacuated from Albania. I also wrote an essay, The English Expert about a quirky professor of English, Abydyli Vasjari in Vlore.

    (more…)

  • Robert Nagle’s Representatives

    Egad, it is so annoying to keep looking up who my representative is. For this reason I have prepared this reference page. (The rest of humanity can ignore this page; google, pleas take note! If all goes well, after 3 or so days, I will merely need to type “Robert Nagle’s representatives” into google to show this page).

    BTW, Chuck Kuffner has a good table of 2009 electoral candidates, along with audio interviews he had with them.

    (more…)

  • Catching up with Facebook

    Some things I posted on facebook which I thought I’d share here.  I’m also including a lot of other great stuff.

    Lack of health insurance raises your risk of dying by 40%.

    CBS/New York Times poll: 65% of Americans say they would favor "the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans."

    States may sue utilities over climate change.  This is what happens when Congress refuses to pass a climate change bill.  Related:  Matthew Wald’s report about carbon capture plants indicates that  Carbon capture reduces plant efficiency by 15-30%. "Environmentalists … worry that sequestration could simply trade one problem, global warming, for another one, the pollution of water supplies."

    J Wynia on making better presentations with Power Point:

    I think the most important presentation habit I picked up was to start working on the presentation somewhere other than *in* Powerpoint or Keynote. Both of those tools encourage a pattern that I think is the number one cause of the bullet-point onslaught.

    What I see people do is File->New Presentation and they start by filling in the title and adding a new slide. That slide is always the Title/Bullet Points layout and they start filling in those boxes and just keep right on going.

    If you start away from the presentation editor and organize your thoughts and ideas into the points you want to make, the things you want to convince your audience of, the things you want to be sure you communicate, etc.

    This is where good old fashioned note-taking, outlining, and mind-mapping come in. Capture the ideas so you can cut out the crap that doesn’t belong. Even if you take a bunch of notes, throw them all away and go to Powerpoint “fresh”, your thinking will be clearer and the presentation better for it.

    By the way, I am currently testing Personal Brain, a mind mapping/organization problem. Will report back if I’m pleased with it. I badly need a mind mapping/outlining tool for my longer written pieces.  WhizFolders Organizer is an alternative.

    Here’s a great matrix comparing the current ebook devices. Apparently the Sony PRS-505 has fallen in price to $199. That’s a great deal, especially if you pair it up with the free Calibre ebook conversion utility. Calibre lets you scrape various websites (Newsweek, Economist, New Yorker) into ebook format… for free!  It’s a big myth that you need your ebook device to have some wireless way to download books. You don’t!

    My article about Fictionaut.  If you’re a writer and need an invitation, let me know.

    Mike Hughes on Why PDFs are sucky for usability. (The article mainly talks about PDF for technical documentation, but some principles are universal here).

    Dmitry Fadeyev gathers some top usability findings. What caught my eye are the typography findings:

    • Line height (in pixels) ÷ body copy font size (in pixels) = 1.48
      1.5 is commonly recommended in classic typographic books, so our study backs up this rule of thumb. Very few websites use anything less than this. And the number of websites that go over 1.48 decreases as you get further from this value.
    • Line length (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 27.8
      The average line length is 538.64 pixels (excluding margins and padding), which is pretty large considering that many websites still have body copy that is 12 to 13 pixels in font size.
    • Space between paragraphs (pixels) ÷ line height (pixels) = 0.754
      It turns out that paragraph spacing (i.e. the space between the last line of one paragraph and the first line of the next) rarely equals the leading (which would be the main characteristic of perfect vertical rhythm). More often, paragraph spacing is just 75% of paragraph leading. The reason may be that leading usually includes the space taken up by descenders; and because most characters do not have descenders, additional white space is created under the line.
    • Optimal number of characters per line is 55 to 75
      According to classic typographic books, the optimal number of characters per line is between 55 and 75, but between 75 and 85 characters per line is more popular in practice.

    By the way, I will be changing the WordPress theme in the next few weeks so that it conforms with these principles.

    The Spearhead, a new men’s site about dating. Slightly vulgar but intelligently written, with contributions from Roissy. I just love it how a bunch of writers can just get together a start a magazine.

    Walecia Konrad on how to manage dental costs.

    It’s important to know the price before you agree to the procedure. Often patients sit down for a routine cleaning and checkup, only to find they have a problem. The dentist offers to take care of the situation on the spot, and the patient agrees — but then is socked with a surprising bill at the end of the visit.

    That happened to Monica Gagnier of Beacon, N.Y., on a recent visit to her Manhattan dentist for a twice-yearly cleaning. Looking to save money, Ms. Gagnier was careful to tell the office when she made the appointment that she wasn’t due to get X-rays and didn’t need to see the dentist for a checkup. Without those two items, she figured she would save more than $100 on her bill.

    …

    You should always be given an opportunity to discuss any treatment, sitting up, without equipment in your mouth, says Dr. Messina. In addition, whenever you are facing an invasive dental procedure that is not an emergency, it makes sense to refuse treatment on the spot and get a second opinion, says Elizabeth Rogers, a spokeswoman for Oral Health America, a nonprofit advocacy and education group based in Chicago.

