Thoughts From Eric Archive

Hooray!  It’s Income Tax Day in the United States, which means that carping and whining about our tax burden will be at an annual high.  Boy oh boy, what could be more fun?  How about griping about a closely related topic?  I’m here for ya!

Personally, I don’t get most of my fellow Americans.  Compared to most countries in the industrialized world, we have a fairly small tax burden, while still expecting basically the same level of service from our government.  In addition, our gasoline is incredibly (some would say criminally) inexpensive compared to most countries.  Our income tax averages around 30% of direct income, with some shifting on either end of the wealth/poverty scale.  I can’t speak to capital gains taxes, but my general thinking has always been that if you’re well-off enough to have capital gains at all, then you can darned well afford the taxes on them.  Ditto the inheritance tax, only more so.

If we want government services, then taxes are inevitable.  If we don’t want those services, then enough people need to elect enough representatives to cut the unwanted services.  Then the taxes can drop.  (Assuming the debt’s been paid off, which of course it won’t be any time soon, but that’s an entirely different gripe of mine.)  If there aren’t enough such representatives, then the “will of the people” must be to keep the services.  Ergo, the taxes need to be able to support the expenditures on those services.  It all seems kinda simple to me.

And hey, if you don’t like the value received for the money you’re required to pay, then nobody’s forcing you to live here.  Find a better country.  Ever think you’d hear a liberal say that?

• Monday, 15 April 2002 was published on Monday, April 15th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Politics category.
• There have been no replies.

This just in: a large area of nightfall was spotted over west central Lake Erie late this morning, reducing visibility and confusing the heck out of everyone in the area.  Doppler radar registered the following at 10:52am local time:

By early afternoon, the unexpectedly large area of nightfall had developed into a line of thunderstorms that moved slowly out of the area.

In a development that surprised nobody, Youngstown area Representative James A. Traficant phoned in from the planet Mars to blame the entire situation on vindictive federal prosecutors out to get him and anyone near him.  The U.S. Department of Vindictive Prosecutions could not be reached for immediate comment.

• Friday, 12 April 2002 was published on Friday, April 12th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Humor category.
• There have been no replies.

Revenge of The 508 Follies: So the U.S. government’s Section 508 Web site has removed its “best viewed with” line that caused me such angst last week, which I suppose is a positive step.  Unfortunately, they have yet to fix either their HTML or CSS to be valid.  I’d rather they had fixed the code and left the annoying text… but I suppose I should be grateful that some improvement has occurred.

• Wednesday, 10 April 2002 was published on Wednesday, April 10th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.

The 508 Follies, Take Two: I got e-mail yesterday morning from a U.S. government Web developer who was reacting to Tuesday’s semi-rant.  In addition to expressing embarrassment over the state of the Section 508 Web site, he pointed me toward an article on Government Computer News—a site I hadn’t known even existed, but plan to visit from now on—titled “Section 508 site takes own advice.”  (That constitutes 100% of your recommended daily allowance of irony, by the way.)  As my correspondent said about the article: “Apparently they recently redesigned their site and the old one was actually worse.”

For some reason I’m put in mind of the song “Don’t Worry About the Government”:

Some civil servants are
Just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they
Try to be strong

For those of you in the civil services who are still working hard and trying to be strong, which I suspect is a lot harder these days, a tip of my hat and most heartfelt thanks to you.

• Thursday, 4 April 2002 was published on Thursday, April 4th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.

I waited a day on posting this, just to make sure nobody thought it was an April Fools’ joke.  Go to http://www.section508.gov/, which is the central hub for information on the piece of U.S. Federal law that mandates accessibility in all Web sites of government agencies, and of those businesses and organizations that do business with or receive money from the U.S. government.  Look at the bottom of the document: “This site best viewed with MS Internet Explorer 5+”.

What?

So I ran the site through the W3C’s markup validator, and got back a report that their markup is broken.  Go figure.  Neither does their CSS validate, and I’m not just talking about the metric ton of warnings the page generates.  No wonder their site looks best in IE5 (for Windows, I assume): odds are it’s the only widely available browser sloppy enough to tolerate their slipshod authoring practices.

It’s things like this that really sap my faith in the intelligence of my fellow man.  Well, that and the e-mail response I saw from the maintainers of the site, which basically said, “IE is the biggest gorilla on the Web so the other 10% of our users can sod off.  And so can you.”  I expect that kind of thing from 14-year-old fanboy site authors, not the people in charge of the government Web site about how Web sites are supposed to be open and accessible to all users.

I’m going to say it right here and now: “this site best viewed in browser X” is shorthand for “this site’s maintainers are too lazy to think about standards compliance, user experience, or cross-browser design.”  Before I get all kinds of “pot, meet kettle” e-mail regarding meyerweb and how it’s designed, you’ll note that I never claimed the site would look better in one browser or another.  If anything, this site looks best in a browser that supports W3C standards.  And I have nothing against their font-sizing widget; I use one myself.  What bothers me is that they can’t be bothered to take simple steps towards the very principles their site espouses, and the browser favoritism they show as a result.

“This site best viewed with MS Internet Explorer 5+”… cripes.  Some days I wonder why we even bother.

• Tuesday, 2 April 2002 was published on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Standards category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat wrote up a short account of our recent trip, which includes a detailed review of the resort where we stayed in case you’re thinking about heading for Cancun.  I marked it up and scanned in a few pictures to make it prettier.  It’s all in the “Miscellaneous” section.

• Monday, 18 March 2002 was published on Monday, March 18th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Travel category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat and I just flew back from a weeklong vacation in the Cancun region, and boy, are my arms red!  No, really—my sunburn has yet to completely fade.  We might actually write up a review of the place we stayed, which is only a few months old.  If we do, of course I’ll post the link.  First I have to dig throught the 2,407 e-mail messages that piled up in my absence.

While I was gone, John Manning wrote to point out that I need to correct an earlier posting, so I’ll do it here:

<style type="text/css" media="quantum-foam">
   cosmos {color: #FEF8EA;}
</style>

Turns out the previously-posted value was the result of computational error.  Oopsie.

I would have laughed harder at the article “Item Found In Garbage To Be Turned Into Lamp Someday” except it hit a little too close to home.  When we took possession of our house, there were several boxes of trash on the treelawn left by the previous occupants.  For no apparent reason, I looked through the boxes and actually salvaged something for later conversion to a lamp.  What was it, you ask?  Let’s just say it’s plastic, brightly colored, and covered in Grateful Dead stickers.

• Thursday, 14 March 2002 was published on Thursday, March 14th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the General category.
• There have been no replies.

The other day I got e-mail containing this amusing vignette:

I took my four-year-old to Borders Bookstore today because I needed three books (Dreamweaver 4 Bible, Heinle’s latest JavaScript book, and your CSS book). Because he can spend almost forever in the Children’s Section, I told him that we had to get my books first.

I find the JavaScript book, then manage to find the DW book. But I can’t find yours. (Of course, this is Borders’ computer section…loaded with books not always organized.) [My son] is getting bored…it’s not much fun for him in this section. He starts looking at different books and liking the O’Reilly ones because of the animals on the covers.

I reach his limit…he’s ready to go. So he reaches up, grabs a book, and says, “This is the one we want.”

And he was right…it was your book.

So you can honestly say that the popularity of your book extends to young and old alike.

As a result, I’ve decided that I’m going to follow Zeldman’s example and term myself “Friend of the Developers’ Children.”

• Monday, 4 March 2002 was published on Monday, March 4th, 2002.
• It was assigned to the Books and Humor categories.
• There have been no replies.