"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life." -- Frank Zappa

All links in orange open in tastefully small new windows.

This blog brought to you by Gold Bond powder.

Not because Gold Bond pays money, but because America deserves a pimple-free ass.

7-26-2003
Misappropriation of fun

Too much grumpiness. That's a trouble with many blogs in general and mine, this month, in particular. So I'll get to a quick little love story in a minute.

For this blog to make sense this month, you needed to start reading at the bottom. To make a long story short, you know things aren't going well when you quick smoking to have something else to get angry about. Go ahead and skip that rant; the vignette on the marriage proposal is better.

In terms of big ideas, you can find my height of grumpiness in a piece about the 4th of July holiday. A major thinkpiece came out in the Harvard Business Review (IT Doesn't Matter) and it prompted a rant as well.

Hard to believe I can spend a couple weeks on a beach and still sound so depressed. Chalk it up to the nature of being a writer.

So to end the grumpiness --hey, I've got a fried-chcken-and-coconut-meringue-pie dinner at the Southern Kitchen in New Market on my schedule -- a vignette about maximum grump is only appropriate. Nico-rage, a demented child, and a love story all in one.

I'll be back in touch once I finish my next cross-Virginia blitz.

The Dreamcatcher Killer
The First Dumpling tells a better version of this than I can.

"I saw it before he did. I was hoping he wouldn't see it," Dumpling says.

The scene: A sunset stroll along the Chesapeake Bay. And up the beach there's a small child. With stick in hand and with adult and puppy dog watching, the kid is in the process of demolishing a fine piece of beach artwork.

It's not a sandcastle, it's an aboriginal collection of stones and shells and feathers arranged in homage to, well, whatever you want to pay homage to. They are fairly common on this stretch of beach, and well received. Kind of pretty in a hippified sort of way.

And this kid is jumping up and down on it, bashing everything in site.

"As soon as I saw he saw, I knew it was going to be bad," Dumpling says.

"Hey!" I yell. "Hey, what do you think you are doing?" I'm running and waving my arms and yelling; a living Scarecrow with shoo on his mind.

The adult wanly smiles. The child starts skipping -- skipping! -- away.

"Hey, would you be doing that to a sandcastle? Would you like it if someone was breaking your toys?" The words are fast and furious and when the kid is told to stay away from the Dreamcatcher, the kid says he'll come back tomorrow and do it again.

Which shifts the focus to the adult. She's in charge of this demon-seed and her dog is better behaved than her kid.

"I think it was a grandmother not used to dealing with an out-of-control kid," Dumpling says.

The lady is moving away, but my indignant shouts don't stop -- the kid needs to be taught respect, he needs a good whipping when he gets home. I've got a final parting shot for the kid, too -- there's going to be a big scary monster under his bed tonight and –

"JIM!"

"That's my ex-husband's name," Dumpling says.

I've been called a lot of things in my day, but never that. In our mutually stunned silence, I get the hint. I let them move off in peace. If I'm being so much of a prick that I remind her of her ex, then I'm way out of line.

I quietly start gathering up what's not ruined, start rebuilding things. Time passes for a bit and Dumpling is back at my side. She motions for me to follow her.

In the sand, with a stick, she has written "I'm sorry."

I tell her it's not necessary, that it was my all fault. She shakes her head.

"This way, I can still honestly say that I've never had to say those words to you."

Is she a keeper or what?

Peace. Hugs.

Out.

-30-

7-25-2003
The word of the day: redact

Here's one for conspiracy theorists. The day after the 9-11 attacks, the word of the day on dictionary.com was redact. What irony that "redact" became the media word of the day when the final report came out on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Redact means "to make ready for publication; edit or revise." This makes it a perfect word under which to hide what really happened with the 9-11 report released yesterday.

This report wasn't edited or prepared for publication, it was censored. Once again, our government is hiding information related to Saudi Arabia and that country's connection to fundamental Islamic terrorists. Bob Baer's wonderful book "See No Evil" had CIA-mandated blackouts related to the Saudis; this time, instead of the big black lines, there are tasteful long em dashes and brackets.

America sends something on the line of $400 million a day to Middle Eastern countries for oil. This includes money that winds up funding people who believe in murdering innocents, subjugating women and who generally want to roll the clock back to 800 AD.

America's reliance on foreign oil links us to an oppressive regime that we can't even talk about freely. Even when that country is -- apparently, allegedly, secretly -- linked to the mass murder of our citizens.

