mongrel

1. Derogatory description of the offspring or result of miscegenation, mixed marriage, etc.; specifically a person of mixed racial heritage. 2. Derogatory term for a person of mixed descent, whose parents are of different nationalities or different social classes. 3. Derogatory term for a person of Jewish descent. 4. A person of mixed or undefined opinions; a person whose political or religious allegiance, etc., changes according to which way the wind is blowing. 5. A person of base, low, or indeterminate status. 6. A cheat or a coward. 7. Worthless. (adjective)

Unreported in the U.S. media, the slur made headlines in Britain during the runup to elections in 2005. The Labour Party leader, Peter Hain, called Conservative leader Michael Howard an “attack mongrel.” Howard is Jewish. Labour Party MP's seemed determined to paint this as simply a variation on “attack dog politics.” However, it is hard to believe the denials that this was an intentional slur when campaign posters had already depicted Howard as “a Shylock.”

When did Mongrel vanish? What did this Phusion Passenger do to it?

Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8a Phusion_Passenger/1.9.1
X-Powered-By: Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) 1.9.1

I hope Mongrel was sent to a good home, and not cast out to wander the streets.

Sorry, it vapourised when I last exited my browser. I've got a new one now.

Oh can't I please see your session ID? ;-)

Oh, I forgot to add: this is a fun page on some of the odd things that have been spotted in response headers.

http://www.nextthing.org/archives/2005/08/07/fun-with-http-headers

I have Firefox with the Server Spy and Web Developer Toolbar extensions, both of which can check the HTTP response headers. So if I ask WDT for this page's headers I see:

Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:22:39 GMT
Server: Mongrel 1.0.1
Status: 200 OK
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Set-Cookie: _session_id={tucked in my tinfoil hat}; path=/; expires=Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:22:38 GMT
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 4202
X-Cache: MISS from squirrel.dur.ac.uk
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from squirrel.dur.ac.uk:8080
Via: 1.0 squirrel.dur.ac.uk:8080 (squid/2.6.STABLE14-20070730)
Proxy-Connection: keep-alive

200 OK

Ooohhh, secrety.

True, it is, in conjunction with Apache. How'd you figure this out? From an error message, maybe?

Apparently Wordie's server is Mongrel 1.0.1.