I learned programming in high school through three classes. I started out doing visual basic which I think is a good platform to learn the basics of programming but you'll need to move on to something like C or Java so you can get experience with object oriented programming.

The FDA is only banning artificially produced trans fats.

Yeah I'm curious as well. I thought the point of the article was that Japanese web design is more complicated and busy than western web design. Other than a few loud fonts I didn't really see that in the examples.