W3C

As I am involved in Web development a lot I have some knowledge and opinions about validation.

First, validation is logically irrational. What one does is to compare a coded page that has to run in a piece of imperfect software called a Web browser to a library of standards that may or may not be supported expressly or correctly by the software people will use to access the Web site.

The W3C is a great idea and I am all for standards but it is an organization that has no authority to impose its will upon software makers. Browser makers with ideals may well endeavor to comply, while still supporting other technologies, either too new or not within the radar screen of the almost arbitrary standards of the W3C.

Microsoft is a big player in this area and will not soon even claim to endeavor to support the W3C recommendations fully or as defined. So, using a validator is about as sensible as using an Oxford English dictionary to correct New York City mobsters on their use of English. The Oxford dictionary is a fine standard to which one can aspire in English writing and usage, though it has no authority at all to impose its will on the streets of New York City.

A site can pass a validator with flying colors and still look broken or poorly rendered when viewed by a person using a browser. Unless, of course, you refrain from using a large portion of the technology available to you and design a look-alike template with lovely little blocks, borders and padding. You will then be YAWN compliant and meet the BAH (boring as hell) standards.

The W3C misuses the word "deprecated". In a world where the company that sets the standards actually makes the product, like Sun Microsystems and Java, the word "deprecated" carries some real weight and authority. It actually means that in either the next version or a near future version of their system, some things will actually cease to work and be removed. This is never the case with W3C recommendations. They have no power to deprecate anything. While no developer worth his salt uses a "center" tag or a "font" tag anymore, these tags sure still work and will work in the next versions of the browsers, though they've been "deprecated" for over 5 years. The strict and transitional modes are so buggy and inconsistent still that I think they are the real "quirks" modes.

The point is not that CSS isn't a better way, it's just that W3C validation is a fantasy land that may come true someday. As for today? No IE does not speak XML, it just happens to be forgiving about code style enough that it allows say a "br slash" without too much complaint.

CSS is just one part of the vehicle that is a browser, and sometimes good old fashioned technology like tires and windshield wipers are still very useful.

I love to hear people who have an underinformed religious zeal for W3C standards complain that the use of tables is deprecated except for use with "tabular data". So I ask, "What defines tabular data? " The answer is usually "things that want to be displayed in neatly aligned rows". Well that's cool, so if my divs won't line up at 100% height then I can use a table instead because I want my page "to be displayed in neatly aligned rows" ? Nevermind, I'll just use CSS and then fix it with Javascript. Hey, by the way, use of your car's air bag has been deprecated except for use in wrecks.

To recap, W3C has no real authority. Browsers are imperfect and inconsistent implementations of "standards", but are themselves the only really useful validation tool that matters. Sure some rendering time improvements come with CSS, but they are far more noticeable on old 300mhz computers.

No, none of this means that you don't need to learn CSS, of course you do, however, I think "people being ignorantly vain about the W3C and the implications of validation results" is now also "deprecated". No, genius-web-hero, not "depreciated", you are reading that wrong. Now YOU are deprecated and are slated to be removed from life, eventually.

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Same Old Snake Oil

A polygamist fugitive named Warren Jeffs was arrested recently. I notice this news more than others because I was raised as a "Mormon" and even used to be a missionary when I was 19 -21. I am now no longer subservient to any church.

I listen to X96 radio from "Hell" err...Salt Lake (streaming on the web). They mentioned the news, which I had heard on NPR anyway. The morning DJ's there, Kerry Jackson, Bill Allred and Gina Barberi, are dry, cynical and so much more enjoyable and real to listen to than "honking clown" DJs. They shouted something like "good, no more pliggin". Which is hilarious.

Anyone who asks me about it knows I think polygamy is evil. When the world's male and female population is near parity, polygamy simply means "many lonely men". Nature wants us each to have a mate. I think keeping more than one mate is fundamentally anti-social behavior that, perhaps indirectly, causes a lot of unhappiness and loneliness for others. I suppose not everyone is going to find someone, and life is not fair, but that's where laws and government have a role. It is good that we use our laws to enforce exploitative behaviors. Sure, not even the force of law would help me communicate better with women I like or be more attractive to them, but I like my chances in a country with no polygamy.

Warren Jeffs activities include but extend beyond polygamy.

