Unfortunately it is deliberate. As a Caltech student I told them not to do this, but they thought it was edgy and hip.

Maybe you should give them the link to this discussion. They'll learn that we're not on their site to be amazed by the fact they know basic html and we'd prefer our articles more readable.

You can congratulate them on completely breaking the pagedown key then.

Why is it that I always see this posted when talking about fixed banners? I've never had one break my page-down key? I know there's something I'm missing, what is it?

Probably that when you page-down (eg spacebar on FF) the paging doesn't take in to account the fixed position element and so you miss out on that section of content

     1
     2
     3
    [4========]

4 is hidden by a fixed footer. When it pages up the next page is:

     5
     6
     7
    [8========]

and you've missed out on all the section 4 and 8 content.

So it's rather the facility of skipping by screenfuls of content rather than the key itself.

Ah okay, thanks. I figured I was missing something obvious.