Mike the Usurper wrote:

After the trap doors opened, al-Bandar could be seen dangling from the rope. Ibrahim's body was lying on the floor, chest down, his severed head resting several yards away.

Oops. Rope was too long.

the current Iraqi administration seems to lack a vital ingredient -- luck

and/or

the one thing you would have thought the Iraqis could do competantly is kill one another -- they couldn't find an experienced executioner in Iraq?

RE: Iraq hanging video shown to reporters - Yahoo! News

Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

The Texas Strategy - New York Times

With Iraq sliding off a cliff, and now tugging another 20,000 young Americans along as well, it’s worth wrestling with a larger question: Why are we so awful at foreign policy?

Stumbling Around the World - New York Times

When Julia Roberts flashed under-arm hair at a film premiere there was uproar. But one woman, at least, wants to overturn prejudices and has taken a New Year's resolution not to shave.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Letting your hair down

This comes with several improvements to the way messages are edited and displayed. In addition to inline display of images using the img tag, we have also added the HTML tags u, center, and pre, in addition to the already existing support for b, i, and a. blockquote can be used as blockquote, bq, or quote. When pre is used, any HTML tags within are escaped, so you can now display snippets of code and other previously impossible text without losing formatting. For instance, here is an example of an image tag:

<img src="http://kradmeme.local/meme_tail.gif" alt="Optional description">

Image tags can be justified left or right using the align attribute so text wraps around them, such as the image in this post. All implemented tags support standard HTML attributes to the degree we support the attributes.

When posting, the interface now displays error messages in realtime about formatting problems above the edit window. Eventually we will have this functionality include better information about to what types of HTML is allowed and how it can be used. In general, the system will display posts better and more uniformly. It is no longer so ridged about spacing after quotes, posts will now display properly regardless of if you have a newline after a quote or not. Characters such as > and < can now be used in posts without being part of an HTML tag as well.

Any Google/YouTube/Revver videos that are primary links will be displayed automatically at the top of the post. Videos can also be displayed inline with a tag like this:

<video url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2f4heaG288" alt="Optional description">

We will add other video services as we become aware of them. Let us know if there is a service you would like us to support.

We would like to single out Acidus for praise. His help made this update happen. We are very excited to have him actively involved with MemeStreams developlment. His work is present in several aspects of this update, such as the on-the-fly picture resizing and the realtime post validity checking. Be sure to tell him how much he kicks ass. We have never worked with anyone better when it comes to web security and javascript.

Be sure to tell terratogen he kicks ass as well. For years now, he has been providing us with with all our graphic design needs. You can see his work in the site's logo and the various graphical icons used throughout the site.

As always, if you encounter any problems, let Rattle or Decius know. More information and site updates are on the way.

MemeStreams Update: Now More Sexy!

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world. It is true to MIT's values of excellence, innovation, and leadership.

MIT OpenCourseWare | OCW Home

why is it that sometimes u recommend a post and the system puts reduntant post and occasionally, like this one till this edit, the system clones the oiginal post?

How I spent my Christmas vacation

Acidus wrote:

This can be fixed, and it doesn't require you hacking around IE6 lacks of PNG transparency or Safari's crazy JavaScript. It's making smart decisions about how you define the layout of a page.

and what would that consist of?
the article seems to take a radical position
that there is a clear dichotomy between style and content
but style modifies the meaning of content
in the same way that punctuation modifies meaning in text
clearly i frequently write in note form without punctuation
years ago I read Molly's soliloquy in James Joyce's Ulysses and saw that certain elements aren't essential for meaning
but
they make it more readable, accessable and friendly
I write how I think and often will polish afterwards.
I wonder whether chasing the Blue Bird of design that fits every platform is realistic but the efforts to produce flexible UI are very important

when my mom bumbs the font size of http://www.cnn.com up 2 levels and suddenly the menu bar is going off the screen and text doesn't fit in boxes anymore, that's is a problem.

When a user enters in a bunch of text into a comment block and it appears as one long line going right over the pretty floating table of content, thats a problem.

When I have a 1400x900 screen and a blog renders as a thin vertical strip maybe 700 pixels across thats just silly.

yes
the goal is communication
flexibility is a challenge
u want a UI to be like a marine. Whom I understand from TV and Hollywood are trained to obey orders and to adapt (AIAO Adapt Improvise and Overcome).
There are too many UIs like Denholm Elliott's character in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Indiana Jones: ...he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
[Cut to middle of fair in the Middle East, Marcus Brody wearing bright suit and white hat, sticking out like sore thumb]
Marcus Brody: Uhhh, does anyone here speak English?

RE: Publishing on the Web Is Different!

i confess i don't get this
i know u know much more than me about this acidus but i don't see the arguments as presented in the article as self evident
i don't want all the web pages i visit to look the same
i enjoy a varied and interesting visual journey as well as one of content
i am a fundamentally visual person
idealogically i like the idea of the reader/user being in control
but the situation will evolve
you are setting out an idealogical position -- an arguably extremist and certainly presciptive position -- "things should be like this"
they may well move to that point but you're fighting 500 years of print tradition and the written tradition of the monks with their extraordinary layouts before that (in the west) calligraphy (in the east)
visual style is important
it is an element of semiotics
i'm reminded of those (who i strongly sympathise with) who rail against fashion -- high street fashion -- alternative fashion -- music fashion etc --- fine we should be individuals but we're fundamentally not -- some are more individualistic than others but fashion is an element of fitting in and being social -- we mirror the behaviour of others - that is part of the social dialogue and multi-threaded discourse -- i'm influenced a little by x and a little by y -- i identify to an extent with a particularly group, with a particular set of values, with a particular set of ideas. It is not merely a question of corporate identity. It is a statement on a fundamental level about who i'm as an individual and how I see myself fitting into society. To assert a visual style is content.
I'm not suggesting you are wrong but i do think there is more to this than technical questions.

RE: Publishing on the Web Is Different!

Astronomers have mapped the cosmic "scaffold" of dark matter upon which stars and galaxies are assembled.
...
While previous studies of dark matter relied on simulations, this one details its large-scale distribution in 3D.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hubble makes 3D dark matter map