You would think that if there’s a hot tap and a cold tap, that the one that would freeze up on a frosty morning would be the cold one. Because the cold tap has colder water. But you’d be wrong. It was the hot tap.

If you’ve ever tried to use Cascading Style Sheets, you’ve quickly run up against the problem that Internet Explorer doesn’t work properly. And most everybody uses Internet Explorer, much as we wish they wouldn’t. There are lots of little hacks around to work around Explorer’s various failings, but they’re a pain to use and they defeat the point of CSS in making styles easy to implement.

I used to run a special javascript on these pages to detect Internet Explorer and apply extra stylesheets like sticking plasters to make the pages display properly. But each version of Explorer has different bugs, and it made the whole thing an enormous pain.

Now a clever guy called Dean Edwards has set up a nice system that collects all the various IE hacks others have invented and implements them all from a single stylesheet. It’s that special kind of clever that makes you wonder why someone didn’t think of this ages ago. Cheekily, he has called it IE7. Because, you know, there isn’t a version seven of Internet Explorer.

If you’re using CSS, or you’d like to use CSS but can’t be bothered fighting IE, have a look.

My niece Shamila was born at 8.47pm tonight. Mother and baby are both well.

This McSweeney’s article by John Moe seems to have started a genuine internet phenomenon. It’s irresistible, and to prove it here are some of my failures to resist.

• The Dust Has Been Thoroughly Bitten By All And Sundry.
• Standing In The Charred Remains Of The House, Wondering What I Was Thinking.
• We Have Discovered That There Is A Certain Degree Of Depression In Ashburton.
• Where The Council Is Finally Providing Adequate Signage For The Streets.
• Quite A Lot Older, Gifted And Black.
• The Burning Has Spread To The Bedside Cabinet.
• We Have Negotiated Rights For Certain Aspects Of The Revolution To Be Televised.
• Baby, I’m So Glad We Were Successful In Our Efforts To Get It Together.
• We Will Get Around To Rocking You Very Soon Now, We Promise.
• Everybody Has Agreed To Take Turns Ruling The World.

Via Boing Boing

Information is starting to come out about the rest of what happened at Abu Ghraib. It’s about as horrible as you can imagine.

Seymour Hersh was the guy who broke the story on the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. A few months ago he was also the one who first reported on the sexual abuse and torture that had been going on in the Abu Ghraib prison. There were various reports at the time of people saying that things were far worse than had been admitted, and Hersh has now given a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union saying that the US Congress has been shown video of desecration of dead bodies and rape, including rape of children in front of their mothers.

Even after all that’s already happened in Iraq, the mind recoils from believing this. I hope to God it’s not true.

If anybody needs a cold, I have one I don’t want. Good condition, one owner. Free to a good home.

• How do we draw the distinction between the material and spiritual aspects of humanity?
• What is the purpose of our material existence?
• How can we lead lives in the material world that bring out our spiritual potential?

The Interfaith Coalition for Understanding is hosting a forum on Faith And The Material World. A panel will present the wisdom of their faith traditions, and respond to questions and discussion from the audience.

Faith And The Material World: How Do They Intersect?
Hagley Community College
3pm Sunday 25 July

Pac-Mondrian

Via Boing Boing