It is almost uncanny how similar the life and behavior of a cult leader like Warren Jeffs is to that of LDS church founder Joseph Smith. Just a quick rundown. 1) Run your own city and take advantage of people's need for real estate 2) Marry teenagers to old men using social pressure 3) Hold your peers down by claiming exclusive prophetic status 4) Break laws so much of your church business must be held in secret...and so on.

Some Mormon's are stuck in cognitive dissonance about their own history, and would rather attack or review any other fact than those that touch upon threatening their beliefs. Some would rather believe things like "The Rosetta stone is a hoax" than accept that their 19th century founder had mistranslated an Egyptian scroll, for example. Facts, to many faithful, are really malleable or ignorable.

I see my friends or family placing faith in something where the investment of faith is uninformed and it is troubling and sad to me. I want them to have faith in themselves faith in their future but not faith in deceptive information held over them to maintain their loyalty...i.e. their lucrative tithing donations. It's only too bad that church systems are supported by so many people who reinforce eachother's cognitive dissonance and investment of faith in lies or under-reported history.

I agree with my blogging friend, Pete, of http://www.fiddley.com/ who says "I think a faith in Joseph Smith is misplaced by todays mormons...almost nothing about him represents modern mormonism he would not be welcome in today's church".

I don't think it means the LDS church should not exist. It should change, abandon the ridiculous and the irrational and become a community organization that can truly help people cope with their lives, truly care for eachother. Although, maybe they have to use the system they use to have enough power over people to exist, and keep people paying, and chasing that carrot of being "blessed".

Blessed is a fine word for "things are going well" like tires that are "inflated" are blessed with air (haha). But I am not sure a God arranges it or pushes it or causes it. Not that there isn't a God or couldn't be. I think if there is, God created the Universe and maybe IS the laws of physics. So sure you can thank God for every breath...but not just YOUR breaths exclusively.

Yet, as my friend Pete says, " Joseph Smith still didn't know shit about ancient Egyptian".

Religious searching is valid...but Mormons and many people of other faiths, do not search. They stop searching and buy all the stock answers given...so they no longer learn or their learning is stilted and uninformed. When you leave that faith, many great understandings are opened to you. Life can make more sense because you can see it for what it is. But other answers are no longer there...they are still just as open-ended as they are for all mankind until we all learn together what is true of life and the cosmos.

Pete: "It is like getting near the end of a crossword puzzle when you realize half your answers are wrong and you know that based on the latest answers you know are right so then the old ones become obviously false."

It's not easy to have to review your own irrational beliefs, but I would think being free of dogma is much more satisfying. You realize you can determine your own destiny and even make your own metaphor for the unexplained. You can update your understanding regularly to the best of human knowledge.

Mormons would say: "yah but what if God could tell you what is what." I agree that would be fantastic. Trouble is...there is no method of determining whether one man's fantasy is from God or not. That holy spirit is fickle, and tells muslims one thing and catholics another...and really....it is probably an innate human response from social bonding.

So, as the arrest of a Latter-day "Joseph Smith" takes place, if we can all agree that kind of behavior is not acceptable, maybe the church founded over 100 years ago by just such a character is not worth preserving and propogating. Bamboozled people can be humble enough to admit they were wrong and mourn the loss and become full, rational thinking human beings participating in the human experience rather then struggling to deny facts to preserve a fondly held faith that is having a hard time standing up to the cool winds of reason. The only alternative is one we all learned on the playground. Simply cover both ears, and repeat after me "la-la-la-la-la-la".
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Religion is not Science

I read about a Bible based museum today on Yahoo.

The founder, Ken Ham, says:
"If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that's our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,..."

I find this idea of teaching religious ideas as science appallingly flawed.

I cannot say there is no one out there...no smarter being somewhere across the galaxies who may be a God to us but is perhaps no god at all. I cannot say that there is no divine being outside the physics we know in some ulterior Universe. Maybe our entire Universe exists in some kind of multi-dimensional "Fish Tank" at the back of God's garage. I cannot rule it out.

With the same exact limitations, I believe no one can exact sharable facts about the will or nature of God outside the pursuits of science. My religion is everything I know, nothing more nothing less.

