Monthly Archives: March 2005

A Statement About Tolerance And Diversity

Posted on by
CLERICS.jpg

Is this a cause for great joy? Are the three great religions united at last? Is peace about to break out in the Middle East?

Well, no.

International gay leaders are planning a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City, home to three great religious traditions.

Now major leaders of the three faiths – Christianity, Judaism and Islam – are making a rare show of unity to try to stop the festival. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

“They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable,” Shlomo Amar, Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi, said yesterday at a news conference in Jerusalem attended by Israel’s two chief rabbis, the patriarchs of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches, and three senior Muslim prayer leaders. “It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it.”

::heavy sigh::

Why, why can’t they all be against something that matters, like for instance war? Terrorism? Hate? Intolerance? Killing other people for the sake of religion? Why is it that homosexuality trumps all of the above?

Apparently, the forces of evil (that’s the “Religious Right,” nu?) have succeeded in exporting their brand of judgemental intolerance to the Holy Land. A prominent clergyman active in the anti-gay movement has been busy makin’ contacts, rilin’ clerics up in Israel.

In spite of appearances, there is a lot of support for the festival in Israel, and in fact smaller gay pride parades have been held in Jerusalem for the past 3 years without incident. Some other religious leaders have something positive to say:

Organizers of the gay pride event, Jerusalem WorldPride 2005, said that 75 non-Orthodox rabbis had signed a statement of support for the event, and that Christian and Muslim leaders as well as Israeli politicians were expected to announce their support soon. They said they were dismayed to see that what united their opponents was their objection to homosexuality.

“That is something new I’ve never witnessed before, such an attempt to globalize bigotry,” said Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of Jerusalem Open House, a gay and lesbian group that is the host for the festival. “It’s quite sad and ironic that these religious figures are coming together around such a negative message.”

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, co-chairwoman of the festival and the rabbi of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, a gay synagogue in New York City, said the controversy was another sign that each religion had become polarized between its liberal and conservative wings.

The global Anglican Communion split deeply over homosexuality in the last two years after its American affiliate ordained an openly gay bishop and the Canada affiliate decided to allow blessings of same-sex unions.

“I reject that they have the right to define religion in such a narrow way,” Rabbi Kleinbaum said of religious leaders who denounce homosexuality. “Gay and lesbian people are saying we are equal partners in religious communities, and we believe in a religious world in which all are created in God’s image.”

I reject that they have the right to define religion in such a narrow way, too, Rabbi Kleinbaum.

via ***Dave

CSS Drop Shadows

Posted on by
4

I noticed a lot of visitors are arriving here looking for information on adding drop shadows to images. As I flailed helplessly at this for a long time before finally settling on a simple method, I thought I’d add a little documentation. The previous entry I had on this was a little sketchy in that department. Also, some discussion popped up regarding text wrap at the excellent Learning Moveable Type site, so I thought I would elaborate on my method for handling images.

First off, you need to go to A List Apart and read Sergio Villarreal’s excellent tutorial. Copy the two shadow files and upload into your images folder. I would only add that I couldn’t get this to work unless I used a complete URL path to the shadow background images; this may be a quirk of my Moveable Type installation. Don’t change any of the values; this method uses negative border values to “pull” the image and background image slightly out of alignment with each other. It also contains a built-in hack that plays well with “cough”Microsoft“cough” non-compliant browsers, which is why there are two background images.

You’ll need to add a new .img-shadow class to your CSS file. I still also have .floatimgleft for those times when a shadow isn’t needed, such as using images that already have their own shadow or frame. Change your image URL path to reflect your own domain as shown in the code below:


.img-shadow {
float:left;
background: url(http://your.domainhere.com/images/shadowAlpha.png) no-repeat bottom right !important;
background: url(http://your.domainhere.com/images/shadow.gif) no-repeat bottom right;
margin: 10px 0 0 10px !important;
margin: 10px 0 0 5px;
}
.img-shadow img {
display: block;
position: relative;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #a9a9a9;
margin: -6px 6px 6px -6px;
padding: 4px;
}

And then in your blog entry, wrap the div tag around the img tag. In practice, I have a small text file that’s pre-loaded with the following HTML, and I just paste the code into it from the “show me the HTML” popup after uploading the image:

UPDATE: Now that I’m using Firefox, I’ve got snippets of code pre-loaded in a plug-in called BBCode, although I may be upgrading THAT plugin soon. Anyway, I currently handly drop shadows that need to be cleared differently, because the clear:both style doesn’t work well with the current 3 column structure on the main index page. So to get it to clear, I had to add a “floatclear” style, and then wrap a clearing div aroud the drop shadow div:

.floatclear {
display:inline-block;
width:100%;
}
/* Hide from IE-mac \*/
* html .floatclear {
height:1%;
width:auto;
}
.floatclear {
display:table;
}
/* End hide from IE-mac */

The above clearing code is adapted from the one at 456 Berea St. It uses the Holly Hack, which may stop working entirely in the next version of IE/Win. Booo!

This clears the floated image if desired and subsequent text or images fall below it. Otherwise, the image floats to the left and text wraps around it on the right, which I normally do for images smaller than about 200 pixels wide. For anything wider, I include the clearing style/div.

You can get pretty elaborate – and also it’s simple to add a link to the image by selecting the img and clicking the “URL” button, as seen below (although the link in this example will just lead to the full size image).

Every now and then I goof up and the background images don’t play well with the image; it’s almost always due to a missing ” character somewhere, which is why I’ve taken to pasting from a text file rather than typing by hand. If I wanted to get really ambitious I suppose I could write a macro to handle this automagically, but I’ve got it down to a routine now.

And the end result, including obligatory “cute cat” image is below.

stueycouch007.jpg

The cute cat is on the left.

UPDATE II: Well, hell, after switching to WordPress years ago, all DIVs got the two classes stripped and had to be fixed by hand. Still using the same method. Two wrapped DIVs, one with the class “img-shadow” and one with the class “floatclear” (which is omitted if the image is to have the text wrapped around it.

Remember Terri Like This

Posted on by
terrischiavo.jpg

This was who Terri Schiavo was 15 years ago or more: vibrant, pretty, bright. She was a real knockout, in fact. No wonder her husband fell in love witih her at first sight and fought so hard for her care in the first few years after her collapse, coma, and entry into a persistent vegetative state. He did everything he could to bring her back, but after several years he came to accept what the doctors told him as far back as 1994: her cerebral cortex was “all but gone.”

11 years ago. “All but gone.” Michael and the doctors have known this for more than a decade, but the news services dutifully reported the point of view promulgated by her too-hopeful parents and their slithering, cynical supporters from the right-to-life movement. Over and over again. And gullible people took up the cause, mostly on the basis of the repetitive “Terri is responsive” message that took over the airwaves for the last month.

And of course Slytherin, the forces of conservative righteousness, will continue to use her for their own purposes; apparently they think promulgating this “culture of life” at all costs and beyond all sense strengthens their hand in the coming judicial appointments battles this summer.

However, don’t be too sure. Not everyone is gullible, and not all on the right are in lock-step with that “vast right-wing conspiracy” (that cliche used to be a joke, and now it’s not so funny). There’s a hell of a lot of disapproval of the way Congress and the Resident juggled their schedules for a look-good resolution designed to please the extreme Right. It now seems there are two kinds of conservatives at last, or at least the news services have finally figured it out: there are “social conservatives” and “process conservatives,” and the latter are justifiably horrified at the precedent set by the almost certainly unconstitutional Congressional intervention.

It was, in fact, an appellate judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush who wrote an opinion Wednesday criticizing the president and Congress for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

My sympathies and condolences to her family. I’m sorry she was so… cruelly used by people who didn’t have her best interests at heart.

A Bit More Tar Talk

Posted on by

The recaplet for last night’s AWESOME double episode:

Wait, am I high, or did that really happen?

Okay, this two-hour extravaganza starts out in South Africa, where Ray and Deana gut out a Fast Forward and Rob and Amber chase it in vain, putting the latter in the back of the pack temporarily. A Detour sends a couple of teams through a fairly cushy scavenger hunt and sends the rest into a cave, where Gretchen manages to fall and cut her head. And as head wounds do, it bleeds a lot, which is pretty scary. Ray and Deana win that leg, and win cars, which will bother me endlessly, and the injured Gretchen and Meredith pull up in last place.

Fortunately, it’s non-elimination, which seems kind of good, since medical emergencies are not a good way for victory and defeat to be decided. Oh, and they take all of Gretchen and Meredith’s stuff, which seems kind of harsh.

