Relevant History

Dsylexie, a new font for dyslexics

My wife and son are both dyslexic, so I was interested in this piece in IO9 about a new font designed to help dyslexics read more effectively:

Dyslexie was created by Christian Boer, a dyslexic graphic designer from the Netherlands. The font incorporates a number of typographical features that make it harder for the brains of dyslexics to rotate, swap, mirror, and otherwise confuse letters while they're reading.

Take the letters "p," "b" and "d," for example.... In many fonts, these letters look very much the same, such that by rotating and mirroring them they can be used more or less interchangeably.

In Boer's font, however, the boldness of each letter's base is increased, granting each character a "weight" that hints at its proper orientation. Notice also that the space enclosed by each letter (what is referred to in typography as a character's "bowl" or "loop") is shaped just a little differently than that of the other two. These subtle typographical cues may not seem like much, but they go a long way in helping your brain recognize which letters belong where when they appear in words and sentences.

Scientific American adds:

One of the first things he did was increase the boldness of letters at their bases, to make them appear weighted, causing readers' brains to know not to flip them upside down, as can occur with "p" and "d." Boer also enlarged the openings of various letters, such as "a" and "c," to make them more distinguishable from one another, and increased the length of "the tail" of other letters, like the "g" and y." He also put certain letters at a slant so that they would appear to be in italics, like the "j," a tactic to increase the brain’s ability to distinguish it from the letter "i." Finally, he boldfaced capital letters and punctuation, and provided ample space between letters and words, to allow the brain more time to compute the letters and begin forming them into words and sentences.

Thoughts on "No More Plan B: A Very Modest Proposal for Graduate Programs in History"

Today I stole my wife's copy of AHA Perspectives and Anthony Grafton and Jim Grossman's essay "No More Plan B," on the need to reform history graduate programs to train people for non-academic jobs. Having written about post-academic life, this is of course a subject that interests me.

I think the Grafton and Grossman essay points in the right direction, and it inspires two suggestions and a caveat.

First, for students in the early stages of the dissertation, it could be tremendously helpful for a department to bring in a literary agent for a day. There are agents who specialize in academic-to-trade crossover projects, and the business is competitive enough for there to be some younger agents who'd find the prospect of representing an entire department interesting. In an afternoon, the agent could explain how the whole selling books for money thing works, and interested students can pitch their dissertations as book proposals.

It wouldn't be the end of the process of turning a thesis into a trade book, but just the beginning; but you have to start somewhere, and if it's possible to craft a Ph.D. with an eye to immediately converting it into a trade press manuscript-- preferably by just stripping out the footnotes and some of the academic framing in chapter 1-- that would do a lot to acculturate young Ph.D.s to the idea that they don't have to make Faustian bargains to make a living writing. (Of course you can if you want, but the academic vs. trade route is not a choice between freedom and serfdom: it's a choice between two different sets of pressures and constraints.)

This would do several things: help demystify the world of trade publishing, give students a sense of how their projects could be crafted for a broader audience, and for at least some, get some funding for the writing. Not every dissertation is the next "Longitude," but I'll bet a surprising number could be crafted for the trades. My agent was phenomenally valuable in both shaping my current book, and without her I'd still be trying to get MIT Press to return my phone calls. Instead, I'm in a very different position.

This might also help deal with a second issue. The biggest thing I had to deal with after finishing my dissertation was a sense of narrowed professional horizons. The cruel irony is that newly-minted history Ph.D.s tend to have a sense that they're LESS able to survive in the world than when they graduated from college, and often less interested in doing so. I'm not really sure there's a whole lot anyone can do to reduce this. It can help to bring in people like me who've had intellectually interesting lives (interesting to me at least) outside academia, but I think graduate school requires internalizing the cultural norms in order to survive-- not to mention justify the intense focus on a narrow subject, deferred income, etc..

