This one caught my eye because it's similar to the other Metamorph themes that I've converted into styles for Movable Type so far. I'm not sure if I want to release two versions of it when I'm done. The toolbar at the top was something that I added to the template markup, but I could see some people not wanting to alter their template markup. Anyway, it's coming along very well now. Quite frankly, this work is a bit on the back burner for me right now because I have a lot of other things going on. One thing that'll hopefully prove to be useful for me in the future is the Firebug plugin for Mozilla. It's really cool, how it lets you right click on a DOM element in the page and "inspect it." It seems like it might be a very useful tool for shaving some time off of a future conversion project by allowing me to focus less on matching HTML and CSS, and more on just saying "oh, this element has these properties, let me throw them in there."
For explaining why the decrepit American auto industry is failing. The screenshot to the left shows the three closest competitors that I could find to the Honda Civic Coupe on the General Motors website. They all come in at at least $1,000 more than the Civic in their MSRP. They same is true of their price relative to the Toyota Corolla.Is it any wonder, then, why people would no longer be buying these cars? When you make a product that is more expensive, less reliable and that doesn't even have a very good image, you can't exactly expect to do well in the market.
The unions and the big 3 are made for one another. Between expensive, ugly, unreliable designs and overpriced labor, what could possibly go wrong?
I know a company in the area where this would actually be taken seriously if it happened there... I guess it's true what they say about the best comedy having an element of truth to it.
I had a show on Physics and alternate universes on as background noise tonight, and one of the scientists was going on about different universes being out of phase, but in the same place as ours. Thus, he said, dinosaurs could be rampaging through your living room and you'd never know it.
And yet, these people call us crazy when we talk about a "spiritual world."
And yet, these people call us crazy when we talk about a "spiritual world."
Movable Type used underscores in the past to represent spaces in file names. For example, hello_word.html instead of hello-world.html. If you create an Apache error handler in PHP, you can use the following code sample to redirect from the old style to the new style without any problems:
$str = $_SERVER{'REQUEST_URI'};That will convert a request for, say, http://www.domain.com/2008/11/hello_world.php into http://www.domain.com/2008/11/hello-world.php. I'm using that now in my HTTP error handler.
$matches = array();
if (preg_match("/\/[\d]+\/[\d]+\/([\w]+_)+[\w]+\.(html|php)/", $str, $matches))
{
$filename = str_replace("_", "-", $matches[0]);
if (file_exists("." . $filename))
{
header ('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently');
header ('Location: '. "http://www.codemonkeyramblings.com" . $filename);
}
}
Proposition 8 was an unsung victory for defenders of individual liberty. Wait, I know what many people will say to this. How can a measure that prevents gay couples from getting a marriage license be beneficial to the defense of individual liberty? It's because that vote represented a line drawn in the sand, even if a thin one, preventing the government from furthering its control over the institution.
As it currently stands, there is nothing short of the problem of finding a pastor, priest or rabbi who is willing to perform the marriage rite that is stopping most gay couples from getting married. They may not necessarily be legally married, but there is nothing stopping them from having a marriage in every other respect, including the public sanctification of their relationship and vows. This issue is really about other legal topics such as power of attorney and employer benefits than marriage itself, at least on the legal front.
The fact is, proponents of state licensing of gay marriages are generally in favor of using the power of the state to force society to accept homosexuality and gay marriage. They know that in a society based on a more concrete notion of freedom of association, that their views will have a hard time competing for dominance, and so they seek a short cut through the state.
In this day and age, it's refreshing to see some small, if temporary, victory in preventing the further politicization of an aspect of our culture. American politics are increasingly totalitarian in the literal sense that totalitarianism was explained by its proponents in the early 20th century: everything is political; every issue is up for debate before the legislature. One of the best defenses of individual liberty is oppose every attempt to politicize aspects of our culture.
Liberal opposition to Proposition 8 is understandable, but libertarian opposition is not, considering that the one real libertarian position on marriage is that it should be a private institution, unregulated by the state between consenting adults. In that sense, Proposition 8 was also a libertarian victory, as it slowed down the state regulation of marriage and might give libertarians ammunition to use with social conservatives to utterly abolish state licensing of marriage should the courts take this out of the voters' hands.
It's certainly educational to observe how many homosexual activists responded to the vote on Proposition 8. For them to compare their situation with that of black Americans is not just offensive, but ludicrous. Black Americans not only faced a whole host of very serious limitations on their legal rights, but often faced the imminent threat of violence should they even peacefully assert their rights. The biggest threat most of them will ever face is the possibility that somewhere, someone won't approve of them.
