Richard Pryor is dead.

This world may be constructed for me, but Pryor's death is a serious flaw in said design.

I have three words to say about the Miami Air Marshal story: dead-man's switch.

Each time someone claims that use of deadly force is acceptable in situations like this, I want to remind them that anyone capable of building a bomb is capable of creating a simple fail-deadly trigger to said bomb.

Shooting people, when explosives are in the mix, is rarely a good idea.

At the very end of this article in Slate about the atrocious Black Eyed Peas ditty "My Humps", there is a section that says "related in Slate". In it is a link to an article the author previously wrote, as well as a bizarre link to a Christopher Hitchens' obit for Susan Sontag.

Get the connection? Well, I sure don't. Unless, horrifically, "My Humps" is an homage to Susan Sontag.

As someone who enjoys good design, I hate websites that look like

• this
• or this
• and, sadly, this

Yes, I admit, my website is far from perfect. But the upcoming redesign should help out a bit. Until then, I think the biggest mistake with most websites today is a lack of focus on typography.

Principally, most blogs seem to ape each other's design, but very rarely focus on the implications of resizing and coloring text. The result? Text-ads that distract from content. Blockquotes highlighted in awful colors. Five to six different kinds of subheads that completely confuse users as to their purpose.

It doesn't have to be this way.

HTML, oddly, was designed from the beginning around outlines. With different header tags, one could quickly transform a document into a web page. Yet as frames, and then tables, and now divs quickly became the norm, designers needed to compress a bunch of information into a format that wasn't mature.

Consider the lowly book: chances are every book shares a set of common features that the casual reader can ascertain at a glance. Page numbers, or folios, commonly adorn each page in the margin. Chapter headings mark the beginnings of chapters. A title page, an index and a table-of-contents are all standard fare.

With a web page, there is no such set of common features. (Again, somewhat ironically, every web page must have a set of common features, namely, the (x)html markup that under-girds each page...yet the data is often curiously uncommon as compared to said markup.) Blogs tend to look like one another only using the same system. CSS-driven table less sites tend to look polished, while those designed using frontpage look as if they fell off the back of a truck.

As the site design changes once again, I'd just like to remind everyone that the focus should be on readability, rather than flashiness. This site is, at heart, a series of articles. So that's what I've tried to emphasize with the redesign.

Just a quick note: sometimes I'm reading an article in the WaPo and suddenly find myself driven insane because of idiocy spewed, without correction, such as this:

"By cutting taxes, you grow the economy, and you generate an enhanced flow of revenues to the Treasury," said Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Look, I know that Econ, much like Sociology and Political Science, is a soft science. Any "science" that lets you model the past perfectly yet still remain unable to predict the future with any degree of certainty isn't much of a hard science. Still, no professor of economics, anywhere, believes that by cutting taxes, you can increase revenue.

Sure, you could argue that you're "growing the economy". But to make the next leap over the cliff and say that reducing taxes actually increases revenue is nonsensical. David Dreier is an idiot, but Weisman shouldn't have included such a quote to begin with.

Unless, of course, he was overruled from above. Which is somewhat frightening.

A vehicle in front of me hit the brakes suddenly. I slowed but didn't even wonder why, despite the presence of a car parked with hazards flashing in the middle of the GW. Seconds later, my car informed me I had lost pressure in one of my tires.

Not a good way to start the day, especially since it took almost an hour to determine what to do. (My special tire-insurance program doesn't direct me to a service location because I have run-flats...they helpfully suggested I call a dealer. Thanks.) Even determining which tire was flat was problematic because the run-flats work so well that you cannot visually tell; one has to actually physically measure the tire pressure to determine which needs to be replaced. Finally, I got in touch with a local dealer to get the tire replaced, mere hours before it's supposed to start to snow.

Altogether, a fairly flat morning.

The best evenings invariably involve a melange of people and places. Friday night was a perfect example, with four groups and multiple destination mixeds together into an walk-filled good time.

Tonight, far fewer people were involved but the combination was just as pleasurable, from the city's first snowfall to some quality breakin' with plenty of stories shoehorned pre and post. I managed to hang out with each of my new housemates, which was novel and fun.

Sadly, like all good times, eventually the clock caught up with us; but even post light-un-dimming in the 'morg (the standard massachusetts light-flashing technique is evidently not in vogue in the district), we managed to hold out until the rain seemed like less of an obstacle than before.