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I found the following Cheny quotation via Davenetics:

“Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not. Either we believe that there are individuals out there doing everything they can to try to launch more attacks, to try to get ever deadlier weapons to use against, or we don’t. The President and I believe very deeply that there’s a hell of a threat, that it’s there for anybody who wants to look at it. And that our obligation and responsibility given our job is to do everything in our power to defeat the terrorists. And that’s exactly what we’re do.”

I might be mistaken, but I believe that what we should be fighting for is freedom, liberty, equality and justice. Today, some would argue that we should be fighting for the right to privacy and security. I understand that there are people who are trying to make it more difficult for us to achieve our goals of freedom, liberty, equality and justice but at what point do the methods by which we attempt to thwart them end up being counter-productive? Is it when we ourselves are attacking our own privacy and security? What’s worse: getting randomly blown up by a terrorist or arbitrarily imprisoned and tortured by your own government?

Over the past century Presidents have been pushing the limits of executive power. By all standards the Bush administration has extended it further than any. Apparently they have forgotten that you can only go so far before other politicians get upset enough to do something about it. What does it say about our culture that you have to commit a half dozen martial indescretions to get the same level of scrutiny as one extra-marital affair.

It is sometimes mentioned that the founders did not intentionally create a two party system. Dave pell seems to have hit the nail on the head as to why that might be the case. It’s clear that there is impetus to gather support among like-minded voters, especial when that’s what the other team is doing. This is a conundrum for those not heavily involved in politics. The differences between the parties devolves into questions of the lesser of two evils, matters of flip-flopping, childish name-calling and other political cliches.

If the party system is the weak point of American government then how do we create incentives to encourage candidates who represent their ideals, and not the ideals of whichever minority their party happens to be targeting.

I regularly read a couple of UI related blocks (Greg’s Head and flow|state) and thought I might weight in with my own pet peeve: dialog boxes. I have never seen a single dialog box that I believe was justified. Almost all dialog boxes in UI are the result of a poorly designed interface. An interface developer (or more likely a programmer who is not an interface developer) who did not think through the user experience enough to realize that there is always a better way to inform or prompt the user.

The worst side effect of dialog boxes that that applications launch them with complete disregard for the user’s focus. If I’m not looking at the application’s window, the dialog box is distracting and therefore annoying. I know the application can’t continue until I confirm or deny it’s problem, but it’s a computer program, it can wait.

Firefox is a great example of how simply thinking through the user experience means you can get rid of the dialog box. It used to be that if firefox couldn’t load your webpage it would flash a dialog box. If you sit and stare at the blank screen while the page tries to load then it doesn’t really matter. But if you load a couple pages then go e-mail and come back to them, it can get bothersome. As of version 1.5, they’ve replaced the dialog box with a simple webpage that says that the website you were looking for cannot be found. I shouldn’t give the firefox team all the credit, Microsoft has been doing this with Internet Explorer for at least the past two versions.

So, if you’re a developer and you write applications that have a user interface, please, grep -i your code for “dialog”, put yourself in your user’s shoes and figure out a simple way to inform them. Your users will be much appreciative.

I predict that in the next two years there will be a service that pre-screens your chosen baby name so that this never happens to you.

Hell has not frozen over just yet (though they’ve probably shut down the furnace). It seems our dearly appointed leader has finally accepted responsibility for something (in this case the gross negligence in intelligence and decision making and going to war uninformed and unprepared). I will don the parka when the response from our congressional leaders is “You got us until this mess, you’re the wrong guy to get us out.”

Dave Winer writes (can’t find the link, used to be http://www.scripting.com/2005/12/12.html#whosLeftToResign):

It’s hard to follow your own act. My high school social studies teacher, Mr Goldman, once offered some philosophy about this. Don’t try.

He said this after throwing some wadded paper into a waste basket across the room. “Dear kiddies, he said, listen up. This is the most important advice I’ll ever give you. When you sink a shot from across the room, act like it’s no big deal, and whatever you do, don’t try again.”

Sounds similar to the advice of a recent manager: Don’t sell past the close.

“From what we know, the team of air marshals acted in a way that is
consistent with the training that they have received.”
-Scott McClellan, White House Press Secretary

Either Mr. McClellan wasn’t informed that the air marshals shot and killed an innocent unarmed man or it is time to change the training.