In much lighter news, glasses might get somewhat easier to wear thanks to some research funded by the Defense Department.[1] It seems they have developed some combination of glass and silica that does not fog! Beyond the military and automotive uses that the article describes, just think about having a pair of glasses with this! No more fogging when you move from air conditioning to not. Less trouble in the rain, when raindrops normally make it hard to see through glasses. This would really really rock. Oh, and as a side note, the article is right that it would be nice for cars.

[1] azonano.com “Unique Polymer Coating – Made of Silica Nanoparticles Eliminates Fogging” azonano.com Nanotechnology News (online) 2005-08-29. http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=1312

In a potentially huge decision, a federal bankruptcy judge has ignored the fact that the various parishes and schools in the Diocese of Spokane are each independent legal entities, making the full property of each available to be liquidated to pay off the sex-abuse settlements.[1] Mr. William Donahue, president of the Catholic League, and lawyers for the diocese both disagree with this decision, saying that it is a violation of the First Amendment. I will assume they know what they are talking about, that is more detail on the legal (both cannon and secular law) of the diocesan structure than I know. But beyond that, if the CNA articles[2][3] are correct, it seems like it would also be a violation of secular law to ignore the separate control of the parish assets. CNA looks at an uncited Forbes Magazine article from two years ago, saying that suing the Church has become a big business, and is no longer truly about the obligations of the Church to the victims. Mr. Donahue seems to agree, saying that the Judge has essentially given assent to efforts to destroy the Church, with the sexual abuse scandal serving merely as an excuse. As an example of this, he looks at the attacks on Archbishop Levada, newly elected head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.[2] He questions the timing of the attacks, especially given the fact that Archbishop Levada was one of the first to seriously address the scandal.

Everyone knows that lawsuits are out of control in this country. We are so well aware of this fact that we joke about it, and Congress attempts (ineffectually) to stem the trend with legislation. Yet with the Church as the target, and with the excuse of “protecting the children,” no one considers that there is a significant potential for false charges to be submitted by those simply looking for profit. Indeed, to even suggest that in many situations would doubtless cause me to be accused of insensitivity, cluelessness, and so on. Yet, as some priests have been found innocent, we know that this is not an idea that has occurred to me alone. It is reality, and so I think that Mr. Donahue may be right in stating that the time has come for the Church to bring cases to court, and fight against the otherwise certain destruction of dioceses. Because as courts mandate that churches and schools be sold, it will become harder and harder to meet the needs of the faithful.

[1] Catholic News Agency (CNA). “Diocese to appeal court decision that parishes can be liquidated; claims breach of church/state separation” Catholic News Agency (online) 2005-08-30. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4749
[2] Catholic News Agency (CNA). “Catholic League president: Church must start playing hardball against victimization” Catholic News Agency (online) 2005-08-30. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4748
[3] Catholic News Agency (CNA). “Judge rules diocese can be liquidated in sex-abuse case: questions arise about ‘big business’” Catholic News Agency (online) 2005-08-29 http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=4741

Apparently my maildir woes with imap stem from the fact that dovecot cannot handle a mix of maildir and mbox folders.[1] Next I am going to try mailutils-imap4d.

UPDATE 2005-08-30-12:14: mailutils-imap4d is no good. squirrelmail cannot get its inbox, imp3 cannot log in at all with it. I am back to dovecot for now.

[1] Dovecot FAQ http://wiki.dovecot.org/moin.cgi/QuestionsAndAnswers#head-ca096174a590558f7ad33420c3ccb62e989ac063

William emailed me today, apparently the Archdiocease of Philidephia is blocking outgoing port 22, or at least that seems to be the case from a quick email diagnosis. My first thought solution was to switch him to vnc, I quickly installed tightvncserver and the associated webserver plugin, but that was a no go. While I can connect to it from both Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, he cannot. I think that problem is likely solvable, but probably not without seeing the computer myself.

So I set up squirrelmail, to give him webmail access. While not as nice as pine is even, this will do the job (he was used to William & Mary’s webmail afterall), and he might even like it somewhat. Still, there were problems. SquirrelMail did not seem to want to fully work with my apache 1.x install, and I did not see an obvious solution. So I made the rash decision to move to apache 2.x. Naturally, I did not think ahead here, but just bulldozed my way through, causing a little bit of panic on my part until the last few pieces fell into place.

There was a big catch getting php to work, I needed some extra packages for that. Then mysql still did not work. A couple packages later, it looked like I had everything, but it still did not work. Google reveals that a couple of lines need to be uncommented in the apache2 php.ini file. That fixes that. But Gallery is not working. It is complaining about php_value, how did I fix that for apache 1.x? I have no clue, and google is not helping this time, at least, not at first. I eventualy stumble on a page of Gallery’s documentation that gives me just enough to remember what I had to add. But where do I add it? Here I really come face to face and get a grasp of apache2’s modular config files. It is not hard once you realize what is happening, but it threw me at first.