I can develop a spiritual life. I am able personally and feel spirituality, pray to and believe in whatever seems to give me the feelings I desire to have. I think we have adapted these mechanisms as human beings to help us reduce stress, focus on what we can manage and control at any given moment and not use our big pattern-finding, problem-solving brains to worry constantly.

We often see what we want to see. We gather evidence that supports our desired presumptions. Thus, something like the breaking of the Bosporus (around 5500 BC) in present day Turkey. This event allowed water from the Aegean Sea to flow into the once lower lying Black Sea. The breach may have flooded so many lands to such a great degree that many thought the world was flooded and wrote that in their traditions. Since this is a water world, there is evidence of flooding and ancient water flow almost everywhere. If a person imposes a token of belief upon the evidence it would be easy to gather hints of support in the natural world for what is believed. Such as in the case of a belief in a global flood. This is, however, the opposite of the scientific method. We must let evidence speak for itself and accept that our postulations must be negatable or may be entirely disproved by reality.

I imagine a news report from today being carried on as a story for many generations. It would eventually gain in fanciful proportion, the original context lost. Something like "It was as if the world were crashing down on us and it was the end!" could become "And behold, worlds did crash upon them in those end times.", after years of translation. These words and the value people place in them may be exploited to coax behaviors out of people, making religion a dangerous tool for manipulation. It always seems that religious people even recognize this kind of exploitation in "other people's" belief systems, their own somehow naturally immune.

When people attempt to connect their spiritual feelings in those personal experiences to "Knowledge" of the Universe or learning... It runs a great risk of producing conclusions that are nonsense, laden with bias, agenda and personal interpretation. Believing this way can be dangerous to society. Beliefs are a fine aspect of the human experience and can even inspire the labors of scientists, but beliefs are not science. The attempt to stretch this extrapolation is fraught with pitfalls of ignorance. It is a sadly self-imposed ignorance.

Many believers who inappropriately elevate the importance of their thinking over observed facts, sometimed fail to even study or consider the Universe, physics..the orbit or rotation of the moon...the science of evolution, the chemistry of life. They do not look and do not see. Fearing, perhaps that reason and knowledge might break the spell of comfort delusion provides.

Religious faith and scientific knowledge can share the same mind, but one must understand the personal emotional nature of the spiritual and not try to impose those feelings upon the search for facts, knowledge and understanding or especially, other people. Religion may have its place in spritual community, but is not something ever to be imposed upon scientific learning. It is simply out of its element in that regard.

Science is the pursuit of knowledge of what is. To a faithful person, it may be fine to believe science is the study of God's creation. The scientific method then let's God teach us about the world, by discovering the laws of nature and phsyics. Limiting the influence of our own presumptions about God and "what can be" according to the finite range of our own understanding.

The Bible is widely interpreted in conflicting ways. It was translated many times and modified by non-believers with intent to persuade or deceive. The Roman Emperor Constantine, a life long Pagan until his deathbed conversion to Christianity, spent much of his life guiding the process that would select which books even made it into the book. His motive was one of governing strength and political consensus, not a search for pure truth.

The Bible's components were written by the hands of imperfect people with limited understaning and knowledge. They used inherently limited human language and writing. The words were often handed down as traditions and only written down again many years later. Even if there is a God. Even if this God spoke to people, the Bible in hand now, is a highly human-influenced document. Endowing it with infallible authority is just irrational. Attempting to endow it with a sense of scientific authority is just not reasonable. It may have worth as human poetry, as a spiritual resource, but not as book of scientific knowedge of a study of nature, physics or biology or the like. Indeed, any seemingly scientific value gleaned from it is tainted by its very existence as an attempt to authorize the beloved book as a source of knowledge whose value is not scientific, but in the humanities.

Personal beliefs are simply beside the point of science. They have their place only in religious community, not in public teaching, debate or education. There we must let the facts of reality teach our open minds. We must allow ourselves to change what we believe about the sum of human knowledge as we learn more about the actual Universe we can observe, quantify for eachother and study. If we want to enjoy the escape faith provides, that is all good and well, but it is a something of a fantasy realm not to be misused as or confused with true knowledge.
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Christian Rapture Madness

With war erupting between Israel and terrorists in lebanon, many christian groups are talking about the rapture or "end times".

