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Sex Offender Gets New Hearing After Hearing Officer Rants Against Arial Font
ericgoldman writes "People often feel passionately about fonts, but government decisions shouldn't depend on what font people choose for their written submissions. In Massachusetts, a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer after it was determined that (among other possible biases) the hearing officer posted to Facebook that he 'can't trust someone who drafts a letter in arial font!' and 'I might be biased. I think arial is inappropriate for most things.' This is just the latest example of how social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers — and the people they deal with."
.... most American legal jurisdictions have Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure, that specify the format legal pleadings are supposed to take. They're usually quite specific on the allowable fonts, font sizes, line spacing, the format they expect for the numbering of paragraphs, and so on. Lawyers and pro-say litigants ignore these rules at their own peril, as doing so is liable to get your case dismissed outright and at the very least will seriously annoy the Judge. Of course, most Judges don't take this annoyance, combine it with a bunch of other rants, then post it on Facebook....
It does amuse me that so-called higher educated professionals just as liable to open mouth and insert foot on Facebook as the immature uneducated brats (I was, like, at work, and like, you know that patient, like, from the other day? He's, like, a total asshole.) I have the misfortune of calling co-workers.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
If you spend your time dealing with sex offenders, and your rants are about Arial, is it possible that you might have your priorities in poor order?
"a sex offender overturned the decision of a hearing officer"
I'm not sure it's a good idea to let the defendant be in charge of the judicial process.
...now if it were Comic Sans, I would TOTALLY agree.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Back in the 90s, I had a job teaching MS Office to people. One class I was hired for was to teach a bunch of local judges how to use Word.
While discussing how to change fonts, one of the judges says, "Huh! Anal font, what the hell is an ANAL font!"
Maybe it is the same judge!
| | All [...] documents should be in a fixed-width font. Anything else is just crazy.
|
| Fixed that for you.
FTFY
social media rants by government workers are causing problems for the workers
Seems to me more like "social media helps to uncover insane asshats among government workers".
Seriously, this guy apparently prejudiced against someone in a sexual assault case based on a font - he just gave everyone with whose cases he was involved a cause to ask for a retrial.
What are the chances an innocent person went to jail cause he didn't like their font or their hair style?
Once again this just proves that if you give asshats enough rope, they will eventually hang themselves with it.
I say "thumbs up" for the social media.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I just this past week had the opportunity to read some legal filings in the case between a friend of mine and his former wife over custody. Since he can't afford a lawyer, he fills out forms the court gives him and does it.... BY HAND.
Give me some arial any day of the week.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
There were several comments which seemed not to really be supporting claims of bias (Arial font, hating the word lascivious), together with some things that are as likely to be just being inconvenienced (e.g. a police report in spanish I suspect is included to imply racism, but is just as likely to be complaining much in the same way I might complain if someone gave me something in German).
But the vast majority of comments were more cut and dry 'I hate the people who I'm called upon to conduct hearings for', which would be the more relevant serious half of this.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
That should be a shooting offence. I recall working for a company who had a new director of marketing. She did everything -- everything -- in PPT, even memos. Her preferred font was Comic Sans and the concept of a colour space for documents was basically science fiction to her.
Yeah, the company went under. How did you guess?
I guessed it went under because if the company went on to be wildly successful, then this anecdote wouldn't confirm your belief that the marketing director's memo style was a sign that the company was doomed to fail so you wouldn't have told it.
That might not be important for you. But other aspects of the system could be. E.g. take an A3, you can put two A4 pages exactly on it. Also, you can blow up an A4 page, to A3 and keep the exact dimensions. Or, blow down an A4 page to A5, and keep the exact dimensions. There are so many benefits from the system, even if you don't use them all.
I like printing two pages to a sheet, it saves paper. Because I use A4 size sheets, I can fit exactly two pages of a document. Nice.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!