Ceci Connolly is a hack. She produces awful articles and is almost Nedra Pickler like in her ability to disgrace the news organization she works for. (The Washington Post...yes, I'm sorry about that.

But her article on the front page of the Post today sure as hell doesn't bury the lede:

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

Damn. She's actually hard-hitting for once. Maybe I'll have to revise my hack statement...of course, she saves the most absurd moment for last (ed. note....next time, guys, cut the final paragraph):

Some course materials cited in Waxman's report present as scientific fact notions about a man's need for "admiration" and "sexual fulfillment" compared with a woman's need for "financial support." One book in the "Choosing Best" series tells the story of a knight who married a village maiden instead of the princess because the princess offered so many tips on slaying the local dragon. "Moral of the story," notes the popular text: "Occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright, but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."

Bizarre.

I don't really like Adobe. They have had years to merge Photoshop and Illustrator into one killer app, but never done so. They were slow to see Quark in the rear-view mirror, and InDesign still has trouble integrating files from Photoshop/Illustrator properly. And then let's not forget their idiotic font decisions in the past.

But by far, their biggest annoyance is the idiotic PDF format. Billed as "a document standard", it has enabled countless generations to abuse the web as their personal playground for embedding ordinary word documents. Here's the chain of events:

1. Crappy HR Person demands that company newsletter, published in Microsoft Word, be put on The Internets.
2. Overworked Web Designer (who has been forced into servitude as a Web Developer) told to put newsletter on the internet. OWD spends hours converting word document into html and stripping out all the unnecessary tags Microsoft threw into their word->html converter.
3. The html page is uploaded to website.
4. Crappy HR Person complains that web page doesn't look like Word Document...demands word document itself be placed on website.
5. OWD argues, is overruled by management, and is forced to upload Word document to website. As a parting way to save face, he notes on the link itself that the document is a Word document.
6. Users from branch office begin to call in to complain that they cannot open Word document because they use WordPerfect 2.0 for DOS circa 1988.
7. Upper management hears complaints, passes directive down that document should be "converted to acrobat" because "everyone has acrobat".
8. OWD goes on four hour fruitless search for the one worker in the office who actually has Acrobat, not merely Acrobat Reader. Copy turns out to be stolen. And all the dialog boxes are in Russian. OWD converts document, discovers text is in cyrillic. Tweaks settings. Converts again.
9. OWD uploads pdf document to website, includes caveat that link points to a pdf.
10. Lower level web designer sees caveat, removes it to "save bandwidth".
11. Edward browses the web, sees a link to the site, clicks it.
12. Five minutes later, Acrobat Reader stops loading and Edward can access his web browser again.
13. Edward fires off an angry screed on his blog about said pdf document.

If I had my way, pdf would be dead. There's no reason for an open standard other than xhtml at this point. Combined with css, you can make almost any document structurally and stylistically the same.

But for god's sake, if you do link to a pdf, warn users that you are doing so so that those of us who don't want to waste four minutes loading fifty apis for acrobat reader can simple skip the link. Thank you.

Welcome to Blogistan, fellow Netizens! Below is a list of some random blogs we occasionally check. This isn't the comprehensive list of websites we freequent...it's just a list of personal blogs I'd like to show some love for. There's no order to it, so don't think I'm ranking these. Without further ado, here goes:

• RumbleStrips
• Movering
• Heelwing
• Karen Likes Cereal
• Waferbaby
• Schilaeuferin
• The Best Page In The Universe
• Dean Velvel

Want to be listed? Well....just ask! The ranks of the Technorati are filled with posers just like you!

For the past several weeks, in what can only be described as a cruel joke, I have been receiving copies of the Washington Times.

It's true.

I arrived back from the election to find several copies, wrapped in orange plastic, living on my steps. At first, I was angry. A few days (and several more copies) later I assumed it was a joke. After another few days, I realized I now had perfect kindling for my firepit.

Then some Jehovah's Witnesses came to the door and dropped off some lit. On their way out, I noticed there were two copies of the Wash Times lying on the steps. (I hadn't picked them up.) Annoyed, I explained that they weren't mine. They said "sure they aren't" which was the camel straw.

I realized I had to get rid of the subscription, so I e-mailed the rag. They sent me a very nice response back today:

Dear XXX,

Your are right we do not have a subscription to your address I will ask the carrier to stop delivery immediately.

Thank you, Jxxxx Jxxxxx

I know it's not the fault of the newspaper that their subscriptions department cannot spell. But for god's sake...who uses the wrong form of your and adds the word are to follow it? It's a completely novel way to mess up the sentence.

Hopefully I won't have to see a little orange bundle of joy on my steps tomorrow morning.

This WaPo story is the reason the Post continues to outshine the NYT and LA Times.

"Why do you think there was such friction between the U.S. delegation and the Chilean delegation?" Morgan asked.