The valley of "Armageddon" possibly referring to the "Jezreel Valley" of northern Israel lies south and east of Haifa, an Israeli city which is in the news as a target of terrorist Katyusha soviet designed rockets. Christians believe a great battle will take place here at a time of "wars and rumors of wars". Some Christian attitudes seem to actually relish the prospect of war, killing and violence at the time of what they believe will be the second coming of a risen Jesus Christ.

This out-cry of a pending "rapture" is often accompanied with cognitive dissonance by the claim, from the christian bible book of Matthew chapter 24 verse 36, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven...". To yearn for the end times of war and violence seems in every reasonable way to be wholly inappropriate behavior for a human being especially one with a claim to christian beliefs. If there is a soul, if there is a God, surely Christians will meet their maker when they die, which may very well be much sooner than the arrival of a Messiah, if any exists. One would expect thoughtful selfless lovers of their fellow beings as christians claim to be, to pray for peace, to yearn for peace, to work for peaceful solutions.

Every thinking man should consider that faith-based understandings are no guarantee. Our higher level reasoning and critical thinking skills have evolved so that we can rely on our knowledge and understanding to make well judged decisions. Some parts of the brain are very good at "following the leader" and blindly obeying. Religious movements like radical islam are really just mind controlling cults where massive amounts of under-informed under-educated people are brainwashed into believing things that aren't true. Longing for the end of the world only combats ignorance with ignorance.

Maybe there is no savior. Maybe we are in charge of our own destiny and must work out our own salvation and peace. If this is so, then yearning for a catastrophic end to the world is a deeply pernicious belief system. I know some religious people don't recycle or reduce their energy consumption because "it will all end"..."jesus will fix it".

Even if there is a higher being that will emerge from the unseen spiritual realms to set foot on a battle field and settle the differences of Arabs, Jews, Christians and every other warring faction, especially in this case as in any other, we will be accountable for our actions. Whether or not there is a God, or a messiah, "longing for the end" is not an acceptable way to proceed for the world. It is entirely senseless even from a christian point of view.
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Lebanon and Israel in conflict

It is almost a given fact that Israel should address its complaints about terror groups in Lebanon to Syria and Iran. Yet, Israel is not entirely wrong to expect, in principal, that Lebanon have charge of its own regions and people. Lebanon has been defacto occupied for so many years (in part by Syria and in part by Israel) that it is understandable that it would take time for the national government to gain control over all the regions of the country. Israel used to be the authority governing southern Lebanon.

When Israel backed out of Lebanon, it seemed to be part of a strategy to seek a peaceful status quo in the region. Israel backed out of Gaza as well and might eventually have gradually stepped back from occupation of the larger West Bank region. Sadly, the illegitimate terror group called hezbollah believed their assaults actually led to the Israeli withdrawal. Lebanon, though only emerging from Syrian occupation in the past year, has the moral responsibility to govern its own lands and to disallow such terror groups to exist. Such groups should be eradicated at best or at least prevented from importing weapons and holding political power. Lebanon's government seems not only to have been inactive in disarming the terror group, but entirely complicit in allowing hezbollah to continue to exist in a militant form. Weapons and equipment were imported right through the national airport.

As a westerner, I feel a kinship of culture with many Lebanese people. I understand it must feel horrifying to endure being bombed. I know there are peaceful people in Lebanon who feel disengaged from the terror groups within the land which are foreign backed groups anyway. The death of innocent civillians is awfully tragic and sad. However, The shocking fact of civillian deaths is precisely by design of the terrorist groups who situate their infrastructure near innocent civillians. Lebanon's quiet tolerance and inaction against these extra-legal parts of their own country is at the root of the latest conflict. Israel has every right to dismantle a terror group for attacking and bombing its citizens. The international community has every right to expect that Lebanon would not tolerate such groups within their borders. The government of Lebanon has not made any plea for international assistance to reign in these groups.

The claim of so called "resistance" by hezbollah, and also of the Palestinian terror groups, is a mask for the wish to eliminate Israel, an internationally recognized, legitimate country. Syrian's and others who oppose Israel refer to "the occupation". In the west, it is sometimes assumed they are talking about occupation of Gaza or Lebanon or the West Bank. It is, however, most likely they are talking about the existence of Israel, the occupation of what they perceive to be their land, all the way to the Mediterranean sea.

