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Center for Responsive Politics

Do you want to know where this year's candidates are getting their money? If so, this is the site. You can even search for individual contributors by name, zip code or by their employer. You can find out which candidates the tobacco industry is supporting. Do you want to know who attended those famous White House coffees? CRP has the answers. The site even has a "Do It Yourself Congressional Investigation Kit" that is billed as a "Consumer's Guide to who is giving the money and who is getting it."

Do I have your interest piqued yet? This is a very worthwhile site to visit. Just a few years ago, this type of information would have taken weeks to assemble. Now it is available to you instantly on the Net. Check out the Center for Responsive Politics at:

http://www.crp.org/

Be a responsible and informed voter. You owe it to yourself and the country you live in.

The :30 Second Candidate

The site has a Historical Timeline covering the development of political commercials. Did you ever wonder how the political spots are put together? There are many tricks of the trade you can learn about that the strategists use to sway you over to their candidate's views. This is a another one of those "must visit" sites that you need to visit before the elections. To learn all about "The :30 Second Candidate," point your browser to:

http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/front.html

The Household Cyclopedia

The Net is famous for making available all sorts of unusual, hard to find, and out of print material to the general public. This site is no exception. The Household Cyclopedia first published in 1881 is a wonderful source of domestic wisdom long forgotten. "The Household Cyclopedia" covers all of "the useful and domestic arts constituting a complete and practical library."

You'll find sections relating to:

• Bleaching
• Engraving
• Horsemanship
• Pottery making
• Fireworks
• Rural and domestic economy
• Medical advice and procedures

On many of the medical pages there are stern disclaimers stating that the medical procedures were accepted back then because the professionals didn't know any better. We know now that when we have a headache, we take some pain medication, we don't attach leeches to our head for a good bleeding. In other words, keep in mind the overall context of the book in terms of when it was written. After reading parts of it, it is comforting to know how far we have come. For a step back in time point your browser to:

http://members.xoom.com/mspong/

Legendary Lighthouses

• Discover what a "fresnel" lens is and how it increases the power and focus of a light
• Read all sorts of interesting stories about individual lighthouses and how a 729 foot-long ship known as the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in just ten seconds
• View lighthouses and their beautiful surroundings
• Explore the many links on the web concerning lighthouses and how they have captured the hearts and minds of young and old alike

To visit this wonderful site, point your browser to:

http://www.pbs.org/legendarylighthouses/

Newspaper Association of America

http://www.newspaperlinks.com

How Stuff Works

This is a very cool and extensive site that you'll end up spending hours reading the numerous pages. You can even make suggestions on future topics that you'd like to see covered. Marshall Brain is the author of ten books and has a unique ability in communicating complex ideas clearly. To check out "How Stuff Works," go to:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Humor Time and Other Noteworthy Bits of Interesting Readings

• If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

• The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

• Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.

• Humans and dolphins are the only species that have sex for pleasure.

• On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

• The strongest muscle in the body is the TONGUE.

• It's impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

• You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.

• Americans on the average eat 18 acres of pizza every day.

• Every time you lick a stamp, you're consuming 1/10 of a calorie.

• Did you know that you are more likely to be killed by a champagne cork than by a poisonous spider?

• Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people do.

• In ancient Egypt, priests plucked EVERY hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes.

• A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

• The ant can lift 50 times its own weight, can pull 30 times its own weight and always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

• Polar bears are left handed (pawed?).

• The catfish has over 27,000 taste buds. That makes the catfish #1 among animals having the most taste buds.

• The flea can jump 350 times its body length; that is like a human jumping the length of a football field.

• A cockroach will live nine days without it's head, before it starves to death.

• The male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body.  The female initiates sex by ripping the males head off.

• Some lions mate over 50 times a day.

• Butterflies taste with their feet.

• Elephants are the only animals that can't jump. (thankfully)

• A cat's urine glows under a blacklight.

• An ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain.

• Starfishes haven't got brains.

Some Researchers put a group of five chimps into a cage. There was a ladder in the middle, going up to a lovely huge bunch of bananas.

After a while, one of the chimps got interested, and decided to have himself a banana. Up the ladder he started.

Then - whooshh! - heavy, hard sprays of icy cold water soaked him, chilled him shiveringly through, and the other chimps too. He scampered back down.

Later, another chimp decided to try for one of those ripe, luscious looking bananas. Cunningly, he crept up the other side of the ladder... whoosh - same result. A whole lot of shivering, wet, unhappy chimps.

Later again, another chimp decided to try doing it - v e r y s l o w l y ... Same result.

Later again, another chimp started towards the ladder. At the foot of it, the rest of the Chimps jumped on him, and beat him up. No more wetting and freezing for them that day!

The Researchers took one of the chimps out, and put in a new chimp who had seen nothing. He looked around, saw the bananas, and thought his new friends a dozy lot for just sitting there. Towards the foot of the ladder he loped - and got jumped on and beaten up. Why?? he wondered, nursing his wounds.

Then another chimp was substituted for another original chimp, - and the same scene was repeated. Even the first new chimp joined in the beating up of the new one who tried to get to the bananas, - tho' he didn't know why. The beating up of the new guy was sort of fun, tho'...

So it went on, till all the original chimps were no longer there. The final new chimp followed his instincts into the same 'mistake', and was beaten up by the rest - even tho' none of them knew why they were doing it.

Explained one of them to the latest new, bruised, baffled joiner: "It's the way we do things around here."

One night, a Delta twin-engine puddle jumper was flying somewhere above New Jersey. There were five people on board; the pilot, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, The Dali Lama, and a hippie. Suddenly, an illegal oxygen generator exploded loudly in the luggage compartment, and the passenger cabin began to fill with smoke. The cockpit door opened, and the pilot burst into the compartment. "Gentlemen," he began, "I have good news and bad news." The bad news is that we're about to crash in New Jersey. The good news is that there are four parachutes, and I have one of them!" With that, the pilot threw open the door and jumped from the plane.

Michael Jordan was on his feet in a flash. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am the world's greatest athlete. The world needs great athletes. I think the world's greatest athlete should have a parachute!" With these words, he grabbed one of the remaining parachutes, and hurtled through the door and into the night.

Bill Gates rose and said, "Gentlemen, I am the world's smartest man. The world needs smart men. I think the world's smartest man should have parachute, too." He grabbed one, and out he jumped.

The Dali Lama and the hippie looked at one another. Finally, the Dali Lama spoke. "My son," he said, "I have lived a satisfying life and have known the bliss of True Enlightenment. You have your life ahead of you, you take a parachute, and I will go down with the plane. "The hippie smiled slowly and said, "Hey, don't worry, pop. The world's smartest man just jumped out wearing my backpack."

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real life Dilbert-type managers.

Here are some of the submissions...

1. As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks. (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington.)

2. What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping)

3. E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business. (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company)

4. This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service)

5. Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them. (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.)

6. My Boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)

7. Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what 'I' say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation)

8. How About Friday? My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists)

9. "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

10. We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)

11. One day my Boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said "If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!" (New business manager, Hallmark Greeting Cards.)

12. Speaking the Same Language: As director of communications I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the "pedagogical approach" used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR director's office, and told that the executive vice president wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for "perverts" (pedophilia?) working in her company. Finally he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired -- and the word "pedagogical" circled in red.

    The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary, and made a copy of the definition to send back to her, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out - directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation memo by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corporation)

13. This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from a large communications company: "(Company name) is endeavorily determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of transaction business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if not supersede, the expectations of quality!" (Lucent Technologies)