Year: 2013

Seth Stevenson reviews Stephen Coles' The Anatomy of Type, which provides a close look at the design and background of 100 different typefaces:

You’ll discover that Times New Roman was released in 1932 (credit for its design remains in dispute!), created for The Times of London newspaper. We learn that its defining features include long, sharp serifs; very wide upper-case letters; and a comparatively small dot above its i. Coles suggests it is a good choice for a "conventional office-document look" but that Le Monde Journal—commissioned for the French newspaper Le Monde in 1997—is a "fresher alternative."

For Stevenson, the book "provides a glorious opportunity to taxonimize another everyday visual encounter." He claims that now, as he peruses "the text of subway ads and pasted-up flyers," that he delights, "in assessing their glyph widths, their stroke weights, their ascender heights."

(Image from James and Karla Murray's  New York Nights, a book Maria Popova calls "a striking, lavish street-level tour of New York City’s typographic neon mesmerism, revealed through the illuminated storefronts of some of the city’s most revered bars, diners, speakeasies, theaters, and other epicenters of public life.")

Kevin Drum has recently examined the consequences of lead exposure. Dave Roberts looks at toxic substances more generally and identifies a pattern:

We start using something before we understand whether it’s safe. We begin to discover it’s not safe. Industry obscures the science and viciously battles off regulation for as long as possible, forecasting economic doom. Lots of people get sick and die while they do so. Finally some regulations are put in place. The costs of complying turn out to be lower than anyone predicted. The benefits turn out to be much greater than anyone predicted. The pollutant turns out to be more harmful than originally thought. Despite all of the above, industry continues battling efforts to further reduce the pollutant, while claiming credit for the benefits of reducing it as much as they were forced to.

Over and over and over, this story plays out. Yet with each new pollution fight, it’s as though we’ve never had all the previous ones. (See: chlorofluorocarbons, mercury, smog, phthalates, etc.)

Drum adds that this is "especially true of compounds like lead, that primarily affect children."

A reader writes:

Regarding the commenter who is upset that the Huffington Post's obituary of Huell Howser didn't mention that he was gay: shouldn't it be the objective of the gay and lesbian community to live in a society where it no longer matters that they are gay and lesbian?  Shouldn't it be the objective of people who believe in equality and the same rights for all that we no longer have these labels? Whether it is African-American, gay or straight, Catholic or Muslim, the never-ending need for labels is what drives us apart rather than together. 

Another writes:

People can say what they will about Huell Hower’s television work, but there is little doubt he was a unique embodiment of California. During the L.A. riots in 1992, I witnessed Howser produce a revolver and personally guard my neighborhood Radio Shack in the Larchmont district. He was just fed up with people wrecking his city and practically dared anyone to try and steal a boombox. That incident cemented my esteem for him. Yeah his show was corny, but he was a guide to everything great and ordinary about the Golden State, and I’m glad I got to take his tour. 

Another sends the above video:

Comedian James Adomian has made his Huell Howser impression famous through Comedy Bang Bang. In the podcast, Adomian's Howser moves consistently with every appearance from hail-fellow-well-met to slaughtering avenging angel. Here's a sample. [Above] is a Funny or Die video of Adomian performing as Howser – just homage, no slaughtering. And here is a NYT profile of Adomian, "Gay Male Comics Await The Spotlight."

Robert Krulwich explores how zero gravity affects the everyday habits of astronauts:

I know that an exercise bike in space is not like an exercise bike on Earth, because up there they don't have seats — none at all. "You don't need a seat," says Williams, because you don't have to deal with your center of gravity. Seats are for settling. There's no weight to settle. "Actually, I haven't sat down for six months now," she says. All you do is put your feet on the pedals and pump.

"Sleeping free" is something that takes practice, since covers float away and there is no lying "down":

Dan Barry, another astronaut, once told me he likes to sleep in a fetal curl, knees to chest. But in space you can't do that, because you're being pulled equally in all directions, so your body just naturally wants to open up. As soon as you doze off, you unfurl into the letter "C." On the first few nights in space, he Velcro-taped himself to his knees.

Today on the Dish, Andrew continued to dispute neocon qualms about Hagel’s foreign policy realism and found signs that their philosophy’s prestige is on the wane. He took apart Richard Socarides’ hypocrisy regarding Hagel’s record on gay rights and pondered whether or not the whole affair has humbled AIPAC. Looking at the bigger picture, Andrew pegged the nomination as the latest move in Obama’s long game, where Hagel will allow for sensible defense cuts in order to sustain our spending at home.

In other political coverage, we rounded up more thoughts on the platinum coin and revisited Drum’s connection of lead and crime. Meanwhile, even the conservative-leaning Rasmussen registered the Tea Party’s decline, while Paul Waldman wondered if Obamagate will ever arrive. Goldblog spoke up for conceal-carry permits while Pareene updated us on the lucrative trade of right-wing snake-oil.