While Arab countries and the terrorist groups they support keep believing they should eradicate Israel, the conflict will exist. One simple solution is for Arab countries to recognize Israel and accept the will of many nations and of the Israelis themselves that there should be a Jewish homeland in a place of ancient Jewish presence. The Arab's have enough land from Morocco to Indonesia to be calm about this once and for all. Perhaps the persistence of this conflict is related to the way in which many Arab families educate their children, repressing them with ignorance so that they may be recruited to give their lives for this hopeless cause. Rather they should teach them math, science, economics and most of all history so that they can understand the reason and need for a Jewish sliver of land among endless Arab horizons.

In any case, No nation can continue to allow terror groups to thrive within their borders and do so without eventual reprisals and consequences. If Lebanon finds Israel's attacks horrifying, let them recognize that Israel has no cause to attack Lebanon other than the illegitimate group Lebanon complicitly harbors. If senseless bombing is truly wrong, let the Lebanese people be angry with hezbollah, Syria and Iran for carrying out and supporting such senseless attacks on Israel's innocent civillians for so long. Arab countries continue to cling to the dream that Israel will one day be gone and they can own the entire land for themselves. It may just be that clinging to this dream will cause them to lose more and more of what they now have. The Arab neighbors of Israel may do well to see reason and support Palestinians in living a prosperous life with all that they do have instead of grinding them to grist against the state of Israel.

Thinking of Israel as occupied Arab land is an outmoded and irrational point of view. If the claim to territory because of past authority were a legitimate argument, then the whole region could just be British land again...British land occupied by Arabs. That idea IS ridiculous, of course, just as ridiculous as the idea that Palestinians must own all of Israel. The Arab's can prevent this question from being decided by an all out war, like the 1948 or 1967 wars. How many more wars will it take to make the point?

There was a time when Palestinians went to work each day in Israel, ate bread baked in Israeli bakeries and drank milk from Israeli dairies. They lived together as one people, perhaps with varying political or religious views, and a few check-points, but one people in one land. Jews and Arabs are brothers anyway. Besides, nothing is more sacred than human life, not a belief system, not a temple site, not a spit of land.
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Marriage

I am single. I would love to be married, have kids with some wonderful woman I love, and enjoy family life. I have not had the chance to do that yet. I won't marry frivalously and I will marry for life someday.

As I look at the national debates about what kinds of unions are allowable. I settled on these thoughts. Corporations can marry technologies and business plans. The word "Marriage" has many uses. The word ought to be applicable to social unions of any kind.

As a mental exercize, imagine two elderly sisters whose husbands have died. They share living expenses and want legal access to one another in hospital situations and even want the right to leave inheritance to one another. Maybe they are affectionate, hugs and consoling words, shared tears. Though this last part of the situation has no bearing on the legal needs they have. They ought to be allowed to marry finances, marry their legal access rights to one another, marry their wills if they so desire. I use this example to take the specific manner and issue of shared affection out of the equation for a minute and just look at human rights and choice.

I suppose, despite the efforts of my upbringing to repress my thinking on this, I do not believe it is socially destructive for women to marry women and men to marry men. The social concerns at hand seem to be the effect on overall happiness, in society, of the happiness of individuals. I think people are far happier when they can do what they like, so to speak.

In a wider view, there are other issues involving the needs of the society concerning the propogation of taxpayers. Certainly sexuality and the ability to reproduce are not mutually exclusive at all. Homosexuals often have children. Maybe there are children from an earlier relationship, maybe by nonsexual means such as cell donors and in-vitro fertilization etc. The reproduction aspects are not a threat to society. Overpopulation may be the real threat.

So why not say that anyone can marry? I suppose the age of marriage is tied to economics, education, higher living standards and maturity and readiness of human beings to marry. A reasonable age is selected by our culture. This really distinguishes us from, for example, bacteria who reproduce as fast as physically possible. We are human beings. Marriage and reproduction age is an expression of our power over our own destiny.

This debate sometimes leads to "group" marriage or polygamy. While adults can do what they choose and life is not perfect, polygamy does pose a "numbers" problem. Nature likes to generally balance male to female population in reproductive years. There are 106 male babies born per 100 female babies in the world. This ratio seems to correct for some of the loss of males due to higher risk activities, such as war, living with testosterone and not having the protective estrogen defenses against disease to the degree women of child bearing years have. Nature wants everyone to find a mate. Polygamy is socially damaging, skewing the numbers leaving some alone.

