Every now and again, something comes along.
Something that gives form to the formless.
Hours ago, I was sad for no reason, a formless sadness that I still carry with me, yes, and along with it a question. That question has been answered, and the answer is in all of you.

At least somewhat. The answer is common sense. The question is why the w3c is evil and arbitrary?
One leads to the other.
For your edification, I have devised a short list of excellently and expertly crafted pages. The reason is to elaborate a restriction that makes no sense, and is foolish and counter to Reason, which is to say contrary to learning, which is to say it would behoove a professor of knowledge of any kind to forego the step where he requires a page to validate with the w3c, which is to say, the champions of darkness.
The w3c sees themselves as the authority on web code. They try to push the xml and xhtml standard, call everything that uses it web2.0, and have an ongoing campaign of misinformation about what all these strictures and requirements actually mean. Here's the scoop: none of it means a damn thing.
Traditionally, when, say, a C compiler checks out your code and reports line by line errors, this means that any and every one of the things it brings up is keeping your code from working. Error means nonfunctional. If you have a bit of code that the compiler thinks is not spruce enough for its liking, but is not keeping your code from functioning, this is called a warning. You can almost always get away with having a warning or two in yer code. I admit that it is not something you want to go in planning to have, and some warnings do lead to actual errors.
However, having a real error always means that some part of your code is not cutting it, or at least not behaving as intended. It means you need to change something. It means you have done something wrong.
This is the power of the word. So today when you register an error with anything, you feel compelled to change it because you have grown up knowing what it is to be in error. The word has power to affect change in you. It comes with baggage of responsibility, liability, onus. You must fix the error because it is your error. It is a serious word for serious folk.
To see the word misused is an equally serious offense. Short of an assault on those who would correctly commit and call errors, misusing the word is an assault on language, which is an assault on meaning, which is why I called the w3c the champions of darkness before. Wicked, wretched, wrongful champions. They misuse the word error to mean warning. This is seemingly a simple mistake. Under most circumstances I would let the w3c sit in their ivory tower and pass judgements on just whatever they wished (as I commonly do the same thing myself), for what is good for the goose is good for the gander. No harm comes of it.

That is, until some harm does come. There are some professors aforementioned who require their students to validate project pages. The trick is that this is the kobayashi-maru, the test with no win condition, and from the sounds of the assignment, the professors aforementioned do not see it this way. They simply go about with the assignements, given a very easy way to grade it: did the page verify? No? Okay, a point off for the number of errors, or a set amount of points for the red light instead of the green, or whatever way to grade that you wish.

So here's my big idea. I'm going to find out how big a problem this is with the IT professors on campus. If some correction is in order, I shall demonstrate to them the following argument, and attach a plea for intercession on behalf of the poor shlubs who can't validate their damn code.
Validating your code is a meaningless activity. The w3c has no authority, power, or influence that's backed up by anything. Often they are not even correct, because here's the bottom line: if your code causes the compiler (er browser) to assemble the page in such a way that conveys your meaning to the user, then it works. There's no amount of valid or invalid that can impugn functional code by this criterion. It does not matter. The w3c is a meaningless organization, and no one should give a damn about their pointless standards. Coders push design. Designers push design. Random feckless organizations passing arbitrary measures from on high do not push design.
The following is a list of websites that do not validate by the w3c's standards.
Perhaps you have heard of them.

-www.google.com
-www.mezzoblue.com An obvious css master, responsible for csszengarden.
-www.apple.com
-www.microsoft.com
-www.sun.com
-www.dell.com
-www.gateway.com
-www.youtube.com
-www.ppi.co.jp Remember, this page is invalid. Your amazement should also be invalid.
-www.rit.edu
-www.harvard.edu
-w3schools.com That's right, a w3c page that doesn't check out. Fuck you guys.

Generally speaking you will find more pages that do not work than those that do. Also you will find more pages that work in browsers than those that do not. Funny that. Oh, and sadly I couldn't run the validator through itself, but for grins, try copy-pasting the source code for the validator into a new file and saving it as whatever doctype you wish.

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