May 2008
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Information, Please! was one of the most popular, and literate, shows on American radio, airing from 1938-1948 and running briefly as a TV show in 1952. Its format was novel: instead of quizzing contestants from the general public, listeners submitted questions to quiz the experts, and if they stumped the resident eggheads, they won money and (for many years) a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The program became a cultural icon, spurring Information, Please! quiz books, card games, almanacs, film shorts, and countless editorial cartoons and satires. Anybody who was anybody wanted to appear on the show.
Its master of ceremonies was the warm and witty Clifton Fadiman (right), literary editor of the New Yorker magazine and a longtime member of Britannica’s Board of Editors. His brilliant and amusing three-member panel of savants routinely included Franklin P. Adams, the popular newspaper columnist, Shakespeare expert, and member of the fashionable Algonquin Round Table of New York writers; John Kieran, the amazing Bronx-accented sportswriter, linguist and Latinist, botanist and bird-lover, and master reciter of Western poetry; and Oscar Levant, pianist, composer, actor, raconteur, and all-around wit. Fadiman and his brain trust would often be joined by a special guest panelist, usually a famous writer, political leader, or Hollywood star. Throughout World War II, the popular show broadcast from cities across the United States, selling millions of dollars of War Bonds in the process.
The program was also hailed for its integrity, as explained in the PBS documentary “The American Experience: The Rise of TV Quiz Shows“:
One of the most popular and intelligent shows was “Information, Please,” which called on the audience to send in questions to stump a panel of experts. The show aired for 14 years, until its finale in 1952, and was noteworthy not only for its success, but for its integrity. At the time, radio programs made their way on air in two ways. They were underwritten by big name sponsors, who were expected to be involved with the show, or they were funded by individual producers, making them self-sufficient. Dan Golenpaul, the producer for “Information, Please,” earned kudos when he fired the Reynolds Tobacco Company, which had run a series of untruthful commercials and also demanded that panelists on the show smoke its cigarettes.
The opportunity to win a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica for stumping the experts was an offer instituted shortly after the program went on the air, and it was an immediate hit with the public. Within weeks of advertising the offer, mail to the radio show skyrocketed from 6,000 letters a week to more than 20,000. Britannica salesmen, however, did encounter one problem: some prospective customers were now delaying their purchase of the encyclopedia because they hoped to win a set by appearing on the show. To combat this, Britannica promised full cash refunds if, within three months, any purchaser of a print set won an Information, Please! prize, and this promise was maintained throughout Britannica’s long affiliation with the program. Exactly 1,366 sets of the encyclopedia were given away to listeners of the show.
The Britannica Blog is proud to highlight one of these broadcasts each Friday. So, “Wake Up!”—as the show’s announcer would say at the start of each broadcast. “It’s Time to Stump the Experts!”
Enjoy the show!
* * *
For thousands of other classic radio broadcasts, visit Ken Varga’s ”Old Time Radio Network Library,” where he offers links to more than 12,000 free shows.
Written by admin on May 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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In the spring of 1994, an express-mail box of 4,000 pages of tobacco-company documents turned up on the doorstep of longtime industry critic Stanton Glantz, a professor at the University of California at San Francisco. The return address read “Mr. Butts,” the character from the Doonesbury cartoon strip who lives to addict children to smoking. Glantz assembled a team of medical doctors and policy analysts to comb through the papers, which he carefully lodged in the special collections division of the university library so that Brown & Williamson, the tobacco company in question, could not block public access to them.
The documents were astonishing, describing projects with codenames like “Ariel” to increase nicotine kick, giving behind-the-scenes look at the company’s maneuverings around various lawsuits and congressional inquiries, and showing beyond doubt that B&W, at least, was well aware of the cancerous effects of smoking decades ago, although it continued to maintain that causation has not been proved “and that we do not ourselves make health claims for tobacco products”—and that nicotine is not addictive.
If you are still smoking tomorrow, on World No-Tobacco Day, you might want to dip into the pages of Glantz et al.’s book The Cigarette Papers and turn to the section on B&W’s experiments with various additives to its products, including benzopyrene, cocoa, and deer tongue, among the dozens of other chemical additives that governments allow cigarette makers to put into tobacco products. Read Tara Parker-Pope’s book Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke on the sheer enormousness of the cigarette industry, which now produces an estimated 5.5 trillion cigarettes each year, or a thousand cigarettes for every person on the planet.
