A Note on the World of Resume Advice

From The Muse, the very first recommendation in their guide "45 Quick Changes That Help Your Resume Get Noticed" is to use a common font:

If it’s not done already, switch the font of your resume to Helvetica, Arial, or Times New Roman—in other words, make sure it’s not hard to read (or stuck in Word’s standard Calibri). Using a common, clean font may not make your resume the prettiest out there, but it will make it more readable (and less likely to be rejected by applicant tracking systems).

Luckily, my resume predates Microsoft Word's switch to Calibri, so I'm accidentally ahead of the curve.

But isn't that the opposite of something else I read recently? Indeed, The Muse also recommends recommends a Bloomberg article which claims:

Using Times New Roman is the typeface equivalent of wearing sweatpants to an interview

Common, clean... sweatpants.

The takeaway - if you're not working in graphic design, don't worry too much about typography. Just make it readable.

Population Density

Here are some of the most appealing statistics we saw in preparing for our move back to South Dakota:

Population Density (persons per square mile, 2010)
Washington, DC:   9,857
Alexandria, VA:   9,314
Fairfax County, VA:   2,767
Jerauld County, SD:   4

Our Interest in Syria

Andrew C. McCarthy writes in the National Review:

Our vital interest in Syria (and Iraq and elsewhere, for that matter) is to prevent its being used as a platform for the launching of attacks against the United States, our allies, and our interests. Moreover, this, it is crucial to remember, is an American problem. It is not one we could responsibly delegate to another country’s “moderate rebels” even if they were numerous enough to need something bigger than a phone booth for their meetings.

That means it is going to take a large commitment of American forces on the ground as well as in the air to achieve our vital interests. But there is no political support for that in our country at the moment.

This seems correct. The United States cannot identify a realistic and desirable winner and will not commit to deposing a brutal Baathist dictator itself under an administration that campaigned against deposing the brutal Baathist dictator next door.

The Obligatory Devils Tower Stop

Devils Tower and the Devils Tower Trading Post, from from our summer roadtrip "Pacific or Burst!"

Our Home in Literature - Willa Cather

"Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. [In the country] you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones... We are all alike, we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners... All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own... We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder." - O Pioneers! by Willa Cather