Why can't every application be like Stickies?

Mac users may know Apple's Stickies application, which comes with Mac OS. What it does is really simple: it emulates a sticky note, but on your digital desktop rather than your physical desktop. But how it does that is just great; it's too bad more applications do things the same way. In particular:

• When I close and re-open Stickies, it remembers what I had opened the last time. If I restart the application, or if I restart my computer, I don't need to remember what I was working on and reopen it manually; Stickies does that for me.
• It saves my changes automatically. In a world of multiple undo, not-saving-my-work isn't necessary as an undo technique -- it's more likely a technique for accidentally losing everything. Better to have everything saved all the time, and let me undo if I make a mistake.

What could make both of the above even better: persistent undo stacks. Why does my list of changes get reset when I close and reopen a document? If it were saved with the document, then opening and closing, and quitting and restarting, would be entirely irrelevant to the changes I make to my content.

(One obnoxious thing about Stickies: why, oh why, doesn't it have scrollbars? In 10.5 and earlier, I could add scrollbars to Stickies myself. In Snow Leopard, I can't.)

Staying Flexible

There's a guy at work that I've worked with for years. He's brilliant, and for the most part, I enjoy working with him. But he does this thing that's always driven me crazy. I've just very recently come to understand and appreciate why he does it.

Here's the situation: It's the eleventh hour of a big, complex project. Everything is going as smoothly as can be expected, and we putting some finishing touches on. Then suddenly, he goes into brainstorming mode. It's like we've spent a year building a sports car, and I say something like, "What color do you think we should paint it so that it looks its best?" And he'll reply, "What if we didn't build a car -- what if we built ... an airplane?"

As I've gotten older, I've become increasingly concrete sequential, so my historical response has been along the lines of: "No, we're not building an airplane; we've already built a car! Are you @%&*ing crazy? Focus! Focus!" If we had wanted an airplane, there was a time when we could have built one. When we're shipping tomorrow, it's not that time. Brainstorming impossible things with people under a deadline increases everyone's stress levels for no reason, and furthermore it disregards and disrespects all of the work that's gone into the project thus far.

But what I've come to understand is this: he doesn't really want an airplane. Brainstorming is just his way of stepping back from the solution to make sure it's really solving the problem. He's thinking to himself, "We wanted to build something that can go really far and really fast. Does this thing we've built do that?" He's walking around it, looking at it from all angles, and trying to put himself in the shoes of someone who's just asked for a go-far-fast thing and been handed a car thing. Would she like it? If she were to say to us, "Gee, I was sort of hoping for an airplane..." would we understand why a car was a better choice for her so that we could explain it convincingly?

To the question "What if we built an airplane?", the correct answer is "Then it would cost 10x more, and all of our customers would have to have pilot's licenses, and consequently no one would buy it." My instinctive answer, "Because we planned all along to build a car, dummy" is actually the worst possible answer, because it implies that I don't understand the problem I'm trying to solve, and furthermore that I'm less interested in finding out than in following a checklist.

So the next time it happens, I will pause, take a deep breath, take my blood-pressure medicine, and play my part in the dialectic. I wish I had understood how to do this five years ago.

That Feeling of Freshness

Have you ever noticed how, if a television commercial features only women, and if those women are having a really good time together, the commercial is almost certainly advertising a product to treat a disgusting bodily malfunction?

In fact, the more fun they're having, the more disgusting their affliction is likely to be. If it's just a group of friends chatting in a living room, they're probably just talking about digestive aids and toilet habits. (Yes, I'm talking about you, Jamie Lee Curtis.) But if they're running and laughing in a meadow, and if there are time-lapse flowers blooming, watch out!

Ladies. Please. It's just disturbing.

