Category Archives: Uncategorized

Kenya agreement

While I am, of course, pleased that Kibaki and Odinga reached an agreement, I’m a little disgusted at the way that they are acting like they are great heroes for it.

I hope that, some day, they have the decency to be ashamed of themselves for their shockingly selfish behavior, and the more than 1000 of their country people who lost their lives due to their consuming hubris.

Remember, if you will, that they haggled over this agreement for nearly 2 months, while the people burned, murdered, raped, and generally destroyed the world’s image of what has always been the greatest nation on the continent. Remember also that the agreement that they have arrived at is very close to what was proposed in the first week – that Odinga is the PM, and that there be some limited power sharing while they work towards a new election.

So, while you celebrate, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga, remember that those 1000 lives are on your hands. Also remember that you have a long road ahead of you to heal the wounds that you have caused. I’m sure you’ll spend the next 6 years trying to shift the blame, but rest assured that the rest of us won’t forget.

Obama in Wajir

Drudge posted a photo of Barak Obama in Wajir, dressed in traditional garb, and apparently there’s a bit of a furor over it.

Now, I’m not sure which makes me angrier – the fact that people would take such a photograph as evidence that Obama would make an unfit president (some nonsense about turban = terrorist, perhaps?) or the fact that the Obama campaign would dignify such absurdities by calling the photograph shameful, offensive fear-mongering.

Up until now, what appealed to me most about Obama was his ties to rural Africa, and thus, I assumed, some understanding of what it actually means to have sensible international relations with third-world nations. To my mind, the only sane response to the posting of a photograph like this would be, “why, yes, I do believe in respecting the traditions and dignity of my friends in Wajir.” Instead, he’s reacted in such a way that it almost seems that he’s ashamed of the photograph.

Even more offensively, this article in Slate implies that he endured the indignity so as not to offend the people of Wajir, much as you endure an ugly sweater given you by your aunt. Surely he realized that they were doing him an honor by dressing him as a village elder – an honor he had not earned, and was an expression of highest respect and esteem. The notion that anybody would see this as a reason to not vote for Mr. Obama is a profound insult to the people of Wajir, and Mr. Obama merely added to the insult by his reaction to the posting of the photo.

As though I didn’t already have little enough respect in the electoral process. Sheesh.

mod_substitute

As of 2.2.8, there’s a new module that comes standard with Apache HTTPd called mod_substitute. As soon as I upgraded to 2.2.8, I found an immediate use for mod_substitute.

mod_substitute lets you apply a regular expression to change data as it gets sent out to the client. Another module, mod_line_edit, has been around for a while and also does this. This is the first time it’s been part of the standard Apache distro.

We’re using TinyMCE to edit content on our website. Turns out that Internet Explorer doesn’t honor align=”left” and align=”right” on images, so we had to stick in style=”float: left” and style=”float: right” instead. But getting TinyMCE to do this was difficult since I don’t speak JavaScript fluently enough to make it do that. We created a class “float-left” and another “float-right” for this.

So, using mod_substitute, I did:

<Location />
AddOutputFilterByType SUBSTITUTE text/html
Substitute “s!(<img)(class=”float-(left|right)”)?([^>]*?)align=”(left|right)”([^>]*?)(class=”float-(right|left)”)?([^>]*>)!$1$4align=”$5″ class=”float-$5″$6$9!i”
</Location>

Yes, that’s more complicated than it should be, because once you start editing and re-editing, the class=”float-*” ends up in the edited HTML, and we have to take it back off again. Sheesh.

But, that’s not all. When we load the content back into the editor, we have to take all that stuff off:

<LocationMatch (/admin/pages.php|/press/edit)>
AddOutputFilterByType SUBSTITUTE text/html
Substitute “s!<(img.*?)class=”float-(left|right)”(.*?)>!<$1$3>!i”
</LocationMatch>

Cool, hmm?

Diego Maradona and the Impermanence of Memory

Diego Maradona and the Impermanence of Memory

Summer 1988

February 13, 2008

A ribbon of memories
tangled around his feet.
He sat, devastated, in a deck chair,
surrounded by a crowed of sympathetic
strangers. Pointing to the frames,
bleaching in the sun, recounting
the stories that they told.

And I, with the new-found focus
of I’ll-never-see-this-again, wallowed
in the stories of this failed
photographer, pointing to the shots
he’d never have to explain
why he missed.

There, on the deck, Diego Maradona.
Yes, that frame, the hand of god –
the shot that proves it was his head,
not his hand. The shot the world
would pay millions to see.

But, due to a faulty door catch,
there it lies, ruined, in the grecian
midday, glinting off the water,
off the jewel-like islands,
off the perfect photos
nobody can ever contradict.

And there – that one – that’s me
with Diego. Di, I call him. He shook
my hand. I promised him a copy.

But now, now,

all gone.

His wife, sitting next to him, nods
her agreement. Or is she just sleeping?
We’re careful not to wake her,
just in case. Like him, like Diego,
we’d rather believe. And evidence,
sometimes, is just as inconvenient
when you have it as when you don’t.