August 26, 2003 – Brian.Carnell.Com

ActiveWords + Conversant

Last year I wrote about ActiveWords, which is hands down one of the best Windows utilities I’ve ever used. ActiveWords makes it easy to trigger relatively complex sequences of events just by typing a keyword into any text entry box.

I mostly use it to handle many of the repetitive tasks that are involved in maintaining my Conversant-based web sites. Conversant itself is pretty straightforward, but I’ve got so many different things going on — and a tendency to do things the hard way — that ActiveWords offers an excellent interface for many of these procedures.

Here’s a basic example. I’ve got close to 1,500 topical pages. Each of those topical pages has an associated RSS feed and features an XML icon with a link to the RSS feed. Each topical page has a hidden field that has the location of the RSS feed (there is an easier way to do this, but like I said, I like to be difficult). So whenever I create a new topical page I simply plant the cursor in the text entry box for the RSS field, type "RSS" followed by the F8 key which runs this basic text substitution script, (the greater than and less than signs are represented by the GT and LT tags).

<lt>!–#siteurl–<gt>index/rss/channel/

which would output:

<!–#siteurl–>index/rss/channel/

then I just have to tack on whatever this particular RSS feed is called and I’m done. It makes it a lot easier to do that then either a) having to remember this format all the time or b) sticking it in a text file, loading the file, and then copying and pasting.

I use a slightly more advanced script to deal with setting up the topical pages themselves. The way the topical pages work is that each article I write is tagged with various keywords that I’ve set up. The topical page simply returns a set of query results that find all articles tagged with a specific keyword or group of keywords. Conversant has a special macro, InsertQuery, that inserts the results from its Advanced Query Page into a regular page. So I’ve set up a script that is triggered when I type "AQP"+F8,

<LT>!–#insertquery aqppath="" cache="true" cacheExpires="720"–<gt>[LEFT:30]

This returns,

<!–#insertquery aqppath="" cache="true" cacheExpires="720"–>

and the [LEFT:30] portion at the end moves the cursor back to between the quote marks after the aqppath="" so I can go ahead and type in the path for the Advanced Query Page that I want to use for this topical page.

I’ve got about 6 ActiveWord scripts that perform actions like this. This way I can set these up the HTML code/Conversant macros like I want, simply remember the ActiveWords token I’m using, and then free up that space in my brain for other purposes.

Something else I’ve been doing for awhile for my web site is adding public domain e-texts to the site. This is part of my obssessive-compulsive personality. I have a page on my personal site about Darwinian evolution, for example. So it’s only logical that I also need to have e-texts of all of the books that Darwin ever wrote on the site as well.

But just having the texts there is kind of boring, so I’ve taken stuff that |Seth Dillingham| and Steve Ivy developed and added paragraph-level anchors so that if I (or anyone else wanted to), you could use a URL to bring up specific paragraphs. Moreover, I’m using a Javascript that Seth wrote to highlight the selected paragraph if you’re using the anchor, and a Cookie-based system to let the user make the permalinks visible or invisible (did I say I was obssessive?) For an example, see this chapter from a book by Frederick Douglass — play with the “Show/Hide Permalinks” option in the right-hand column to see how this works.

So the first thing I need to do is go through a book and add permalinks to every paragraph. I use Textpad 4.7 for all of my text editing, and this ActiveWords script triggered by "permalinks"+F8 to add the permalinks,

This script goes through and adds an opening paragraph tag at the beginning of the document and a closing paragraph tag at the end of the document, then adds paragraph tags at the beginning and end of every other paragraph. Then it goes through and adds a named anchor at the beginning of every paragraph along with a paragraph ID tag that the Javascript highlighter needs as well.

Group to Sue Government Over Title IX

A group representing various college coaching groups recently announced plans to sue the U.S. Department of Education over the way it enforces Title IX.

The Bush administration convened a Commission on Opportunity in Athletics to examine Title IX enforcement, but then ignored the commission’s findings. So the College Sports Council is headed back to court with a two-prong legal strategy.

First, it wants an appeals court to reinstate a lawsuit it filed challenging the Department of Education’s Title IX enforcement. THat lawsuit was thrown out by a District Court in June. That lawsuit challenges a Clinton-era interpretation of Title IX that many coaches blame for the elimination of men’s sports across the country.

Second, the group is filing a lawsuit challenging the Bush administration’s January 2003 decision not to repeal that interpretation of Title IX.

At issue is the Clinton-era interpretation which requires the male-female ratio in sports to approximate the male-female enrollment level in the college. This has been difficult to achieve at many schools without simply eliminating sports (with sports like wrestling and gymnastics taking the biggest hits). As women continue to be disproportionately represented in colleges and universities, this will become a bigger problem in coming years.

The group also claims that the Department of Education is using Enron-style accounting in claiming that since 1980 a total of 36 additional men’s teams have been added across the country. The Department of Education points to that result to back up its claims that Title IX enforcement hasn’t harmed men’s sports.

