What fresh hell is this? MS Word’s new equation editor

Argh.

Every once in awhile, I have to load up a document with equations. Planning journals have no idea what to do with LaTex.

So I wind up with MS Word documents. In the past, I’ve just typeset the equation in LaTex and saved it as a pdf file.

This time out, I wanted to give Microsoft a chance, as I am using the new, very nice Mac version of MS Word.

The equation editor is more stable and less clunky, but it’s a ribbon you have to scroll through for symbols. Now, maybe that’s faster for people who were used to dealing with the equation editor, but those of us from LaTex who are used to just typing \sigma^a_t, the idea that you are going to scroll through the ribbon for the right positioning template, then scroll through for the ribbon for the sigma, then finally get to use your keyboard for a and b is hell.

Oh, and I’M OLD YOU YOUNG COMPUTER SCIENCE BASTARDS. Ribbons with buttons on them the size of half a dime are illegible even with my reading glasses.

Rrrrrrrrr.

50 best books on sustainability

The University of Cambridge has released a list of the 50 best books on sustainability via the Gaurdian. It’s a great list, with not one specifically urban book on the list, and none by planners or new urbanists.

My must-reads from the Gaurdian’s list:

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the battle Against World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus 1999

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart, 2002

Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen, 2000

The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, 2005.

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, by Hernando De Soto, 2000

Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by E.F. Schumacher, 1973

Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development, by Vandana Shiva, 1989

Globalization and its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz, 2002