Still no go though. But now at least, I can get to Gallery’s setup page, the first page of which fortunately has all sorts of dependency checking. Thank goodness for small favors, this tells me that I do not have mod_rewrite. By now I understand a little of what is going on, and it was fairly trivial to realize that it was installed (by something) but not enabled, and to create the necessary symlink. After that, everything I can think to test is working, and, as an added bonus, my guess was correct: SquirrelMail seems to fully work now.

On a side note, I do not particularly like SquirrelMail, it certainly does not meat my needs, since I have set up a number of maildir mailboxes (which it does not support), but I think it will do enough to meet William’s needs.

In unusual and amusing news today, I learn that an accumulation of jellyfish caused a reactor shutdown in Sweden.[1] While of no particular significance, I found it amusing.

[1] The Associated Press. “Jellyfish Cause Reactor Shutdown in Sweden” BREITBART.COM, INC. (online). 2005-08-29 http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/29/D8C9HR480.html

It is nice to see that even some who do not believe in Intelligent Design are coming to realize that the defense of Darwinism is anything but scientific.[1] The misrepresentations of Intelligent Design and those who support it should be incredibly embarrassing to those who think Darwinism true. If they cannot debate Intelligent Design on the merits, how can they claim that it is persuasive?

[1] Cohen, Jonah Avriel. “Why intelligent design theory ought to be taught” The American Thinker (online). 2005-08-25 http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4761

Heartless and immoral doctors won a “victory” yesterday, preserving the decision in a court case that allows them to refuse to resuscitate a 22-month old baby who has serious lung, brain and kidney damage.[1] Even though the baby has progressed further and is doing better than the doctors and judges thought possible, still the justices rules that the original judge’s order stands. This further confirms the idea that doctors and the courts, and not the parents, have the final word in what happens to children. Increasingly, parents are being treated simply as unpaid care-takers, and not as parents. It is important to remember that parents, and not the courts, have the moral imperative to care for their children, and make decisions affecting their health and education. The courts should be stepping in only in the clearest cases where the parents have abdicated their responsibility, and then only with the greatest reluctance.

[1] BBC News. “Parents lose right-to-life appeal” BBC News World Edition (online) 2005-08-25 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/hampshire/4181172.stm

I need to read Deep Hot Biosphere[1] again. I no longer remember his ideas well enough to know how they would mesh with seismic evidence that the Earth’s core is rotating faster than the surface is.[2] This, and related research that shows that the mantle is also spinning faster, provides at least some proof for the plate tectonics theory that I dislike. It at very least demonstrates that there are three layers to the Earth’s structure, which is a prerequisite of plate tectonics. It does not, however, demonstrate that the crust is split into segments that move independently or semi-independently. It would, in fact, seem rather hard to make a categorical statement that the crust is rotating at any single speed, if different segments of it are in fact moving in different directions. This would, however, be dismissed as simply an average speed that averages out, necessarily, to a speed in the same direction the Earth rotates. Earthquakes and mid-plate faults remain the strongest flaw in plate tectonics.

[1] Gold, Thomas. Deep Hot Biosphere (Springer, 1998 ISBN: 038798546) Some information on this scientist can be found at the Wikipedia entry. The Web Archive fortunately preserves his home page here.
[2] Than, Ker. “Earth’s Core Rotates Faster than Surface, Study Confirms” Live Science (online). 2005-08-25 http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050825_earthcore.html

The news today is in an uproar about a BBC report of some research that seems to indicate that men, after 14 or 15, tend to be more intelligent than women.[1] First of all, as a caveat, I am not at all sure how much good IQ tests are. That they have non-trivial flaws is obvious. Still, taking the research at face value, there are several note-worthy points.

• They focused on the high end of the IQ scale. Somewhere I read, but appear not to have written, about research indicating that women’s IQ test scores form a nice bell curve while men’s show a much straighter line, a distribution with more people at each extreme. Focusing on the high end of the scale would tend to ignore the possibility that there may be just as many men scoring just as significantly lower than the women’s average as there are men scoring above.
• The study finds no difference before age 14. This is incredibly counter-intuitive, but may be explained by my next item.
• The study finds that women “are able to achieve more than men” “at the same level of IQ” (I reversed the clauses of the sentence, hence two quotes).[2} This may explain the common impression, perhaps reality (I honestly do not know how much basis in fact it has) that girls are smarter than guys in grade school.

[1] BBC News. “‘Men cleverer than women’ claim” BBC News UK Edition (online). 2005-08-25 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4183166.stm
[2] See above.

Reading one of Martin F. Krafft’s entries in Planet Debian,[1] I learned about an interesting format called “reStructuredText.”[2] At first glance, it appears to live up to its name as being simple and easy to use. It is somewhat related to the wiki formatting styles you commonly see, but not requiring the html input form, should prove more useful and more worth knowing (as each wiki seems to have its own rules, they are not in general worth learning).

[1] Krafft, Martin F. “Restructured text for the CV” untitled. 2005-08-25 http://blog.madduck.net/2005/08/26/2005.08.25-cv
[2] Docutils project. “reStructuredText” (online) 2005-06-16 http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html