Genetics -- online book explaining the consequences of this future science...

Keurig Coffee Systems - It seems like every office has one of these, and they are always serving Green Mountain Coffee. Is it because it's the cheapest? I've certainly had better.

I finished Choke. It was like Fight Club with sex instead of violence. "Derivative" isn't the word I'm looking for, but it's the first word that comes to mind. For a quick read, I liked it. It reminded me of J.G. Ballard's Crash, but only because the characters in that were also obsessed with sex.

As part of a secret project for work (secret because they don't know I'm doing it), I'm identifying some print industry and marketing magazines which I can potentially write articles to about our products.

Print Industry Magazines:

• Printing Impressions
• Printing News
• TRprint

Marketing Magazines:

• American Demographics
• Cahners
• epm communications, inc.
• Bank Investment Marketing
• International Journal of Bank Marketing - scholarly journal for Bank Marketing
• Bank Marketing
• Business Marketing Association
• B-to-B - Magazine for Marketing and E-Commerce Strategists - formerly Business Marketing magazine (no longer published)
• Chemical Market Reporter
• Direct Marketing - published by Hoke Communications, Inc. 224 Seventh Street, Garden City, NY 11530
• PR News
• American Marketing Association
• Marketing Click Network
• mad.co.uk
• Marketletter
• Sales & Marketing Management
• Spray Technology & Marketing

PC Magazines

• Laptop: Mobile Solutions for Business and Life
• Mobile Computing
• Business & Technology Wireless
• Pocket PC
• Internet Advisor
• Handheld Computing
• PC World
• PC Magazine
• Ziff-Davis Smart Business
• iSource
• Upside
• Web Technologies
• Technology Review
• Internet Works
• Online
• Linux Journal
• Maximum Linux

Infotrack - password is guest.

Here's proof that in Massachusetts, a landlord has to pay you interest on your Security Deposit.

How a bill, submitted by a Massachusetts citizen, can become a law.

Okay, I dug alittle deeper, and found that Mr. Rajotte is a retired selectman from Northbridge, who's hobby is taking advantage of a loophole in Massachusetts politics, which allows him to petition the legislature for just about any law he can think of. So many, he claims, that he's forgotten the details of some of them. See this article from SouthCoast Today for more info.

Rosaire J. Rajotte, who had a bridge named after him in 1998, apparently submitted a petition on behalf of the city of Northridge, MA, requiring that people be given two warnings after a $5 fine if they're caught driving without a seat belt. Now why is it that the state has to care whether I'm wearing a seat belt or not? I wear one all the time, but shouldn't this be my choice?

• Here's the bill, "Senate, 1239."
• Mr. Rajotte's name is associated with another bill involving property and liability insurance.
• The Massachussetts General Court homepage, where you can look up bills in the Massachussetts House and Senate.
• The Index of Massachussetts Legislators
• My representatives:
  • Senator Steven A. Tolman
  • Representative Peter J. Koutoujian

With Pearl Harbor in the theatres, I'm hearing a lot about the other movies which covered the same general time period, and perhaps did a little better. Here's a list of WWII movies and their adjusted box office gross...

Choke

I got a hold of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke. The book isn't as good as I thought it would be. I think I'd rather read Fight Club. I guess I was expecting more poetry in the fiction. The book reads very quickly, and the characters are drab. The topics seem recycled from Fight Club, at least from the movie. The main character's mother is an anarchist, there are scenes of her doing some of the same things Tyler Durden trained his Project Mayhem group to do. Victor Mancini is a sex addict who attends a support group for other sex addicts, so that he can regularly get laid. He works in a dead end job in Colonial Dunsboro, where it's always 1734. His life seems stuck in the same rut. His mother suffers from Alzheimer's, and every time he goes to see her, he's a different person. An then there's the Jesus thing. I won't get into that yet. So far I just want to finish it so I can move on to Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, by J. Richard Gott, or A Confederacy of Dunces. Here's a review I agree with.

It's always nice to see that one man still has the power to change the world.
I wonder if there will be any others.

