I don't know much about the United States Code, really. One thing I do know, or have at least heard, repeatedly, is that it's immense. Individual bills sometimes come in at thousands of pages, and go completely unread by a large percentage of the legislators who vote on them.
This is the story, anyway. I'm presuming it's accurate.
And it strikes me, in thinking about this, that probably a large percentage of all those words involve some sort of standard boilerplate-like language that shows up again and again - either across bills, or within a bill. Maybe that's not at all the case, I don't know. But knowing what I know about how I've seen things done elsewhere, I'm inclined to guess that it's likely. It's certainly a common thing in a lot of software I've seen (and some I've written), to express the same things over and over again.
And in software, it's often a horrible way to go about things. And I suspect the same to be true in the world of legislation.
It's understandable, mind you... One time you want to say "one time you want to say", and another time you want to say "another time you want to say". They're not identical statements. Yet there's a whole lot of repetition there.
There's been a movement in the software world to keep code "DRY"... An acronym for "Don't Repeat Yourself". In computer code, this is arguably a lot easier than in English. You have functions, and variables, and a readership who knows how to deal with these sorts of things. So you can do something like (in some arbitrary pseudo-code English):
1. Let "tywts" mean "time you want to say".
2. One tywts, "one tywts", another tywts, "another tywts".
There's arguably still repetition there, of course. And in a real code environment, there'd be ways to reduce it further. Still, if you decided you wanted to change things to be "one time you wished you had said", you only have to change it in one place (never mind that the acronym is now obsolete in its lettering; you could fix that, too, but you don't have to). This is one of the major wins with DRY code. And I suspect there are a lot of places in legislation where we could do something similar. After all, the readership of legislation is presumed to be sophisticated, too.
So make a library of specific definitions - within the body of law, overall, and within specific laws, as needed. An then express ideas in succinct, if slightly cryptic to the lay reader, ways. I think that might be better. At the very least, I think it's worth thinking about.
And maybe some day we'll set aside 5% of congress's time for a decade or three to "DRY off" the existing laws.
2013-08-02
More atheists in Congress... (write your reps!)
Apparently, there are some 28 atheists in Congress, only one of which is open about their atheist views.
Personally, through a wide variety of inputs (perhaps I've written about these? And/or perhaps I will (more) in the future), I've come to the conclusion that only an open atheist is really in the best of positions to be a legislator.
As such, I've just written to Jim McDermott, my representative in the House, the following message (which says a little more about why I hold this position):
Now, I ask you to do something similar. Write it in your own words, to your own representatives (whether in the senate or the house, or ideally both; perhaps I'll follow up with Murray and Cantwell, as well). If you'd like to link to this blog post, feel free, but mostly, just write, OK?
Thank you for reading.
Personally, through a wide variety of inputs (perhaps I've written about these? And/or perhaps I will (more) in the future), I've come to the conclusion that only an open atheist is really in the best of positions to be a legislator.
As such, I've just written to Jim McDermott, my representative in the House, the following message (which says a little more about why I hold this position):
Dear Congressperson McDermott,
I've been voting for you for the last several years, and I've seen you speak a few times, and generally I must say: I like what you're doing. Which means I'm inclined to want to see you continue to represent me in congress.
However, there's a point where I'd like to be more represented, where I'm less sure about how well you represent me:
I'm a staunch believer in evidence and reason for deciding truth, and as such, my reason and the best evidence I've been able to find so far leads me to being a fairly strong believer in the absence of a personal god, or really pretty much any deity, though one does have to carefully define ones terms before one can reasonably have the conversation.
At any rate, I've further come to the belief that I strongly want those who represent me in government to have a similar position, and take it openly. For I feel there are basically two main possibilities for someone (and particular, someone in congress) who identifies as a religious believer (and specifically a believer in a personal god - which may or may not be you? I'll get back to that):
1. That this someone either has not looked at, or is ignoring (for whatever reason or reasons), the evidence for non-theistic explanations of the way the world works, and evidence against the existence of a personal god; or
2. Someone who has examined the evidence, and doesn't believe in a personal god, but for whatever reason or reasons (and there are some arguably good ones; cf. a talk on this topic by Daniel Dennett[1]), has chosen to lie about it.
