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26 November, 2002
Texas Death Row: Final Meal Requests
Further proof that
everything you need to know is available on the Web.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice keeps track of the last meal requests for people who are executed. In addition to the last meal requests, you can click a link to get more information (including rap sheet and mug shots) for each inmate. Fascinating stuff!
I especially like the disclaimer at the top of the page: The final meal requested may not reflect the actual final meal served.
Here are a few examples:
- Baker, Jr.: Two 16 oz. ribeyes, one lb. turkey breast (sliced thin), twelve strips of bacon, two large hamburgers with mayo, onion, and lettuce, two large baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, cheese, and chives, four slices of cheese or one-half pound of grated cheddar cheese, chef salad with blue cheese dressing, two ears of corn on the cob, one pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and four vanilla Cokes or Mr. Pibb
- Mitchell: One bag of assorted Jolly Ranchers
- Dowhitti: One dozen fried eggs (over easy), 1 loaf of bread, a bowl of salad dressing, French fries, and milk (3 cartons)
- Rumbaugh: One flour tortilla and water
- Barnes, Jr.: Justice, Equality, World Peace
Posted on 26 November, 2002
The Book is Selling Well
I just checked the JungleScan site for the Amazon sales rank for my new book. It ranks #97 of all of the books available. I'm pretty sure that this is the first time one of my books has made it to Amazon's Top 100 list.
Here's a chart that shows the sales rank for the past 36 days.
As a point of comparison, the best-selling edition of the Holy Bible ranks #5,869.
Posted on 26 November, 2002
Total Information Awareness
George W. Bush
signed the Homeland Security bill yesterday. This gives John Poindexter funding
and authority to carry on with his
Total Information Awareness
plan, which will create a monstrous database that contains detailed information
on every American. The idea is to come up with software that can identify
patterns that might arouse suspicion of potential terrorist activity.
Justin Raimondo, in an article titled Totally Clueless, explains why this will never work.
For if the illusion of "total awareness" becomes widespread, this can only foster a dangerous complacency - while the terrorists go around the fringes of society, and the innocent are caught up in the same system that strip-searches little old ladies at airports. It's all so pathetically predictable that to watch the process unfold is like seeing a terrible accident take place, only in slow motion, the horror accentuated by an eerie feeling of d�j�-vu.
Posted on 26 November, 2002
For Computer Case Freaks Only
This German site (Javascript required) has photos of hundreds of computer cases. Some are very cool!
Posted on 26 November, 2002
My Book Has Arrived
It's
finally here. Late yesterday afternoon, the UPS guy dropped off a box that
contained ten copies of Excel
Charts. I ripped open the box and grabbed one. The cover looks great, but I
was surprised at how thin the book is. Most of my books are in the 800-900 page
range, but this one's only 520 pages.
One of the nice features of this book is that the companion CD-ROM contains a complete electronic version of the book (in PDF format).
The CD-ROM also contains three additional chapters that didn't fit into the allocated pages. We call this "bonus material." It also contains several chart-related add-ins that I wrote, about 150 example workbooks, and a cool chart gallery that consists of more than 250 full-color charts (the figures in the book are all grayscale images).
Overall, I'm very pleased with this book. The layout is great, I haven't any glaring errors (yet), and it's chock full of interesting figures.
Posted on 26 November, 2002