    The range of prices on treatments like root canals, for instance, can easily differ by $1,000 or more.

    Commonplace blog, a literary blog by D.G. Myers. Myers is a literary critic from Texas A&M with an interest in contemporary literature. More about him later.

    Satirical video about a Microsoft marketing plan. My theory: MS made a dopey marketing video and then released an underground video with the bleeps and double entendres. Never underestimate marketing genius.

    Two maxims about network TV. Cory Doctorow: The goal of network TV is to make you consume  shit and crap cash. (Someone else): The main message of cable news is: Shut Up and Spend!  Aha, I remember the source of that second quote. It was from a Project Censored Video (which I am too lazy to look up).

    Top 25 Censored Stories of 2010 (I assume the list is about 2009 news items). Here’s the top 25 Censored Stories of 2009. I haven’t looked over the 2010 list, but it looks good!

    I am happy to learn that Mark Ames’ satirical journal Exiled Online is back in business.  Some highlights: I predicted the financial crisis and you didn’t listen and how the pro-ABM advocates reminded him of the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones. More shocking is Mr. Bernacke’s plan to drain a trillion dollars from the US money supply as a way to “protect” the finance industry:

    What’s even more strange is that the Fed’s plan to “drain” an incredible $1 trillion from our ruined economy comes after the Fed spent two years pumping trillions into the banking system, on the specious theory that the best way to get us regular folks that money isn’t to give it to us directly, but rather, to give it to the bankers first… because they know better than anyone, better than us especially, how to distribute it down to the rest of us (that ol’ trickle-down theory that’s been working magic since Reagan suckered us into believing it). We’d lose it as soon as we received it—whereas they know how to hide it for safe-keeping.

    Then there’s the question of how: like, how do you actually “drain” or “”mop up” $1 trillion from our economy–it’s not like CIA agents running around Central Asia buying back Stingers from the mujahedeen in the 1990s. (The actual process makes for boring reading, having to do with the Fed and primary dealers and its balance sheet and reverse-repos, bla bla bla.) What matters is this: The Fed is going to re-steal $1 trillion of the trillions it doled out to everyone who isn’t us, because Wall Street is complaining that if some of those trillions do trickle down to the rest of us, it’ll cause inflation. They’re calling it “excess”—the same guys who are making so many billions they don’t know what to do with it, they’re the ones who know what’s excess liquidity or not. So by taking away $1 trillion of money we regular folks might get our hands on and use for our own selfish purposes, Wall Street thinks that it can contain the inflation disease that we carry around.

    This is why the Fed and Treasury made sure that all those trillions went to a select few plutocratic institutions first, and not to the rest of us. See, those dollars only have value to them as long as they’re the ones in control of the dollars, and the amount of dollars. If we all have these dollars, then they’re not much value or use to the billionaires anymore. The billionaires in Wall Street, Zurich, Abu Dhabi, and Hong Kong had two goals: first, to get ahold of the trillions they’d lost, even if it meant stealing it all from Americans. Then, once they got the loot, the next goal was to make sure it didn’t leak out to the rest of us and inflate its value away, otherwise, what was the point of looting all those trillions?

    So that’s where we are now, in Phase Two: we regular folks must not be allowed to get our hands on any of that dough, or all economic Hell will break loose. Drain it, mop it, suck it up–get the trillion out of our hands before we do something stupid like buy Jeep Cherokees with it. Because basically we non-millionaires are slobs, and they’re not. They know what to do with money: In their hands, money doesn’t lose value (it may vanish or turn into negative money due to overleveraging, but it doesn’t inflate away, and that’s what makes them so great!); in our feckless irresponsible hands, the value of the dollar goes to shit. So they’re taking it away from us, $1 trillion of it, for our own good.

    …

    The Fed says this is all about fighting inflation–which is exactly what Wall Street, the Chinese, Zurich and the rest of the super-wealthy world has been bitching about for the past six months or so–that is, ever since they gorged themselves on the trillions in handouts, and thought, “Okay, I’m happy again. Don’t need this government money anymore, at least not at this rate. Hey, wait a doggone minute here–why is the government letting the rest of the schmucks in on the trillions? Get it out of their hands now!” Everyone knows what happened to Spain after they plundered all that gold from the New World: too much gold in everyone’s home led to gold losing its value. Lesson: make sure only a few people share in the spoils. So they want a lot of that money drained out of the economy before the rest of us get our hands on it and mess everything up with our highly-communicable inflationary diseases, which we carry around us like head lice. According to the people who run our economy—Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner—regular taxpayers like you and me carry highly-communicable strains of inflation in our psyches, and so we have to be quarantined from that money to protect the nation, and especially to protect the super-rich, who shouldn’t have to suffer just because we don’t bathe properly.

    Mark Ames is a polemicist, so you have to indulge him a little, but his grasp on facts seem basically sound. The other articles on Exiled Online are in the same vein.

  • My backlog

    I have been out of town for most of this week. I just wanted to say that I have a backlog of old blog posts to publish. Stay tuned!