By the standards that the White House press pack uses to gauge a deft question, this one failed roundly: It was about yesterday's news; Bush was unlikely to answer it with any specificity, and it wouldn't "make news" (produce a headline) if he did.

In the networks' nearby transmission room, out of Bush's earshot, correspondents and producers groaned loudly and grunted their disapproval.

Yes, it focuses on the process rather than the substance. But as many reporters and editors are starting to realize, this entire administration is about media control and not public policy. How do you fight back against a White House that never gives press interviews?

Well, to start, you show the raw numbers. And then you explain the press production values. All done neatly here:

Bush has held 16 solo news conferences, compared to 43 for Bill Clinton, 84 for George H.W. Bush and 26 for Ronald Reagan at this point in their presidencies, according to research by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University.

These sessions are a contest between Bush's desire to repeat his previously articulated views ("sticking a tape in the VCR," as one frequent Bush questioner puts it), and the reporters' quest to elicit something that will contribute to democracy, not to mention getting them on television or the front page.

By exposing how reporters carefully construct loaded questions in order to get answers, Allen makes an implicit point: that this administration wishes to hide from the press. Yes, policy points are important, but until the news media, and the public at large, realize that this administration is obsessed with secrecy, policy will have to take a back seat.

If we just had more Dickersonian questions at the press briefings, and more Milbankian/Allen/Priestly writing on the front page, the country would be far better served by the media.

I am cold and tired and very wet. Apropos of nothing, here are my deadly sins, ranked from first to last.

1. Pride
2. Sloth
3. Lust
4. Gluttony
5. Wrath
6. Avarice
7. Envy

To be honest, I am very rarely envious of anyone. But I'm definitely on top of the other six. How would you rank yours?

I cannot discuss money matters around my friends. So let me just say that charging a 3% "transaction fee" for a check which counts as a "cash advance" (meaning that interest begins to accrue right away) is what I would label "highway robbery".

Also, two other small coding points. The search engine, which has been down, is now back up again.

Finally, as many of you have noticed, you don't have permission to delete your own posts. Some have complained about this. My logic is this: if you really need to delete a post, get in touch with Helena, Brad or myself. We have the rights to do so. But posting and then removing is a weapon of last resort. It's the sort of thing the White House does all the time.

Information, once placed on a website, is historical. Removing it doesn't get rid of the information, it just moves it to different areas. So next time, think before you post that juicy bit of gossip about your boss.

On that note, I love my job.

Damn.

This is one cool trailer.

Makes me almost forget Fox slapped Firefly with a 6 month delay...

This ruling totally stinks. We need to make access to unions easier, not tougher, especially for the growing temporary worker class.

Temporary workers will no longer be able to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing a Clinton-era precedent.

In a 3 to 2 vote that was issued Friday, the three members appointed by President Bush -- Robert J. Battista, the chairman; Peter C. Schaumber and Ronald E. Meisburg -- said there is a difference between temporary and permanent workers. "Thus, the entity that the two groups of employees look to as their employer is not the same. No amount of legal legerdemain can alter that fact," their ruling stated.

Look for most businesses to continue to try to reduce permanent workers and replace them with temps, allowing them to slash benefits and cut costs. The long-term problem? Put simply: a workforce made up of temps contains numerous overhead that will eventually drag a business down. The lack of institutional knowledge alone is something difficult to quantify, yet the repercussions on the bottom line are significant. Each time a new temp worker is hired, time must be spent to bring them up to speed, and certain bits of information (the password to an old router, the location of an old bill, the vendor one uses for a particular need) are certain to be lost during the transfer. Over time these little bits of loss become larger until an organization can no longer function properly.

I've worked in an office with extremely high turnover...tons of time was always being wasted when someone said "Oh, we already did that last year...where did we put it?"

werkz advice: worth seeing.

The latest non-bond brosnin flick: "After the Sunset" is ostensibly a jewel-heist caper. In reality, it's a somewhat quirky comedy, filled with a bizarre shark shooting, men sleeping together and suntan lotion weirdness. All with a caribbean accent. And a remote controlled car. And Salma Hayek building a deck.

Trust me, you should see it. It's not great, but it's memorable.

werkz advice: go see it!

Bruckheimer's latest production, "National Treasure" is a fairly decent action comedy. Having Nicholas Cage in it lets me complete the following logical statement: Con Air is not as good as National Treasure which is not as good as The Rock.

With that said, NT was actually a fun time. So go see it.

Kerry is off the list of titles. Gerry is on. Go figure.

So Howl's Moving Castle is in the process of blowing apart the box office records in Japan.

Happy Turkey Day, kids.

I'm stuffed at the moment, or rather, have been, since noon.

The luxury of being able to sit in a warm house and type these words is more than enough to be thankful for.

That and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon cooked in a special marinade...mmm....I think I'm hungry again.