If most people aren't seeing this as a major civil rights battle, it's because it really isn't. Unlike being black or female, sexual orientation is something that can be controlled, hidden and denied. For millennia, priests practiced celibacy successfully in defiance of strong male heterosexual sex drives. Others have suppressed and denied impulses that their cultures have deemed immoral or depraved for equally as long. The defining difference between "women's rights" and "minority rights" versus "gay rights" is that short of plastic surgery and medical therapy, one cannot control, hide or deny their gender or race.
None of this is to say that homosexuals are inferior human beings who deserve less liberty. However, it's time for homosexuals to realize that their cause is not as worthy as that of women or blacks because what separates them from everyone else is most likely, at the biological level, merely a minor genetic defect. Likewise, defenders of individual liberty need to realize that even the bigots did everyone a favor here by temporarily delaying the state's advance on its control over even the definition of marriage.
It's possible that some of us have been wrong in judging many of the gay rights activists as being vicious totalitarian thugs in the aftermath of Proposition 8. So then, the challenge to them is to prove us wrong. They can start by offering up a counter proposition to dismantle state licensing of marriage in California and to allow each religious institution to define for itself what marriage is between consenting adult parties, as it always should have been. Surely, if this is really just about getting married, they can find willing parties among the Church of Scientology or the Unitarians at the very least.
As it currently stands, there is nothing short of the problem of finding a pastor, priest or rabbi who is willing to perform the marriage rite that is stopping most gay couples from getting married. They may not necessarily be legally married, but there is nothing stopping them from having a marriage in every other respect, including the public sanctification of their relationship and vows. This issue is really about other legal topics such as power of attorney and employer benefits than marriage itself, at least on the legal front.
The fact is, proponents of state licensing of gay marriages are generally in favor of using the power of the state to force society to accept homosexuality and gay marriage. They know that in a society based on a more concrete notion of freedom of association, that their views will have a hard time competing for dominance, and so they seek a short cut through the state.
In this day and age, it's refreshing to see some small, if temporary, victory in preventing the further politicization of an aspect of our culture. American politics are increasingly totalitarian in the literal sense that totalitarianism was explained by its proponents in the early 20th century: everything is political; every issue is up for debate before the legislature. One of the best defenses of individual liberty is oppose every attempt to politicize aspects of our culture.
Liberal opposition to Proposition 8 is understandable, but libertarian opposition is not, considering that the one real libertarian position on marriage is that it should be a private institution, unregulated by the state between consenting adults. In that sense, Proposition 8 was also a libertarian victory, as it slowed down the state regulation of marriage and might give libertarians ammunition to use with social conservatives to utterly abolish state licensing of marriage should the courts take this out of the voters' hands.
It's certainly educational to observe how many homosexual activists responded to the vote on Proposition 8. For them to compare their situation with that of black Americans is not just offensive, but ludicrous. Black Americans not only faced a whole host of very serious limitations on their legal rights, but often faced the imminent threat of violence should they even peacefully assert their rights. The biggest threat most of them will ever face is the possibility that somewhere, someone won't approve of them.
If most people aren't seeing this as a major civil rights battle, it's because it really isn't. Unlike being black or female, sexual orientation is something that can be controlled, hidden and denied. For millennia, priests practiced celibacy successfully in defiance of strong male heterosexual sex drives. Others have suppressed and denied impulses that their cultures have deemed immoral or depraved for equally as long. The defining difference between "women's rights" and "minority rights" versus "gay rights" is that short of plastic surgery and medical therapy, one cannot control, hide or deny their gender or race.
None of this is to say that homosexuals are inferior human beings who deserve less liberty. However, it's time for homosexuals to realize that their cause is not as worthy as that of women or blacks because what separates them from everyone else is most likely, at the biological level, merely a minor genetic defect. Likewise, defenders of individual liberty need to realize that even the bigots did everyone a favor here by temporarily delaying the state's advance on its control over even the definition of marriage.
It's possible that some of us have been wrong in judging many of the gay rights activists as being vicious totalitarian thugs in the aftermath of Proposition 8. So then, the challenge to them is to prove us wrong. They can start by offering up a counter proposition to dismantle state licensing of marriage in California and to allow each religious institution to define for itself what marriage is between consenting adult parties, as it always should have been. Surely, if this is really just about getting married, they can find willing parties among the Church of Scientology or the Unitarians at the very least.
For my Flash class, I had to add audio and/or video to my first homework assignment. Read on to see my semi-snarky addition to my first assignment, the "thank you card" from the government for giving up your house, so that property taxes could be raised.
Continue reading I couldn't help myself.
Rachel just got glasses, and looks very good in them. A lot of guys are apprehensive about this sort of thing, but not me because I had faith in her taste and it paid off when I saw what she had selected. You know you're a lucky man when your wife can do something that a lot of men are uneasy about and actually come out looking even better!
(This was submitted to Pajamas Media over the weekend, but unfortunately, they ran enough on this subject and thus couldn't consider it.)
Continue reading Why the Republicans lost.