Imagine French terrorists killing 3,000 Americans and Congress passing a law that all auto tires be made by Michelin. It would make about as much sense.

***

I'm a sucker for big minds thinking big thoughts, especially since I've made a career of trying to bring up big ideas while holding little jobs.

Here's a hint on that approach: It doesn't work.

Considering my chance of snagging a MacArthur Genius Grant is pretty much zero, I'm stuck with envying what other people are doing. In between my own daydreams, of course.

• How about a dashboard for the human body? Why should you have more information about your car than your body?

• How about the semantics of copyright? If you can frame the language, you can frame the debate on your terms, and right now, we the people are getting hosed.

<rant>
It is a great regret that most Americans lack the capacity to address complicated issues. The sentiments in the Doc Searls link above, and the continuing Microsoft-funded attack on Open Source software via SCO legal claims, really are big deals.

Way I see it, there are four ways of effecting change. There's the government, which is now an auction, not a democracy, so that's pretty dim. There are the courts, and considering the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court once ruled that counting the votes of the people created "irreparable harm," I've lost faith there, too.

There's exposure and shame, by way of a free press, but monied interests have grown totally shameless, and the ability of a news operation to shock the public into motivated action relies on people paying attention. Never forget that in terms of the economics of news, it's not the news that's important, it's the advertising.

The final alternative is direct revolutionary action, the manning of the barricades and blood in the streets. Aside from the fact that in the case of modern American life, this is akin to burning down a house to get rid of termites, people should remember that in this land of free speech, it is illegal to advocate the violent overthrow of the regime. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater, you can't threaten a president, and you can't disclose any information big government has deemed classified.

The old canard is America, love it or leave it, and it's worth noting that roughly 5,000 Americans move to Canada each year. That number is expected to climb, thanks to recent legal changes on homosexual marriage up north, but the number needs one other statistic for context; six Canadians move south for every American moving north.

Since America runs on money and not people, it's a fair question to wonder what would happen in case of monetary collapse. This is not far-fetched, considering a recent report said within 20 or 30 years government obligations and revenues will be, if I remember correctly, $44 trillion out of wack.

The government has cracked down on cooked books on Wall Street but continues to write record-setting deficits awash in fuzzy math. Remember when the Republicans shut down the government because the deficit had to be brought under control? Now they argue the debt is irrelevant considering the government's ability to repay. Quite a shift in thinking in less than 10 years.

</rant>

***

The Harvard Business Review, not exactly a radical publication, ran a May 2003 story by Nicholas Carr under the headline "IT Doesn't Matter."

At the risk of oversimplification, the article basically said once you strip away the hype, IT spending has been a lot of money down a rathole. If IT spending changed the way a company did business, it was a factor; if it was the same corporate crap distributed in new ways, it did not offer any great rate of return.

This is one of those big ideas, big concept, Atlantic Monthly thinkpiece ideas that's been stirring in the back of my mind since '99 or so.

In an IT career stretching back to '96, I've seen patently ridiculous concepts (my favorite: newsfeeds on a screensaver) pushed with a perfectly straight face.

I watched the entire I-bubble from the inside and I've been involved in some pricey, long-term projects that carried little obvious value at all, except, of course, for the fat checks going into people's pockets.

What has always baffled me about the IT industry is the decision-making processes involved. For years I chalked it up to bureaucratic factors, such as the overall lack of courage in American business, or the fact no one ever got fired for choosing IBM.

Over time, however, I came to appreciate the personality types and backgrounds of IT workers. There's a plethora of small-minded, power-blinded network and database administrators, for instance, who work their way up the corporate ladder. And despite a brief spin during the dot-bomb bubble of innovative geeks as heroes, it's an industry where a lot of nerds are still a bunch of nerds.

I'm oversimplifying, of course, but in case after case, bean counters and computer-shy businesspeople have been afraid of the nerds. They couldn't argue the distinctions between IIS and Apache servers, so they have left the technological decisions to the technologists.

In doing so, the technologists, in their decision-making authority, have ranged far beyond where their structured thinking should have taken them. And in the process, they have elevated Nicholas Carr and "IT Doesn't Matter" to genius status.

