There’s a strange idea floating around the internet at the moment. Several people have put forward the argument that the US constitution provides an excuse for presidential candidates not to answer questions pertaining to their religious beliefs.

Such arguments appeal to the section of Article VI that reads:

…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

It is inferred from this clause that it is improper to ask candidates questions about their faith, and that the correct response to such inquiries should be one of righteous indignation.

It should be obvious that such malarkey is entirely without merit. Candidates are not required to answer such questions in order to run for the presidency, nor do they constitute a ‘Qualification’ to the office. They are also not required to answer questions on their ideas for economics, foreign policy, social security reform, immigration, or climate change. Nevertheless, it is quite legitimate for voters to ask questions about these subjects if the candidate is asking for their votes.

Religious belief and association is not immune from questioning. Indeed it goes to the very heart of whether a candidate is fit for high office. It seems absurd to think that a person’s beliefs about the origin and nature of morality and the existence and characteristics of an omnipotent deity will not inform their social and political ideas.

Mitt Romney seems particularly sensitive to religious questioning, which is hardly surprising since his particular religious affiliation renders him especially vulnerable. As Christopher Hitchens points out, it is essential that Romney is made to clarify issues surrounding his religious affiliation, since his church maintained openly racist policies while he was an active member.

The Times continued to accelerate its slow but relentless decline into the cesspit of tabloid journalism today. Out of 120 square inches of printable space on its front page, a mere thirteen were allocated to a sole news story.

More than thirty-one square inches were generously assigned to a large and garish advertisement for the availability of a free DVD. Thirty-four square inches were given over to a photograph of the Queen meeting a group of HIV/Aids patients, accompanied by the dramatic tag-line ‘The day the Queen came face to face with Aids’.

After reserving further space for an otiose sidebar offering juicy little amuse-bouche as teasers for other stories in the paper, we are left with a meagre thirteen square inches of genuine journalistic content on the front page of one of Britain’s leading quality newspapers.

But wait! Did I pass judgement too soon? On closer inspection this solitary nugget of true reporting turns out to be – quelle surprise! - a poll story, that last refuge of the ergasiophobic journalist, and thus not worthy of the description ‘genuine journalism’ at all.

It seems that the British Board of Film Classification is ‘facing controversy’ - the wonderfully malleable term employed by Richard Brooks in The Sunday Times today – over its decision to allow David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises to be screened uncut. In support of his claim Brooks cites Mike Bor – former BBFC chief examiner – as claiming that the Board’s policy “… is now out of step with public opinion”.

I am moved to ask what possible relevance ‘public opinion’ could have to a decision over whether to allow private adult citizens to view a piece of film. The thought that a government body has the power to decide what I should be permitted to watch is as repugnant to me as the scenes of violence in Eastern Promises seem to have been to the squeamish Mr Brooks. The difference is that he can elect not to watch such material, whereas I would have no such choice should the film have been banned.

Original Article

Looks like Doug Engelbart agrees with me over the mouse button issue. There’s also some interesting discussion in the comments over on Scoble’s blog that got me thinking a bit more about this. I would agree that the reason we need many mouse buttons is a deficient user interface. The proliferation of mouse buttons is a reflection of the inability of the UI to adapt to our demands.

If the UI were very well designed then it would intelligently adapt the function of the single mouse button to perform whatever task it is that we want to do. If you think about it then under an ideal interface we would have no mouse buttons at all, the computer would just know what the user wants and would do it (whether by a direct neural interface, strong AI or some other method).

However, we do not have an ideal user interface and until we do I want a shed-load of buttons to compensate for the stupidity of my operating system.

Technorati Tags: GUI, Mouse, Technology, UI

Here’s a really cool set of photos from the International Space Station. The ISS reached its 5th anniversary of continuous human presence in space on the 2nd of November. Pictured is a photo of New York City on 11/09/01. Pretty incredible.

