licentious radio

Monday, February 3, 2003
[4:39:02 PM]

Some of our recent web/usability and typography musings that didn't make this top page.

More zeldman.com hacking: Shall I change the width of my browser window to suit zeldman.com's layout? userContent.css to the rescue!

Line-height in CSS: HTML and the various related technologies have been a nightmare to work with, for several reasons.

How to escape pixel-based measures for onscreen type....

Use border-bottom for links, not underline -- for better readability and control.

HTML is becoming more useful -- thoughts in response to an essay called HTML's Time is Over. Let's Move On.

And don't miss:

The hundred millionth monkey: "Once upon a time all the web monkeys used tiny type on their web pages. Most used font size=2. The artistic and the long-winded used font size=1. The forward-thinking, standards-compliant web monkeys used stylesheets: font-size: 11px."

Fitts's Law: "The rest of the story. Few people remember that Stalin was trying to develop three-armed soldiers. Even fewer people know that the project was -- technically -- a tremendous success. Stalin did, in fact, manage to create a whole army of three-armed soldiers."

[1:11:00 PM]
Why Saddam can't give WMD to Al Qaeda -- unless we invade....

He can't do it openly, or we would retaliate. Could he do it on the sly?

Consider Al Qaeda's goals.... Al Qaeda seeks to provoke the US to attack Arab/Muslim countries, in order to create anti-western sentiment, and support for terrorism. Al Qaeda also *dislikes* secular Arab states like Iraq -- where women can wear pants and have jobs, etc.

So maybe Saddam hands Bin Laden some VX and says, "just don't tell them you got it from me". And Bin Laden thinks, "Hmm. If I let it slip that I got this VX from Saddam, Shock and Awe (TM) in Baghdad. The Arab world turns against the US for the next 50 years. And no more Saddam!" And what could Saddam do about it? First, he's dead, but even in his last days there's no way for him to retaliate.

[11:26:23 AM]
On "conspiracy theories"....

I'd *like* not to believe in behind-the-scenes wrong-doing. That's what we mean by "conspiracies", right? I'd like to think Oswald decided to kill Kennedy on his own, and that the "magic bullet" wasn't so magic after all, and that there's a simple explanation for how fast Oswald bio information (reportedly) turned up in the Australian newspapers, etc.

But I'd also like to think Nixon didn't bomb Cambodia or invade Laos, and would *never* run the Watergate break-in, and Kissinger would never run coups in Chile.

I'd like to believe that every weird question about the September 11 attacks has a straight-forward answer. It's beyond me to believe the Pentagon crash was faked. Why should I wonder whether Atta's passport was really found on the sidewalk? Why should I wonder if the white jet was really fast and low after the airliner in Pennsylvania? Why should I wonder about the scattered debris? Isn't that what I have a government for?

One problem is that we can't know when the government *isn't* lying. We know they lie. Frankly, (I hope) in many cases it's appropriate. But it means we can't just assume that everything government says is accurate. We know bureaucracies cover up. We know Bush/Cheney want to look good in the polls. Would they tell us if they shot an airliner down? What if they shot it down and later discovered the passengers were on the verge of taking control back?

Think about the series of lies from the White House and Rice about "what Bush knew". First there was no indication. Eventually it turned out they had every indication that this sort of thing might be in the works -- known from the White House on down. Heck, the Pentagon was running a simulation on September 11, 2001 of what would happen if terrorists took over an airliner to crash into the Pentagon. That's crazy stuff.

So what do we do, if anything? Should we just be pleased at the increase in government secrecy? Should we assume that any cover-up is minor stuff, just well-meaning bureaucrats not wanting to look bad?

The problem is the *pattern* of increased secrecy, reduced rights, increased imperialism, etc. We *want* to give the benefit of the doubt to any specific event, but the specific events seem to fit the pattern so well it makes you wonder. And there are so *many* events that fit....

[10:41:29 AM]
Why a war against Iraq is unnecessary [afr.com]: In fact, the historical record shows that the US can contain Iraq effectively - even if Hussein has nuclear weapons - just as it contained the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

[10:27:55 AM]
First Ashcroft threw a drapery over a statue of justice because her breasts were showing. Now the UN has had to draperize its Guernica -- Picasso's master work on the horror of war. "A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings."