.htaccess fix for trailing slash(es) on server-parsed HTML files

I now have a complete fix for not only trailing slash(es), but also characters following the slash, and a redirect to the proper/permissible path.

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*\.shtml?)/.*
$RewriteRule ^.*$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}%1 [R=301,L]

You also deny these altogether by changing [R=301,L] to [F,L]. This will generate a 403 FORBIDDEN response.

.htaccess fix for trailing slash(es) on server-parsed HTML files

I just came across something slimilar. Here's a link:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3412891.htm

Presidential outlook

America will do well with John McCain or Hillary Clinton, but America will falter with Bama. McCain will bring a period of bumpy progress. A Clinton administration will be smooth and harmonious, setting a foundation for wise economic prosperity in a second term. An Obama administration will be stagnant and will bring no improvement for any present American issue. Senator Clinton will be most productive joining forces with John Edwards, but it is uncertain if Senator Edwards could win a Presidential election after a Clinton administration.

Spam this!

I finally had a great idea in my war against spam. Even if you have a personal and a not-so-personal disposable account, it is an imperfect arrangement. The idea is that at some point your not-so-personal account will reach an intolerable limit of spam and you can abandon it and move on to some other then-in-vogue address. But between inception and abandonment, what about the annoyance of the steadily building spam? And for that matter, wouldn't it be nice to know WHO didn't protect your email address and WHO you can blame for this dastardly misfeasance? And wouldn't it be nice to not have to keep track of multiple accounts?

Having your own domain name (i.e. JaneDoe.com) is the first step. Next, find a web host or an email service (Google and Yahoo, for example) that will let you use your personal domain with their email service. Create whatever email address you like (say, jane@janedoe.com) and only provide it to your most trustworthy correspondents.

Now for the genius part! Establish a sub-domain that will be easy to remember (i.e. Jane.JaneDoe.com), but don't configure any email addresses for it. Instead, set your options so that all messages sent to this sub-domain go to your private email address. So any email sent to blahblah@jane.janedoe.com will be delivered to jane@janedoe.com. Don't dismiss me just yet. This is the good part! Whenever you buy or sign up for something online, create a new email address according to the merchant. So if you buy something from amazon.com, enter your email address as amazon@jane.janedoe.com. It does not matter that this is not your email address as all messages sent to the sub-domain are delivered to your private email address. Now if you ever start getting spam sent to amazon@jane.janedoe.com, then you know that Amazon is responsible for not protecting your information. As for stopping it, now you can create a block/filter that deletes any future message sent to amazon@jane.janedoe.com and you will NEVER get another spam from anyone who obtains that address. But this caveat: I use Amazon as a convenient example. I have shopped with Amazon for years and have never had a single problem. It is a great company in every respect, so in their case, you could trust them with your private address.

As a final note....if any of your trusted correspondents do not use anti-virus software, a nasty virus could harvest the email addresses from every email sent to or from that person. So this might not work until the next American centennial, but it should last you a decade.

A plain cheeseburger

I kid you not folks, I went through a McDonald's drive through this afternoon and ordered a #3 plain (Dbl Qtr Lb w/ Cheese). The male voice on the speaker asked, "What all do you want on that?"

The "sins" of the parents

Ok, so within the last few weeks or so, I was talking to my mother on the phone. (It's not that I have some form of "confirmed bachelor" mother-worship going on; it's just that there is an irony in the fact that she indoctrinated me to the extreme and yet it's her parlance that dis-indoctrinates me.) Anyway, she made this comment about the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, etc, etc. The context was one of those situations that can't be discussed in detail (see notes to the right), but suffice it to say that the discerning reader already has enough info to draw an inference. So as I was say... I promptly corrected and informed her that a more proper translation is iniquity. I knew the verse, but couldn't recall its location so I googled it and came up with Exodus 20:5-6. Hmm, seems like there were some others appearances as well. Maybe I'm come across them as I am simultaneously reading a particular Google result (incidentally, it was the first item in the search results). Ok, so I'm reading this transcript of a call-in radio show. I was starting to write the commentator off the page, but then he hits on another verse familiar to me from Ezekiel 18. It mentions the fathers eating "sour grapes" that "puckers" the children's mouths. But then Ezekiel writes that God says not to use that saying any longer. I've always taken this to be highly revealing about the nature of God. God is good. God is love. So is it in the nature of a good and loving God to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty? No.