In foreign affairs, Assad’s latest speech contained the hubris of fallen dictators. Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett insisted that the West ignores the progress on women’s rights in Iran, Jada Yuan outlined the danger of filming polo in Afghanistan, and André Barcinski measured the huge strides in the Brazilian economy.

In assorted coverage, we studied the possible benefits of hunting on the ecosystem and surveyed the amount of climate-driven damage that battered the US in 2012. Hélène Mialet described how a systematized community can spark a singular moment of genius, Gary Marcus insisted that it’s never too late to pick up a new skill, and Bruce McCall counted the comedians from Canada. Christoper West reflected on the sensual and the divine while Roxana Robinson celebrated the stillness of the morning. We paused for a tribute to California’s TV personality Huell Howser. We then charted the ludicrous rise of college textbook prices, Laura Vanderkam found that the people who buy self-help books aren’t the ones that really need them, and Norm MacDonald asked whether New Year’s resolutions could be ignoble.

In more miscellania, we took at tour of that diner from every movie, slowed down to hang with sloths during our MHB, overviewed some VFYW construction in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, witnessed two sad faces seeing their dad off to deployment, and pinched our noses at an Ayatollah air freshener. The winner of this week’s VFYW contest, featuring Tehran, is here. We also continued to take on more thoughts from readers about the .99 pricing scheme for Dish subscriptions and delved into the continued evolution and improvement of online advertising. But we still have no plans to host ads on the new Dish, so you can help support us  here.

– B.J.

(Photo: A protestor wears an orange prison jump suit and black hood on his head during protests against holding detainees at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay during a demonstration in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on January 8, 2013. This weeks marks the 11th anniversary of the opening of the prison. By Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

"We are rarely presented with an authentically fulfilling trajectory for our desires… If we are created for infinite satisfaction, we really only have three choices about what to do with our desire in this life: We will become either a stoic, an addict, or a mystic. The stoic squelches desire out of fear, while the addict attempts to satisfy his desire for infinity with finite things, which, of course, can’t satisfy. That’s why the addict wants more and more and more. The mystic, on the other hand — in the Christian sense of the term — is the one who is learning how to direct his desire for infinity toward infinity," – Christopher West, whose new book is Fill These Hearts.

Laura Vanderkam uncovers the contradictions of the American penchant for self-improvement:

[T]he people who buy these books are, like all book buyers, "pretty comfortable," says John Duff of Penguin. "It’s going to be that middle-class person, reasonably well-educated" and in "very rarefied" company, as "our market for all books is really very limited. Most people stop reading when they leave school." Those who don’t stop probably have their acts together.

Call it the paradox of self-help. "The type of person who values self-control and self-improvement is the type of person who would seek more of it in a self-help book,"Whelan says. "So it’s not the unemployed crazy lady sitting on the couch eating potato chips who reads self-help. It’s the educated, affluent, probably fairly successful person who wants to better themselves."

André Barcinski observes how the country has advanced economically:

In November, 2012, one new shopping mall was opened every three and a half days in São Paulo. Luxury stores such as Chanel, Bulgari, and Prada are always packed. Airports are also filled to capacity: in 2011, domestic plane passengers surpassed bus passengers for the first time. Last year, Brazilian tourists spent over twenty-one billion dollars overseas, a thirty per cent increase in comparison to 2010. It is no coincidence that the United States recently adopted measures to facilitate the issue of visas for Brazilians. For any Brazilian over twenty, this is big news. We used to spend endless hours in line at the American Consulate, begging for a visa. Now, they encourage us to go to the U.S. and spend our money.

He credits "social assistance programmes, huge discoveries of deep-water oil fields, the development of the ethanol industry and advances in agricultural technologies" for the improvements. But he fears that easy credit in the country will doom the country:

In June 2012, almost a third of all credit card holders in the country were at least 90 days late on their payments. Economists fear mass default.

(Photo: People watch fireworks along Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro on January 1, 2013, during celebrations by over three million people attending New Year's Eve festivities. By Ari Versiani/AFP/Getty Images)

Ronald Bailey finds Kevin Drum's article on crime's connection to lead incomplete:

Drum is right that exposure to lead increases the chances that a person will suffer the sorts of neurological damage that lowers their intelligence and lower intelligence is well-known to correlate with increased criminality. Reducing such exposures has no doubt contributed to our happily falling crime rates. But it is likely that other factors including more policing, more incarceration, less crack, increased concealed carry, and other such efforts to control crime have contributed as well.

Deborah Blum makes related points. Drum clarifies:

It's true that one researcher has suggested that lead can explain 90 percent of the rise and fall of crime, but that's very much the high end of the estimates in the field. I'm a lot more comfortable with an estimate of around 50 percent, something I should have made clearer in the text of my piece. In other words, lead probably explains a very big chunk of the rise and fall of postwar crime in America, but it doesn't trump everything else. Drugs, poverty, urban gang warfare, education, policing tactics, and other things also play a role.