The College Sports Council points out that this is fallacious since the newer data include 134 additional schools that were added to the Department of Education’s survey after 1980, which backs up the group’s point that colleges are shedding men’s teams at a rather high rate.

Sources:

Groups to fight over Title IX enforcement. Ben Feller, Associated Press, August 14, 2003.

Coaches Launch Renewed Legal Challenge to Title IX Enforcement. Jim McCarthy, College Sports Council, August 15, 2003.

UK Court Rejects Transsexuals Lawsuit Over Bathroom Privileges

A British judge this month rejected a lawsuit by a group of transsexuals who argued they suffered sexual discrimination at a pub. The five transsexuals were asked to leave a pub after they used the women’s restroom.

The men sued and were backed up by the UK’s Equal Opportunities Commission. The transsexuals each sought 2,000 pounds from the pub owner.

But a judge ruled that the UK’s Sex Discrimination Act does not provide protection specifically for transsexuals. The judge ruled that since the transsexuals were biologically men, that the pub owner was well within his rights to ask them to leave if they could not refrain from using the women’s restroom.

Source:

Landlord right to treat transsexual customers as men. Nick Britten, Daily Telegraph (London), August 15, 2003.

Transsexuals Lose Case. Sky news, August 14, 2003.

Should Older, Lonely Women Considering Becoming Lesbians?

Australia’s government-funded Relationships Australia has a bit of advice for older single women having trouble finding companionship — give lesbianism a try! Seriously.

The Herald Sun quoted Relationships Australia spokesman Jack Carney as saying,

As they get over 60, opportunities [for women] to get a man diminish substantially. Men marry younger women and they die about eight years younger, so there is a real male shortage.

And as women get even older it gets much worse, so we ask them to entertain the idea of lesbian relationships.

Source:

Older women urged to become lesbians. Herald Sun, August 10, 2003.

UK Children, But Not Parents, Given Right to Sue for False Child Abuse Claims

A Court of Appeals in Great Britain in July rejected claims of parents who wanted to sue doctors and social workers over false claims of child abuse, but it did rule that children involved in such cases could sue doctors and social workers.

In the UK doctors and social workers are legally obligated to report any suspected abuse. The Court of Appeals heard the claims of three couples who wanted to sue health care and social workers for negligence for falsely accusing them of abuse and, in one case, taking a child away from parents for almost 9 months.

In one case a woman was accused of Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, but ultimately it turned out that the child in question simply had severe allergies. In another case a father was accused of abusing his daughter, but it later turned out that she had a rare skin disease. Finally, an infant daughter was removed from the home of a couple for more than nine months after the girl’s parents were accused of breaking her leg. The girl was later diagnosed with a rare genetic condition which renders the bones extremely brittle.

The Court of Appeals ruled that although parents had no grounds to sue, that the children did under the Human Rights Act which requires the state to protect the rights of children. The court’s decision will likely be appealed.

Sources:

Children can sue over abuse claims. The BBC, July 31, 2003.

Victims of child care errors win right to sue. Clare Dyer, The Guardian, August 1, 2003.

Domestic Violence Advocate Convicted of Second-Degree Murder

Oregon domestic violence advocate Lorraine Netherton was convicted in July of second degree murder in the death of 22-year-old Desiere Rants. Rants was literally caught in the middle of a custody battle that Netherton was trying to resolve.

Until last year, Netherton was chair of the Federal Way Domestic Violence Task Force. She was forced out in a vote of the members of the task force, however, who were concerned about “her violent temper and her penchant for carrying handguns.”

Netherton, 40, had agreed to help a neighbor with her child custody battle. Netherton was trying to serve the father of the child, William Rants, with court papers. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Netherton spotted William Rants in a car with his daughter, and engaged in a car chase of William Rants.

At the end of that car chase, William Rants and his daughter exited the driver’s side door of the car and Desiere Rants, his sister, exited from the passenger side. Desiere got between William and Netherton apparently to try to keep them apart. Netherton claimed that Desiere hit her, and so she fired two shots into the woman’s upper body, killing her.

Both witnesses and physical evidence contradicted her claims, however. Although Netherton testified that Desiere Rants had hit her 6-8 times in the head and face, there was no evidence of any injury and even Netherton’s makeup remained undisturbed. Moreover, witnesses testified that Netherton fired without provocation at Desiere and then stood over her and fired at her again as she lay on the ground.

The jury settled on a conviction for second degree murder after spending two days debating and ultimately rejecting a conviction for first degree (premeditated) murder. Netherton plans to appeal, and could face 16-25 years for the murder if her conviction is not overturned.

Sources:

Domestic-violence foe guilty of second-degree murder. Tracy Johnson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 19, 2003.

Woman charged in fatal custody-case shooting. Hector Castro, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 28, 2002.

Domestic violence worker guilty of murder. Kathleen R. Merrill, King County Journal, July 19, 2003.

Ex-advocate for violence victims is charged in slaying Maureen O’Hagan, Seattle Times, November 28, 2002.