So back to the misquotation. I'm looking through various English translations online, and I find that New Intl Ver., Message, New Living Trans., New Life Ver., Holman, New Intl. Readers Ver., and Today's New Intl Ver. (TNIV) were the ones that used the word sins. The other translations all used iniquity. Another thing I noticed was that the sins translations were all very recent translations. The oldest copyright that I saw for these was 1969. So it is a new convention, and one, I would argue, that was influenced by the end-time apocalyptic evangelicals who perceive and preach God as a hard-line judge of good and evil. I disagree with this approach. God is good and evil is not a part of God. So what purpose is there in judging something that is clear-cut? Rather, God does not judge good and evil in the book of Revelations, but rather the character and nature of each individual. Some would call this their "soul". And it follows that a belief that the world is living in the "last days" [sic] necessitates a belief that God's judgment is near. Therefore, there is a greater emphasis in sin, righteousness, etc, etc. The problem with this is that it ignores the essence of God's judgment. Mankind was created in God's image. This doesn't mean that we look like God--that is nonsense. God is spirit only and has no innate physical form. (But before anyone argues, yes, I acknowledge that God can arbitrarily take any form.) I have said for quite some time that this idea of image refers not to form but to concept, which is to say, an artist, borrowing from Plato and Aristotle's metaphysics, in the same manner that an artist conceives the idea of his painting in his mind before actually painting it, so God conceived the idea of humans before engaging in the act of creation. Both the artist's painting and God's creation, therefore, are created, or fabricated, according to a mental design, or image. Plato and Aristotle both wrestled with which of these is the true essence and form. The idea is always more perfect than the manifestation, but the manifestation is always more concrete than the idea. So in relation to God, what is God judging--the concept/image that was his pattern or the work that was produced from the pattern? I am becoming more convinced that God's judgment is largely about measuring the conformity of the opus with respect to the idea. In this line, there is a Biblical simile comparing God to a potter who, if not satisfied with the opus, elects to obliterate the form and being anew. And one could argue this as an echo of the flood recorded in Genesis. This could be further applied to the concept of salvation and baptism. But the idea here is that the creator's estimation of the manifestation of his concept is the basis of whether the work is good or bad. It is the suitability of the manifestation that is being judged, and suitability is open to interpretation as to fitness for a particular purpose or degree of similarity in form. This is to say, which is more important, a vase that doesn't leak or a vase that leaks, but is true to the artists mental image? Neither is a more valid basis than the other and the determination exists with the fabricator for only the fabricator foreknew the purpose of his creative expression. But with humans, the creator also designed free will, and free will includes the option to accept or not to accept any given interpretation, including this one. And even though it seem like this has nothing to do with the original premise of this blog, it is this: Who is to say what God is truly judging? Good is good. God is love. God is a father. Does a man punish a puppy because the dog relieved itself on the carpet? No. And as Jesus himself said about a father not giving his son a stone when he is asked for bread, if even we understand this much, how much more does God show his love to us? Loving relationships are about acceptance and presence rather than judgment and exclusion. So God's judgment and punishment is only an infinitesimal part of his Divinity. The apostle Peter writes in his second epistle that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God's desire is not to condemn. But judgment is a key part of end-time theology, which in turn casts God in a harsher light. Likewise, believing firmly in God's judgment and wrath fosters a works-based approach to righteousness because this judgment is either based on good or bad deeds, or based on the goodness or evilness of one's soul, which is also manifested in one's deeds, as expressed by the Apostle James who wrote that fresh water does not come from an unclean well. So good deeds are perceived to be indicative of goodness of soul. Likewise, bad deeds should be evidence of internal corruption. I argue, however, that Christians want to accept the first part and avoid the second because each person wants to believe that s/he is good. But Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of God's standard, and this is plainly depressing, which runs contrary to the belief that Christians should rejoice in the hope that comes through Christ. As a result, there is a tendency to re-apportion logic as it applies to theology and Scripture. If we have all sinned, then how does Person A have an assurance that he will attain Heaven and Person B will not? The true answer is that this is known in the heart, not in the mind, but the mind demands empirical (observable) proof. This leads to better-than comparisons, which leads to a false-contrapositive statement of the logic. Person A is does good things, so Person A much be a good person. Person B does bad things, so Person B must not be a good person. Notice that I did not say Person B was a bad person, just that Person B was not good. Adding to this the American belief that efforts yield results and that all adversity can be overcome though perseverance (i.e. work hard, spend wisely, and be successful). In other words, results come through purposed acts. The conclusion is that deeds are rewarded and it becomes convenient to believe that the same is true of bad results (i.e. homicide results in incarceration). And it is also acknowledged that life deals certain "hands" that are undesirable and insurmountable as in the case of debilitating birth defects. But for non-debilitating impediments, American society expects that the afflicted person work harder to overcome that adversity. This fits hand-in-glove with the notion that life deals no one a perfect hand and each person has his/her own obstacles to overcome. Some would argue that this is a coping mechanism to deal with socio-economic disparities. But this works-minded approach in conjunction with end-time theology to view circumstance as a product of indirect choice. This, I believe, explains the modern sin interpretation of what was rendered iniquity for centuries. It is more agreeable to believe that undesirable circumstance is produced by action. But this approach minimizes the reality that bad events do happen to undeserving people which emphasizing that bad circumstances are produced by bad choices. Unfortunately, reconciling this with a premise of equal opportunity to overcome adversity produces a conclusion that children can be forced to suffer for an ancestor's badness, but God's nature has already been argued to the opposite. Nonetheless, end-time mindsets predispose the individual to choose an interpretation that casts God in a more judgmental depiction and thusly, iniquity becomes sin, which emphasizes choice over condition. A father commits a crime and in incarcerated. As a result, a child grows up without a paternal figure in his formative years. He does suffer the secondary effects of his father's choice. And his father's iniquity effects his life, which in turn effects his children's lives, and even the lives of his children's children. Similarly, genetic anomalies can manifest repeatedly in descendants. In fact, a study was released just this year (2008) that all individuals with blue eyes have a single common ancestor who had acquired a genetic mutation that turned his brown melanin to blue (melanin is the same substance that causes skin to tan...which never tans any color other than brown). God is good. God is love. God cannot hold a child accountable for the sins of a parent. However, earth and mankind exist in a "fallen" state. Free will created a state of existence in which bad events could befall an undeserving party. Free will continues to inflict suffering on undeserving parties. Free will not only accounts for the Fall, but perpetuates the fall. Because of the "fallen" state, bad events happen to undeserving persons. These people were created in the image of God though Adam. Christ was a second Adam. Christ innocently suffered all the wrongs of the fallen world to provide hope though belief in Him, who abided in love, not judgment. God is love. When judgment comes, are we to be judged for our sin? No. We are justified through faith in God and his Son, the quintessential embodiment of love. We are saved by this faith and not by works (Romans 9, Ephesians 2). Salvation, not sin, is the criterion. This recalls the Platonic/Aristotelian argument of the greater reality--concept or manifestation. The former is conceivable while the second is knowable (provable). It is easier for the contemporary Christian to accept the concreteness of sin than it is the abstractness of iniquity.

