This New Year in particular does not feel particularly exciting, as many polls and pols seem to report today. But there are many things to be thankful for and I intend to focus on the following:
1. Life itself, puttering and winding along on unpaved roads.
2. The mirror, as it always reflects something.
3. Time and its misshapen handles on everything.
4. The cosmos, which will always astound by making us smaller and smaller by the day.
5. Animals, which work to live, not live to work.
Here’s to 365 good days in 2003.

Being a recent dad, and having had this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!, recommended to me many times, I read and finished it today.
It’s not very good. I guess I should say, it’s great if you need a kick in the pants to start getting your financial life in order and you want to start getting into real estate investments, which Mr. Kiyosaki pretty much out and out says is the only way to become wealthy. He may be right. But his condescending tone, his psycho-babble speak, and his one-line argument makes for some dull reading. I am interested in getting rich. So is almost everyone. But the author frames his own ability to make private wealth in the language of “should” which never works on me. I hate being told “you should.” Loathe it, in fact. I guess I’m going to be a Poor Dad.
Lessons learned from the book, however, are: 1. Start investing now, not later. 2. Stop spending your money on crap, even nice crap. 3. Get a good proofreader, as his book, a #1 New York Times Bestseller, is laden with errors.

I hate to do this, but here is the link to the company that claims it has created the first human clone baby. I find the whole thing kind of sad and fascinating at the same time.
I think the whole thing is a fraud (we’ll know sometime this week apparently), but if it’s not, how did these fellas gain access to such advanced bio-technology? Second, Rael, the group’s leader looks a bit like Saddam Hussein with a small mustache. Third, Brigitte Boisselier, the CE0 who announced the birth, has the most amazing voice — a cross between E.T. and an early Brigitte Bardot. Lastly, why would anyone in their right mind actually want to give birth to *themselves*! Gross. By the way, the group claims it plans on cloning *Dracula*…

In my travels, I stumbled on this very nice little Web site, typographer.com, which discusses new type releases, font issues, and book and software recommendations. Very nice design throughout. Now that I look at it again, this Web log masquerading as a news site looks remarkably like Deckchairs on the Titanic. My predilections are becoming predictably prone to preposterous visual processes.

Thanks to bloggers, Mr. Lott was brought to light. This is some very good news about blogging — putting the lie to those who say Web logs are simply “personal diaries” of the unpublished and disenfranchised. Thanks, VS, for this reference!
A very happy and joyful holiday this week, all.

I’ve always had my eye on type. I think it all began when I was a kid and really took a good hard look at the RCA logo, a company that employed my grandmother for a number of years. The logos and font-faces of yesterday’s big companies, such as RCA, Ford, Chrysler, IBM, GE and many others, are back as the logos and font-faces of today’s big companies. Fascinating.
As I’ve become increasingly interested in today’s font development, I’ve found thatTypophile is a very nicely designed and useful site. It features a review of the new book called Indie Fonts edited by Richard Kegler, James Grieshaber, and Tamye Riggs, for which I recently put good money down at Amazon.com, and which contains 33 original fonts that in and of themselves seemingly outweigh the cost of the book itself ($39.95).

I believe that every person in the world has a series of questions in their head at all times or some of the time. Many of those questions may be of the existential variety (e.g. “Why am I on this planet?” or “Who is G-d to give or take life?”) but many are more mundane. Here are a few of mine while in the car:
1. Why do some automatic cars roll back on hills if you take your foot off the brake? Shouldn’t all cars not do that, unless of course they are manual?
2. How can gasoline still be so cheap and plentiful when a great majority of people say that fossil fuels are scarce and getting scarcer still? Is the government really subsidizing gasoline through highways subsidies and wars as some allege?
3. What percentage of people still have their user manuals for their cars in the glove compartment? And how many of those that do have read them?
4. Why aren’t cops pulling over people using their cell phone without a hands-free device? Isn’t it law in N.Y.?

Chafee Calls for Senate Leadership Change I’m all for getting rid of Mr. Lott, as he is a bad egg, and hasn’t truly represented his constituents, his country, or even himself. He sucks. But, and this a big but, I’m not enthralled with the way the left has sunk its teeth into this issue, which is what Bush and his Rovey friends have strategically devised. The charge of “getting rid of Lott” deflects all issues away from Bush and his party; the reality is that there are many more bad eggs in the Senate on both sides of the isle and the political left appears just too wimpy to go for broke on this one.

In my recent past, I worked on pitching a number of eGovernment contracts — I still believe they would have worked and apparently, so does President Bush, who signed the E-Government Act of 2002 today. While it remains to be seen how this money — $345 million — will really be used and whether it will go toward greater government transparency (as NYC.gov has done with its online record of public health reports about restaurants here) or toward privacy invasions, remains to be seen.

In a rare double-billing on today’s Deckchairs, one must read today’s Post editorial: Lott Must Go. Why did Lott feel the need to apologize 4 times for his ignorance of history, race, and national politics? Perhaps because he didn’t really mean it the first, second, third, or fourth time.