In the second leg, the teams head to Botswana, where the stupidity of the nonsense between Lynn and Alex and Rob and Amber only intensifies, and all are reminded that alongside Rob’s appealing streak of Playful Scamp exists a very unappealing streak of Sniggering Asshole that has a particular tendency to come out when things aren’t going so well.

And then it gets awesome. Brian and Greg wreck their Jeep, resulting in a pretty scary injury to their camera guy (that’s not what’s awesome). Lynn and Alex, to their credit, stop to see if they can help, and then Rob and Amber, to their non-credit, don’t — they at least should have slowed down and rolled the window down or something. They don’t, however, and so Lynn spends the rest of the episode telling everyone who will listen that the boys wrecked their car, but THAT’S NOT REALLY THE IMPORTANT THING, because the important thing is that ROB AND AMBER DIDN’T STOP. Basically, everyone is an idiot about this particular thing. But that’s not the awesome part either. The awesome part is that the boys have to wait around a long time for a replacement Jeep to come, but when they get to the Detour, they find that some teams are still there, including Ray and Deana, who apparently cannot work together long enough to complete a simple task, so intense is their dislike for each other. The teams finish different Detour options at about the same time, and they take off for the pit stop within sight of each other. Jeep race! And then they’re at the pit stop, and they get out, and Brian and Greg smoke Ray and Deana in the foot race, and Brian and Greg are saved and Ray and Deana are eliminated and I think I need to lie down. That was the awesome part.

It’s being voted up as an A+ episode, and everyone at work was talking about it nonstop all morning. All of us reported yelling at the boys during that last sprint: “Go! Go boys! RUN! RUN!”

Oh, and how awesome was it that Brian, on ripping the clue to start the first leg, says “And we’re going… home for a big hug from Mom, and a big plate of her chicken enchiladas…” I have to watch that part again tonight, it cracked my shit up all over. Thank goodness for St Tivo. They’re starting to call the boys “The Brothers Awesomov” on TWOP now. Definitely the favorites in popularity, they are. They may even take Bald Snark ‘s place in the “favorite teams” stakes, but for GOD’s sake please no more photo finishes! And NO “fourth team curse!”

I forgot to say more about the terrible accidents last night – Gretchen looked like she’d been through the wars after she cut her head, and she did the ROADBLOCK and everything with her head wrapped in a bandage reminiscent of the headwrap on the guy in that painting with the fife, drum, and tattered American flag. Man, she rocks. And while the medical guys were patching her up and asking “how many fingers am I holding up?” she tells Meredith to go find the clue. Which he does, and the task helps him focus on something else and not worry so much about his wife. Who I had previously thought was pretty annoying (she has an unfortunate pitch and rasp to her voice) but who I now think is a worthy Racer and a woman to be emulated in life. No learned helplessness for this lady: she gets it done. She chose to do the Roadblock because it was an easy non-physical shopping-type task, and she did all right with that shopping for ingredients in Chile, so no problem for her at at all.

The thought that she’d have to go through the next leg wearing the filty, bloodstained shirt she had on in the caves was distressing, which was another reason it was so kind of Uchenna and Joyce to stop by with a bag of clothes, unasked. They also rock.

As for the rollover – man, that cameraman gets my vote for the “Get The Shot” award. He looked to be in a lot of pain. I ran across something on another site that reminds me that the cameramen get switched around from team to team, so there’s a very good chance that he had been Rob and Amber’s camera dude at least once. This week I’ll be checking out the Insider videos a little sooner than usual to catch up on the part of the saga that didn’t get air time.

But again: Cameradude, you rock too. I hope you’re all healed up and the other drunken reeling cameramen buy you beers.

The good folks at TWOP are happily posting favorite, not-so-favorite, and anti-favorite quotes and cuts from the episode now that the boards are back. One poster lists among their faves, “Phil giving Romber the baboon ass on the mat.” BWAH!!

The recap for the previous episode is also up: What A Gaucho You Are.

That’s two weeks in a row for Gretchen to get the “title quote” credit. She may be screechy, but she’s got spunk.

Spring…

Posted on by
snowdrops.jpg

Okay, I’ve uploaded some more Chicago Botanic Gardens pictures and jiggered things around. The main albums page is here, and the newest album is “Spring 2005.”