Read Allan Brandt’s The Cigarette Century, in which, in 1882, future tobacco tycoon James Duke came to the realization that cigarettes would have to supplant chewing tobacco, pipes, and cigars in order to earn their keep. His Tobacco Trust, though soon broken up by federal regulators, was successful well beyond Duke’s plans, in part through the accident of changing cultural norms, in part because of deliberate recruitment of women and children as smokers. As Brandt relates, the major producers benefited, too, from conflict and empire; during World War I, General John J. Pershing said, “You ask me what we need to win this war. I answer tobacco, as much as bullets.” And read Richard Kluger’s Ashes to Ashes, which documents the first hundred years of the cigarette industry in the United States; by 1891, he notes, cigarette makers were clearing a 27 percent profit margin, an investor’s dream that remains roughly constant today, for all the billions that the industry shells out in legal fees and fines—a rich source of revenue for governments, along with cigarette taxes, for which reason tobacco is not outlawed outright, even though it is less socially acceptable to use it in public.
This holds true throughout Europe and North America these days; even Turkey, long a major tobacco producer and smoker’s haven, has outlawed smoking in most enclosed public places. The draconian bans seem to be having an effect: in the United States, where more than half of adults smoked in 1950, only about 20 percent do so today. Only East Asia, the tobacco marketers’ last hope, remains a holdout, and public-health officials project that it will one day align with the rest of the world in discouraging the practice.
Written by Gregory McNamee on May 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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The disclosure that Israel and Syria are engaged in peace talks mediated by Turkey suggests that both sides see benefits to at least giving the impression they are prepared to make the tough compromises required to resolve their differences.
Syria would like to end its isolation and distract attention from its ongoing alliance with Iran in support of Hezbollah and President Bashar Assad’s continuing effort to destabilize Lebanon. Israel has long sought peace with Syria but Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also needs a diversion from the corruption allegations against him. He also may want to put pressure on the Palestinians by showing that Israel is prepared to focus on the Syrian track if they are not more forthcoming in their bilateral talks.
A peace treaty has been sitting on the table for a decade awaiting the Syrian president’s signature. Several Israeli prime ministers have expressed a willingness to meet the Syrian demand for a return of most, if not all, of the Golan Heights, but only in exchange for a full peace. To date, Assad has not been prepared to make that commitment.
Rather than prepare for peace, Assad has been building up his arsenal. Most worrisome was the revelation that Syria was working with North Korea on what most analysts now believe was a nuclear weapons program before it was destroyed in an Israeli raid. Though that attack, and the subsequent disclosures related to the facility came as a surprise, intelligence reports suggesting that Syria was engaged in nuclear research have circulated for several years. Now, even as the reports of peace talks leaked, Syrian officials are reportedly planning a trip to Moscow to discuss the acquisition of advanced weaponry, including submarines, anti-aircraft missiles, the latest model MiG fighter jets and advanced surface-to-surface ballistic missiles.
Syria now has more troops and tanks, and nearly as many aircraft as Israel. The Assad regime fields armed forces totaling more than 300,000 men, with another 350,000 troops in reserve. Syria’s arsenal is by far the largest in the Arab world (roughly double that of prewar Iraq), and includes more than 4,700 tanks and 611 combat aircraft. Syria also has stockpiles of chemical and biological agents.
Israel’s attack on the nuclear facility temporarily raised tensions along the Golan Heights where Syrian actions had already provoked concern about the possibility of conflict. In March 2007, it was reported that Syria has positioned along the border with Israel thousands of medium and long-range rockets capable of striking major towns across northern Israel. A division was added to the Syrian army’s forward deployment on the Heights and the production of Scud missiles has been accelerated. Russia provide the Syrians with advanced anti-aircraft missiles and recently announced plans to sell new MiG fighter planes capable of flying at nearly three times the speed of sound and simultaneously shooting several targets more than 110 miles away.
These developments are hardly signals of a shift in Syrian policy. Nor does the agreement Syria signed in 2006 with Iran for military cooperation against what they called the “common threats” presented by Israel and the United States. Even with its Iranian patron, Syria cannot feel too comfortable after the Israeli raid.
Israel would very much like to reach an agreement with Syria and even though past Israeli leaders have laid out the basis for a treaty, it will still require a great deal of confidence building on the Syrian side to persuade the Israeli public that Assad is sincere about peace.