I read an article which I can no longer find, about the dangers of chemicals found in your own home, including formaldehyde, used in floor finish, latex paints, particle board, and permanently pressed clothing. In searching for the original article, I discovered that there is a controversy as to whether exposure to formaldehyde causes cancer or not. Formaldehyde exposure comes in the form of a "gassing out," which occurs as the floor finish is drying, or soon after the permanently pressed article of clothing is exposed to air. This article mentions the dangers of formaldehyde in the home.¹ This article suggests using household plants to reduce the amounts of formaldehyde in your home.² According to the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN) journal, exposure to formaldehyde carries the following risks:

Exposure to airborne concentrations above 0.1 parts per million (ppm) can cause irritation of the eyes and upper airway. A 30-minute exposure to 100 ppm can be fatal, and pulmonary edema has been diagnosed after exposures of 50 ppm. These levels can be generated by small formaldehyde spills of only one pint or less, even in ventilated areas.(15) Blindness can result from splashes in the eyes, and dermal contact causes various degrees of reactions, including sensitization.(16) For these reasons, formalin should be stored and dispensed carefully in a centralized location. Individual specimen containers can be filled under controlled conditions and stored at the central location, close to eye wash, cleanup, and decontamination facilities in the event of an accidental spill or injury.³

¹ Science News, Jan 9, 1999 v155 i2 p22(1) ² The University of California, Berkeley Wellness Letter, Oct 1994 v11 n1 p4(2) ³ AORN Journal, March 2000 v71 i3 p688

Research for a forthcoming article on the "does formaldehyde cause cancer" controversy.

Open Content License
GNU General Purpose License

work

TV

How safe is your data?
Social Security numbers at risk on the Net

I want to read Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club and Choke, his new novel. You remember Fight Club, the David Fincher movie starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton about an insomniac revolutionary who starts going to support groups to get to sleep, only to discover a new channel for his displaced rage in clubs where men fight each other for fun. Well, Choke is along those same lines, about a guy who goes to support groups for sex addicts to fulfill their fantasies in the room across the hall. For work, he chokes in restaurants and lives off the money sent to him by those who felt sorry enough to "save" him.

I want to research Martin Buber's I and Thou manuscript.This might be part of the text. This looks like a picture of Buber. This is the Amazon link to the book. I read in a Silicon Valley newspaper in November that a professor of that area is going to study Buber's I and Thou and publish a contemporary critique. I don't know when and I don't remember his name, but I want to buy it.

Also, check out this lecture transcript. It was sent to me by an Indian friend. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the concepts are similar to Buber's.

More books: Working on Yourself Doesn't Work, Wild Mind (may be kooky, but could be a good library book, Passionate, Accurate Story, Stein on Writing.

The Artist's Way - a book recommended to me that promises to show how to "recover your creativity from a variety of blocks."

Okay, I did some research*, and this is what I could come up with as far as the first reports of vandalism in the White House. It's a transcript of Ari Fleischer's answers to questions on the 26th of January. This is the best I can get (short of a link to Lloyd Grove's January 23rd column in the Washington Post -- please e-mail me if you find it). Here's another article from that same search.

To summarize:

This is what the president had to say when asked about the acts of vandalism:
"I'm so happy to be here -- (laughter) -- that I'm looking forward. There might have been a prank or two, maybe somebody put a cartoon on the wall -- that's okay. It's time now to move forward. It's time to focus our attention on what's possible and how to get children educated. I'm excited about what this week has brought. I'm excited about my job."

Here's what Ari Fleisher had to say:

Q Ari, how dismayed is the President about the vandalism, and what does he want you to do with the cataloging once it's completed?

MR. FLEISCHER: You know, I think we really dealt with that question. His focus is on governing. He's not focused on any of the things that took place as we arrived here. The cataloging that I mentioned, frankly, that's one person in their administrative offices who is really just keeping track in his head about things that may have taken place. So we've moved beyond it.

Q But, Ari, this is a President who has come in here, expressed from the very beginning how honored he is to be here, how he wants to restore honor and dignity to this office. Doesn't he consider it a personal affront that taxpayer money must go to replace the vandalized property here?

MR. FLEISCHER: He does not consider it a personal affront.

Here's where it gets interesting...

Q Ari, are there -- just a follow-up, please, on the vandalism. Could you at some point get us a figure, because people are using wild figures -- $90,000 -- just give us some general ballpark idea?

