November 10, 2003

More Mush from the Wimp

“MORE MUSH FROM THE WIMP”… was the famous headline from the Boston Globe mistakenly left on a story about Jimmy Carter’s views while he was president. Evidently some typesetter who didn't share Carter's enthusiasms slugged it in while waiting for the real head to come down from editorial. It never made it and the story ran with a more accurate if less polite headline.

We've come a long way since then. Now we don't have to wait for the big media to filter the candidates views to us. No. With the blight of online campaign blogging we can cut right through the media filters and reap the spew of the various presidential wannabes right from the source! Why we can read their very thoughts as their very hands type them in to the blog.

Yes, we can get our mush straight from the wimp.

Take the hard blogging disgraced general Wesley Clark. He's posting away with a vengence on his blog -- probably using that leetle thumb keyboard on Blackberry.

Clarkites across the net are panting with passion at his "Generally Speaking" notes. ("Oh...My...God! It's Wesley taking the time to type to me, just to me!")

Yes, it is a communication breakthrough daily as Clark takes time out from his whirlwind tilt at the White House to share these intimate thoughts with us:

And I keep thinking about Harriet Johnson, mother of Army soldier Darius Jennings who was killed on the CH47 shot down last week. I visited with her on Thursday...I've seen many grieving families...often from accidents that should have been prevented. But these casualties in Iraq are coming from a badly misguided and misconceived policy, and a war we didn't have to fight...it is so sad, and it was so preventable...and with each grieving family we should harden our determination that we'll get out of this mess, the right way...and that's the success strategy I presented on Thursday.

From: Official Clark '04 Campaign Blog: Generally Speaking...: Note From the General

I'll say this for Wes, he's really got the common touch and the common tone honed to perfection here. The trotting out of the bloody shirt, the crocodile tears, the carefully choreographed descent into .... well, into..... into the dots between sentence fragments as he condemns the war... you... can.... almost hear... the.... the.... the sobs, the choking up as he considers the cost, the human cost... why wouldn't you want this man to be your leader? After all, he gets misty online as well as his mentor Clinton did on camera.

Just imagine this man as President. Just imagine a remorseful nation's reaction: "It is so sad, and it was so preventable."

Posted by Vanderleun at November 10, 2003 10:55 AM
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"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.

And this is different from Bush planning to meet with the families of British soldiers who died how? Well one difference is that Clark is not the president and not responsible for putting that woman's son in harm's way. Another difference is that Clark is actually a former General and never went AWOL. A third difference is that Darius Jennings was an American soldier and Bush doesn't make it a priority to meet the families of American soldiers killed in action.

Crocodile tears? This is a man who risked his life and rapelled down a cliff to try to rescue people he barely knew except on a professional basis in Kosovo.

Crocodile tears are the kinds of things that Bush has, along with fake compassion. Note how at the changing of the guard on Veteran's Day, when silence is required, Bush was shown whispering to the guy next to him. Really classy. It's a bit like talking during a moment of silence for the 9/11 victims, whose deaths Bush has used over and over as political capital.

Give me a real hero like Wes Clark anyday rather than some action figure who dresses up in a flight suit and prances around an aircraft carrier pretending to care about anything other than his oil-guzzling friends.

Posted by: CLM at November 14, 2003 12:25 PM

Dock Animation. Sometimes animating icons in the dock can be useful in communicating the status of the system or application.

Posted by: Marian at January 12, 2004 10:29 PM

Adhere to File Locations. Make sure that when your users save documents, your application knows where to put them and also gives users flexibility.

Posted by: Lettice at January 12, 2004 10:29 PM

Adopt Sheets. I really like the use of Sheets in OS X. The use of Sheets lets me know which window my dialogue belongs to without hijacking my system.

Posted by: Ebotte at January 12, 2004 10:30 PM

At WWDC, I listened to Apple representatives make some excellent points about taking the time to build a 100%-compliant Aqua application, and I think all developers need to look beyond the code and listen to what the folks at Apple have to say

Posted by: Machutus at January 12, 2004 10:30 PM

You Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.

Posted by: Margaret at January 12, 2004 10:30 PM

If an application is designed well, the reward for users is that they will learn it faster, accomplish their daily tasks more easily, and have fewer questions for the help desk. As a developer of a well-designed application, your returns on that investment are more upgrade revenue, reduced tech support, better reviews, less documentation, and higher customer satisfaction. The rewards of building a good-looking Aqua application are worth taking the extra time.

Posted by: Bartholomew at January 12, 2004 10:30 PM

You Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.

Posted by: Edi at January 12, 2004 10:31 PM

Adhere to Window Models. Document windows, Utility windows, Click-through, Layering, Drawers, Controls. How do users open windows, how do you properly title windows?

Posted by: Alan at January 12, 2004 10:31 PM

For example, if you see an AIM window peeking out from behind your browser and you click on it, that window will come to the front, but the main application window will not. The Mail.app/Activity Viewer is another example. The Aqua system of layers works well in many instances, but not in all. Thank goodness that the Dock is always there to come to the rescue. I know that clicking on an application icon in the Dock will always result in not only the application coming to the front, but also any non-minimized windows associated with it. And if the application is active but no windows are open, clicking on the Dock icon should create a new window in that application.

Posted by: Agnes at January 12, 2004 10:31 PM