This is annoying.

Go ahead and read this biased article by the new Washington Post Ombudsman, Deborah Howell.

Now compare that to this article written by the former Ombudsman, Michael Getler.

Getler gets it right. (And I noted so here with respect to, who else, Froomkin!) And Howell is way off base. Let's look at some of her more inflammatory paragraphs:

Political reporters at The Post don't like WPNI columnist Dan Froomkin's "White House Briefing," which is highly opinionated and liberal. They're afraid that some readers think that Froomkin is a Post White House reporter.

John Harris, national political editor at the print Post, said, "The title invites confusion. It dilutes our only asset -- our credibility" as objective news reporters. Froomkin writes the kind of column "that we would never allow a White House reporter to write. I wish it could be done with a different title and display."

Harris is right; some readers do think Froomkin is a White House reporter. But Froomkin works only for the Web site and is very popular -- and Brady is not going to fool with that, though he is considering changing the column title and supplementing it with a conservative blogger.

Froomkin said he is "happy to consider other ways to telegraph to people that I'm not a Post White House reporter. I do think that what I'm doing, namely scrutinizing the White House's every move -- with an attitude -- is in the best traditions of American and Washington Post journalism."

On the other hand, Chris Cillizza, a washingtonpost.com political reporter, appears in The Post frequently. When he writes for the paper, he works for Harris, who is happy to have him.

First off, Froomkin is much better than Cillizza, who simply channels The Note/Hotline conventional wisdom about politics. Cilizza is good at his job, sure, but it has nothing to do with Froomkin's ability to do his job. Insert apple/oranges cliche here.

Second, why is the WaPo Ombudsman concerned about an intra-Post dispute between the online and print editions? Did readers complain about Froomkin? Because otherwise, the Ombudsman has nothing to do with this.

Third, if the "kind of column" Froomkin writes is unacceptable, why does Dana Milbank have a job? And what is his column about then?

Finally, I encourage everyone to write a letter to Ms. Howell and encourage her to relook the Froomkin issue. If this is indicative of her ability, I think the WaPo made a huge mistake to get rid of Getler.

But wait, is there more? I just discovered the best paragraph Howell wrote:

Some Post reporters don't appreciate that links are put on the Web site to what bloggers are saying about this or that story -- especially when the bloggers are highly negative.

Hmm. Really? I cannot imagine what stories she's referring to...oh, wait, how about this one? Yes, it appears over 37 bloggers and counting are being "highly negative" about such an uninformed piece. Who could have written such dreck?

Crazy at work. But in this holiday season, if you're going to shell out a couple benjamins for a shoddy wine-bottle opener that breaks within a few months, you might consider heading over here to give some cash to ActBlue.

Looking at the numbers now, less than 20 people have given on average to each of these five states. That's too low. Only 80 people have given in total! Look, I'll cough up $20 to help out. Will you?

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.