December 23rd, 2003
I love nice colophons:
The text of this book was set in a digitized version of a typeface
named Perpetua, designed by the British artist Eric Gill (1882-1940)
and cut by The Monotype Corporation, London, in 1928-1930. Perpetua is
a contemporary letter of original design, without any direct historical
antecedents. The shapes of the roman letters basically derive from
stonecutting, a form of lettering in which Gill was eminent. The italic
is essentially an inclined roman. The general effect of the typeface
in reading sizes is one of lightness and grace. The larger display
sizes of the type are extremely elegant and form what is probably the
most distinguished series of inscriptional letters cut in the present
century.
(From Jewish
Cooking in America, by Joan Nathan, pub. 1998 by Knopf.)
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December 23rd, 2003
I’m always running into abuses of precision in the service of weak
assertions. People are easily seduced into “rounding” numeric values in
their arguments, sometimes as much as half an order of magnitude, and
then rounding the resulting value again. They apply this rule
over and over to grossly exaggerate the figure. Recursive
aggrandizement!
Exemplar gratis:
“Our group has nearly 200 members. That’s practically 250, which
is basically 300, which is so close to the threshold of 350 that it’s
not even worth quibbling about!” [Hypothetical argument made to
gain special treatment, reserved for groups of 350, to a group of, say,
185.]
[Also note this related exchange
on bash.org.]
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December 23rd, 2003
Wah. I had finally started to read Doonesbury and FoxTrot again, via
RSS, and now
this.
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December 23rd, 2003
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December 23rd, 2003
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