Must I rail about "The Times They Are A-Changin'" again? I'll just quote something I wrote back in 2018:
[T]he old song... anchors Bob Dylan in his political protest time, from which he changed. But Baby Boomer politicos have always harked back to it, and it serves them — I'm not including me — right to have that song sung in their face now that they are old and not ready to roll over for whatever advancement the young people think is due.
I don't include myself because I've never liked the forefronting of Protest Bob. "The Times They Are a-Changin'" is the song picked out from all the others by people who don't really know and love Bob. I don't like seeing him used this way, restricted to this narrow version.
And the words are too cruel and anti-inclusive to use generally (outside of the literal blocking of doorways in the desegregation era).
Now about those fonts... did you know sans serif fonts are supposed to be easier for sight-impaired people to read? I've been sight-impaired, and I've never chosen a sans serif font for my Kindle, and I'm always searching for what's easiest to see clearly. But according to this WaPo article...
The secretary’s decision was motivated by accessibility issues and not aesthetics, said a senior State Department official familiar with the change.... Many experts agree that serif typefaces — categories of fonts with added strokes — are more difficult to read on computer screens...
Who am I going to believe — experts or my own imperfect eyes?
“Good practice would be the use of a sans serif font,” [said University of Edinburgh’s Disability and Inclusive Learning Service] in an accessibility guide. “Fonts such as Times New Roman are much less accessible.”...
Maybe in Scotland.
In its cable, the State Department said it was choosing to shift to 14-point Calibri font because serif fonts like Times New Roman “can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities who use Optical Character Recognition technology or screen readers."
Oh! It's not about human eyesight at all. It's about a computer doing the reading.
"It can also cause visual recognition issues for individuals with learning disabilities,” it said.
Again, I presume, it's not about eyesight. This relates to brain function.
While Calibri may improve the experience of readers who use screen readers or OCR — technology that can convert the image of text into editable text — it could make reading more difficult for others, [said Jack Llewellyn, a London-based designer who specializes in typography]....
Exactly, that's my point. So many people have eyesight issues.
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I see the world is falling apart but Blinken is focused on the larger-type issues.
Does he have a Siamese cat on his shoulder, is my only question.
I work at a church and we changed back to a serif font for our printed bulletins because it is far easier for older eyes to see. Specifically-- the serif helps the eye track where the bottom edge of the words are, so it's easier to keep track of what line you're reading on.
I think it also helps the eye to recognize a word's shape and identify it more quickly, but the line tracking is why we changed back.
From google’s ‘People also asked’
What Calibri says about you?
You tend to like neutral things and maybe your personality can be a bit swiss. If you're on the Calibri buzz, odds are you're an avid Microsoft supporter. Mar 14, 2022
Ha!
Good to see our feckless Secy of State working on the key issues of our time. Love this administration. I've never seen anything like it. Not ever. Not even in the heady days of Burt Lance running the OMB. Today we have the likes of Jennifer Granholm, Pete 'Don't-call-me-Petey Buttigeig, Alejandro Mayorkas and others, like Antony Blinken.
What a show.
The Nebraska Supreme Court changed the font and margin requirements for all pleadings and briefs. Arial is forbidden. The reason? Supposedly easier to read the briefs on their iPads. Lawyers hate it.
A fraktur font would be perfect for the NYT.
i use Consolas.. Like GOD intended us to use
I can’t distinguish between a numeral one, a capital eye, and a small ell in sans-serif fonts.
When I had to look at alphanumeric service tag codes and the spreadsheet was in a sans-serif font, i would convert it to a serifed font.
JSM
Russia, China, & Iran running rampant in the world, but hey, let's change fonts in the State Department.
It took a period of adjustment but I'm 100% pro kindle. You can enlarge the type to read comfortably no matter what type style is used. No need for reading glasses. Another plus, you can read in the park, even in the gathering gloom of winter's late afternoon. Also you can look up those pesky, little used words that British historians are wont to throw into their works. The maps, photos and illustrations aren't as good on Kindle, but that's the only downside....I sometimes pick up books in used bookstores, but only to read at home. Even then I look to see if the library has a kindle version and read that if available.
I'm sure glad Blinken has found a passion to hang his hat on. Times New Roman vs. Calibri! Such a big issue! I'm sure our ambassadors are regaling their counterparts about how Calibri is so much more diverse, equitable and inclusive and will be the savior of humanity.
Increasing the font size to 14-pt increases the gravitas of all the nonsense the State Department puts out. I can see how this improves the menus of all State Dept. festivals. Biden's Iran betrayal agreement looks much better in 14-pt Calibri than 12-pt TNR.
I've worn glasses since grade school and I prefer the Arial font. I'm curious which font is used on eye charts.
My office recently “upgraded” to a version of Westlaw that displays the text of all cases in a previously unseen (by me, anyway) sans-serif font. It now takes me longer to read the cases, and they tell me I cannot display case text in any alternative font, not even Westlaw’s old one. I guess they think I have stalled; perhaps they’re right. A pox on all of them.
And anyway, why would the State Department want to make it easier for people like Anthony Weiner to OCR their stuff?
Bob Dylan's voice grates on me. I'll often change the channel when one of his songs comes on.
I prefer Century. It’s a serif font, but not as tightly compact as Times New Roman. Whenever I read something that is supposed to be “professional” but isn’t in serif font I downgrade its reliability.
He just wants to reduce the blinken when readen.
Put me on Team Blinken, here. "Protest Bob" is not the Real Bob". Saint
Joan learned this the hard way. "Diamonds and Rust" is a great "lesson-learned" song.