MR. FLEISCHER: We're not. We're just going to focus on doing our jobs here. Any of the things that took place upon our arrival here are not in our focus. And I understand it is in the focus of some others, but it's not in ours. And we're just going to put our heads down and do our jobs and go to work. It's in the past.

Q But Ari, the President says this is the people's house. I mean, don't you folks owe a duty to the people to tell them what's been done to their house?

MR. FLEISCHER: I think that whatever took place is passed, and our focus is going to be to just do the job that the American people elected President Bush to do. And I can understand -- sometimes in Washington people want others to fight, and this is part of changing the tone. We're just going to do our jobs.

Q Ari, some Clinton folks that we've talked to said, wait a minute, there's sort of a double standard here. No one says from the Bush White House exactly what happened. There's this word cataloging, but there's no specifics ever given. And they're saying in many respects, they don't think these things ever happened in the first place. And we don't even know how to respond to allegations that are as amorphous as these are. And when you say cataloged, is this a catalogue that's going to be kept within the White House forever, or at some point are you going to tell the American people in some sort of way --

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, as I said, it's one person in an administration who is just keeping track in his head of the different things that people have said took place to their desks or offices, and as far as we're concerned, it's over.

Q Is there going to be an effort to confirm these things?

Q Can we download the mental catalogue for the reporters to look at?

MR. FLEISCHER: It's just not our focus.

Q Ari, did the President specifically give instructions that no kinds of criminal charges or legal charges should be pursued with respect to any vandalism or mischief that might have taken place?

MR. FLEISCHER: It is the White House's position, it is our focus, and obviously that's what we're doing.

Q No. Did the President give instructions that there should be no pursuit of this in terms of legal or criminal charges of the vandalism or mischief, or whatever --

MR. FLEISCHER: My information comes from Andy Card. If Andy got it from the President, I'm not aware of it. That's our position.

To see the larger context of the transcripts, hit [CTRL]-F on your MSIE browser and search for all occurrences of the word 'vandal' .

*research consisted of going to Yahoo!News Advanced Search and searching articles with the keywords 'white house vandalism' from 01/23/01-01/30/01.

Remember the White House vandal story that went around soon after Bush had taken over the office? You know, the one that said all the W's were missing from the White House keyboards, and desk drawers were glued shut? The so-called pranks that occur whenever there is a bi-partisan shift in the executive office? I even remember an article which mentioned some of the hijinks that occurred when Clinton took office after the first President Bush... Well, according to this article on Salon, it was all bunk. Yup, it was all made up, fiction designed to take Clinton down a few more pegs, at the time neither confirmed nor denied by the Bush press secretary. And here's Salon, with a page 60 retraction...

The Pollack article reminded me about feed, a cool e-zine. It reminds me of Salon.

James Jeffords - He couldn't have picked a more appropriate time to switch sides...

The Origin of the Brunists. This is what happens when I follow links on the web... from Britannica to Pollack to Mencken to Robert Coover and The Origin of the Brunists.

H. L. Mencken

Neil Pollack article I stumbled upon while searching for the definition of "algorithmic styling" on Britannica.com. Neil Pollack is a featured writer in McSweeneys.

The Financial Times - On many an analyst's desk, along with The Wall Street Journal.

I have to thank The Daily Dave for reminding me of my love/hate relationship with advertising. Check out Subvertise.org or RTMark (very cool) for some corporate marketing bashing.

One of my favorites (which I should visit more often) is Adbusters.

If you'd like to learn more about culture jamming, check out The Culture Jammer's Enclyclopedia, the Theory of Culture Jamming, or this link.

Flaunt.net - Witty blonde internet girl

What’s Your Personality Type? - Internet Keirsey personality tests...

mcsweeneys.org - I haven't been here in so long I almost forgot about it.

Web Hosting from pair Networks

Chicago Manual of Style FAQ

The Chicago Manual of Style (14th Edition)

O'Reilly RTF Template for Microsoft Word

O'Reilly Default Stylesheet and Word List

Font Hinting Article - Written by Bitstream employee in 1996 to Bitstream and Verso personnel, and David Siegel. W3.org doc.

Google's Technical Writing Resources

Table of Contents: So You Want to Write A Book? - O'reilly's guide to publishing.

Media-Perils Liability Insurance (Writer's Insurance) Only $215.00/year!

Salary Survey for Technical Writers - April 2001