Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Pet Peeve Time, or, Why Kyle Sampson Shouldn't Have Been Hired

One of my pet peeves is people who refuse to get into the 21st century. Even though the software industry has provided PC's with hundreds and thousands of fonts, they insist on using a non-proportional typeface like pica or elite, which trace their origins to the days of the typewriter. My problem dates back to the early 70's, when research for a better word processor than the IBM MT/ST led me to looking at the early CRT's (which made characters using a 5x7 or 6x9 grid of, if I remember, pixels). In trying to find out how important such differences were (I'm very easily distracted), I read some stuff on typography. Rather arcane (serifs lead the eye from one character to another) but interesting. It made me forever dissatisfied with pica and elite. But people hate to change, so 25 years after good fonts became available, a few benighted conservatives still use pica and/or elite.

Based on the excerpts from the e-mails released by DOJ in the dispute over firing attorneys, it looks as if Kyle Sampson, the now ex-chief of staff, falls into that category.

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