The most recent global example of odd IT decision making comes from the Department of Homeland Security. In a field where security is paramount, Tom Ridge's department just picked Microsoft as its lead technology vendor. You know, the Microsoft that issues 40 or 50 security patches a year. The Microsoft susceptible to viruses and worms. The Microsoft that did the system (WIN CE) underlying electronic voting machines recently found to be too insecure to put into use.

The most recent personal example I can give works like this.

Twice, in huge corporate settings, I've been in on discussions where expensive, custom-coded applications were being developed to make it possible for users to search both an intranet and the Internet at the same time. And as I've sat in those rooms, I've wondered if anyone else in attendance knew such a capability comes for free, built in with a Mac.

Being a Mac user, I learned early on that the IT industry hates the user. I have learned that what I do -- user interface, information architecture, editing -- is not a positive attribute but an expense. IT vendors cynically know that a bad app is not a bad app -- it's a good opportunity to add on expensive training and manuals.

Due to the Cage-predicted contraction in IT spending, and my pesky user-first, on-the-screen focus, I don't expect to continue in this field much longer. I won't miss the cubicles or the clunky PCs, but I'll miss the feeling of doing something newer, better, faster.

I guess I should have known that someone finding me for a job via Google was the beginning of the end, not the end of the beginning. The Web may have started as a fundamental, conceptual earthquake, but it's on its way to becoming just another form of cable TV, and that, to me, is far more sad than any lost job.

Jobs come and go. Revolutions either succeed or fail.

Here's how my day starts every morning -- a TV news show telling me another GI is dead in Iraq.

That really aggravates me.

So I go for a hike or a run in the Ocean Park neighborhood of Virginia Beach, and there's nearly always another tree-tality, another tree cut, another lot cleared, another zoning board public notice clearing the way for more rubber-stamped development.

Aggravating.

So I go about thinking big thoughts, and I struggle to find ways to reduce big complicated issues to simple little examples. I still have this pesky notion that information, clarity, insight, can make people change their minds.

How silly of me.

Here's one of my new diagnostic measures of our threatened culture. If somebody can't tell that Fox News is not news, then I'm wasting my time.

On to what's up in the world...

***

• I'd lost track of Hal Crowther. Found this column and I can report he's still in fine form. The line about supporting our troops no matter what, and comparing that sentiment to the soldiers of King Herod, is a classic.

• Hunting for Bambi. It combines two things I really like in a really sickening way. I hope it's a spoof, but I doubt it.

• Sunday's New York Times featured a long piece comparing the current U.S. occupation of Iraq to Britain's troubles with Iraq post World War I. Funny, I wrote about the same thing five months ago. Here's a quote from Lawrence of Arabia you might find interesting: Remember it's 70-some years old.

"The public has been led into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. We are today not far from a disaster."

• The Internet is shit. So says this Web site. I sent the proprietor an email noting that Web site is two words with a capital W; what can we expect from a medium when we can't even spell it?

• From Ken Layne: "An increasing number of bloggers seem to suddenly be unemployed."

• A new version of the classic Warhol line -- everybody will get 15Mb of fame. Here's a look at the man behind the 404 weapons of mass destruction not found.

• Covered just under 1,000 miles last week and leaving at sunrise for four more days on the road. Back in touch in a bit.

Updated: 7-12-2003

-- At the Lexington, Va. grave of Robert E. Lee's horse, people leave apples for Traveler.

-- If you want to compare the Confederate Lost Cause with Islam, instead of making the haj to Mecca, visit Lexington. For true southerners, the religious experience that begins at the Lee chapel culminates with strawberry shortcake at the Southern Inn on Main Street.

-- Virginia Route 20, which runs from Scottsville to Charlottesville to the Fredericksburg area, is one of the nicest two-lane byways you can ever hope to find. Made for a motorcycle. Be sure to smell the roadside anise near Somerset.

-- If you need breakfast in the Roanoke area, any of the Famous Anthony's will do. Good. Cheap. Southern. Perfect. The Wyndham near the airport is considered the best hotel in town by the locals.

-- Farmers who managed to get corn planted during the super wet spring are looking at bumper crops -- plants more than six feet high already. Many of the farmers who had to wait still haven't lived up to the old line "knee high by the fourth of July."

Updated: 12:30 p.m., July 5, 2003
The Marriage Proposal

As once noted on GL The Mag, Dreamcatchers are little pieces of environmental art/sculpture.

Commonly found on a stretch of beach along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia Beach, they offer people a chance to contribute, by planting a feather or seashell, and in return have a wish come true.

