HTML Books

Let's start at the very beginning - well, at least close to the beginning. God created mankind in his own image. Now some of us are not exactly sure how all of that works, but Cynthia Ryland, in her exceedingly apt and clever "God Went To Beauty School" offers some great Truths, both about God and about his human creatures. This is, of course, a work of "fiction" and not "fact". Fact and Fiction are opposites,and mutually exclusive, but, as anyone knows who has ever read a good novel, there is often much "Truth" in "Fiction" as is the case here. We all recognize that there are bad humans in the world and we recognize that there are many instances where popes and princes,philosophers and preachers warn of an unyielding, fierce God who is a stern, perhaps even unforgiving, Taskmaster. Ms Rylant's refreshing, delightful book offers an altogether different view of God (May I presume to claim this same God for myself?) a God who made, who created, e.g., funny,quaint,warm, loving,curious humans and a God who (therefore?) must Himself have had, and who continues to have, some of those very same qualities Himself.I shall not dare to interpret/explain her work. Read it yourself and work it out. Tell your friends (maybe your enemies?!) about it. Ask your preacher to write a sermon about it.That should prove to be interesting.Propose it to your book-club.
God is indeed GOOD. May God (that happy, smiling, cheerful, friendly, curious God so delightfully, so exquisitely presented by our Author) bless Cynthia Ryland! Oh, and me too, please, God!

Sometimes, people challenge previously accepted historical accounts. And such challenges can wind up being constructive criticism for those who previously made incorrect claims. In some cases, countries have come up with rather wild claims about their past. The Soviet Union comes to mind as an example. And I think that Russians are finally rejecting some of the wilder statements they used to make.

Well, what about Israel? Are claims about Jewish history mostly bogus? Is it true that no Jews never existed? And that they killed God, the creator of the whole Universe? And poisoned the wells? And that they never built a Temple in Jerusalem? And that they never lived in the Middle East, and left it for good 2000 years ago? Is it true that they did not exist when they invaded the Levant as a right-wing colonial force after World War Two, having pretended that they were killed during the war? Or did they invade a few decades earlier, unarmed, to steal land from the only real people in the world, the heavily armed and liberal Arabs? And to use their blood to make their bread? Is it true that more Jews returned alive from the World War Two death camps than went there?

Well, no, of course not. Such illogical taunts are not constructive criticism. They are simply examples of antisemitism. Such absurdities do not tell us much about the Jews. But they do warn us that those who are coming up with such nonsense may have a problem.

In this article, Lewis explains that Holocaust denial is part of the mainstream in much of the Arab world. This denial is "deeply anti-Semitic." But it is not mere anti-Semitism. It implies the lack of a rational, democratic culture in much of the Arab world today. We see simultaneous claims that the Arabs were not responsible for the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and that they were justified. Claims that the Jews are mass murderers who are as bad as the Nazis and that the Nazis were not mass murderers after all. And so on. The author explains that throughout, all this political irrationality is a "mindset that lends itself to denial of all empirical evidence" that might be relevant to such issues. Conferences that could be organized to discuss actual societal problems are instead held to discuss this sort of nonsense (thereby creating even more problems).

The author says that "Arab societies that wish to be part of the modern, technological world cannot be built on a foundation of lies." And that Arab intellectuals and leaders are going to have to make a choice: reform or "further retreat into irrationality."

I agree with the author that Arab Holocaust denial is basically an Arab problem. It has little to do with actual Jews: in my opinion, the Jews (and Israel) in Arab propaganda are mythical anyway. Sure, Arab nations may confuse actual Jews and the real nation of Israel with the caricature they have invented and attack it, but that has more to do with the Arabs than with their neighbors, Jewish or otherwise. And I agree that truth is the main issue here. Once we can get societies to value truth, we're well on the way to making big improvements in human society as a whole.

Very timely article on the state of mobile security. His explanation of encryption was Schneier-esque (Bruce) and made me feel like I could write my own algorithms. His reference to phase shift Quantum Encrytion has changed the way I view the debate on Photon wave vs. particle theory. I would highly recommend other articles by Mr. Roberson, especially his tome "Turning off the lights, use the switch".

Quite the author this guy, great verbiage.

Just so you know, my sister wrote this article. And I don't know why anyone is selling it. Does she get a cut of the profits? I mean, since she wrote the damn thing, she should get something from it. Am I right? Yes. I am. So my sister will be expecting some of the profit now. Thank you.

Alex D. Martinez

Are you new to Web page design? Do you wonder if you could make your own Web site? If so, this is the book for you. Of course you could just grab an HTML editor and drag and drop objects into an HTML page but without understanding what is going on behind the scenes, what do you do if you have a problem. You can stare at the HTML code but it may as well be Greek!

Learning HTML 4.0 is a compilation of the previous Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced HTML books from the same publisher. It walks you through writing HTML code with a text editor such as Wordpad and viewing the results with a browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape. Learning HTML 4.0 takes you from "What is HTML?" to basic HTML concepts such as document structure and simple HTML tags. It goes on to intermediate elements such as tables and frames and concludes with advanced topics including forms and cascading style sheets.

Included with the book is a companion CD with lesson files and examples of HTML to help you understand what the book is teaching. This is a wonderful book for the individual who wants to learn HTML without going to school. You can work at your own pace and proceed through the lessons as quickly as you want. Once you are done with the lessons, you will have a working knowledge of HTML but you will keep this book within reach and use it often as a reference book.

An interesting sidebar to this is that you will likely have your own Web site up and running long before you finish this book. A lot of the advanced techniques are not needed to publish a nice Web site. Why not use that free space your Internet Service Provider offers for your own Web site? Order this book and you will be online with your own Web site soon!