At the same time, there's a critical thing that must be maintained in graduate school at all costs. Spaces for contemplation are being torn up faster than rain forests: just look at the mania for collaborative spaces in library architecture, the assumption that knowledge work is all about networking and idea-sharing, the arguments among (both evangelical and liberal) Protestant ministers over bringing social media into church services ("RT Luke 3:16 LOL #atchurch"), etc. etc.

If there is one great thing I got from graduate school that has sustained me in all my professional endeavors, it's the capacity not just to write and produce knowledge-- scholarly knowledge, popular pieces, even slightly disreputable consulting "product" with what Stephen Colbert might call "knowledginess"-- but an understanding that serious thinking really requires time and sustained, slightly manic, attention. There are precious few places outside universities-- and fewer and fewer places within the academic "marketplace of ideas" (kill me now)-- that take the vita contemplativa seriously; one of the best things you can do for students is help them learn how to live that life, and to make it portable.

Quote of the day: John Milton Keynes

Via Paul Krugman (who is tired to trying to reason with you people):

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally then to succeed unconventionally.

Scenes from the memorial wall, Apple Store, Palo Alto

Earlier today I went by the Apple Store, and had a look at the memorial.

the memorial wall and iphone 4s line, via flickr

It's developed into quite the phenomenon. Someone (Apple? someone else?) put out a bunch of Post-Its and pens, and people have been leaving messages. Most of them are impressively heartfelt.

what if god was one of us, via flickr

This evening I went back-- my wife, after a saintly exercise of patience, got a new phone-- and noticed the apple lit up some of the messages. A nice spontaneous piece of design.

the apple at night, via flickr

Palo Alto Apple Store last week

impromptu steve jobs memorial, via flickr

Saving a heritage oak

We just heard that the centuries-old oak tree that we protested to save this summer will be spared:

A centuries-old oak tree in San Mateo County in the path of a $4.6 billion water system upgrade will be preserved thanks to an agreement reached between neighbors, the county and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The tree, which North Fair Oaks neighbors nicknamed "Granny" and is estimated to be at least 150 years old, stands in the path of a project to upgrade the Hetch Hetchy water delivery system so that more than two million Bay Area residents will have a safe water supply in the event of a major earthquake.

Negotiations to preserve the valley oak reached an impasse in August, but on Monday the SFPUC, the county and neighbors jointly announced that public money will be spent to tunnel beneath the tree's roots to allow the construction of the new water supply pipeline to move forward.

Hooray!

Lady Gaga, Glee, and me

Probably the only time in history I'll be mentioned with Lady Gaga and Glee: Publishers' Weekly's article on what books American publishers are selling at next week's Frankfurt Book Fair.

Look under the listings of Hachette, the conglomerate that owns my publisher, Little Brown.

(And so long as I live, I swear I'll never get tired of saying "my publisher, Little Brown"!)

AHA: Non-academic careers shouldn't be a "plan B"

Inside Higher Ed reports that the American Historical Association has just released a position paper, co-authored by AHA president Anthony Grafton and AGA executive director James Grossman, arguing that non-academic careers for history Ph.D.s shouldn't be thought of as some kind of aberration or "plan B," but recognized as the new normal.

For years now, humanities and other disciplines have promoted "alternative" careers for new Ph.D.s, trying both to increase the range of opportunities available to new graduates and to ease the competition just a bit in the academic job market.

The president and executive director of the American Historical Association have just released a statement calling for their field to abandon the idea that any career path -- including those paths outside of academe -- be classified as "alternative." It is time, they argue, to admit that the academic job market is not coming back anytime soon, that many new Ph.D.s who find jobs outside academe find rewarding work (both financially and intellectually), and that the doctoral experience needs to change in some ways so that new Ph.D.s have more options.

It's only taken 20+ years to recognize that graduate training promotes an outmoded, unrealistic (and, I would argue, unnecessarily narrow) set of career expectations. But maybe attitudes will actually start to change. Or perhaps graduate programs will just reduce their enrollments by 50%, to reflect the permanently reduced size of the academic job market, and to keep from having to change their way or working.