I am not sure there is a debate about choice vs. biology among sexual preferences. We all have the in-born ability to choose, that IS our nature. Though, no amount of mocking, laughter, ridicule, or suspicion of my being a single man in his 30's will ever change my heterosexual blood. No amount of therapy, indoctrination, guilt, religion or fear will ever make me not want what I want. Sure, I don't find every woman equally attractive, but I know what I desire. My experience of sexuality is that it is part of my nature. Not even the pain, humiliation, loneliness and rejection I have experienced pursuing women throughout my few years will have a hope of changing my desire to love and marry some special woman.

I would never try to tell someone else that they are choosing who they are or don't feel what they feel. I would reject that out of hand if it were imposed on me in that way. Even though I may personally not understand someone else's desires, I strongly believe that every human being has the right to pursue happiness and have the benefits of social union as they please. If the tables were turned and my heterosexuality were socially banned, I could never stand for being denied my right to woo, date, marry and love a woman. Not on pain of death. Though, I still can't get a damn date.
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Immigration

During the immigration protests this year I heard some possibly illegal immigrants shout the message and hold the banner "No One is Illegal". I know this is supposed to appeal to my humanity, inviting me to remember that people coming over the border are human beings. I agree with the idea that human beings are all inherently valuable.

I came from another country. I was born into American citizenship on foreign soil because I had an American mother at birth. As I think about the claim "No One is Illegal" I see it both as an affirmation of human rights, but I also see it as a threat to national sovereignty.

We human beings have the remarkable ability to determine our destiny. America comes from the people's belief in and respect for the rule of law, starting with the Constitution. Our mutual acceptance of and belief in law is the way we bring justice and access to opportunity to our lives.

Some people are "Illegal". They lack a clearly documented identity, often do not carry insurance and cannot be tracked with criminal records or credit histories. We have a 12 million member class of under-identified people who should not be above the law and need to go about obtaining legal status. It may mean they must return to a home country and re-apply eventually, or pay a penalty for having violated the law.

The thing, this country, unto which people are coming, exists because of respect for and enforcement of laws, at its very core. Saying "No One is Illegal" is a "feel good" statement that is false and actually opposes the sovereignty of the United States. I am happy to see this country's demographics change and grow, this is our legacy. Whether Mexican, East Indian, West African, Asian, Eastern European, Irish, Italian or from anywhere, I believe every American resident should be documented and have respect for the laws of the land. If that means they cannot come here, then maybe it means reforming one's beloved homeland to have greater respect for law.

Many countries can meet the American standard of government or even improve upon it if they keep their citizens at home by improving their chances in their own borders. In any case, America without respect for the law, becomes something else. No matter how many immigrants try to shout it down for their own happiness and convenience, at the end of the day, they wanted to be here because of the character our nations citizens provide to our country through laws.
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Against Torture

I have stood in Het Graven Steen in Gent, Belgium. This is an old castle that also contains a kind of museum of torture. Some ominous and horrible devices are shown that use starvation, drowning, stabbing or prolonged discomfort as means of torture. I recall thinking that we were beyond such things. How relieved I felt that as a modern, enlightened culture we would not use or face such things.

I believe the United States has held and should renew and preserve a place of leadership in the world as a society that respects people and is governed by laws that specify and gradually curtail the means of punishment allowable for crimes by the seriousness of the offense.

Maybe in our times, new levels of awfulness have arisen. There are now crimes that I hear of that I never even imagined when I was younger. Sometimes our laws are not equipped to handle these developments in a way that seems satisfying, appropriate or even necessary for our safety.

I must admit, the mentality of those who would attack the U.S. seems, to me, to be less evolved than it should be. It is like our enemies are acting on an instinctive, animal, territorial level driven by primal fear. How else could inhumane and murderous acts be justified? Yet, we should not allow these developments to justify the regression of our own culture. I want to stand up and say that civilized nations are better than that. I think we can use our intelligence to solve complex problems without resorting to torture.