It was a nice day that day, if a little cold, and windy on the southern exposures (Ooh! my Aunt Fanny!). Today, though, was a really nice, actually quite warm day. The tulips are coming up in the front yard, I can hardly believe it but it’s true. And only last week the whiskey barrel was full of ice. I’ll be doing more gardening this year than I did last year, that’s for sure.

Anyway, enjoy the photos. Vote as you see fit.

Aiyee! Yes! Nooo! Ouch! Yay!

Posted on by
ray_index.jpg

That pretty much says it all for tonight’s double-barreled TAR7 episode – it turned out to be a non-elimination episode first, with an elimination second. Gretchen took a terrible spill and cut up her face something awful, plus they had wandered around looking for the clue before that, so they came in last. In yet another “new twist,” this time in addition to losing all their cash, they had to hand over their backpacks and all their possessions except for the clothes they were wearing.

You can tell who the nice people were from the not-nice people at the beginning of the next episode – Uchenna and Joyce came to their room that night with extra clothes, and the next day, all but Rob/Amber and Ray/Deana donated cash. The brothers (love my boys!) were generous as were the other nice people. R/A and R/D: not nice.

Then in the second episode, the brothers (love my boys! etc. etc.) rolled their Land Rover over, injuring their cameraman, who had his head and arm out the window on that side filming! Fortunately, they determined by the end of the leg that he’d be all right. But you could tell who was nice and who was not-nice by who stopped to help after the crash, who slowed down to ask if everyone was all right.. and who rolled on by, saying “well, that’s too bad, but it’s a race.”

Included in the nice category: Lynn and Alex, who actually stopped and offered help and support, Meredith and Gretchen, Uchenna and Joyce. Ray and Deana at least slowed down and asked if they were all right.

Not nice: Rob and Amber again. Meanwhile, they benefited again from being recognized. In Soweto! Being greeted by name! They had Ferns springing up all over! Ugh.

However, the second episode ended satisfactorily, because Ray and Deana got beat out in a footrace to the mat by… the brothers! My boys! And Ray? Not nice, ragging on your “teammate” like that after being supportive earlier in the 1st leg and the first half of the 2nd leg. The poll over at TWOP makes it clear:

Ray:
Needs to be stung to death by wasps – 56%
Is an overbearing creep – 42%
Is just trying to help – 2%

So satisfying. Ron and Kelly beat out Rob and Amber for first, Meredith and Gretchen came in 5th after getting mugged AND robbed, and my boys weren’t eliminated. And Ray and Deana: GONE. Such unpleasant people. Especially as they took one of only two Fast Forwards in the whole race, and they won two friggin’ RAV4s! Fortunately, some well-timed mega-bunching ate their lead up right away.

Not only was the outcome of the second episode totally bitchin’, but the various tasks in South Africa and Botswana were awesome – spelunking, delivering tribal goods, buying and delivering children’s clothes and infant supplies to a Soweto orphanage, feeding raw meat to lions, throwing spears, grinding corn and storing water in ostrich eggs.

AWEsome. Great pair of episodes. So happy.

My BOYS!

No. Just: No.

Posted on by
petpillow.jpg

The latest bizarre, yet strangely compelling must-have item chronicled at Boingboing: Pet pillows made from the fur of your very own very dead pet!

Well, this option is no longer open to us. Which is an extremely good thing.

Besides which, the cleaning ladies would be mystified by the extremely quiet, tidy, and square kitty on the couch.

The Kumars at No. 42

Posted on by

Now that I’m on the subject of British TV, I’ve recently gotten into watching “The Kumars at No. 42,” a wacky satire on chat shows set in the rec room of an East Indian family that live somewhere in British suburbia. The episode with Richard E. Grant (and Michael Parkinson) had me convulsed, but David didn’t really get what was so funny, and I couldn’t explain it.

Comedy is haaaard.

The New Doctor Who

Posted on by

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Doctor Who is Saturday night hit

newwho.jpg

The reviews are good; I hope it shows up on BBC America soon. I’d love to watch Doctor Who again after all these years – I watched almost all of the Tom Baker episodes and quite a few of the Peter Davison ones, long ago and far away in another dimension. All the Doctors are gathered helpfully together here.

There used to be a very, very active Chicago contingent of Who fans; I wonder what they’ll make of the new series? I’m subscribed to a local SF mailing list, so I expect discussion will surface soon, as there’s a local convention this November. There seems to be a blog for the convention, too.

It could be fun. Hmm.