In the last 40 years, Israel has developed the Golan Heights economically, and anyone who has ever stood on Mt. Bental immediately can see the strategic value of having its forces looking down on Syria rather than the other way around, as it was for the prior 20 years. Less visible, but no less important is the access to water that comes from this area. Roughly one-quarter of Israel’s drinking water comes from the Sea of Galilee and it would be endangered by a return of the Golan Heights. It is no wonder that opinion polls after news of the secret talks leaked showed a majority of Israelis opposed to trading this land for peace.
To overcome this opposition, Assad will have to make the type of psychological breakthrough that King Hussein of Jordan and President Sadat of Egypt achieved by their words and, more important, their deeds. Assad will have to stop supporting Hezbollah, expel the terrorists from Syria, close their headquarters in Damascus and sit down for face to face talks with the Israeli prime minister. This would demonstrate his sincerity. As was the case with Hussein and Sadat, such gestures would undoubtedly be met with enthusiasm and conciliation by Israelis.
Written by Mitchell Bard on May 29th, 2008 with no comments.
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Perhaps you recall listening to Jimmie Dodd sing these words:
Proverbs, proverbs, they’re so true.
Proverbs tell us what to do.
Proverbs help us all to be
Better Mouseketeers.
And perhaps you’ve wondered, as I have, if that’s really true. Let’s have a look at some proverbs.
“Seeing is believing.”
That means, I take it, that visual evidence is particularly persuasive. When you actually see something, rather than merely hearing a second-hand report of it, you are very apt to accept the reality of what you see. Of course, one problem is that there are such things as mirages and optical illusions. Thus,
“Appearances can be deceiving.”
That’s certainly true. For one thing, as St. Paul put it, “We see through a glass, darkly.” For another, there are so many people out there whose business it is to deceive us. The deception may be more or less benign, as when we see Fred Astaire dancing with a vacuum cleaner in a television commercial, or it may be quite otherwise, as when pictures from a war zone are fabricated in order to make a political point.
So where does that leave us? Taken together we are advised to trust our senses, but only to the extent that the things we conclude are true are, in fact, true. Hmmm.
“If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc., it’s a duck.”
Thus are we cautioned against claims made by individuals or groups that are contradicted by the plain evidence of their behavior. Seems like good advice. But then,
“You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
So the saying goes, and Bo Diddley confirmed it. You don’t argue with The Originator. And anyway,
“All is not gold that glitters.”
And once again, where exactly are we? A thing that appears to be X may well be X but, on the other hand, it may not be. Okay, then.
“Look before you leap.”
This seems wise but, on reflection, incomplete. Look – and then what? I suppose it means to imply that, having looked, we will make some sort of judgment as to whether leaping will be, under the observed circumstances, well or ill advised. But is it enough simply to imply this? Isn’t what we actually need some guidance on how to make that judgment? Conceding that it is surely the case that without that first look, no niceness of judgment is likely to avail us much, still the looking is by far the easy part of the process.
A similar difficulty crops up in an adage popularized by an iconic American hero, Davy Crockett:
“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
This pretty much amounts to “look before you leap,” minus the alliteration. It’s more nearly explicit about what is truly in question – not simply the looking but the being sure. But what we want to know is how exactly to assure that we are right. The motive to proceed might just as well be assumed; we hardly need to be reminded why we were bothering to inquire into the matter.
I can’t find an adage that teaches how to be sure. This is strange, considering how many people are sure. Or at least they seem so; are they really? Perhaps they’ve tired of seeking assurance and have simply decided to go ahead without it. You know, because
“Time and tide wait for no man.”
I think maybe Jimmy was just trying to impress Annette.
Written by Robert McHenry on May 29th, 2008 with no comments.
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We’re all living in a state of passivity—at least we are according to renowned architect Peter Eisenman. In mid-May, Eisenman used the platform provided him at the 2008 convention of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RISA) to denounce the effect that a “prevalent media culture” has had/is having on architecture.
The 75-year-old American is known for stirring the pot on occasion, so the six-point plan he presented at RISA comes without the shock and awe of earlier controversies. As one of the first architects to embrace a style that would now be filed under Deconstructivism - a term not used to describe an architectural approach until the late 80s - Eisenman’s most famous buildings appeared to most critics disconnected from both historical context and their surrounding environment and caused much debate.