Technorati Tags: 9/11, NASA, ISS, space

This afternoon at 4.30 MPs in the House of Commons will vote on the Terrorism Bill. The media coverage of this Bill has focussed largely on the clause allowing police to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without trial. I’d like to bring up a couple of points that have not been widely covered.

The first relates to the Bill’s compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 5, Paragraph 3 of the ECHR states that

Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1.c of this article shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time …

The key phase here, of course, is ’shall be entitled to a trial within a reasonable time’. What ‘reasonable’ means precisely is a question open to debate. However, it seems clear enough to me that if the Terrorism Bill is passed as it stands then it will certainly be challenged in the courts. If the Bill were found to be incompatible the ECHR then it would certainly be embarrassing for the Government and for the PM personally.

The second point is that the Government seems to have a very serious problem with how it defines terrorism. I think that should the Bill pass this problem will be made a great deal worse because of some of its clauses. The Terrorism Act 2000 defines ‘terrorism’ as follows

(1) In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where-

(a) the action falls within subsection (2),

(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to
intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a
political, religious or ideological cause.

(2) Action falls within this subsection if it-

(a) involves serious violence against a person,

(b) involves serious damage to property,

(c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person
committing the action,

(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or
a section of the public, or

(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt
an electronic system.

(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which
involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism
whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.

(4) In this section-

(a) “action” includes action outside the United Kingdom,

(b) a reference to any person or to property is a reference to any
person, or to property, wherever situated,

(c) a reference to the public includes a reference to the public of a
country other than the United Kingdom, and

(d) “the government” means the government of the United Kingdom, of
a Part of the United Kingdom or of a country other than the
United Kingdom.

As it stands that definition would label many types of activities as ‘terrorism’ which I am quite certain the Government would not regard as such. For example the American Civil War would fall under this definition, as would the British Government’s current military activities in Iraq. The definition is clearly lacking in credibility.

The reason that this is going to be a specific problem for the new Terrorism Bill is that in addition to extending the period of internment detention without trial to 90 days it introduces some new offences. The Bill makes illegal ‘glorifying’ terrorism, giving or receiving terror training and indirectly inciting terrorism. Since all these new offences are based on the rather shaky foundation of the definition of terrorism given above it seems reasonable to ask what precisely these offences will make illegal. This problem of vagueness is further compounded by other ill-defined terms such as ‘glorification’ and ‘indirect incitement’.

Vagueness in criminal legislation such as this is not just a technical matter only of interest to lawyers and judges but should be of concern to everybody. Granting the Government such power without also setting and understanding the limits of that power may be the first step on the road to tyranny.

Further Reading

ECHR Full Text
Terror Bill Full Text

I direct your attention to this article by Lance Ulanoff. It’s about things that annoy him about personal computing. For the most part I agree with what he says. However, there is one thing about which we disagree. This is what Lance has to say about mice:

Our mice are ten times better than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. No mouse balls and rollers to gunk up, just elegant optical laser systems. But while the internal mechanics have taken huge leaps forward, the button proliferation is a big step back. I still use just the two main buttons and sometimes the roller—nothing else. I do not need side buttons near my thumb. My last digit is happy just to grip and move the mouse. I hate when I accidentally hit a side button that takes me back to my previous Web page, and it always happens at the worst time—just as I nearly finish completing a lengthy Web form.

I couldn’t disagree more. I use a Logitech MX700 and it’s far and away the best mouse I’ve ever used. It has a total of eight buttons (including the scroll wheel) and I use seven of them every day. Aside from the left and right click buttons I have one button set up to take me to the next unread article in my RSS aggregator, one set up to open a new tab in Safari, the Back and Forward buttons and the scroll wheel button which opens Dashboard. I recently had to use a computer which had only two buttons (not even a scroll wheel) and I felt like I’d lost a limb. Dragging the cursor up to the top of the browser window every time I wanted to go back was almost as debilitating as not having tabs (the computer in question was also cursed with IE).

I also can’t understand Lance’s frustration with hitting the buttons accidentally. Even if you don’t find the Back/Forward side buttons useful it’s extremely straightforward to simply disable them.