Death to Comic Sans

It's true: I'm a font snob. Go ahead, say it to my face. It's OK. (And I've been called far worse.) Sure, my snobbery isn't limited to typefaces alone: My snobbery extends to food (especially carrots, tomatoes, apples, bread, butter and pasta) and wine, and many other areas of life that I refuse to accept mediocrity. But fonts! They hold a special place in my heart.
 
As a proud, bonafide font snob, I judge people by the type of font they use, family members included. (Apologies in advance to any soon-to-be-relatives.) It's not that I'm all that passionate in the great serif or sans-serif debate; it's that I strongly believe the time has come for Comic Sans to die. I mean, really: For the love of god and all things holy, please, lord, make it stop.

Nobody likes a clown.
(A clown using Comic Sans, especially.)

In my ever-so-humble opinion, that font belongs in one place and one place only: elementary schools. If your audience reads at or above a sixth grade level, they should not be subjected to Comic Sans. Yet somehow, I see it everywhere. In professional e-mail signatures, community notices, business signage... it's nothing short of insane. I consider being forced to read it an insult to my intelligence. Suffice to say, I'd pull my teeth out before going to a dentist who writes his name in CS. (Would you let a third grader give you a filling? I think not.)

I'm not alone: Comic Sans Criminal is a very cute, clever and well-designed website dedicated to putting an end to the CS epidemic.

"The only appropriate uses for comic sans," it states, include "when your audience is under 11 years old (Writing to their parents in Comic Sans does not count), when you're designing a comic, [and] when your audience is dyslexic."

I admit, I probably got a little too much joy out of this cheeky little site, but it is what it is: Awesome.

So go forth and enjoy, dear readers—just please, promise me you'll never use Comic Sans ever again.

Japan: Before & After

This series by HuffPo's Mike Sparks is one of the coolest (and most useful) applications of multimedia I've seen so far regarding the ongoing disaster Japan.

Part of the reason I like it so much is because it's so simple. Sparks took images from Google Maps that were taken before the earthquake/tsunami, then layered images of the same terrain taken after the disaster over top.

As you mouse over the images, the before shot switches to the after shot. It's as cool as it is devastating.

Click here to see the entire collection on my beloved HuffPo.

I'll Drink To That

 

Cheers to Pepsi Co., which announced today that it has developed the world's first plant-derived pop bottle. Although it doesn't look any different than the current plastic bottles the company uses, the new ones are made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and "other materials" (that we assume are plan-based but too obscure and perhaps gross-out worthy to mention.) Pepsi says it will use biproducts of its food business—including orange peels, oat hulls and potato scraps—to make the bottles, too.

The stuff inside the bottles, on the other hand, will continue to be a witch's brew composed primarily of "nasty chemicals" (to quote my mother, who says there's too much sugar [worse! corn syrup] in regular soda, and too much aspartame that'll give me cancer in diet versions.)

Despite my mother's concerns, I still drink a lot of diet Pepsi (deal with it!), and the new bottles are good news.

"PepsiCo plans to test the product in 2012 in a few hundred thousand bottles. Once the company is sure it can successfully produce the bottle at that scale, it will begin converting all its products over," reports the Huffington Post.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola Co., which makes bottles using 30% plant-derived materials, recently stated, rather erroneously, that it'd likely be several years before they could make a commercially viable, totally plant-based bottle. So much for that theory!

Pepsi already earned earth brownie points for creating the first compostable chip bag, for SunChips. Why they don't put all their chips in similar bags is beyond me ... but hey, it's a baby step in the right direction. And they did cut a lot of the plastic out of their Aqua-Fina bottles in 2009 (saves them money, saves the earth... everybody wins!). And according to the Huffington Post, Pepsi is in the midst of transitioning Naked Juice branded drinks into bottles made from 100% recycled plastic.

Boise? Really?

I hate losing, but I hate losing to Boise even more. But that's just what Las Vegas did, according to a  ranking of the most socially networked cities in the U.S.

The [bogus?] poll, released by Men's Health, claims to have considered Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Twitter, MySpace, Reddit and Digg usage, along with reported blog and chat room activity when compiling the list. (To do so, they depended heavily on data from NetProspex, Chitika and SimplyMap.)

While you night assume San Francisco would top the poll, the closest major city to Silicon Valley didn't even place within the top five. In fact, SF finished in sixth place—which is respectable, sure, but can someone please explain to be how Atlanta, Denver and Minneapolis out-teched SF?

As I told the friend who sent me a link to the story (via twitter, no less): " I smell another flawed algorithm."

"I thought you would have single-handidly brought Vegas to the top 5," he quipped. Alas, my rampant tweeting was not enough: Boise, Salt Lake, Wilmington and 21 other cities outranked Vegas; we finished in 25th place.

Washington D.C. was awarded first place, which wasn't all that surprising to me. I used to live there, and I recall fondly the abundance of smart, tech-savvy and totally-into-themselves people in that city. (My initial response to learning D.C.: "D.C. won b/c the city is full of narcissists who LOVE checking into 4sq & bragging about what congressman they just talked to."

Atlanta and Denver somehow followed the nation's capital, placing second and third, respectively. Rounding out the list of 100 cities were social network dunces Billings, Detroit, Bakersfild, Lubbock and, in last place, El Paso. Funny: Three of the four most unsavvy cities in terms of social networking were in Texas. Click here to see the full list—not that I think it's all that accurate.