It appears, for the sake of controversy, that Eisenman’s rant on his newest target - our virtually-supported sense of reality - will work, if anything, to undermine nearly all of his creative output produced in a decades-long career. With fewer commissioned projects on the architect’s drawing board, it seems as though Eisenman is turning now to powerful, carefully crafted language to create a firestorm instead of creative, carefully crafted structures to enhance our built environment.
A summary of the six points in Eisenman’s “plan” (read the entire text here):
- Architecture in a media culture: Thanks to iPhones and other technological advancements, it seems we’re connected to a computer at all times. “Less and less,” Eisenman says, “people are able to be in the real physical world without the support of the virtual world.” As a result, architecture is focusing more and more on “spectacular imaging,” architects building icons without meaning.
- Students have become passive: Well, everyone has become passive because of the prevalent media culture we live in, Eisenman argues. Students, though, are the group he chooses to focus on because they are the ones that should sit – pen and paper in hand – jotting down everything the aged professor has to say, right? “[Passive] people demand,” Eisenman insists, “more and more images, more visual and aural information and in a state of passivity people demand things that are easily consumed.” What does this mean for the future of architecture?
- Computers make design standards poorer: With a computer, we no longer need to learn how to draw. Eisenman’s third point focuses on the fact that “architects used to draw volumes” and could illustrate the differences between Le Corbusier and Palladio. Now, our work is merely connecting the dots on a screen. “Photoshop is a fantastic tool for those who do not have to think,” he says.
- Today’s buildings lack meaning or reference: Eisenman seems to be saying here that an architect should always be able to answer the question “Why does this building look like this?” with a nod to historical example or cultural meaning. Today, the answer is “Because the computer can produce it.”
- We are in a period of late style: “Late style” is a nod to Edward Said’s book On Late Style, which, Eisenman says, “describes lateness as a moment in time when there are no new paradigms or ideological, cultural, political conditions that cause significant change.” Eisenman posits that we are currently in a period of late style, but offers no conjecture as to what follows the end of a historical cycle.
- To be an architect is a social act: Architecture has always been a social act, Eisenman argues. Not in the sense that architects work to build “houses for the poor or shopping malls for the rich” but in the sense that architecture must engage with society by “operating against the existing hegemonic social and political structure of our time.”
When I first read this list, I immediately thought of the work of Frank Gehry, particularly his most recent designs (the Jay Pritzker Pavilion bandshell in Chicago’s Millennium Park, the Walt Disney Concert Hall–right–in Los Angeles, etc.) and their defining similarities: cold steel exoskeletons carved and curved like the chocolate topping on a French Silk pie, a design made possible only through the use of modern computer software, a design based on “spectacular imaging.”
Typically I think of Frank Gehry’s work as being in a category all to itself because his buildings seem almost indistinguishable from the others; yet, it’s hard to compare Gehry’s work to that of any other working architect. However, in a strict classification of architectural styles, it would be hard to place Gehry anywhere outside of the Deconstructivist label. His work, due to its trademark fragmentation and use of unusual shapes, is eerily similar to the later work of Eisenman himself.
Eisenman’s latest major project, a multipurpose stadium constructed for the University of Phoenix, looks remarkably like a work by Frank Gehry. The stadium became globally known when it hosted the 2008 Super Bowl and has been recognized by Business Week as one of the 10 most impressive sports facilities in the world, but regardless, it is still an odd structure – completed only two years ago – for an architect now critical of architecture without meaning or reference. Because of its multipurpose nature, the stadium – officially the home of an NFL team – has hosted soccer matches, concerts, trade shows and more. Not only does the exterior – crafted of curving Gehry-like steel that could be created only on computer software – fail to evoke historical reference or cultural meaning, the interior has been consciously designed to schizophrenically play host to any number of events
Eisenman’s latest creative work stands, quite literally, in strict contradiction to his latest academic work; it’ll be interesting to see if the architect takes his own ideas into account when laying out his next structure or if this, his most recent presentation, stands as just a small blip on a career built on creating controversy.
Written by Nicholas Jackson on May 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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The British author Ian Fleming, whose centenary falls today, May 28, once observed that owning a lot of books tends to go with serious criminal tendencies. There is a certain irony in the observation, since Fleming kept a fine library and wrote 16 or so books himself, but he knew his crime. Not only that, complained fellow spy novelist John Le Carré, Fleming’s alter-ego and fictional hero James Bond had few scruples and little sense of morality; in the rough and tumble of the Cold War, Bond was committed to toasting his enemies by any means yesterday, and Fleming’s novels and the films that were made of them, from Dr. No to Casino Royale to The Living Daylights and back to Casino Royale again, revel in the glory of righteous murder and various forms of sociopathy to political ends.
