If you’re looking to replace WordPress’s long load time for a 404 error page for at least the missing images on your website, consider adding the following to the .htaccess file that sits in the root of your WordPress installation airblown inflatables canada:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png)$
RewriteRule .* /wp-content/themes/your-theme/images/placeholder.png [L]

In practice, this looks something like:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} \.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png)$ 
RewriteRule .* /wp-content/themes/your-theme/images/placeholder.png [L]

RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Working with Nginx? No problem, here’s the equivalent commands that go into your site configuration file:

location ~* (jpg|jpeg|gif|png) {
	expires 30d;
	access_log off;

	error_page 404 /wp-content/themes/your-theme/images/placeholder.png;
}

I hold a degree in computer science. I’ve been employed for 10+ years as a software developer. When the occasional news story comes out about liberal arts majors having trouble finding employment in today’s economy, there’s a part of me that feels smug. It says, “Yeah. All right. Go us. We made the right choice. We were rational about the job market.” And it is indeed very easy to indulge that part of myself by lapping up news that confirms my life choices.

But I’m also something of a contrarian. (Actually what’s probably more accurate is I hate to be wrong, so I feel compelled to understand the pro-arts side of the argument to prepare for it.) What is the appeal of the liberal arts in 2012? Are they necessary? In the end, I think my final position is that the liberal arts are important, and if a comparison must be done, they’re likely to  be more important than computer science or engineering. My reasoning: Engineering may allow us to live longer and better, but liberal arts let us find understanding in others and ourselves.

As evidence, I offer portions of a piece from 1997 by the late Earl Shorris. It’s about his attempt to teach a group of impoverished Americans about the humanities. It’s really quite profound and, I think, one of the only true ways to permanently solve poverty in the world. Enjoy the read.

Harper’s Magazine – On the Uses of a Liberal Education, Part II: As a weapon in the hands of the restless poor

We had never met before. The conversation around us focused on the abuse of women. [Viniece Walker]’s eyes were perfectly opaque—hostile, prison eyes. Her mouth was set in the beginning of a sneer.

“You got to begin with the children,” she said, speaking rapidly, clipping out the street sounds as they came into her speech.

She paused long enough to let the change of direction take effect, then resumed the rapid, rhythmless speech. “You’ve got to teach the moral life of downtown to the children. And the way you do that, Earl, is by taking them downtown to plays, museums, concerts, lectures, where they can learn the moral life of downtown.”

I smiled at her, misunderstanding, thinking I was indulging her. “And then they won’t be poor anymore?”

She read every nuance of my response, and answered angrily, “And they won’t be poor no more.”

“What you mean is—”

“What I mean is what I said—a moral alternative to the street.”

She didn’t speak of jobs or money. In that, she was like the others I had listened to. No one had spoken of jobs or money. But how could the “moral life of downtown” lead anyone out from the surround of force? How could a museum push poverty away? Who can dress in statues or eat the past? And what of the political life? Had Niecie skipped a step or failed to take a step? The way out of poverty was politics, not the “moral life of downtown.”

But to enter the public world, to practice the political life, the poor had first to learn to reflect. That was what Niecie meant by the “moral life of downtown.” She did not make the error of divorcing ethics from politics. Niecie had simply said, in a kind of shorthand, that no one could step out of the panicking circumstance of poverty directly into the public world.

Although she did not say so, I was sure that when she spoke of the “moral life of downtown” she meant something that had happened to her. With no job and no money, a prisoner, she had undergone a radical transformation. She had followed the same path that led to the invention of politics in ancient Greece. She had learned to reflect.

In further conversation it became clear that when she spoke of “the moral life of downtown” she meant the humanities, the study of human constructs and concerns, which has been the source of reflection for the secular world since the Greeks first stepped back from nature to experience wonder at what they beheld.

If the political life was the way out of poverty, the humanities provided an entrance to reflection and the political life. The poor did not need anyone to release them; an escape route existed. But to open this avenue to reflection and politics a major distinction between the preparation for the life of the rich and the life of the poor had to be eliminated.

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