The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are evan raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measure turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that is this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

Basically the Republican party campaigned on a platform of change, and then changed nothing. That sounds a lot like the 2006 Democratic campaign actually…

Needless to say, I am also unimpressed by the liberal Left. Although they posture as critical thinkers, their confidence in government is inexcusably naive, based as it is on civics-textbook platitudes that bear absolutely no resemblance to reality.

I have long been bothered by the assumption that it is the government’s responsibility to fix every thing that is wrong with the world, from healthcare to foreign aid. Frankly, I don’t trust the government’s ability to spend my hard earned money better than I spend it, nor do I agree with giving the government the authority to look out for the best interests of “society”.

Watching candidates “debate” this past election season was beyond painful, because the debate was pointless at best:

No wonder frustrated Americans have begun referring to our two parties as Republicats. And no wonder the news networks would rather focus on $400 haircuts than matters of substance. There are no maters of substance.

To sum things up, I leave you with thoughts on what government’s role should be:

When we agree not to treat each other merely as means to our own selfish ends, but to respect one another as individuals with rights and goals of our own, cooperation and goodwill suddenly become possible for the first time. My message is one of freedom and individual rights. I believe individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should only be used defensively. We shoudl respect each other as rational beings by trying to achieve our goals through reason and persuasion rather than threats and coercion. That, and not a desire for “economic efficiency”, is the primary moral reason for opposing government intrusions into our lives: government is force, not reason.”

I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Revolution as this book does an amazing job of simply focusing on the issues that matter and cutting through the common rhetoric and political platitudes we normally read and watch.

• Dojo QuickStart Guide
• DWR QuickStart Guide

These guides were developed by the SitePen support team.

Today, we have excellent SVG (and canvas) implementations in Safari, Firefox, and Opera. dojox.gfx provides a simple JavaScript API based on SVG nomenclature for abstracting away inconsistencies between implementations, and also allow VML and Silverlight support for IE browsers.

Lately, Apple has been taking an interesting approach of leveraging key SVG stylistics features and exposing them through CSS: CSS gradients, CSS transforms, and CSS animations. What’s really interesting is that some of the best features of SVG are making their way into HTML+CSS.

I’m starting to wonder if the future of SVG for the most common 80% is just HTML, CSS, a few new shape and path elements, and some additions to the HTML coordinate system.

More information is available in the Dojo 1.1 release notes, or on the SitePen Dojo 1.1 announcement.

Be sure to check out the new Dojo API Viewer, and the growing collection of Dojo demos, tutorials, and articles.

Update: The Beauty of Dojo 1.1 by James Burke, and Dojo 1.1 released announcement by Peter Higgins.

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