The Bond novels still hold up, even if drinking to excess, cigarette smoking, tearing about busy streets in race cars, and other forms of Bondian amusement are generally frowned on these days. Even his slightly frothy children’s book Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is better than most such things, though some guardians of youthful innocence and slayers of initiative might frown on Fleming’s insistence that yes is better than no: “Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes,’ otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”
There are plenty of other good books to read in honor of the Fleming centenary. One is Laurent Bouzerau’s richly illustrated The Art of Bond, with its fervent celebration of the swimsuit-clad temptresses in the Bondian annals. Bookend it with Simon Winder’s The Man Who Saved Britain, Barry Parker’s Death Rays, Jet Packs, Stunts & Supercars, about the mad science of the Bond novels and movies (“I took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge, Miss Moneypenny. That’s why I can fly this helicopter.”), and James Chapman’s entertaining study Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, which opens with the question, “Why should we take James Bond seriously?” Chapman gives a reasoned, detailed answer, but Kevin Kline’s rogue CIA agent character in Richard Lester’s rollicking film A Fish Called Wanda gets it right, too, a few adjustments made: because without Bond, England would have been the smallest province in the Russian Empire. Reason enough to toast Ian Fleming on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and to tip an iron-rimmed hat to Mr. Bond as well.
Written by Gregory McNamee on May 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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This morning we released the Preview 3 build of the ASP.NET MVC framework. I blogged details last month about an interim source release we did that included many of the changes with this Preview 3 release. Today's build includes some additional features not in last month's drop, some nice enhancements/refinements, as well as Visual Studio tool integration and documentation.
You can download an integrated ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 setup package here. You can also optionally download the ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 framework source code and framework unit tests here.
Controller Action Method Changes
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes the MVC Controller changes we first discussed and previewed with the April MVC source release, along with some additional tweaks and adjustments.
You can continue to write controller action methods that return void and encapsulate all of their logic within the action method. For example:
which would render the below HTML when run:
Preview 3 also now supports using an approach where you return an "ActionResult" object that indicates the result of the action method, and enables deferred execution of it. This allows much easier unit testing of actions (without requiring the need to mock anything). It also enables much cleaner composition and overall execution control flow.
For example, we could use LINQ to SQL within our Browse action method to retrieve a sequence of Product objects from our database and indicate that we want to render a View of them. The code below will cause three pieces of "ViewData" to be passed to the view - "Title" and "CategoryName" string values, and a strongly typed sequence of products (passed as the ViewData.Model object):
One advantage of using the above ActionResult approach is that it makes unit testing Controller actions really easy (no mocking required). Below is a unit test that verifies the behavior of our Browse action method above:
We can then author a "Browse" ViewPage within the \Views\Products sub-directory to render a response using the ViewData populated by our Browse action:
When we hit the /Products/Browse/Beverages URL we'll then get an HTML response like below (with the three usages of ViewData circled in red):
Note that in addition to support a "ViewResult" response (for indicating that a View should be rendered), ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also adds support for returning "JsonResult" (for AJAX JSON serialization scenarios), "ContentResult" (for streaming content without a View), as well as HttpRedirect and RedirectToAction/Route results.
The overall ActionResult approach is extensible (allowing you to create your own result types), and overtime you'll see us add several more built-in result types.
Improved HTML Helper Methods
The HTML helper methods have been updated with ASP.NET MVC Preview 3. In addition to a bunch of bug fixes, they also include a number of nice usability improvements.
Automatic Value Lookup
With previous preview releases you needed to always explicitly pass in the value to render when calling the Html helpers. For example: to include a value within a <input type="text" value="some value"/> element you would write:
The above code continues to work - although now you can also just write:
The HTML helpers will now by default check both the ViewData dictionary and any Model object passed to the view for a ProductName key or property value to use.
SelectList and MultiSelectList ViewModels
New SelectList and MultiSelectList View-Model classes are now included that provide a cleaner way to populate HTML dropdowns and multi-select listboxes (and manage things like current selection, etc). One approach that can make form scenarios cleaner is to instantiate and setup these View-Model objects in a controller action, and then pass them in the ViewData dictionary to the View to format/render.
