on the XHTML 2 working group; it will stop meeting after the end of this year, when its charter expires. I can’t say I’m happy about this, but I’m hoping the XHTML 2 folks will join the HTML 5 WG and help to work out some of the kinks there.

Update 2009/07/15 18:06—Here’s reaction from Keith and Zeldman.

Sanford emails? Another politician’s career takes a hit because of infidelity? Yeah, whatever. But those emails! Oh, purple prose! His speechwriter has to be cringing.

In all seriousness, though, for all the disgust and schadenfreude being aimed at his head, it appears that Sanford honestly loves this woman, and while infidelity is unforgivable in almost any circumstance, at least this is better than him boinking some intern for the hell of it.

here’s some data about the effect of Michael Jackson’s death on internet traffic:

Keynote Systems reported this evening that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of ABC, AOL, CBS, CNN Money, MSNBC, NBC, SF Chronicle, and Yahoo! News. “Beginning at 5:30pm (EDT), the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds,” said Shawn White, Keynote’s director of external operations said. “During the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%. The index returned to normal by 9:15pm (EDT).”

I knew the nerds would come through.

sycophantic love fest that is sure to come the next few days, Lileks offers us some perspective:

But musically? As I said, Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam had a far greater influence, and Prince a greater talent. Yes, he’s odd – a smaller, more agreeable set of demons, though, and he has an inexhaustible desire to create without freeze-drying every note into a crystalline framework, with every manufactured Yelp and Yip dropped in at the expected perfect moment.

I wouldn’t have felt any of this if the event wasn’t being treated as a near-fatal blow to Western Culture in some quarters. He called himself the King of Pop – after which fame and sales ebbed. Of the many lessons in his life, that may be the oldest.

That said: it’s no shame to have your best work behind you. It’s a pity to die young. It’s a testament to the work you did to be mourned by millions.

Talent of his caliber will be missed. And has been, truth be told, since around 1992.

Since this afternoon, my local mix station has been playing Michael Jackson every hour, on the hour in memoriam. I can only imagine that popular radio stations all over the world are doing something similar. When I went out to dinner this evening, the jukebox at the restaurant played 4 or 5 of his songs in the mere hour and a half I was there.

If there was a way to keep track of these things, I’d be interested to know just how much play, radio and otherwise, Michael Jackson got today. The numbers have got to be insane.

Michael Jackson died this afternoon—he was hospitalized earlier today after going into cardiac arrest.

For as much of a moonbat as he was in his later years, he was responsible for some of the best, most timeless pop songs of our time—I was just listening to Billie Jean on my stereo yesterday and wondering why they don’t make songs like that anymore. Talent of his caliber will be missed.

a well-deserved spanking to the New York Times for their foot-stomping tantrum over getting scooped by the WSJ on the Steve Jobs liver transplant story. Ruthless and brilliant.

(via)

And speaking of poor journalism, here’s a piece from a couple of months ago where PressThink’s Jay Rosen took the Times to task for more lameness.

1. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Make sure to celebrate your Irish heritage today by eating sugar cookies with green sugar sprinkles and drinking green beer.
2. Check out the live coverage of Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 preview event. The list of new features reads like a most wanted list:
   • Cut, copy and paste. Hallelujah! Also: about damn time.
   • MMS. Again: about damn time.
   • Search in all applications and also across the system. OMG, IFO.
   • This is more for developers, but a Maps API that lets you embed maps into your application. HUGE.

   And they’re not even done yet.

Update 2009/03/17 11:35—Oh, no! Looks like (a) the iPhone OS upgrade is not free for original iPhone owners (i.e. me), and (b) no MMS on the original iPhone. The latter is a huge disappointment. Huge.

John Edwards, no question. What a weasel. Why are there so many liars and adulterers in political power?

Stephen Green is a little bit angry with Governor Bobby Jindal (who majored in biology in college) and his support of the LSEA, the new Louisina bill allowing, in so many words, intelligent design to be taught in public school science classes:

Social sciences are, almost by definition, soft-skulled bullshit. So let the liberals teach it. Real science is supposed to mean something… and when it no longer does, then we’re all screwed.

So am I emotional on this issue? You bet your ass I am. And I’ll get emotional whether it’s a Kansas school board, or the legislature and governor of a state I’ve barely even visited.

In the churches, faith can and does sustain good people of every stripe — and in ways biology, physics, and math never could. But forcing our preachers to teach in the scientific method would ruin the religious experience. Just as surely, mixing faith and science would destroy those things science offers us.

And with that, I’ll step away from the pulpit for a while. I’d like to think that Governor Jindal would do likewise and get the hell out of our classrooms.

Read the whole thing, especially Green’s engagement with soft-skulled ignoramus hpb in the comments.

Now, the foundations of human knowledge, and science, are by no means sure things, and are open to reasoned, intelligent criticism^†. If you are going to teach criticism of modern scientific theories, as the bill states, you’d be much better off teaching applied epistemology^* than what the bill’s writers intend (hat tip).

Matters of faith have no place in our science classrooms.

^† And yeah, intelligent design ain’t it.

^* Ha, make sure to read their terms of service.