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Day One of the federal government shutdown, 2013 edition, was business as usual, at least when it came to each side trying to win the message war and keep the pressure on the political opposition in the hope of getting them to blink first.

President Obama had a White House Rose Garden event to mark what also was the first day individuals were able to enroll in the Affordable Care Act's health-insurance exchanges. With real people who would benefit from Obamacare arrayed behind him in a photo op, he used the moment to blast Republicans.

"They've shut down the government over an ideological crusade to deny affordable health insurance to millions of Americans," Obama said. "In other words, they demanded ransom just for doing their job."

Congressional Republicans worked a two-pronged strategy. First, they portrayed themselves as eager to negotiate with Democrats but disappointed that the other party declined to talk with them.

Second, they proposed a plan suggested by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to fund various federal agencies and services in a piecemeal way, like the National Park Service, Veterans Affairs and the District of Columbia, in a partial reversal of the shutdown.

They were so eager, in fact, that some House Republicans held a photo op where the other side of the table was empty (to symbolize that they lacked Democratic negotiating partners).

"I would say none of us want to be in a shutdown," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said. "The way to resolve our differences is to sit down and talk. And as you can see, there's no one here on the other side of the table."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., didn't spare the sarcasm: "Now that's really so unique," he said of the GOP photo op. "Has it ever been done before? Only 5(000) or 6,000 times since I've been in Washington."

Democrats were equally dismissive of House GOP idea of a piecemeal reopening of the government, which was aimed, in part, at making it appear that Democrats were the reason national parks remained closed. Jay Carney, the president's press secretary, said the proposal pointed to an "utter lack of seriousness."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader, reinforced his message that Democratic intransigence is to blame. "It's pretty clear to me, at least at this point, that neither the Senate Democratic majority nor the president of the United States have any interest whatsoever in entering into any discussions about how to resolve this impasse."

Shutdown Sidelight: The Battle Of The Mall

A group of World War II veterans found themselves in the shutdown news cycle Tuesday. The elderly men were confronted by barriers and police tape at the World War II Memorial, which was closed because of the shutdown.

But aided by Republican congressmen who included Louie Gohmert of Texas and Steve King of Iowa, the vets got in to the closed memorial, although it's not entirely clear how, according to The Washington Post.

Shutdown-related promotions sprung up around Washington. A local Italian restaurant offered free use of its private dining rooms to Obama, Reid and House Speaker John Boehner to negotiate over pasta.

Another local restaurant offered furloughed federal workers a free daily cup of coffee. Members of Congress, however, would be charged double the price.

It was proof that one person's shutdown is another's marketing opportunity.

No doubt most of you reading this post have looked at Yelp or Google+ Local to check the user reviews before you tried that fish store, bakery or even dentist. On occasion, you may have wondered if some of those reviews were too good to be true.

It turns out that some of them were.

New York's attorney general revealed the results of a yearlong investigation into the business of fake reviews. Eric T. Schneiderman announced Monday that 19 companies that engaged in the practice will stop and pay fines between $2,500 and $100,000, for a total of more than $350,000 in penalties.

Schneiderman said his office used undercover agents. One agent, posing as the owner of a yogurt shop in Brooklyn, called up search engine optimization companies and asked for help in combating negative reviews on consumer websites. In many cases, the agent was told that they would write fake positive reviews for a fee.

One of the reputation companies required its freelancers to have an established Yelp account more than three months old, and at least 15 reviews and 10 Yelp friends. The jobs paid the false writers — who lived as far away as Bangladesh and the Philippines — between $1 and $10 per review.

The investigation also uncovered businesses that did their own reputation management. For example, US Coachways, a charter bus company on Staten Island, had its employees write positive reviews and offered $50 gift certificates to customers who would do the same — without requiring those customers to reveal the gift.

Ratings website Yelp says it welcomed the crackdown. However, the company has also been accused of manipulating reviews on its site by merchants who claim Yelp offered to move positive feedback closer to the top of the page for a payment. Yelp denies this.

All Tech Considered

Dear Apple: Good Luck Against The Smartphone Black Market

These days, many people wear their vegetarianism as a badge of honor — even if it's only before 6 p.m, as food writer Mark Bittman advocates. (Actually, he wants us to go part-time vegan.) There's even a World Vegetarian Day, which happens to be today, FYI.

But more than 100 years ago, when Hitl, the world's oldest continually operating vegetarian restaurant, opened its doors in Zurich, it was an entirely different story.

"The first several years, people entered Hiltl through the backdoor," says Peter Vauthier, the head of Hiltl guest relations.

The Swiss, you see, have long been a pretty meat-loving bunch. "If you didn't eat meat, it meant you had no money," he says. Vegetarianism, in other words, was kind of a badge of shame.

The gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is growing, according to an analysis of IRS figures by an international group of university economists, and it hasn't been so wide since 1928.

The incomes of the very wealthiest 1 percent of Americans increased by 31.4 percent from 2009 to 2012. By contrast, the bottom 99 percent saw their earnings in the same period go up by just 0.4 percent. In 2012, the top 1 percent collected 19.3 percent of all household income and the top 10 percent took home a record 48.2 percent of total earnings, The Associated Press reports.

The result, according to the analysis by economists from the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University, who looked at 1913 onward, is the broadest income gap between super-rich and everyone else since just before the Great Depression.

The AP says:

"The top 1 percent of American households had pretax income above $394,000 last year. The top 10 percent had income exceeding $114,000.

"The income figures include wages, pension payments, dividends and capital gains from the sale of stocks and other assets. They do not include so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.

"The gap between rich and poor narrowed after World War II as unions negotiated better pay and benefits and as the government enacted a minimum wage and other policies to help the poor and middle class.

"The top 1 percent's share of income bottomed out at 7.7 percent in 1973 and has risen steadily since the early 1980s, according to the analysis."