How to handle blockquotes?

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I'm trying to decide how to handle blockquotes. If you've got an opinion, express it below. Here's the deal, in valid XHTML a blockquote tag has to include a block-level element, such as a p tag. That looks like this:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

-Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

Okay, that looks good in RSS, but doesn't quite pop when viewing this page in a web browser. So what if instead of using the blockquote tag, we just wrap it all in a div with some fancy formatting defined in our cascading style sheet, like this:

The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has up dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not recieve this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.

-Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

Now that looks good in a web browser, but is hard to see in an RSS aggregator. So, what if we combine the two? It's a bit silly, but it should do the trick for both sets of readers:

There is an old picture of a people traveling by sleigh through deep woods--pursued by wolves. Every now and then they grab one of their number and toss him to the wolves. That's conscription even if you call it selective service and pretty it up with USOs and veterans' benefits--it's tossing a minority to the wolves while the rest go on with that single-minded pursuit of the three-car garage, the swimming pool, and the safe & secure retirement benefits.

-Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

Okay, it's a little silly to need to use three tags to mark up one paragraph of text, but fortunately, MarsEdit lets me define a custom tag to do just that, so all I have to do is highlight the paragraph I want to mark as a blockquote, and invoke the custom tag. Cool, eh? The post winds up a little too indented, since the CSS code is bumping the margins in too, but it's probably good enough for government work.

New Proxim AP

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Proxim, our wireless vendor of choice, has released a new access point model today, the AP-700. I haven't nailed down what's new and different about this unit yet, but to me, it looks like an AP-4000, only with either 802.11b/g or 802.11a, but not both. Why I'd choose this, rather than the AP-600, is unclear right now, but hopefully I can get one to play with after my return from Russia.

Got Blogs?

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While in Russia, I'm giving a presentation on weblogs. Here's the title: "Weblogs: The Changing Face of Academic and Political Discussion Online"

It's going to be a fairly short talk, as they translate it into Russian in real-time, thus reducing the amount of time I'm going to be blathering by half. I've already got some sites selected to showcase in my presentation, but if you've got a favorite political or academic weblog that you think is important or interesting, and worth a mention, please post it in the comments below, and I'll add it to my talk.

Syntax G551 Drivers

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In case a student ever brings you a Syntax brand (No, I never heard of them either) laptop, model G551, that someone has formatted without having access to the drivers, you can get them here. This student had even purchased an external wireless card, having not realized that there was one built in to her laptop, it just didn't have any drivers loaded, much like the sound card, or the video card... Syntax doesn't have an obvious link to those drivers on their site, but when I called them, they helpfully e-mailed me that link.