The Queue
I was reading The Secret History of M.I.6 while eating my lunch the other day when a vague acquaintance asked what I was reading. As is my habit in response to such questions, I held up the book so she could see the cover. She read aloud: "The Secret History of M-16." Not "Em-Eye-Six," the British spy agency, but "Em-Sixteen," the famous assault rifle. The error wasn't her fault, not really; though I transcribe the title as The Secret History of M.I.6, it is printed on the cover as The Secret History of MI6. "MI6" is in a sans-serif font, meaning the capital I is nothing but a vertical line, indistinct from the numeral 1 or a lowercase l. Absent the foreknowledge necessary to read "MI6" in context, it might easily be perceived as "M16."

That is yet one more reason why punctuation matters, & why fonts matter. Many suffer the delusion that sans-serif fonts are "cleaner," & thus "clearer." I content, however, that serif are a useful aids to clarity, helping to distinguish, for example, capital I from lowercase l to the numeral 1. Clarity is key!

Lies, Damned Lies, & the News
N.P.R. is abuzz with incredulity about the recently revealed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States by bombing a restaurant in Washington, D.C., an attack that would likely have resulted in a high number of civilian casualties. The incredulity, which has about it the despicable the tinge of conspiracy theory, centers on how "out of character" the plot seems for Iran's dreaded Quds Force. Must I remind the pompous personages at N.P.R. that truth is stranger than fiction? In 1941, the Deputy Führer* of the Nazi Party, Rudolf He߆, embarked upon a bizarre one-man peace mission to the United Kingdom: Heß stole a Luftwaffe plane, which Hitler ordered to be shot down & destroyed; parachuted into Scotland; was promptly captured instead of greeted as befits a plenipotentiary; & spent the rest of the Second World War as a prisoner in, amongst other gaols, the Tower of London. (Heß spent the rest of his life imprisoned, remaining as the sole inmate of Berlin's Spandau Prison until his death, probably by suicide, in 1987.) Following the logic of today's N.P.R. coverage, those documented historical facts must not have happened, since it seems out of character for a high-ranking Nazi official to deliver himself so freely into the hands of his enemies. Pardon my bitterness, but I yet hew to the old-fashioned belief that reporters are supposed to report the news, not deride whatever doesn't fit into their inconsistently, arbitrarily devised standards of what's "likely."

Perchance to Dream
An odd dream from the other morning: my parents & I were on vacation in Los Angeles, except L.A. looked like a combination of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado & the National Museum of the U.S.A.F. at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. While driving to the aerodrome, presumably to catch the flight back home, were traversed a large, traffic-congested freeway that looked for all the world like a runway. Planes passed very low overhead & I, inexplicably behind the wheel of the large S.U.V. in which we were traveling, has constantly to swerve to avoid low-flying aircraft of all types. When we finally reached L.A.X., it was a madhouse that I can best describe as being a series of swooping, looping rails & handholds, somewhat along the lines of the storeroom of doors in Monsters, Inc. You would grab onto a handhold, like those you encounter on the subway, & then be lifted high into the air, rising & falling as if on a roller coaster, & hanging on far longer than I know I could in real life.

At that point, an alarm woke me up & I shambled my way to the water closest. I had a half an hour before I needed to get up & start my day; so, I laid my head down on the pillow &, rather uncharacteristically, began dreaming again. I cannot tell you where I was, but I was in the presence of my friend/former "frenemy" Frankenstein's Monster & a numer of comely lasses. For whatever reason, Frankenstein's Monster was acting like a stereotypical frat. boy, a real member of Alpha Beta (from Revenge of the Nerds). There was no discernable plot to this second go-round in dreamland.

*Heß's title is more accurately translated as "Deputy to the Führer," but is usually given in English as "Deputy Führer." But even read as Deputy to the Führer he was still a high official in the Nazi government; when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Hitler declared that if anything should happen to both him & his number two, Hermann Göring, then Heß should assume leadership of the Reich.

†Heß is often rendered into English as Hess, to avoid the German character ß. Hess is perfectly correct, as is substituting fuehrer for führer, to avoid the ü. Your humble narrator uses idiosyncratically the German characters.