Problem: you want to make coffee. In front of you is a coffee maker with freshly-ground coffee, and filled with water. It is turned off. What do you do?
Answer: define a mapping from coffee to tea, thus reducing the problem to a previous joke.
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The blagosphere has been abuzz over the story of a
eucharist held “hostage”.
A celebration of first amendment freedom.
(Warning: what follows may be obvious or trivial to many.)
One of the cool things about AJAX is switching parts on and off: you
can make an element visible simply by
myElement.style.display = "block";
or hide it with
myElement.style.display = "none";
But the problem with this is that it requires the JavaScript script to
know a lot about the document. The example above doesn’t look too bad,
but what if you have something like a pulldown menu that appears when
you click a button?
Let’s say that originally, the button is gray and has a “+” icon next
to the text. When you click on it, the menu becomes visible, but the
button also changes to red, and the “+” icon changes to “-“, to show
that the menu is active.
Now you have all sorts of CSS resources that you have to keep track
of. It would be nice to put them in the .css file, with the
rest of the style stuff.
One thing that’s always bugged me with the
“good shepherd”
metaphor is that while a good (or at least competent) shepherd will
protect sheep from predators, disease, weather, etc., he does so
mainly because he doesn’t want wolves to eat his sheep before he gets
a chance to turn them in to lamb chops himself.
Of course, that’s probably not something he wants to tell the sheep.
Pink Floyd
lyrics
below the fold.
As hacks go, this one is pretty obvious, but I thought I’d throw it
out there anyway.
Let’s say there are three stylesheets you want to use on your web
page: one for all browsers (style.css), one for browsers with
JavaScript enabled (style-js.css), one for browsers without
JavaScript (style-nojs.css). This can be useful for things
like “display the fancy drop-down menu only if the browser supports
JavaScript; display the plain-HTML menu only if the browser doesn’t
support JavaScript”.
The common stylesheet is pretty standard:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"/>
The one for browsers that don’t support JavaScript is also pretty
easy: that’s what <noscript> is for:
<noscript> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style-nojs.css"/> </noscript>
Finally, what’s the best way to have different behavior in browsers
that support JavaScript? Why, run a script, of course:
document.write('n');
Republicans (natch) have introduced yet another “Defense” of Marriage amendment bill.
It’s co-sponsored by Larry “Wide Stance” Craig and David “Diaperman” Vitter.
This has got to be a joke. No one can be that irony-blind.
At a time when I, like a lot of the country, was starting to suffer from outrage fatigue, it seems that today brought a higher-than-usual number of news stories in the “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” department.
One of Erik Prince’s companies (no, not Blackwater; another one) invokes Shari’a law when it’s convenient:
RALEIGH – To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using Islamic law, known as Shari’a.
Last year, they tried arguing that the airline was a government contractor, and individuals can’t sue the government, but judges didn’t buy that. So now they’re arguing that since the crash was in Afghanistan, the case is subject to Afghan law, which is basically Shari’a.
Remember when questions like “Is it okay to torture people as a matter of government policy?” were no-brainers?
Ah, those were simpler days. Yesterday, John Yoo, the guy who came up with the legal rationalization for Gitmo and torture, in testimony before Congress wouldn’t say whether the president has the right to order that someone be buried alive.
In a blast from the past, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington regales us with last year’s hit single, “The Vice President Isn’t In the Executive Branch“.
Reuters reports
that Spain is expected to pass a law granting rights to non-human apes:
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s parliament voiced its support
on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what
will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called
for such rights for non-humans.
Dembski’s
reaction:
Here is one consequence of evolution being used to justify
strict continuity between humans and other forms of life. Discovery
Institute’s persistent stress on humans being made in the image
of God and that not being a privilege extended to the rest of the
animal world makes more and more sense. [Slippery slope
snipped.]
I just heard that George Carlin died on Sunday.
Well, shit.
Fuck.
Piss, cunt, motherfucker, cocksucker.
Tits.
I first ran into his Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV when I was, oh, twelve or thirteen. At the time, I thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Later, I decided it wasn’t actually all that funny; that the humor came entirely from the fact that you’re not supposed to say those words—in other words, it was an elaborate poop joke.
Still later, I listened to the sketch again, and realized that no, it’s funny even if you’re not shocked by words like “cocksucker”. And while the humor is based on the fact that you’re not supposed to say words like that, it’s more subtle than just a poop joke; it’s more of a commentary on society, and the interaction between the meaning of words and their connotations.
But to hell with that. Here’s a sketch of Carlin’s that’s all about death and heaven:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqVVENiY2c&hl=en]
And finally, let’s thank the sun for the fact that we had Carlin as long as we did. And Joe Pesci, if you’re listening, please make sure he’s not in any discomfort.