In the former case, I'd worry about this person's ability to use evidence and reason to make good decisions about how to interact with the world, especially when making policy decisions as my representative in congress.
In the latter case, I'd worry about the mental hoops this person has to jump through in order to lie to me and others, and about what else they might be able and willing to lie about in the course of their service.
In either case, I'd much prefer a representative who had examined the evidence, concluded that a personal god did not exist, and was then able and willing to openly admit to this.
Now, according to wikipedia, you're a member of the Episcopal church. According to the same page, you also led a recitation of the pledge of allegiance, rightly (in my opinion) omitting the added words "under God". I've done a little bit of searching, and don't immediately find more information on your actual beliefs in this area...
So I ask you:
Are you, privately, an atheist?
If so, I simply ask you to consider "coming out", and making your atheism public.
If not, I ask you to consider the evidence (as presented, e.g., by Victor J. Stenger[2]) that exists against the hypothesis that a god exists, and if you find it convincing, to then consider my "if so" statement again.
Either way, if you're willing to speak candidly (either in direct correspondence with me, or publicly) about your beliefs, or if you have in the past and can point me at some record of such, I would greatly appreciate hearing your views. The one thing I will ask you NOT to do is to tell me that you're a believer if in fact, deep inside, you are not. If you will keep your non-belief hidden, I can respect that (to some degree). If you truly do believe, well, I'd again ask you to look more closely at the evidence, and/or I'd be happy to have a conversation with you about it, should you wish to do so. If you disbelieve and explicitly say otherwise, though, then I have real trouble with that. So I ask you not to do so.
With respect and continued support,
- David Lindes, a Seattle constituent.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvJZQwy9dvE
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God:_The_Failed_Hypothesis
Now, I ask you to do something similar. Write it in your own words, to your own representatives (whether in the senate or the house, or ideally both; perhaps I'll follow up with Murray and Cantwell, as well). If you'd like to link to this blog post, feel free, but mostly, just write, OK?
Thank you for reading.
2013-03-04
Automatic tool tips need to die.
I just noticed a typo when re-reading my post (in preparation for sending it to a friend) about software pain, and went to go fix it. And, in the spirit of that very essay, I'm now going to rant about the experience I had.
Because you see: the effort of doing the edit was impaired slightly by the fact that blogger decided it was time to tell me something about sharing on google+ or something. I don't know, I didn't really read the thing, because I was trying to get something specific done. Anyway, it was popping up a sort of "dialog box" kind of thing, over the editing field, being in my face about whatever new feature it was trying to tell me about. And when I searched on the page for the typo, it seemed to go away for a moment (I guess when the page scrolled, and the CSS-positioning had to get adjusted by some javascript or something), but then it popped right back up. Right over whatever text I was searching for, which... happened to exist in more places than one in the document (it wasn't a misspelled word, just the wrong word, so the string existed elsewhere legitimately). So I couldn't tell if I was at the right place yet (let alone make the edit), because this window kept covering up exactly the thing on the screen that I was trying to look at.
I find this horribly non-user-friendly.
If you've got a new feature you want to make me aware of, send me an e-mail about it. I might actually read it, at a time of my own choosing.
If it's something so dire that using the site can't be done without knowing about it, then don't let me even see the site. Present me with a page and make me make a decision, or acknowledge that I've read something, or whatever it is you're trying to do. This is annoying too, and is often over-used, but... still, it's better than the automatic pop-over thing, and if it's really both important and urgent, then it's the right answer. If it's quadrant 1, don't let me do anything else until it's done. But you're making something that, for me, is quadrant 4 into something that's quadrant 3, which gets in the way of me doing something I consider to be quadrant 2... and frankly, that pisses me off.
