SBC’s merger with AT&T was approved today, so I am now an employee of “The New AT&T.” The new corporate logo will be revealed on Monday. See the press release for more info.

Preface: I most often do not read chain emails, and I do not pass them on for numerous reasons.

Last night I received a chain email by the title of Jimmy Crack Corn… And I Don’t Care (read it here). I know this email reflects the feelings of many Americans, but it is appalling to me both as an American and as a Christian.

As an American I care because:

• When we abuse, kill, or mistreat our Arab prisoners it fosters more hate against us in the middle east (and elsewhere).
• Abuse of prisoners violates international law, and the USA is not above the law (or at least shouldn’t be).
• America should be focused on justice not on retaliation or revenge.

As a Christian I care because:

• Christians are supposed to be advocates of justice and peace.
• Jesus would not torture.
• Romans 12:17-21.
• Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Back in the days of Mac OS X 10.0, setting up a dynamic webserver was an ordeal. I was new to Unix at the time and installing PHP and MySQL required compiling both from source and recompiling Apache as well. Not only that, but MySQL’s build kept failing until I fdiscovered (thank you Google) that two lines of code had to be changed in one of the source files. Since that time things have gotten much simpler. I have installed PHP/MySQL numerous times and it gets easier every time.

Entropy.ch has PHP in a Mac OS X package - just download it and run the installer. MySQL also has packages for Mac OS X (also linked to from entropy.ch). MySQL now has a Preference Pane for System Preferences included in the Mac download! Don’t forget to download the ImageMagick package if you want to manipulate images in PHP (or use things like Typo3 or Gallery). Last night I set up a dynamic webserver in about 10 minutes.