Posts by Dr. Boli

VICTORY FOR CIVILIZATION.

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Victory Rooster

A while ago we were talking about right-justified text, and in particular about the clashing dogmas on the subject: Web designers on the whole think right-justified text is a mistake in any context, whereas designers of serious books and magazines think that failing to right-justify text is a mistake. We noted that WordPress, the software that has run this Magazine since it moved to the Web almost nineteen years ago, and that since that time has grown to power half the Internet, had removed the right-justification feature years ago, leaving designers to write their own CSS if they felt the need for a traditional text design. (This was one of the main reasons Dr. Boli had to learn a little about CSS and theme design in the first place.)

Yesterday we were reading about the new features of the upcoming version of WordPress, and buried two-thirds of the way down a very long page was this little paragraph:

Nearly all text blocks now support the standardized text-align block support system, including Paragraph, Button, Comment blocks, Heading, and Verse. Plus, text justify alignment is now available. See tracking issue to follow along on the progress (60763).

And, indeed, it seems that a pull request that has been open for two years has finally been closed with a successful merging of the code into the core of WordPress. It is now possible to justify text with a simple button, even if the theme (unlike the “Dr. Boli” theme that runs this Magazine) has not specified justified text.

Throughout history, civilization has been under constant assault from the forces of barbarism. But once in a while it helps to remember that, in spite of tremendous defeats, there have always been more victories for the forces of civilization, and the barbarians have never succeeded in completely extinguishing it. Today we are witnesses to a victory, and we can remind ourselves that defeats can be overcome and pernicious trends reversed if someone with enough determination and patience stands up for civilization.

If justified text is finally back, could small capitals be next? The “Dr. Boli” theme has made them as easy as possible under current circumstances, but they still have to be implemented by adding the codes <sc></sc> directly in the HTML. It seems to Dr. Boli that simple and intuitive small capitals, which are required for certain uses in formal publishing, are the next obvious step in making the World-Wide Web safe for serious writing. Is anyone ready with a pull request? For any coders who need encouragement, it may help to point out that the successful pull request for a right-justification option came from a first-time contributor to WordPress.

HOW MANY WORDS DID YOU AGREE TO?

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To set up a meeting with your broker through Calendly: More than 15,000. We say “more than” because the site designer has cleverly made some of the words, especially the ones in all capitals, inaccessible to copy and paste, so we could not get an exact count. “By proceeding, you confirm that you have read and agree to Calendly’s Terms of Use and Privacy Notice,” says the site.

The Terms of Use contain this provision in all capitals, indicating, of course, that it is not important at all and you should ignore it. They could not be copied by normal means, but optical character recognition made them accessible:

READ THESE CUSTOMER TERMS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE SERVICES AS USE OF THE SERVICES INDICATES THAT YOU HAVE BOTH READ AND ACCEPTED THESE CUSTOMER TERMS. THESE CUSTOMER TERMS CONTAIN A DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND ARBITRATION PROVISION, INCLUDING A CLASS ACTION WAIVER THAT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THESE CUSTOMER TERMS AND WITH RESPECT TO DISPUTES YOU MAY HAVE WITH CALENDLY. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU ARE ENTERING INTO THESE CUSTOMER TERMS VOLUNTARILY AND NOT IN RELIANCE ON ANY PROMISES OR REPRESENTATIONS WHATSOEVER EXCEPT THOSE CONTAINED IN THE CUSTOMER TERMS THEMSELVES.

So, as you see, you are agreeing, by scheduling an appointment with anyone who uses this service for appointments, not only that you will not object to the terms, but that you have actually read them. You “indicate” or “confirm” that you have spent more than an hour reading legal slop that would have made your eyes roll back in their sockets to protect themselves if you had actually spent more than five minutes in it. A commonly accepted figure for the average reader’s silent-reading rate is 238 words per minute, and 15,000 words would thus take you a bit more than 63 minutes if you could read them at the normal reading rate—although, as Dr. Boli has pointed out more than once, you could not read the words at your normal reading rate, because they are words like these:

If you are an Entity purchasing licenses for your Authorized Users, you may provision or deprovision access to the Services, manage permissions, retention and export settings and transfer/assign accounts as described in the Documentation. As such, you will (a) inform Authorized Users of all Entity policies and practices relevant to their use of the Services and of any settings that may impact the processing of Customer Data; and (b) ensure the collection, transfer, and processing of Customer Data under the Customer Terms is lawful. If any terms in the Industry-Specific Supplement (“Industry-Specific Terms”) apply to you (e.g. Customer is a U.S government entity), those terms are also incorporated by reference herein and you agree to fully comply with the applicable Industry-Specific Terms. To the extent any such Industry-Specific Terms conflict with the terms below, the Industry-Specific Terms shall take precedence.

(We remind our readers and any guest attorneys present that these quotations are used for the purpose of criticism, and constitute a tiny portion of the more than 15,000 words under discussion, both of which considerations put us safely within the limits of fair use.)

Clearly you did not spend 63 minutes reading terms and conditions to make an appointment. And neither did anyone else who uses Calendly. But you all made a legal assertion that you did. With trivial exceptions, everyone who uses Calendly has committed the crime of perjury. This is not libel. It is cold fact. To live in the modern world, you must be a criminal perjuror. An American criminal lawyer could tell us whether this crime could be prosecuted under the laws of the land, but that it is a moral crime no one with any moral sense would deny.

We could solve this problem. Do we have the will to do it?