"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.

Updated: at a time when posting times seemed stupid
Noble experiment

A 40-hour week.

That's right -- a straight-up 8:30 to 5 p.m. job, then home to do other things. Dot-life and all that stuff.

Now living in the computer world, I figured the 40-hour commitment would have to include staying away from the Mac after work, too. I've been pretty successful at it, though I must admit the end result is that I often manage to drink too much beer.

But no one cares about my boring stuff. On with the news.
***

Updated: at a time of my choosing
Sign's a changed
There's a quiet protester outside the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond most days. Apparently, he's been there a long time with his simple sign "No war in Iraq."

Now he's there with a big "N" laughingly, plainly pasted right over the "Q" on his sign. No War In Iran.

Wow.

Now, American soldiers are dying everyday in Iraq, and a loose collection of anti-Western forces seem fully capable of managing a low-intensity conflict for a long duration. From their point of view, it's a holy war against an occupying military power.

Now it's not exactly rocket surgery (to borrow Steve Krug's line) to think that this situation was a pretty likely outcome. I mean, after all, one out of every eight countries in the world currently is the scene of a civil war.

History was pretty clear, too. The US got truck-bombed in Lebanon while trying to go a good deed, and got shot up in the streets in Somalia while trying to do a good deed, and American troops have been sniped at in Afghanistan and are now being attacked in all kinds of ways in Iraq.

That's why it's important to remember that before the war, the spin from Pentagon ultrahawks was that Americans would be greeted as liberators. We sure see how that worked out.

Now to be fair, there are likely millions of Iraqis very happy that America and Britain and their coalition of favor-currying nations did what they did. That's nice, but it's only part of the equation, and the total equation must always include the nine percent or so of the population that considers it a high priority, a duty even, of killing infidels.

You know, at some point you have to go beyond questioning whether US government officials lied in the run-up to the Iraq war. You have to start asking how an entire media-fed culture could be duped so easily.

***

Updated: at a time when I could have been exercising
By way of the Web

When out-and-a-blogging, please make Bifurcated Rivets a Top Five read. Mr. Marshall's work, and he's no apparent relation, I might add, has been consistently strong for years.

Though I enjoy blogging to collect things here for buddies and readers, my basic daily pattern is Dan Gillmor and Richard Brosnahan at work in the mornings, then Rivets and Obscure Store at evening. The final spot in my Top Five is whichever newsie-type blog, Ken Layne or Smoking Gun or Drudge or whoever, has been strong of late.

In terms of recent blogging snags:

• Smart girls win all ties. Only fitting, then, that some hormone-crazed adolescent creates a page dedicated to the beautiful women of chess.

• While on beauty, it now can be scientifically calculated, as demonstrated with Virtual Miss Germany. Personally, to paraphrase Charles Frazier, I believe calculating beauty by scientific methods makes as much sense as eating birds based on their songs.

• A classic chart: What Europeans think of each other. CHTL, by the way, stands for "Can't Hold Their Liquor."

• The Bible done in Lego people. The Brick Testament advises which scenes contain sex, violence, nudity or cursing. Here's just one small sample of the illustrations. I can't believe it's been around for a year and that I just heard of it. What a riot.

• And finally, Gregg Easterbrook on Sammy Sosa: " Allegations that Sammy Sosa has been using corked bats have been hotly denied by his press spokesman, Jayson Blair. His agent, Jack Grubman, swears that all 4,000 of Sosa's previous home runs were genuine, while Arthur Andersen is conducting a no-holds-barred audit. WorldCom is tracing Sosa's cell phone calls to make sure that none were to cork dealers, while Adelphia promises to review tapes of his previous games. "

Updated: without asking permission
What is happening in America?

There are times, when discussing modern politics with my buddies, that I feel like I'm speaking a foreign language. There's a fog afoot, a blindness to uncomfortable truths as opposed to polite fictions.

With that in mind comes an article by Eliot Weinberger titled What is happening in America? It's a thought-provoking piece from a German publication.