For example, below I'm creating a SelectList view-model class over the set of unique category objects in our database. I'm indicating that I want to use the "CategoryID" property as the value of each item in the list, and the "CategoryName" as the display text. I'm also setting the list selection to the current CategoryId of the Product we are editing:
Within our view we then just have to write the below code to indicate that we want to create a drop-downlist against the SelectList we put into ViewData:
This will then render the appropriate drop down with items and selection for us at runtime:
Built-in error validation support isn't included with our HTML helpers yet (you currently need to write code for this) - but will show up in the future, which will make form editing scenarios even easier.
You'll also start to see ASP.NET AJAX helper methods show up in future preview releases as well, which will make it easier to integrate AJAX into MVC applications with a minimum of code.
URL Routing Improvements
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes a number of improvements to the URL routing system. URL routing is one of the most "fundamental" components of a web MVC framework to get right, hence the reason we've spent a lot of focus the first few previews getting this area nailed. Our new URL routing engine will ship in .NET 3.5 SP1 this summer, and will support both Web Forms and MVC requests. ASP.NET MVC will be able to use the built-in .NET 3.5 SP1 routing engine when running on .NET 3.5 SP1. ASP.NET MVC will also include its own copy of the assembly so that it can also work on non-SP1 systems.
Some of the URL Routing Improvements in the Preview 3 release include:
MapRoute() and IgnoreRoute() helper methods
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 includes new "MapRoute" and "IgnoreRoute" helper methods that you can use to more easily register routing rules. MapRoute() provides an easy way to add a new MVC Route rule to the Routes collection. IgnoreRoute() provides an easy way to tell the URL routing system to stop processing certain URL patterns (for example: handler .axd resources in ASP.NET that are used to serve up JavaScript, images, etc).
Below is an example of the default RegisterRoutes() method within Global.asax when you create a new ASP.NET MVC project where you can see both of these new helper methods in action.
The MapRoute() helper method is overloaded and takes two, three or four parameters (route name, URL syntax, URL parameter default, and optional URL parameter regular expression constraints).
You can call MapRoute() as many times as you want to register multiple named routes in the system. For example, in addition to the default convention rule, we could add a "Products-Browse" named routing rule like below:
We can then refer to this "Products-Browse" rule explicitly within our Controllers and Views when we want to generate a URL to it. For example, we could use the Html.RouteLink view helper to indicate that we want to link to our "Products-Browse" route and pass it a "Food" category parameter using code in our view template like below:
This view helper would then access the routing system and output an appropriate HTML hyperlink URL like below (note: how it did automatic parameter substitution of the category parameter into the URL using the route rule):
We could alternatively use the new Url.RouteUrl(routeName, values) within views if we wanted to just retrieve the URL for a named route (and not output the <a> html element).
We could also use the new RedirectToRoute(routeName, values) helper method on the Controller base class to issues browser redirects based on named routing rules.
Richer URL Route Mapping Features
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports a bunch of new URL route mapping features. You can now include "-", ".", ";" or any other characters you want as part of your route rules.
For example, using a "-" separator you can now parse the language and locale values from your URLs separately using a rule like below:
This would pass appropriate "language", "locale", and "category" parameters to a ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:
| URL Route Rule | Example URL | Parameters Passed to Action method |
| {language}-{locale}/products/browse/{category} | /en-us/products/browse/food | language=en, locale=us, category=food |
| | /en-uk/products/browse/food | language=en, locale=uk, category=food |
Or you can use the "." file extension type at the end of a URL to determine whether to render back the result in either a XML or HTML format:
This would pass both "category" and a "format" parameters to the ProductsController.Browse action method when invoked:
| URL Route Rule | Example URL | Parameters Passed to Action method |
| products/browse/{category}.{format} | /products/browse/food.xml | category=food, format=xml |
| | /products/browse/food.html | category=food, format=html |
ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 also supports wildcard route rules (these were also in Preview 2). For example, you can indicate in a rule to pass all remaining URI content on as a named parameter to an action method:
This would pass a "contentUrl" parameter to the WikiController.DisplayPage action method when invoked:
| URL Route Rule | Example URL | Parameters Passed to Action method |
| Wiki/Pages/{*contentUrl} | /Wiki/Pages/People/Scott | contentUrl="People/Scott" |
| | /Wiki/Pages/Countries/UK | contentUrl="Countries/UK" |
These wildcard routes are very useful to look at if you are building a blogging, wiki, cms or other content based system.