I was watching TV this evening, and a commercial came on featuring a cadre of young attractive women laughing and hugging in a mall. (You know: more fun than the living room; not quite as much fun as a meadow.) And I asked myself: When was the last time I saw a commercial featuring a bunch of guys, say, playing football on a bright summer morning while simultaneously engaging in a frank-but-surprisingly-pleasant conversation about wetting themselves? Then I remembered: Never. I have never seen a commercial like that. A man who wets himself would never admit to it on TV and would certainly never fantasize about admitting it to his friends while playing football with them. And, I might add, he would be most unlikely to purchase a product pitched to him by someone who did.

Democracy: Getting Our Money's Worth

Whither campaign spending limits? Speech and money are fungible, and that principle cuts both ways. It costs money to buy a megaphone, print a newspaper, or buy off a congressman. More money means more megaphones and more congressmen on your side. It distorts our representative democracy. At the same time, limits on spending are implicitly (some would say explicitly) limits on speech. It's a bit strange for us to claim that a person can advocate for whatever views he might have while at the same time stripping him of a powerful and lawfully-obtained means of doing so.

This issue has come to the fore again recently with the recent Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. (Astute readers may recall that I wrote about the Citizens United case back in September.) Our courts have in the past issued inconsistent rulings with respect to whether corporations enjoy the same free-speech protections as do individuals. The ruling in the Citizens United case sways the balance far into the Yes camp. They may speak -- i.e. spend -- as they wish, as we do. (Thanks to John Gruber for the FreeSpeechForPeople.org link.)

I think this idea is nonsense and that by holding to it we throw away an excellent opportunity to thread that needle I talked about in the first paragraph above. Let me break down what I think would be a better model.

We the People

...should face few or no limits on our political spending, aka political speech. The Constitution grants us extensive free-speech rights, irrespective of the state's interest, limited only when speech turns into violence.

Corporations Are Not People

...and the law has only recognized their rights as pseudo-people selectively. They may currently receive free speech protections, but they do not vote and are they not taxed in the same way as individuals. (Although at least one corporation is running for Congress, albeit in jest.)

A corporation isn't "real." It's an abstraction to to make it easier for people to do business with one another. But it has no natural interests beyond those of their members.

This is not to say that the interests of a corporation reflect those of all of it's members. In fact, a corporation's actions and messages are determined by its executives but funded through the actions of all of its workers. The effect is to amplify the voices of a very few, regardless of the wishes of others.

Moreover, the power relationships and financial motives in a corporate environment encourage people to act against their own beliefs and values. People are far more likely to contribute to a project they don't believe in if they're told to do so by someone above them, if their jobs depend on it, and/or if they're paid to do so.

Therefore, let us purge from our minds any thought that a corporation is entitled to the same speech protections as a person. I favor a strict ban: corporations should not be allowed to spend money on political campaigns -- at all. Our electoral system must not be for sale.

Voluntary Associations Are Different

...from corporations. Corporations are defined and circumscribed by statute. Churches, charities, and clubs, by contrast, come about directly through the will of their members. This distinction means that a restriction on corporate speech/spending need not -- should not -- apply to these other kinds of voluntary associations. "[T]he right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government" is established in the first amendment to the Constitution; corporations are not.

This distinction is critical. Without extending the protections due individuals to groups of individuals, you and I could not join together in petitioning the government, I could not hire you to lobby on behalf of our shared interests, and we could not bring our friends together to discuss our values and priorities.

Just to Stir the Pot

...a little bit more, let me bring out one more idea from our country's founding creeds: No taxation without representation! If corporations aren't really real, why do they pay taxes as if they were? The revenue of a corporation will eventually become the revenue of individuals. Therefore, let's further support in law the concept of unreal corporations by eliminating corporate income and payroll taxes. We're all paying those taxes indirectly anyway, so let's make those payments directly. We'll simplify our tax regime and make it more transparent along the way.


Our goal should be the elimination of barriers that prevent government from representing and responding to the will of its citizens. To that end, we should strengthen the protections granted to those citizens, remove distorting and distracting influences, ... and perhaps offer some inducement to hurry the money men out the door.