Terrible Idea (.net)

My dad is a fairly tech-savvy guy.  Rather than calling to talk to me and find out how my life is going, he will contact me using GChat.  I don’t know how usual or unusual this is for people my age, with parents his age, but I’m impressed by it.  That said, despite his affection for modern means of communication, he still harbors affection for certain… out-moded forms, even when using a decidedly modern one.  Here is a conversation I just had with him over GChat (cleaned up slightly to be more… readable):

Parents: Are chats secure?
Me: no
Me: you can make them secure though
Parents: how?
Parents: write in Latin?
Me: different plug-ins
Me: i wonder if the CIA or the FBI has a latin translation team
Parents: Grandma mihi argentum multum davit.
Me: quantum?
Parents: supra MMM
Parents: multissima!
Me: quam ea ages?
Parents: eum celare paro.
Parents: vel in terra vel in domu vel in loco alio
Me: vel in manum meum?
Parents: in somniis tui
Me: heu
Parents: celeriter satis in latina non cogito
Me: partes eius celeriter mihi redeunt, partes non

Any Latin scholars out there, pardon the errors — I’ve been out of practice for years, and my dad has never had formal training (as far as I know).

Friends exclaim “oh, you’re almost done with your first year of law school!”  That’s true in the chronological sense, but not in the stress and worry sense — grades are determined almost solely by exams.  So, a week ago I was still only half done.  Now I’m three quarters done with my first year of law school, and the other quarter will happen in the next week.  But I still have time for a few non-exam thoughts:

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever come across in my broad traversal of the internet at large is the Internet Archive’s Live Music Archive.  With almost 3000 artists, some with dozens of shows, all for free, it has served as a welcomed distraction this week when I get bogged down by the books.

From that archive, I recommend the inimitable Warren Zevon and the 73 shows he has up on the archive.  Much to my chagrin, Warren died a few years ago, just as I was getting into his music, but this amazing collection let me get a taste of the live experience I was never able to capture.  The rendition of “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” from the Jan. 16, 1996 show has good stage banter, a great song, and a fun little diversion into what sounds like a German folk song.

Another fun studying distraction I ran across this week was a one-hour BBC special with Stephen Fry (whom I know and love from QI) in which he delves into the very early history of the printing press by means of a hands-on project: replicating a page of the Gutenberg Bible.  (The link goes to the first of the six parts into which it had to be divided to fit on Youtube.)  It fulfills my love of typography, medieval European history, and Stephen Fry.  OK, that middle one was a bit of a stretch.

Scott Greenfield writes one of my favorite law blogs, Simple Justice.  Today (yesterday, now — it is 4AM apparently), he writes about convincing juries.  Turns out that, no matter how convinced you are of your argument, as a (criminal defense) lawyer, you have to convince others, who may not only fail to understand your sophisticated legal argument, but also be actively hostile to it.  Sounds like my profs…

Recently, I’ve been very interested in typefaces and design, sort of as a hobby.  I have no formal training, but I’ll look at a logo, or a brochure, or a sign, and ask, “what is it trying to accomplish,” immediately followed by, “how is font choice, layout, and color scheme helping or hindering that goal?”

Helvetica, by Gary Hustwit, is a film that is all about these sorts of questions.  The film looks at changes in the world of design over the past fifty years by studying the history and use of one of the most ubiquitous typefaces in the world, the titular Helvetica.

How can a movie about a typeface be interesting?  Well, it may not be that interesting.  In the film, Erik Spiekermann (who has a very interteresting blog that I’ve been following since seeing the movie) says, “Other people look at bottles of wine, or girls’ bottoms, or whatever.  I get a kicks out of looking at type.”  So, it’s definitely not for everyone.  Personally, I would say there’s something about the curve of a girl’s bottom that even the elegant lines of Garamond can’t match.  But I do think there’s a place the for appreciation of type, and the role it plays in our lives.  This film evokes exactly that appreciation.

Choice quotes that show the extremes of the dialogue that has been occuring in design over the past 50 years:

Wim Crouwel sums up the modernist perspective, and their view on Helvetica in one line: “The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface, and that is why we loved Helvetica very much.”

David Carson illustrates the other side: “If something is a very important message, and it’s said in a boring, non-descript way, the message may be lost.”

“I mean, that doesn’t say caffeinated…  It’s just sitting there!  There’s nothing caffeinated about it!  There’s nothing extramarital about that.  There’s no sunshine here!  That’s not a fun sandlot.”

Of course, there’s a lot more nuance to the positions of these designers than a few choice words can show.  If you are at all interested in the way the form of communication impacts its content, I recommend Helvetica.

Blogging will be almost non-existant for the next week.  I’ve reached that zenith of the law school experice, final exams.  I’ll try to post links to interesting things that catch my attention (I can’t be buried in the law all day), but few substantive posts will come out as I pore over things like the rule against perpetuities, the Erie doctrine, the parol evidence rule, and the affectation doctrine.