Summary
Today's Preview 3 release of ASP.NET MVC includes a bunch of improvements and refinements. We are starting to feel good about the URL routing and Controller/Action programming model of MVC, and feel that those areas are starting to bake really well. In future preview releases you'll start to see more improvements higher-up the programming model stack in areas like Views (html helpers, validation helpers, etc), AJAX, sub-controllers and site composition, deeper Login, Authentication, Authorization and Caching integration, as well as data scaffolding support.
I also have a (very) long tutorial post that I started putting together this past weekend that walks-through building an application using ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 that I'm hoping to wrap up and post in the next few days. This should provide both a good intro to ASP.NET MVC, as well as help provide some context on how all the pieces fit together if you are interested in using the ASP.NET MVC option.
Hope this helps,
Scott
Written by ScottGu on May 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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Wine has become a poster-child for the health benefits of alcoholic beverages. It has been the subject of a diverse range of scientific investigations and as a result often appears in news headlines. The news has been mostly positive, in part because wine, especially red wine, is loaded with antioxidants.
But the beneficial health effects of wine extend well beyond what many of us would expect. According to a study published in the June issue of the journal Hepatology, wine consumed in moderate amounts is actually safe for the liver and in certain people can potentially prevent a condition known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This condition is believed to be associated with heart disease—the number one killer in the United States—because both conditions share similar, defining characteristics, namely high cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
The results of this study mark a pivotal change in our understanding of the ways in which alcohol affects our bodies. There exists a therapeutic window for alcohol, defined as one to two drinks per day, and within this window the effect of alcohol on our blood vessels and cardiovascular health is generally both positive and optimal. Some doctors have even recommended a glass of wine per day to certain patients at risk for coronary artery disease, and scientists and doctors alike have uncovered evidence that modest alcohol consumption is safe for many people at risk of heart disease.
Doctors generally encourage patients to improve cardiovascular health through simple changes in diet and lifestyle before falling back on other alternatives. But even powerful factors such as therapeutic agents that directly or indirectly affect our cardiovascular systems for the better, appear to be humble artery warriors compared to alcohol. In addition, moderate consumption of wine can be especially healthy for us because it contains polyphenol compounds, better-known as antioxidants, which have potent artery-disease fighting qualities. Of these compounds, resveratrol, which occurs naturally in many plants, including in the skin of grapes, has received the most attention, primarily because of its antiaging and cancer cell-killing properties.
The health affects of red wine have been complicated by the French paradox, which is perhaps one of the most intriguing yet inexplicable phenomena of the relationship between wine, diet, and cardiovascular disease. The basic observation that the French thrive on high-fat diets amply supplemented with red wine and rarely suffer from cardiovascular disease was initially described nearly two centuries ago. When the paradox resurfaced in the 1990s, Americans tried to reproduce the seemingly effortless healthy lifestyle of the French, largely by buying and drinking red wine.
A few years later some scientists pointed out that the data on heart disease in France was inaccurate; the disease was actually more prevalent than had been reported. Around the same time, resveratrol stepped into the wine limelight, having been publicized as the health-promoting component of wine. However, studies in recent years have reported that this compound does not occur in large enough quantities in wine to exert any significant affect on health on its own. This indicates that the wine-health equation is dictated by more than one variable.
Because a characteristic of cardiovascular disease is oxidative stress, the secret of red wine likely lies in a combination of effects produced by the interaction of alcohol with antioxidants from grapes. Juice from dark-skinned grapes is loaded with polyphenols, and these antioxidants undauntedly neutralize the many harmful radicals in our bodies that cause oxidative stress. However, the interplay between alcohol and antioxidants in wine isn’t well understood, at least not in the context of human health.
Scientists have also found that the type of alcohol consumed may not matter when it comes to cardiovascular health. Beer, liquor, and wine all have positive affects on our cardiovascular systems when consumed in moderate amounts. Although the French population in general seems to have been given a “get out of heart disease free” pass and been told to enjoy several glasses of wine while they’re at it, it is also important to consider the health benefits of simply enjoying a slow-paced dinner with friends—and perhaps a glass or two of wine.
Written by Kara Rogers on May 27th, 2008 with no comments.