On this day I'm traveling with a new disposable camera, purchased expressly for documenting the latest tide-defying dream creation.

It's the Fourth of July, night is falling, and all along the beach, the first tentative blasts of fireworks are color-streaking the sky. I'm sitting near a Dreamcatcher enjoying a picnic with The First Dumpling.

A handsome young couple approaches. The young man tells his girlfriend to put something into the Dreamcatcher, and to bury it, really bury it deep. She drops to a knee and starts burrowing, her back turned to him.

It's a diversion. While she's attending to the Dreamcatcher, he drops to a knee, pulls out a red jewelry box, and flips open the top. He's going to propose.

I grab my camera and move fast.

Her shock -- and joy -- is immediate. Yes, she says, and she hugs him so tightly she's buried his head into her bosom. Flash. The ring goes on -- flash -- and he's struggling to his feet -- flash -- and she's in tears and everything I learned in journalism tells me to move closer. These are expressions not to be missed.

And I can't do it. I can do them a favor by documenting the event, but innately I know I don't want to alter the moment. I snap a few more, flash, flash from a safe distance, and try to frame the happy couple with fireworks in the background.

They gather themselves to move back up the beach and he turns to me. "I thought I heard someone taking pictures," he said -- a line that cracks me up because it shows how oblivious he was to the flash bulb. "Can I buy that from you?"

"Not a chance, dude," I tell him.

I hand him the camera for free. "Let me be the first to say congratulations."

They walk away under a loud, multicolored sky. The young fella's sense of timing and romance could not have been better. I sure hope things turn out for them.

Sure hope the pictures come out, too.

-30-

Updated: 11:30 a.m., July 4th, 2003
As American as humble pie

I would like to encourage you to enjoy this particular Independence Day. I mean really enjoy it. Because I really truly believe that freedom as Americans know it today will be history within 25 years.

Now in political oratory this is what's known as a hook, and once you start with appealing to a fear, you move to appealing to a hope -- "freedom as Americans know it today will be history within 25 years -- unless we do something about it!"

Trouble is, I don't see this as idle rhetoric or oratory.

***

Let me set the scene. I'm hiking the beach. A hot afternoon, this July 3rd, and I'm working on a Fourth of July essay, working out the construction in my mind.

George Washington, who warned against foreign entanglements, would be thrilled to know the U.S. now has a standing army of more than a million people, and that nearly half of them are currently abroad.

Thomas Jefferson, who said he'd prefer a country with newspapers and no government to a country with a government and no newspapers, would be thrilled to see media conglomerates choking debate, limiting coverage and being more interested in making money than exposing wrongdoing. I tell ya, the media coverage of the Iraqi campaign would have made any state-run media proud.

I keep working on timelines and factoids -- soldiers who fought in World War I, The War To End All Wars, would be pleased to know the Model Ts they drove then got better gas mileage than the Fords of today -- and I make my way back inland to start typing.

So I'm sitting at the Mac with CNN's Inside Politics in the background, and here comes political analyst Bill Schneider with a poll. Would the Founding Fathers be pleased or displeased with how things have turned out in America? Look at that, I say to myself -- the exact same question I've been mulling.

The poll reported, essentially, a 50-50 split between pleased and displeased. No surprise, really -- Bush v. Gore in 2000 pretty much proved we're a country split right down the middle.

The surprise to me in Schneider's poll was the utter clarity of the demographic breakdown. Ask a rich person if the Founding Fathers would be pleased with things, and the answer is yes. Ask a poor person and the answer is no.

What a powerful message there.

***

I wonder how many people will send Fourth of July emails out on Windows machines today. I wonder how many people will do their holiday shopping at Wal-Mart. I wonder how many people will go see the latest blockbuster movie from the big media conglomerates. And I wonder how many people will stop to think about the growing rift between giant and small, super-rich and working-poor, and what it means for our society.

People should remember it's called capitalism, not laborism, and that money is far more important than a person's work. That's the sort of situation found in Third World countries and Banana Republic dictatorships. Americans may have this benign smugness that it can't happen here, but in many ways it is already happening here. George Bush is on path to become the first president since Herbert Hoover to have net job losses in his term, yet his tax cuts and economic policies favor his fellow travelers in the monied class.

American politicians routinely bashed Banana Republic leaders for ripping off their people to enrich the ruling junta. It's happening in large part here today, but if someone says such a thing, they sound like a kook, a radical -- it's too far-fetched, too un-American, to be taken seriously.