For those who will be turned off by the leftist rhetoric in the beginning of the article (people have just tuned out the fact that Dubya got fewer votes), let me quote this story from where it is reaching it's end; Mr. Weinberger's take on Gulf War II.

First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until the population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on the World Trade Center, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass destruction" that threaten the world.

Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation, and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes-- such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- worthy of Soviet cinema.

Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.

It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without resorting to the hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after so many decades, but that have now finally come true.

Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American administration in modern times ..."

I give the writer props, but my sense of depression comes from more than politics -- the relentless bigness of Wal Mart and Microsoft, the steady erosion of good jobs and the triumph of the stockholder over the employee, the unabated consolidation of media and the proliferation of safe, bloodless news and views.

So I should end on a lighter note, some educational way that can hopefully lead to change. And with that in mind, may I present the latest version of the famous Iraqi deck of cards -- the war profiteers deck of playing cards. Think of how important David O'Reilly is in all of this, and then ask yourself why you've never heard of him.

***
Updated: when nobody was looking
Intellectual Make-Out Music
Nearly went out to buy the new Radiohead "Hail to the Thief" at one of those midnight madness release parties. Waited 'til the next day instead, and now I'm kind of glad. The CD has been widely hailed as brilliant, and I concede that it is. I just found it to be quite disappointing in a number of vague ways.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam told NPR that in his musical world, songs have a sense of momentum. I found that a terrific insight, especially when applied to the last three Radiohead releases.

It's certainly not standard rock 'n' roll. It's about emotion and texture and to use the classical music term, it's more a tone poem than a symphony. And that's what I found lacking on too many tracks of "Hail To The Thief" – a sense of going somewhere. You know in fiction where they say characters have to develop? Apply it to "Hail To The Thief."

I realize the CD carried a burden of heavy expectations. I'm just sorry it didn't live up to it. Hey, Pink Floyd had to follow "Dark Side of the Moon." It can be done, you know.

It is generally agreed that Radiohead's music grows on you over time, so my disappointment should fade as my familiarity grows. There's a hypnotism to Thom Yorke's voice that eventually takes over. So I'll give the CD a chance. It'll just be mixed in with Flaming Lips and Dandy Warhols, too.

Updated: at a tiime when I should have been doing something else
Web Trends
For trend-watchers, two things are really exploding on the web.

First is spam, which went from 16 percent of all mail to 46 percent of all email in a matter of two years. It has now moved from 46 percent to 51 percent in the last two months.

I can confirm this in my own inbox; a steady increase in traffic finally topped 100 spams a day for the first time just a few weeks ago. Now I consider 100 pieces of penis-expanding crap a light day.

Secondly, broadband connections now account for a third of all Web surfing. This was a field characterized by slow acceptance due to matters of complexity, reliability and cost.

With those matters being the beneficiaries of years of lessons learned, consumer acceptance is growing rapidly according to the experts.

It took years to get broadband connections up to a fourth of all traffic. It took just a year to move from a fourth to a third.

I must admit I take great delight in the slow acceptance of broadband, and will hate to see the slow old days go. I've been telling my dot comrades since '98 that broadband was a myth that was years away. It's nice to be right every now and then.

Here's another example of slow acceptance curves. The capacity to build Web pages in a totally precise way, what's known as absolute positioning and Cascading Style Sheets, has been around for five years. And I've yet to build an Internet site totally reliant on them.

I can't bill a client for stuff that doesn't work, and even though I sneak more and more of these hybrid commands in my work nowadays, I've probably got another year before I can dump table-based layouts entirely.

Case in point: my outdated quickie portfolio page, a pretty simple Javascript show/hide layers page. Here's what it looks like in Netscape 4.7.

About the blog
Mr. Marshall apologizes for the lack of post-a-comment technology. but it springs from his philosophy of not owning a cell phone. If you carry one, people will call it.

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May 2003
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Bifurcated Rivets
Obscure Store & Reading Room
Ken Layne
Broznews
Dan Gillmor
Instapundit

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.