Big Week

tweet tweet, tweak tweak

This week, my ever-so-popular Tweets of the Week column in Vegas Seven is different. It's usually a mish-mash of funny, timely and political rants, raves and random observations (kind of like this blog!), but this week, it's all about everyone's favorite celeb gone wrong, Charlie Sheen.

It's in the new issue that hit newsstands today, but if you haven't seen it, check out Tweets of the Week: The Charlie Sheen Edition online. Because, let's face it: We really haven't heard enough about winning, tiger blood, goddesses or warlocks from the former Two and a Half Men star.

Sheen recently set the world record for amassing the most Twitter followers in the least amount of time. He has more than 2.5 million followers (and counting...) yet follows just 31. Unsurprisingly, my Twitter account isn't one of them, but Vegas' very own Floyd Mayweather is, as is Jessie Waits (who runs Tryst and XS nightclubs, and was recently named one of Vegas' top 40 under 40 by InBusiness). Come to think of it, Waits just signed up for Twitter, too. Right around the same time Charlie did, come to think of it. Hmmm...

Choices at the Pump

You can either laugh or cry.

Damning the Manning

Usually this blog is a happy place for sharing happy links and videos and other random, cool stuff. Well, this post is different.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 6 months, you probably know what Wikileaks is. Yes, it's controversial, but I think, by in large, that it's fantastic. Sure, you can argue that it puts national security at risk, but if you do, your argument is weak at best. I have yet to see a single thing come out of Wikileaks that put an American life at risk—other than Bradley Manning's.

Manning is the 23-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst who leaked a bunch of classified information to Wikileaks, which in turn made the information (cables) public. He's since been arrested and is currently being held in solitary confinement in Virginia. He's spent more than 200 days in a 6 x 12' cell, and is let out (into a larger room, goodie) just one hour per day.

Imagine having essentially no human contact for 6+ months. Just try to wrap your head around that. And, remember, he has yet to be convicted. If convicted, he could face the death penalty... even though he didn't kill anyone, and his actions didn't result in a single death or injury. The U.S. Army sustained a few bruises to its ego, but that's it.

As the poster that I every-so-gingerly copied and pasted at the bottom of this post states:

"Manning faces decades in prison [or death] for allegedly leaking a video of a US helicopter attack that killed 11 civilians and wounded 2 children in Baghdad, Iraq. The army covered up the evidence and declared the war crime justified, now they claim that exposing the massacre is criminal.

This is a massive human rights issue. As this column, published in The Guardian, points out:

"The US condemns human rights abuses abroad yet appears to be allowing the psychological torture of Bradley Manning."

The piece is a quick, informative read—so read it! And, as a citizen of the world, it is your civic duty to keep up with this story. Still, I can already tell you the lesser moral, here: Don't enlist in the U.S. Army. (Look what happened to Pat Tillman. Get The Tillman Story on Netflix ... it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year, is narrated by Josh Brolan, and will scare the shit out of you.) Mark my words: Years from now, Manning will heralded as a hero. A martyr, perhaps, but a hero nonetheless.

Have You Seen This Man?

This blew up the Twittersphere and jammed my inbox (ie, went super viral) today, but in case you didn't see it:

I really, really wish there was a phone number at the bottom, instead of Lionel Ritchie lyrics... but the lyrics are pretty awesome on their own.

Are You a Winner?

Thanks to Esquire for this gem, which comes to us by way of Alyssa Kelly, who tweeted/shared this w me. (I call it teamwork, but we can all call it #winning)

As Esquire's Foster Kamer said,  "Go forth, and try not to melt your face off."

 

National Pancake Week

Du-Par's pancakes: $7.75 for 3, or $8.75
for 5. Either way, money (and a week's
worth of calories) well-spent

It's National Pancake Week, apparently, which means we all have a reason to go to IHOP, the Original Pancake House and indulge in the best pancakes in town, at Du-Par's in the Golden Gate (see photo of said deliciousness on the right). 

Or, go for broke, and try the Illegal Chocolate Chocolate Pancakes at Max Brenner at the Forum Shops at Caesars. Those poppies incorporate 60% dark chocolate truffle cream, milk chocolate shavings, spiced pecans and caramelized bananas. Or try the Royal Berries pancakes, which come with a crown of candied blueberries and blood orange maple syrup—those are sure to blow your diet, too, in one super-sweet-and-totally-worth-it sitting. 

If you experience any pangs of guilt or diner's remorse this week, remember: It's a national holiday. It's your patriotic duty to indulge. Anything else would be... unAmerican. And every time someone orders a granola parfait, the terrorists win. 

When I think pancakes, I think of my great gramma's amazing french pancakes, which were super thin and fluffy, thanks to stiff egg whites that were folded into the batter. Granny's "French pancakes" were her signature dish, even though she wasn't French, and made amazing shortbread, too. She made them for us whenever we visited her, and served them with sugar and lemon juice instead of syrup. Sounds gross, but try it. Delicious!

The second thing I think about when I hear "pancakes" is Jim Gaffigan. He does a hilarious take on the health benefits of cake—fried breakfast cake included—in his very funny DVD, "Beyond the Pale."

Here's a clip, And happy holidays.

Jim Gaffigan 2013 Cake 2013 Beyond the Pale - Watch more Funny  Videos