That's why I say enjoy this Independence Day. As George Orwell said, if the government and the media control the language, they'll control the thought.

It takes intelligence and an appreciation of history and economics and sociology to spot these lies; do you think it's coincidence that schools and media keep getting dumbed down? Do you think it's a coincidence that schools remain in large part financed by property taxes? What a way to guarantee that the poor will not only remain poor, they'll remain stupid, too.

There are a number of unpleasant truths in our world today, but Americans prefer polite myths to harsh realities. People are dying in this occupation-cum-liberation of Iraq, yet the myths survive. Pardon my pessimism that the economic lies that could fracture this country will be exposed anytime soon.

Happy Independence Day indeed.

And to think people died for this...

-30-

Updated: 1:30 p.m. July 3, 2003
Law, blogs and Kirsty MacColl
• I begin with an update to my post from yesterday "Fury. Pure Blind Fury." I made some slight text edits in it today for safety reasons. It is one thing for me to hold an opinion that I was the victim of bad faith negotiation; it is another thing entirely, in a legal sense, for me to assert such an opinion as a fact. I am sure the Supreme Court of Virginia has every legal right to treat their contractors badly. I'll leave it to the court of public opinion as to whether government branches should treat people in the manner in which I was treated.

For what it's worth, I got some mail on the subject. Most people totally agreed with my decision to quit. One person said I should have stayed and worked the contract no matter what. I must admit I don't understand that sort of thinking; to me, that's like having a bank repo your car, and then the bank expecting you to continue to make the payments.

• While on matters of law, four years ago University of Iowa professor Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression" -- then hired a lawyer to sue for infringement. You can find this story and other protests against what's going on with copyright law nowadays at the Illegal Art Web site. Be sure to read the pop-up disclaimer.

• In the spirit of Jayson Blair and The New York Times, check out www.denounce.com, a site dedicated to "All the news that never happened" and which carries a motto "All fake, all the time." I discovered this site after seeing an item for an Internet Pundit Fantasy Camp, an idea that might actually sell considering the wannabe nature of our culture nowadays.

• Speaking of culture, be sure to check out the Google Zeitgeist sometime. The page is so wonderful, it even includes a definition of Zeitgeist -- "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." And to really appreciate the quality of Google operations, check out this particular item from their online store. The last line in that copy is so brilliant I wish I'd wrote it.

<rant>
Just as I was working on an essay on I-racketeering,(the monetary and political connections behind current US/Iraq policy) along came George W. Bush with his "Bring 'Em On" boast -- a snappy soundbite that apparently resulted in three more attacks and 10 more injuries in the current U.S. crusade of Iraqi occupation. Apparently the war hawks in the Bush Administration continue to live in a collective delusion of infinite military superiority.

Too many people forget the insight brought by the Viet Nam war. Our enemy there did not have to win. All it had to do was not lose. Just keep it going forever and eventually the French and Americans will leave. You don't think the same thing will happen in Iraq?

Prediction: We're going to lose hundreds of God-fearing respectable GIs before we can vote George W. Bush out of office and end this disgraceful chapter in American history.

• There's a great song in heavy rotation on a Virginia Beach radio station nowadays -- "In These Shoes" by Kirsty MacColl. It combines jazzy, snazzy lyrics and great Latin rhythms and it's from a 2001 album called “Tropical Brainstorm.”

Now here's the rest of the story. It's a cautionary tale in an era of media conglomeration.

I first heard this song years ago on WRNR in Annapolis, Md., a station at one point widely considered the best radio station on the Internet. Through word of mouth, immediate listener acceptance, and lots of little web stations (such as Radio Paradise), the song hung around and finally got enough legs to finally make it to the mainstream, at least here in this part of the world.

The standard way for a band or musician to break out is to tour and tour and tour (aka The White Stripes). The late success of MacColl's song is even more remarkable considering she died before "Tropical Brainstorm" was even released. She was swimming off the coast of Mexico with her sons when hit by a boat propeller, and died Dec. 19, 2000.

As people speak of Nick Drake today, I expect they'll speak of Kirsty MacColl 20 years from now.
</rant>

-30-

Updated: 1:30 p.m. July 2, 2003
Fury. Pure blind fury.

This is a story about anger management. It contains an unbelievable twist.

I start with anger management because I have spent the past three days in a boiling rage.

