Newsletter the Forty-ninth

Days like today, when our kitchen table is covered in newsprint, I feel like the Lorax is going to come knocking. "I speak for the trees!" he'll shout. After all, we subscribe to four different print newspapers: the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Seattle Times, and our little town's 16-pager. We're among the last in our neighborhood to have papers delivered to our driveway. But hey: I grew up reading print papers, I love seeing the news in print, and I hope I never have to stop.

A few reflections on these papers:

• As a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I feel like a traitor for saying this, but these days, the WSJ is just better than the NYT in most ways… except when it comes to the opinion pages.?
• The WSJ opinion articles are about 93% dreck… I mean it's shocking how clueless and hypocritical some of those pieces are.
• On the other hand: the WSJ Saturday Review section? I look forward to immersing myself in it every week! It's editor, Warren Bass, should be given a medal.
• And the Seattle Times? It's a little embarrassing to admit that the sections I read most consistently are Sports and the comics.?

Of course, we also subscribe to some magazines (such as the amazingly great New Scientist), pay for some online news sites (notably the Washington Post), and donate yearly to the Wikimedia Foundation and the Internet Archive.?

Why do we do it? Why support all these organizations? For three reasons:

1. Because democracy and freedom only work when we're educated and have open access to information.
2. I love stumbling across random articles about ideas or news about which I never would have purposely tried to find.
3. It's fun to be connected, and to explore new ways of thinking about the world.

Just (Don't) Do It

You know the old rule about not typing two spaces after punctuation, right? Most people don't realize this is actually just part of a bigger rule: Don't type two invisible characters in a row. That means spaces, tabs, and returns.

That's right: in a finished document — whether you're using Word or a professional page-layout app — you should never have two or more spaces, tabs, or returns in a row.

Let's look at the implications of this:

?? If you need space between paragraphs, you should use the app's "Space Before" or "Space After" feature.

?? If you need to position the location of a tab, you should set a tab stop there.

?? If you need an indent at the beginning of a paragraph, use the "First Line Indent" feature.

In other words: use the formatting features that are built into your tool! Don't skirt them with extraneous characters that clutter up your text.

Again, I'm talking about finished, formatted documents, not drafts or things you typing in a notes app. And of course, I never met a rule I didn't have a caveat for. So I admit there are times when I type two tabs in a row, or two Return/Enters in a row… but these should be rare exceptions!

Fun with Math

When my kids were young and struggling with math — especially those infamous "word problems" with which teachers attempt to convince us that mathematics is actually relevant in the real world — I realized that symbols and words often get in the way of deeper understanding.?

After all, math is just a language, much like any other "foreign language." And remember that the point of a symbol is to wrap up a bunch of words and meanings in a single character. But when we forget the meaning of the word or the underlying story of the symbol, then it's easy to get lost.

For example, everyone knows that % means "percent." But when you see % do you think "divide by 100"? That's really all it means. Its monetary equivalent is the cent: 15 cents literally means "15/100ths of a dollar" (or Euro, or whatever).

There's a social media post going around that points out that "8% of 25 is the same as 25% of 8." And to many people that seems like amazing math magic. But it makes sense if you remember:

• 8% just means 8/100
• "of" just means multiply (x)

So take it step by step:?

• "8% of 25" is the same thing as 8/100 x 25…?
• which is the same thing as (8 x 25)/100.

And from that, you can do the math:

• 8 x 25 = 200… and divide by 100 to get 2.
• or 8 x 25/100, which is just like "8 x .25", which is 2

So… let's try 60% of 30: (60 x 30)/100 = 6 x 3 = 18.

Now can you do 4% of 600 in your head?

Thank you!

I enjoy sharing my musings… and I enjoy hearing yours! Please share this newsletter with a friend,?follow me on LinkedIn, and send me feedback. You can always reach me at [email protected]