I’ve never liked EvolveFish very much; they’re well-known for selling the Darwin Fish car emblems. The type of people who plaster their cars with their beliefs usually aren’t the brightest people in the world. The highway is not the place to flaunt the fact that Jesus or Darwin is your personal savior. (Seriously guys, Darwin was a great scientist and all, but stop worshiping him.)

Anyway, I was taking a look at EvolveFish’s products to see if there was anything interesting that I might actually buy. I saw some classy things like, “CAUTION! I don’t break for RIGHT WING NUT JOBS!” and “Darwin Loves You,” but what really caught my eye was “9/11 Was an Inside Job” button. Who would in their right mind would wear something like that on their shirt? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. No one in their right mind would; only a conspiracy theorist would be stupid enough to.

Upon further inspection, they appear to have a “9/11 Truth Zone” page. They even sell an Eye of Providence sticker with this description: “You’ve seen this symbol before – it’s on many government buildings and also the back of a $1 bill. But why is it there, and what does it mean? And why do the New World Order’s power players have a peculiar attachment to it…?” Yes, the EvolveFish people, who supposedly sell products that promote skepticism and rationalism, also promote some of the most idiotic conspiracy theories there are unquestioningly. I know I’m not going to buy anything from EvolveFish now; I suggest you don’t either.

I used to think the Green Party was pretty neat. In fact, when I first registered to vote, I was torn between registering for the Green Party and the Democratic Party. Although I’m not entirely happy with the Democratic Party, of course, I’m still happy I didn’t register as a Green. Parts of their official platform are blatantly anti-science.

Section F of their platform, which describes their views on health care has some gems like these:

4. We support the teaching of holistic health approaches and, as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, acupuncture, and other healing approaches.
…
10. Medical research must be increased, and alternative therapies actively sought, to combat diseases and eliminate their causes, especially cancer and HIV/AIDS.
…
12. Public policy needs to move in the direction of a voluntary, community-based mental health system that safeguards human dignity, respects individual autonomy, and protects informed consent. A wide variety of humane, effective, and empowering alternative and complementary approaches should be available for anyone who experiences a psychiatric problem or mental disability.

Now let me put this bluntly: “alternative” and “complementary” medicine is not simply called “medicine” because it either hasn’t been proven to actually work or because it has been effectively proven not to work. Despite this, the largest party left of the Democratic Party in the United States blatantly endorses wasting money on quackery. It just goes to show that being liberal doesn’t mean you’re rational.

Google did a decent job with its new web app, Google Buzz, but it completely failed at privacy. By default, when you start using Google Buzz anyone can see who is “following” you and who you are “following” by going to your Google Profile. Furthermore, the people you follow are automatically those who you contact most often. This means anyone on the Internet can find out who you privately communicate with on your Gmail account, and can see their “buzzes” as well. However, you can opt-out of this by going to the Google Profile page, clicking “View my profile,” then clicking “Edit Profile” on the top-right hand corner. Finally, uncheck, “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me,” scroll down to the bottom, and click “Save changes.” Now only you are able to see who you are following.

However, an even bigger privacy concern exists. By default anything you post is set as public. I’ve noticed already that even my highly privacy-conscious friends have failed realize that anything they post on Google Buzz will be available for anyone to see (despite the words “Public” right next to “Post”). People simply assume whatever they post via Gmail is only going to be visible to their friends, which would make sense. However, unless you click “Private,” anyone will be able to see whatever you post via your Google Profile. Remember that when you set your posts to “Private” that if you check “My Contacts,” anyone you’ve ever added to your contacts will be able to see whatever you post on Google Buzz. You may wish to create a contacts list of “Friends,” and only share your “buzzes” with them.

Google needs to change Buzz’s default settings. People shouldn’t have to opt-out of sharing a bunch of their personal information. That is something that, obviously, should be opted-in to.

I’ve had two problems with my website that have been bugging me for a long time. The first was that when I tried to change to PHP5, I couldn’t use <?php include()?> to include files. That was because PHP5 disables register_globals, and I was using $DOCUMENT_ROOT to ensure that the includes worked regardless of the directory of the document requesting the includes file.

The second issue I was having was that when I created a subdomain, my host asked me to choose a directory I wanted the subdomain to use. For example, alex.asolis.net is located at asolis.net/alex. However, if someone went to the latter site, they would get a bunch of error messages since the $DOCUMENT_ROOT code made the document look for the includes file in the asolis, rather than the alex, directory. While alex.asolis.net still worked, asolis.net/alex had a bunch of error messages because the includes files it was looking for didn’t exist.

After several past failed attempts to find a solution to these issues, I finally figured them both out yesterday.
All I had to do to fix the includes problem was replace $DOCUMENT_ROOT with $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] (and put AddType x-mapp-php5 .php in the .htaccess file, of course).

The subdomain issue was equally simple. All I had to do there was add this to the .htaccess file in the asolis directory:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^alex\.asolis\.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^alex(.*)$ http://alex.asolis.net$1 [R=301,L]

That results in a 301 redirect from, for example, asolis.net/alex/file.html to alex.asolis.net/file.html.

It’s that easy!

Who would win in a fight between Cthulhu and God with a machine gun? Scribblenauts knows.
(See 2:20 into the video.)

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