It's a pretty simple story really. I'm cruising along on a redesign project; my on-site boss told my consulting company boss I was doing great work. The project was ahead of schedule on its 13-week timeline.

Then I get an email -- the budget priorities have changed and I have four days to wrap things up.

Four days notice and no severance, and I'm supposed to come in happily and finish things up for them. I had a Plan B for such shoddy treatment.

I quit.

Four days notice and no severance is one thing, considering the brutal nature of IT consulting nowadays. What fueled my anger was that it sure seemed to me that the entire assignment had been negotiated in bad faith. Getting booted for budget reasons seemed pretty questionable considering the state fiscal year began on July 1.

I saw little evidence that the on-site boss ever had any intention of the project ever running its course, and I picked up a number of hints that her goal was to pick my brain and dump me. She was constantly pressing me, hurrying me, getting me to do things out of sequence and contrary to the agreed-upon timeline. At the time, I thought she was just a nervous nelly in a hurry; now I suspect a pattern.

Most telling, for me, is what should have been a clear sign a few weeks ago. She called me into her office and secretly gave me a want ad for a web editor job. At the time, I took it at just what she said it was -- that she was thinking about me if I ever wanted to get out of the consulting business. Considering she ended my job shortly thereafter, it's probably fair for me to now question her motivation in doing such an unusual thing. It's probably fair to say that I was I one stupid dupe.

Now here's the twist. You know where this happened? You know where I got an Aug. 29th end date on a purchase order only to later be told my last day was July 3rd?

The Supreme Court of Virginia.

I was so shocked and angry that an institution based on integrity could end my job in such a seemingly unfair way, I researched the legal aspects of what happens if someone enters into an agreement they have no intention of honoring. To quote directly from www.nolo.com: "In legal terms, this is called the "covenant of good faith and fair dealing."

And yeah, like I'm going to find a lawyer willing to sue the Supreme Court.

I was so angry when I quit I said very little because I didn't want to do anything stupid. If I'd been more collected, I'd have reminded this woman, who in my personal enmity is now pretty much equal to a perpetrator of a fraud, that I turned down an eight-month writing gig to take this job, that I spent $500 on clothes, including two new suits, to fit their conservative dress code; and because a three-month contract qualifies as stability in my world, I made a big ticket purchase (a washer and dryer) and passed off nearly $700 in charitable contributions.

Think I'd like to have some of those decisions back?

Good faith should run both ways. If there's a four-week budget, tell me there's a four-week budget and I'll adjust the deliverables to match. That Aug. 29 end date meant a lot to me. Apparently it didn't mean jack to anyone else.

As I recovered from the knife wound in my back, my first inclination was a big f--k you to the IT industry as a whole and the city of Richmond in particular. I thought about taking my Macintosh out into my back yard and blasting it full of holes with my .45.

Turns out, though, I sadly have plenty of experience in getting screwed over. So I got on nicotine patches to give myself something else to be angry about. I started working out because I know once the anger phase is over, the depression phase kicks in, and that physical activity is a key in handling depression.

I expect to have plenty to be depressed about. Odds are I'll never get a job in this town again. Standing up for what you believe in around here makes you a loose cannon, not a person of integrity. There's a sad unspoken truth in the South that people are supposed to know their "place." My white readers may object to this, but I guarantee you the brothers and sisters know what I'm talking about.

So let me leave with two ironies.

While helping a SCV coworker (hint: don't FTP PDFs as ASCII and expect good results) I found out the interactive PDF forms were subcontracted out at a ridiculous price per form. I showed them there's absolutely nothing more simple than interactive Acrobat forms, and that they could be handled in-house. That savings alone, over a year, would have probably paid for my contract.

Secondly, there are currently 20 people on Virginia death row who could get expensive new trials because the jury verdict form is so confusing.

Don't tell me that information design is not important.

-30-

About the blog
Mr. Marshall generally ends his Web entries with clever little outcues, but lately he's been feeling a bit depressed.

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Mr. Marshall is a reporter turned web developer turned information architect and interface designer.

If he ever won a McArthur genius grant, he'd study Earth-friendly building techniques. If he won a Niemann Fellowship, he'd study the myth-making aspects of American capitalism. If he ever won the lotto, he would, over his lifetime, give away more money than he actually won.

Mr. Marshall spends weekdays in Richmond, VA. and weekends with The First Dumpling in Virginia Beach.