And so I wonder, when my mother commented that the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, etc, etc....was she including herself?

.htaccess fix for trailing slash(es) on server-parsed HTML files

Ok, this is a strange post, but since Blogger is immediately indexed in Google search, I thought I'd put this out there for any other geek-zoids out there like myself. I spent a great part of yesterday googling a solution to this problem. It is an obscure condition to say the least, but perhaps there is one other person among the world's six billion people who needs this same solution.

The problem: Trailing slashes on a server-parsed html file breaks every relatively linked resource. Images, style sheets, etc. won't display. Apache 2.0 has an httpd mechanism to ignore the trailing slash, but if it is not configured for this, or if you're using Apache 1.3, the trailing slash(es) will present a problem. So I came up with this snippit to put in your .htaccess file. If you don't know what a .htaccess file is, google it. Put this code in the root directory as follows:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{http_host/} [R=301,L]

Requested URLs with trailing slashes will instead serve up the default page. Of course, this only removes the trailing slash (or multiple slashes), which is the most common issue encountered thanks to the myriad search engines and spammers who abuse your cgi/pl forms. This fix does not prevent a trailing slash with extra characters following (ex: www.yourhost.tld/index.html/a). If you need this, add the appropriate RegEx to to fix your particular situation. Your snippit would then look like this:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)/$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (.*)/PutYourRegExHere$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%{http_host/} [R=301,L]

Another--although undependable--way to handle this is to add a conditional SSI (server-side include) meta refresh statement. This is problematic because it will be ignored by robots, crawlers, and the like, not to mention browsers that either ignore or allow the user to disable meta refresh. I tried to include it anyway, but then Blogger wouldn't allow it because it tried to interpret it as html code. But it is made to be irrelevant by the solution above. And if you can use SSI in the first place, you can almost certainly use .htaccess.

If you need some guidance, try these links
Comprehensive guide to .htaccess
Lissa Explains it All -- .htaccess Tutorial
Apache Core Features
Regular Expression Tutorial - Learn How to Use and Get The Most out of Regular Expressions