For some reason, this website’s text looks jaggy and uneven when viewed with Mozilla Firefox. I’m not sure if it’s because I use Microsoft Internet Explorer to recode and post entries. (I recode the html so the font size is larger–I didn’t change the default font itself, which is Calibri.)
I’m new to WordPress and programming languages. Any advice as to how to fix my browser text issues would be greatly appreciated.
I’m 28 years old and for whatever reason, so many websites use text so tiny that I have to squint and press my face to the computer screen to read it. Combine this with a backlit LCD screen and you have the perfect recipe for a headache.Which is why the this website’s text is so large. Although I love this template, there is no way to alter the text size (which is around an 8 by default). So, I basically had to teach myself HTML to alter the font size of each post.
I’m aware readers can use the CTRL+ command or click a button to increase text size, but they often have to do this for every new page they bring up. I’m also aware, as a novice WordPress user, that I can purchase a CSS Upgrade to alter the theme’s text size. To my mind, both options seem inconvenient at best. I have no idea why webmasters insist on using 8-point fonts, but I can only hope that, especially as we all grow older, this is something that goes the way of hamsterdance.com and Friendster.
I should say that I’m incredibly grateful for WordPress’ feature that automatically saves previous edits and drafts–otherwise, I would have lost the entire “primates and language” entry.
This has nothing to do with WordPress, but I really hate Calibri, probably because it’s Microsoft Word’s default font. One has to do all sort of gyrations to reset it to Times New Roman. For awhile, I’d altered this website’s html to change the font to Georgia, which I like–it’s kind of an edgier version of Times New Roman. But the recoding caused all sorts of problems and Robertyune.com suddenly looked like a Cubist painting. I had to revert back to the theme’s default Calibri, albeit at a larger size. I’d vowed to never drink Microsoft’s font Kool-Aid, but here I am. How does it taste? It tastes gross.
I stumbled upon Shaw’s essay about primates and language about a year ago as I was looking up model APA papers. As a writing tutor working with ESL students, I was fascinated by syntax, how different cultures arranged words and meaning. At the time, my older sister was a sign language interpreter sent on strange assignments and I hoped that she might someday be called upon to teach sign language to a chimpanzee. It never happened, but she still knows sign language and chimpanzees still exist. I can only hope. I guess this would be a lot funnier if you knew my older sister.
But I found the essay fascinating, and I was intrigued by how passionate both sides felt about chimps using language. Not long ago, the usage of tools was thought to be a uniquely human characteristic, and I’ve often wondered whether complex language is truly out of the animal world’s reach. I can, of course, understand why some might feel threatened or upset by anything that narrows the definition of what it means to be human.
The second article I found in today’s New York Times. Apparently, advanced primates have the ability to talk but don’t. It’s incredibly strange to me that such a tiny, perhaps fortuitous shift in a primitive brain led to humans developing “theory of mind,” the desire to share thoughts without self-benefit. Wade explains, “Luckily for [early humans], all the underlying systems of perceiving and producing sounds were already in place as part of the primate heritage, and natural selection had only to find a way of connecting these systems with thought.”
On the other hand, according to experts, primates have thoughts but no interest in sharing them. Especially in the early days, it seems like so little separated humans from apes, from genetics to appearance to the ability to vocalize sounds. What especially fascinates me is what occurred in early humans to account for the change, for this development of “theory of mind.” In Biblical times, a tongue of flame accompanied linguistic gifts –was it so with the first spoken sentence? I’m not an expert in primates or linguistics, but I will say that, after years of observing my cat, animals are as smart as they need to be. When my cat feels the need to enter a locked room, he can be surprisingly ingenious. But most of the time, when his food bowl is full and his surroundings remain unchanged, he doesn’t spend a lot of energy doing anything.
This complacency, for lack of a better term, was found in early humans as well–it took humanity a long time to go from drinking from cupped hands to drinking from bowls. Sometimes, it seems like we’re in a hurry to distinguish ourselves from the natural world’s complacency (“satisfaction” might be a better term for it), devising up with unnecessary invention after invention at such an accelerated pace that you’d think we were trying to outrun something.
I also think scientists underestimate how smart animals can be. There have been reports of chimpanzees using tools as well as a recent surprising report of an octopus–an invertebrate!–using tools. (The chimpanzee used a stick to extract termites from a nest, the octopus used coconut shells as armor.) I’m personally a bit excited that our definition of the human realm is being challenged: too long have we relied on basic reasoning and problem-solving abilities to define us as human, to judge intelligence, to judge worth. If this new scientific debate pushes us in the opposite direction and encourages us to further value art, music, and–yes–literature, so be it. It might not be long before chimpanzees can compete with Ty Pennington, but I suspect it will be a while before they can compete with Woolf and Melville.
Related:
Links from Diana Hacker, The New York Times, MSNBC, The National Geographic Society, and The Museum Victoria.
can be found here.
Three words that, when combined, make a giant red flag: hipster dance party.
I’ll admit a bias: my father was in the U.S. Navy and served on submarines for most of his 26-year career. When I was a child, my family lived on the Navy base in Groton, CT, and I remember being awed when I toured the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered sub. I was impressed by its sheer size, this black tube somehow afloat, but I also remember being struck by how cramped its interior was. Some spaces seem designed to make you feel claustrophobic, and so it was with this historic vessel.
Rutherford’s story is set on the CSS Hunley, a submarine built by the Confederates during the Civil War. I absolutely love the story’s language, which is vibrant, sad, and often funny. Oftentimes, fairly or not, I think a lot of people associate stories set during a historic period with sepia-toned prose and irrelevance, but from the beginning to the end (and what an ending!), “The Peripatetic Coffin” is fascinating and immediate.
This story was published this year in American Short Fiction and was recently selected to appear in the upcoming Best American Short Stories anthology. You can find the story in PDF form at ASF’s website: http://www.americanshortfiction.org/images/pdf/rutherford.pdf
can be found here.
Robert Yune 