
Too cool for school: Brooklyn school bans hipster glasses
PUBLISHED: 16:13 EST, 14 May 2013 | UPDATED: 16:33 EST, 14 May 2013
Students at an Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn have been banned from wearing the thick-framed retro glasses that are currently very fashionable with celebrities and local hipsters alike.
Parents at the Bobover Yeshiva B’Nei Zion school in Borough Park, which caters to members of the Bobov sect, recently received a letter written in Yiddish from the school telling them about the new policy.
‘We are asking that everyone buy simple glasses,’ reads the letter. ‘The yeshiva will not tolerate thick plastic eye glasses.’

I don’t know what this is, but I do know it’s lying on top of some cedar mulch. And that I photographed it in our neighborhood.

Give this image a quick scan:

Now give this one an equally quick scan:

The difference? The first word is “c l i c k,” the second “d i c k.” But for someone who’s quickly scanning, they both seem to be the same word. Why? Kerning.
The term kerning refers to the the space between two characters — in this case “c” and “l”. Move those two characters close enough together, and unless one is paying close attention they’re likely to be seen as “d”.
I get these silly things every so often. The email address is always fake:

The IP address in the full header is always that of a known scam site:

But the come-on varies in interesting ways. I’m going to start saving the text (not the email). Here’s the latest:

I first studied this poem in 1960, on this campus, about 200 yards from where I was standing when I shot this photo yesterday. The science building beyond this young woman didn’t exist then. Nor did the library beyond, or the museum beyond the library. To the north of those buildings stood a dormitory, which has since been demolished.