As Jim Moran explains in this fine article, people are being slaughtered in large numbers in Darfur.

Does that mean that we can use the word "genocide?" As far as I am concerned, yes it does.

Should the United States try to help stop the slaughter? I think we Americans have a duty to try.

Still, I do sense that many people who say they are against the mass murders in Darfur would secretly like to see them continue, if the alternative means that the victims will be saved with the help of the Americans. And that truly disgusts me. Suppose someone you knew said that it would be sad if a million people were murdered....but that it would be catastrophic if all those lives were to be saved, if that meant using American power to do so. Wouldn't you disagree? I sure would.

Let's all try to find a way to stop the genocide. Mass murder is bad for everyone.

In this very well written article, Stein and Gal-Or point out that when the topic is Israel, "an anti-intellectual approach that seeks to limit debate, free speech, and academic freedom has been increasingly present on Canadian campuses. It has manifested itself in a number of major strategies: preventing speakers from arriving at their destination, preventing speakers from being heard, restricting opposing views, exploiting emotion and using propaganda, and preventing rebuttal."

The authors note that while arguments on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict have often been "skewed," it is the anti-Israeli camp "that has exceeded the bounds of civilized debate" by using the above strategies. They make the point that students and faculty are supposed to listen to all points of view to form their opinions. They shouldn't want or need others to tell them which speakers are acceptable. And one can presume that those who are against freedom of speech have something to hide, and that facts would discredit their cause.

The authors give some examples of intimidation and harassment on campus. And they insist that pro-Israel speech be given the same protection as its anti-Israel equivalent. That protection ought to extend to grades on papers: the article shows that many students were downgraded on papers that showed Israel in a good light.

This eight-page article makes quite a few good recommendations, but I think the best is the following:

"Although opinions can be held freely, patently false statements of 'fact' should bear some censure in the form of cumulative academic consequences similar to acts of plagiarism or 'cooking of results' in academic experiments."

I would like to applaud Inroads for publishing this article. I highly recommend it.

While the National Catholic Reporter's articles about Israel often leave much to be desired, the present one is a pleasant surprise. Although Robert Royal may not appear to be so sure that Zionism was a great idea, he shows no doubt about the fact that terrorists who attack it need to be opposed.

In this article, Royal explains that Israel was deliberately attacked by Hezbollah. And that "since negotiating-and peacemaking are self-indulgent delusions," Hezbollah has to be disarmed or defeated.

The other point that Royal makes is that one of the causes of Hezbollah's attacks was "the disastrous softness of Ariel Sharon." After all, Sharon did pull Israeli civilians out of Gaza. That may have made sense in some respects: Israelis in Gaza were being attacked and were hard to defend. And the pullout from Gaza did win Sharon some admiration internationally. Unfortunately, as Royal says, it also brought more war, with Gaza becoming a base for rocket attacks on Israeli territory.

As Royal warns us, "civilization is always compromised by present and past evils. Yet, if the civilized world cannot find it within its soul the courage to stand up to evildoers, despite the consciousness of its own flaws, evildoers will be quite happy to create another sort of civilization." I agree. Sooner or later, we'll either defeat such thugs or wind up without much of a civilization at all.

I recommend this article.

This boxed set contains three books that have been published in December 2001 and represent the essentials for anyone who is working with XML and web services.

The books are:

(1) CHARLES F. GOLDFARB'S XML HANDBOOK by Charles F. Goldfarb and Paul Prescod. Goldfarb invented SGML, upon which XML is based and which had a significant influence on the design of HTML. At 1200 pages this book is probably one of the most complete references that one can have. It covers every conceivable topic, ranging from a good description of XML and how it evolved from SGML, to semantic web and web services (each of which are disciplines onto themselves).

Expected topics are given in-depth treatment (XML, schemas, DTDs, datatypes, XSLT, XSL-FO, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XSDL, namespaces, topic maps, RDF, SOAP, UDDI, WSDL and VoiceXML), with a focus on the following:
- integration of XML and the older EDI approaches to e-commerce and extended supply chain systems
- a sound approach to content management
- how XML fits into the web services framework
- chapters on important topics such as portals, databases, content acquisition, conversion and publishing
- a series of chapters devoted to tutorials on XML basics, schemas, and transformation and navigation protocols

In addition this book comes with two CD ROMs that are packed with applications such as IBM's AlphaWorks suite and NeoCore XMS Native XML Database (Personal Edition). A trial version of TurboXML IDE & Schema Editor is also included among the 175 programs on the CD ROM set.

This is an overwhelming book for beginners, but is a valuable resource for anyone who is deeply involved in web services, XML and related technologies. If you fit the latter category this is probably the only XML reference you'll need.

(2) DEFINITIVE XML SCHEMA by Priscilla Walmsley. In a nutshell this book gives a detailed description of the XML schema and associated topics. The author is a member of the W3C working group that created XML Schema, and the material in this book is consistent with W3C recommendations. See the editorial description and reviews on this book's product page for specifics.

(3) DEFINITIVE XSLT AND XPATH by G. Ken Holman. Covers everything you need to know about transforming information structured vocabularies and output formats. The author is the chair of OASIS's XSLT/XPath Conformance Technical Subcommittee. See the editorial description and reviews on this book's product page for specifics.

What's not included in this set, but worth getting is DEFINITIVE XML APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT by Lars Marius Garshol. However, "The Definitive XML Professional Toolkit" will provide you with a solid foundation of the basics as well as software tools that you can evaluate as candidates for your own development environment.

Delivering Push delivers. This guide presents information for both users and developers, though I found the information for developers most useful. Unlike most of the media treatments that pushed push as the next big thing, this book stops to consider what push technologies might actually be good for.