The list of Dylan songs that should be echoing through the halls of power is a long one. I could waste an hour or two thinking about that... and probably will.
"Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground"
Down with Antiqua, bring back Fraktur!
Fiddling while Rome burns.
My favorite "Protest Bob" song is "When the Ship Comes In," because Joan Baez was with him in a hotel room when he wrote it, and she explained how it came about. The hotel would not let the unwashed and not yet famous Bob Dylan in, and the famous Baez had to call down to get them to let him in, and you know he said to himself "when my ship comes in!" Anybody would; well, in those days it was a common saying. But then he turned it around to not be about himself and used his anger to write that great song. Or maybe he just exists on such a spiritual plane that he did not have to go through the step of it being about himself the way mere mortals would.
I was thinking about Dylan in "No Direction Home" where early in his career, he just invented a life for himself and told people that it was his real life story, when the George Santos thing happened. Maybe George Santos is just a "political expeditionary."
I never liked Times Roman font, and was glad when the corporation where I worked chose a different font as our internal standard. The idea behind the font seemed to be to cram as many letters into as small a space as possible. Not at all aesthetically appealing to my eyes.
Ann, you are a treasure. Too have a story about government use of fonts intersect with a Dylan song is in your wheelhouse and you are knocking out of the park.
I have been told that sans serif fonts like Calibri are easier to read on small screens, in other words phones.
Serifs forever. Sans-serif fonts are ugly.
“The Night Times New Roman Called it a Day”.
By the artist formally known as Protest Bob.
Ah, but which Interstate font do you prefer?
"Diamonds and Rust" is a great song, but I am not sure she got it right:
"So you're telling me, you're not nostalgic, well give me another word for it..."
Watch the Rolling Thunder Review, and listen to the music Dylan went on to create, his comeback was not about nostalgia.
This White House was made for Comic Sans.
"Speaking strictly for me, we both could have died then and there..."
Before Dylan did much of his best work.
The default on microsoft word used to be times new roman but now it’s calqmbri. Wonder if this is oart of the reasoning for this.
Blowin' in the Wind
The Times They Are a-Changin
Are two good Dylan Protest songs that I enjoy, at least when song by others like PP and Mary.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'
Yep, get out the way Boomers.
My Back Pages is the true Bob.
I'm kinda wondering how many man-hours went into this important font decision.
The Times They Are A-Changin' = Imagine.
Both are treacle that had their (brief) moment in the sun for boomers, but anyone who still gets hard/wet listening to them is an embarrassment.
Diamonds and Rust" is a great song, but I am not sure she got it right:
"So you're telling me, you're not nostalgic, well give me another word for it..."
Watch the Rolling Thunder Review, and listen to the music Dylan went on to create, his comeback was not about nostalgia.
My reading of the song differs. She's not accusing Dylan of being dishonest about not being nostalgic. She's nostalgic when Dylan calls her and it hurts. She wants another way of describing her emotions to herself to push them away.
"You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly"
Not a Baez fan, but "Diamonds and Rust" is a great song. If Dylan ever does a follow-up to his recent book, he should include that song.
Re Fonts. I recall from a Ross Gubberman CLE that the Supreme Court and Solicitor General use Century.
The 7th Circuit has a document providing guidance. This notes the same thing about the Supremes and SG and adds, "...faces in the Bookman and Century families are preferable to faces in the Garamond and Times families."
I think that the “vagueness” bit is about how Baez writes concrete poetry, describes stuff that happened to her, and Dylan writes abstractly, it is a male female thing.
I think that the “vagueness” bit is about how Baez writes concrete poetry, describes stuff that happened to her, and Dylan writes abstractly,...
Perhaps, but making distressing things vague or abstract is less painful than making them concrete. That's what she needs.
I thought the Tea Party should have used the song as an anthem, but it never caught on.
So thats what the biden center money was for
I give you....
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
You're welcome.
Does he have a Siamese cat on his shoulder, is my only question.
Chrome horses??
Not a big Baez fan but Diamonds and Rust is epic. She perfectly captures the sweet sadness of remembering lost love and especially the emotions you get punched with when you pick up the phone and it's The One Who Got Away. I've gotten a few of those calls....
I guess boomers have had to learn to cheese it with the "I took to the street and protested" kind of talk. I'm down with the kids, kind of thing. The woke have been asking for a while now: if you protested, why is everything still so unjust? Why did you stop? Why did you settle? The young boomers had at least the beginnings of identity politics--too much privilege has gone to heteronormal white cismales, not enough to anybody else--but they didn't follow through. I guess they taught the young to follow through, and now the young are quite prepared to turn on the boomers, everything in its time, etc.
In my teaching days I took for granted that teaching Plato's Republic was a good way of channelling youthful idealism into more and better education. Now I wonder. The woke have this puritanical side, battling against eros and humor. Maybe they should have had more of Plato's Symposium: eros is what it is, it will always be a bit awkward to make laws work. An adult teaching as opposed to a juvenile one.
This feels all too much like chasing fashion and then finding a reason to do so. Did people change fonts all that much when it was all print?
Calibri is the devil’s font! I feel very strongly about certain fonts, perhaps even irrationally, and I just have a very visceral dislike of Calibri. It’s generic but somehow slightly off, ugly. Versus Times New Roman, which is also pretty generic but classic and still pleasing.
I don’t have anything against sans serif, perhaps because I’m near sighted and have no sight reading issues (yet), but my favorite font is Helvetica. So beautifully simple, so artfully spare. Century is my favorite serif font.
In my Navy days working in a message center, we used early OCR readers for processing messages quickly; the IBM Selectric typewriters of the time used a fontball with OCR-A font, which was easy for the machines to read - - mostly.
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