There should be limits on the means of interrogation. No matter what the threat to our national security, debasing ourselves is a threat to our national integrity. What makes our security so worth protecting is our values, our staunch unwillingness to reduce ourselves to the level of those who hate us. How can we say that slowly modernizing cultures should look to us as an example of why they should westernize when we are abandoning our distinctive and precious good qualities?

We need to fight the ignorance of those who do not value human life. We need to keep our values intact to demonstrate the preferability of tolerant, mixed, secular societies, and the glory of the freedom to choose. If we have anything that could be construed as torture in our detention facilities, we should eliminate it now and turn from that path to one of a more enlightened society.

Let us look to the British example of preserving Habeas Corpus in all the world, with no exceptions beyond the seas. Then criminals can be tried and, as appropriate, receive sentence or release. There are other solutions to the worlds problems beyond torture and endless detention.
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Mac Virus Debate

Those new Mac ads are funny. Sure the Mac is "Better" in many ways. People who use them more get that more. At my office we have this debate all the time. Every time someone gets a virus, I simply have to remind them that the Mac I use still has no virusses. Inevitably the debate engages. "No one uses a Mac" they say, so that's why there are no virusses (viri?) for Mac. Well, this is simply wishful thinking.

I have used every platform as part of my work and personal experience, including the Mac platform. Not to show my age, but I am certain I have had my hands on the keys and my eyes on the screen of every computer platform available to the public. Because I am a "power user" I know every machine has flaws and weaknesses and EVERY platform has crashes. I use a Mac at home and at work (I do use other computers for testing as well) and I know I have experienced some lockups and crashes even on the latest Tiger OS on my dual G5. Bad hardware or software can cause a Tiger G5 to do the "We're hangin' here" thing. What I don't have on my Mac is any virusses.

Now, back in the OS 9 days, I had the occassional virus. Why? Because people try to write them and system weaknesses can be exploited. So why are there no virusses for my Mac running OS X? The reasons are combined. People don't write virusses for Mac because they are harder to exploit. The Mac market is large enough to have a percentage of the 100's of thousands of virusses created...but it has none. Is it because it has fewer users? This is true...but it is only part of the story. It is also less exploitable. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but the security patches are way ahead of attempts to exploit the platform.

See, people want a virus to propogate like wild fire to millions of machines. The Mac market is big enough for that, but the Mac is very much ineffective at allowing rogue code access to system resources. So, the real reason writing a virus for the Mac is unrewarding, is that the system is not as easy to exploit. Thus, the rewards drop right off to zero. Zero is the amount of virusses I have on my Mac.

Sure, the rewards for exploiting the Mac to spread a virus would be greater if the market share were reversed, but the ability to exploit the system would still be just as unrewarding to a virus writer, as compared to the currently popular target. Is it possible that someone will be able to find a way to exploit the Mac for virus propogation? Sure, but that is like the footpath to heaven, not the 96 lane freeway to hell.
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Written in a Book

Listening to a radio station in my area which is ultimately owned by a church, I noticed they had a quick two minute anti- Davinci Code editorial.  The station presents itself as a news and traffic station and is said not to proselytize its owner's faith, although I hear an "on message" news or editorial item every 10 minutes on the nines, so to speak. The amazing irony is that the editorial contained the phrase "Just because it is written in a book doesn't mean it is true" as it tried to dissuade people from paying attention to the Davinci Code. I would refer the religious believers back to their own belief in things in books they believe are true. 

To truly understand life and the nature of the universe we live in, we must be ready to accept that things we hold true can be proved wrong by greater understanding. The religious method is to seek to confirm truth by personal spiritual experience. The trouble is, personal convictions cannot be peer reviewed or tested. Was Jesus divine? What is divinity? Is there a God? What is the nature of God?

There may well be a divine creator and many people seem to feel that there is. We will never understand the nature of God when we study our own inventions, like religion. When we seek to expand the edges of human knowledge and understanding with hope and wonder and the most rational, objective scrutiny, then this study of the known or study of knowledge will guide us all to real, verifiable and valueable truth.

What is the study of knowledge? SCIENCE.

Carl Sagan said, "It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."

And that is why I don't place a lot of value on religiously funded editorials. Just because it's on the radio, doesn't make it true. Sometimes you have to follow the money and see who's talking.
=sw