If you want to have tool tips for actual tools, where I actually have to hover my mouse over something to see it, that's totally fine with me. (I'd like to have the option to turn them off, of course, but I find that in practice, I usually don't.) And if you want to advertise some new feature or something, that you think I might really like to know about, then I'd even tolerate having a bit of screen real estate devoted to some sort of notice about that. Make it dismissible, and I'll very likely take the time to read it and then dismiss it at some point when I have half a moment, so that I can get my screen real estate back.
But when you put something that for me is quadrant 4 directly in the way of me trying to get done my quadrant 2 work done, thus making it quadrant 3 (urgent, but not important), you're causing me some pain. If you want to keep me as a customer[0], please stop doing that, lest I drop out.
Much as I dislike supporting Covey[1], I do like to try to stay in quadrant 2 of his urgency/importance matrix when I can. Stop feeding me quadrant 3 stuff, please.
Oh yeah, and to the rest of the world: I ask you to stop putting up with annoyances like these. if you'd like to understand why, please go read that article on software pain (linked up top).
[0] To some small degree, I specifically mean google and the blogger platform team. Mostly, though, that was just the particular instance of a broader trend that I've noticed which caused me to write this post.
[1] For reasons I won't bother saying here, right now.
Because you see: the effort of doing the edit was impaired slightly by the fact that blogger decided it was time to tell me something about sharing on google+ or something. I don't know, I didn't really read the thing, because I was trying to get something specific done. Anyway, it was popping up a sort of "dialog box" kind of thing, over the editing field, being in my face about whatever new feature it was trying to tell me about. And when I searched on the page for the typo, it seemed to go away for a moment (I guess when the page scrolled, and the CSS-positioning had to get adjusted by some javascript or something), but then it popped right back up. Right over whatever text I was searching for, which... happened to exist in more places than one in the document (it wasn't a misspelled word, just the wrong word, so the string existed elsewhere legitimately). So I couldn't tell if I was at the right place yet (let alone make the edit), because this window kept covering up exactly the thing on the screen that I was trying to look at.
I find this horribly non-user-friendly.
If you've got a new feature you want to make me aware of, send me an e-mail about it. I might actually read it, at a time of my own choosing.
If it's something so dire that using the site can't be done without knowing about it, then don't let me even see the site. Present me with a page and make me make a decision, or acknowledge that I've read something, or whatever it is you're trying to do. This is annoying too, and is often over-used, but... still, it's better than the automatic pop-over thing, and if it's really both important and urgent, then it's the right answer. If it's quadrant 1, don't let me do anything else until it's done. But you're making something that, for me, is quadrant 4 into something that's quadrant 3, which gets in the way of me doing something I consider to be quadrant 2... and frankly, that pisses me off.
If you want to have tool tips for actual tools, where I actually have to hover my mouse over something to see it, that's totally fine with me. (I'd like to have the option to turn them off, of course, but I find that in practice, I usually don't.) And if you want to advertise some new feature or something, that you think I might really like to know about, then I'd even tolerate having a bit of screen real estate devoted to some sort of notice about that. Make it dismissible, and I'll very likely take the time to read it and then dismiss it at some point when I have half a moment, so that I can get my screen real estate back.
But when you put something that for me is quadrant 4 directly in the way of me trying to get done my quadrant 2 work done, thus making it quadrant 3 (urgent, but not important), you're causing me some pain. If you want to keep me as a customer[0], please stop doing that, lest I drop out.
Much as I dislike supporting Covey[1], I do like to try to stay in quadrant 2 of his urgency/importance matrix when I can. Stop feeding me quadrant 3 stuff, please.
Oh yeah, and to the rest of the world: I ask you to stop putting up with annoyances like these. if you'd like to understand why, please go read that article on software pain (linked up top).
[0] To some small degree, I specifically mean google and the blogger platform team. Mostly, though, that was just the particular instance of a broader trend that I've noticed which caused me to write this post.
[1] For reasons I won't bother saying here, right now.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
