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Update on Standards and CSS in IE7
brajesh writes "Chris Wilson has posted on IEBlog about the Standards and CSS in IE7. According to the post, "In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can, and we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well. Though you won't see (most of) these until Beta 2". Further,"we will not pass this (Acid2 browse) test when IE7 ships.""
In the aftermath of the bombings in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair has asked the British people to remain calm and maintain their daily routines; the terrorists win, he says, if one gives in to fear. This, you may remember, was also George W. Bush's response after Sept. 11, when he called on Americans to return to our shopping malls and not be afraid.
But we should be afraid--precisely because of Blair's and Bush's policies.
We face an enemy, Islamic totalitarianism, committed to our deaths. Its agents have shown an eagerness to kill indiscriminately in London, Madrid, New York and elsewhere, even at the cost of their own lives. They continually seek chemical and nuclear weapons; imagine the death toll if such devices had been used in London's subway bombings. In the face of this mounting threat, what is our response?
Do we proudly proclaim our unconditional right to exist? Do we resolutely affirm to eradicate power base after power base of the Islamic totalitarians, until they drop their arms, and foreign governments and civilian populations no longer have the nerve to support them?
No. Blair's response to the London bombings, with Bush and the other members of the G8 by his side, was, in meaning if not in explicit statement, to apologize and do penance for our existence.
Somehow we in the West and not the Palestinians--with their rejection of the freedoms attainable in Israel and their embrace of thugs and killers--are responsible for their degradation. Thus, we must help build them up by supplying the terrorist-sponsoring Palestinian Authority with billions in aid. And somehow we in the West and not the Africans--with their decades of tribal, collectivist and anticapitalist ideas--are responsible for their poverty. Thus we must lift them out of their plight with $50 billion in aid. This, Blair claims, will help us "triumph over terrorism."
The campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq might be considered exceptions to this orgy of penance, but that would be an error. In neither war was the aim to smash the enemy. Unlike in WWII, when the Allies would flatten cities to achieve victory, the American and British armies, by explicit order, tiptoed in the Middle East. Terrorists and insurgents went free, free to return to kill our young men, because we subordinated the lives of our soldiers to concern for the enemy's well-being and civilian casualties. Our goal was not victory but, as Bush so often tells us, to bestow with our soldiers' blood an unearned gift on these people, "freedom" and "democracy," with the hope that they would then stop killing us.
According to Blair, our duty is to shower the globe with money. According to Bush, our duty is to shower the globe with "democracy." Taken together, the meaning of their foreign policy is clear. The West has no moral right to exist, because it is productive, prosperous and free; materially and spiritually, with its money and its soldiers' lives, the West must buy permission to exist from the rest of the world. But the rest of the world has an unquestionable right to exist, because it is unproductive, poor and unfree.
Until we in the West reject this monstrous moral premise, we will never have cause to feel safe.
What we desperately need is a leader who proclaims that the rational ideals of the West, reason, science, individual rights and capitalism, are good--that we have a moral right to exist for our own sake--that we don't owe the rest of the world anything--and that we should be admired and emulated for our virtues and accomplishments, not denounced. This leader would then demonstrate, in word and deed, that if those opposed to these ideals take up arms against us, they will be crushed.
Support for totalitarian Islam will wither only when the Islamic world is convinced that the West will fight--and fight aggressively. As long as the insurgents continue with their brutal acts in Iraq, unharmed by the mightiest military force in human history, as long as the citizens of London return to "normal" lives with s
When Lance Armstrong rode through Paris on Sunday, crowning his unprecedented seventh consecutive victory in the grueling Tour de France, he put an exclamation mark on what is more than merely an extraordinary athletic career.
By this time, the entire world knows Armstrong's story--his remarkable recovery from what was feared to be terminal cancer, his exhausting training program, his legendary endurance, his dauntless determination, his unequalled dominance of cycling's premier event. Millions around the world properly celebrate him and his lofty accomplishments.
But what explains the enormous interest in Armstrong's success--or that of any other sports hero? Why do sports fans set such a strong personal stake in the victories of their heroes? After all, little of any practical significance depends on such victories; a seventh Armstrong win won't get his fans a raise or help send their children to college. Why do sports have such an enormous, enduring appeal in human life?
The answer lies in a rarely recognized aspect of sports: their moral significance. What athletic victories provide is a rare and crucial moral value: the sight of human achievement.
Athletic competitions are staged with the goal of achieving victory. By their very nature, they seek and honor champions, i.e., those select few who, in a given field, outdistance their brothers and sisters. The result of this policy is that sports reward exceptional achievement, not equality; they glorify the elite, not the ordinary; they celebrate towering heroes, not "the little guy."
Sports do not seek to "level the playing field" in an attempt to give a less-talented competitor a better chance of defeating a superior rival. Properly, there are no penalties imposed on a champion for being superior to his foes. Lance Armstrong, for example, is not required to heft a twenty pound weight up the steep ascents of the Pyrenees. Michael Jordan was not banned from springing skyward. The PGA does not require Tiger Woods to use an inferior brand of clubs. The only equality permitted is that every competitor gets the same opportunity to showcase his talents and determination.
With artificial handicaps or advantages eliminated, sports provide an undiluted example of the pursuit of excellence. In an era when the anti-hero is dominant in intellectual culture, sports provide the purest arena in which to pursue, observe and appreciate human aspiration, achievement and greatness. The reality of an athlete striving to hone his skills to the utmost--enduring pain, overcoming injury, testing his mettle against the world's best--provides a noble vision of man's potential.
Those of us who, physically, cannot cycle 2,000 miles or run the 100 meters in 9 seconds can still aspire to significant achievements. The vision of Armstrong's magnificent abilities and dauntless determination engenders in the best of us the questions: What might I accomplish in my field and in my life if I embodied the same degree of dedication? How high might I go in my own life-promoting endeavors if I put into them the identical indefatigable qualities of spirit that Armstrong does?
The motto of the Modern Olympic Games is: Citius, Altius, Fortius--Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Lance Armstrong embodies these principles perfectly. A great athlete like Armstrong is inspiring, because he reminds us how much is possible to a human being. He is living proof that an individual can reach great attainments and that profuse exertion in pursuit of a daunting goal need not be fruitless.