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I wonder what sort of man the Rev. John Hagee must be. That “Rev.” tells us that he is, as they say, a man of God. On the evidence, he’s a man who thinks in large, even cosmic terms – he explains great historical events in terms of vast plans, and he finds, if not specific prophesies, then at least anticipations of them in a book he holds to relate the inerrant word of this same God.
He holds to a view of the history of the world called “premillennial dispensationalism,” which is an impressive mouthful of a label for an elaborate fantasy about The End. This particular figment requires that biblical Israel be restored in order for the drama of end times to play out. So the Rev. Hagee is a supporter of the modern state of Israel, not in the sense that he wishes it well and works to assure that it and its people will continue to exist and prosper despite their many enemies, for he knows that they won’t endure, any more than the rest of the Earth. No, he supports Israel as a tool, a means to get to the end of things along the lines he believes he understands from “Revelation,” the concluding section of that book.
This instrumental view, this seeing of someone or of a whole population as a means to an essentially private end, pops up even earlier in the Rev.’s interpretation of history. As he sees it, and as he believes the prophet Jeremiah (ibid.) indicated so long ago, the Holocaust was also simply a means to an end.
We know, of course, that for Adolph Hitler it was a means to an end, the end being a
Europe, a Reich, that was Judenfrei – free entirely of the Jews. But Hagee tells us that it was a means also for God: God wanted the Jews to reestablish Israel and so He whipped up the Holocaust as a way of prodding them – or however many might be left – to abandon Europe for the old homeland. And so they did, and now there is an Israel, and so we can get on with the business of the Second Coming and the consequent eternal bliss promised to the Rev. Hagee and his coreligionists.
As I said at the beginning, I don’t know what sort of man could believe this. And I certainly don’t grasp the notion of a God who could come up with such a plan. Let’s think about it a bit.
If you had wanted the Jews to leave Europe and resettle in the Middle East, how might you have gone about it? Let’s make it easier: Pretend you are God. You are omnipotent. So, taking the softest possible approach, you could just have whispered into each Jew’s ear, “Cheese it! and get thee to Israel.” Some secular or skeptical ones would have resisted, of course, but you didn’t need them all to go anyway, just a good-size core group to get things off the ground. Surely, on hearing a Word directly from God, a goodly number would promptly have upped stakes and gone.
Or you could have been less subtle. There is precedent for a pillar of fire, leading the godly to the promised land. A couple of plagues, precisely targeted, would no doubt have done the trick as well. Or you could simply have caused them all to disappear from where they were and reappear instantly in Palestine. There are four ways right off the top of my head. All in all, it wouldn’t have been an especially hard thing to manage, if you’d been God.
But instead, this God, the God of Hagee, lays out a time-consuming, expensive, ridiculously sloppy program. First, he selects the highly unlikely ex-corporal Hitler as his tool, has him spend more than a dozen years gradually gaining political power in Germany, has him undertake the conquest of Europe so that he can reach all those Jews scattered about the place, and then has him instigate the systematic extermination of six million or so of them by the most brutal methods his minions can devise. Why? Why, pour encourager les autres! A staggering idea, no? Except for the Rev. Hagee, apparently, who recites it with the equanimity that, when it does not proceed from wisdom, is so often the product of derangement.
Well, OK, credit where credit is due: The scheme worked, though I can’t help wondering how the Rev. Hagee accounts for the many obstacles that were thrown in the way of the refugees even then. But – pardon me – this is a depraved tale, told not necessarily by an idiot but by someone whose ideology is morally incoherent.
An idle question or two for the Rev.: In this scenario, exactly what is Mr. Hitler guilty of? Did he not do precisely as instructed, by no lesser an authority than your God himself? Was he free to do otherwise? How do you suppose he was rewarded for his service?
I cannot imagine why anyone would listen to a man who thinks this way. That numbers do is one of the more telling arguments against democracy. Senator McCain is well rid of him.
Written by Robert McHenry on May 26th, 2008 with no comments.
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On Tuesday, May 27th, WordPress will turn 5 years old. We’ve come a long way from that original 0.7 release.
To celebrate we’re throwing a party in San Francisco at 111 Minna, starting at 9PM. You can get the full details and RSVP on Upcoming.org or on Facebook.
I hope you see some of you there, should be a fun time.
If you host a party in your area for WordPress’ 5th, let us know and we’ll post it here.
Written by Matt on May 25th, 2008 with no comments.
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