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Copyright ©1996 by LeftJustified Publiks. All rights reserved
This logo and the terms "LeftJustified" and "LeftJustified Publiks" are Trademarks of LeftJustified Publiks, of Las Cruces New Mexico.
Many people ask about the nature of the name LeftJustified. The name came to me one day when I was dreaming about what form this business might take & what it should eventually become. LeftJustified is about publishing. Thus, a common reference in print processing of any kind is the justification of a line or paragraph of text: left justified, right justified, centered, etc. The concatenation of the two words makes it a unique name that can be trademark protected. The "Publiks" part is a twist on the words publication and public. This is a nonsense spelling & I hope language critics will forgive me; but it is is easy to say and it sort of sticks in your mind, doesn't it? Of course, the real interest in the name is because of its double meaning.
My politics are progressive. I wish to make my work reflect this. While the initial offerings of LeftJustified appear to be pretty conservative you will probably agree that—being fundamental to the makeup of governments—they are instructive & therefore useful to everyone. The parts of liberal progressive politics that interest me most are education, communications, & ethics. This is what forms my Left justification. What else is there, you may ask?
There is Ideology, for example. Ideology is a device that people use to reduce every argument to a black-white, us-them context. Within such a context, it is very difficult to compromise. A lot of ill feeling is generated, and ultimately communication & clear thinking are suppressed. Ideology can serve leaders for a while, but eventually fails them. This is so because most "followers" will eventually find contradictions in the leader, or in the party line. A handful of such contradictions are enough to drive ethical people away, leaving a core of participants who suffer from unclear thinking, poor ethics, or both.
There is Power; the power that becomes concentrated in the hands of a few people and eventually supplants the original objective. When power is the objective, corruption is inescapable. Our society is rife with the abuses of power. There is not a man, woman, or child who are not exposed to corruption (exploitation, lawlessness, disrespect, abuse) on a regular basis. And we often deny it. All too often, we blame it on fellow victims who have even less power than ourselves. They are easy targets.
I have heard it said that the very best form of government is a benign Dictatorship*, the only problem is that the benign dictator is eventually replaced with a corrupt, repugnant one. Maybe the problem with Democracy is a similar one.
What is LeftJustified?
There are a couple of
fundamental ideas at the root of what this company is. LeftJustified is
about education. To be more specific: Life-long education. I came
out of the public school system with a dismal education. I must assume
full responsibility for this, but at least I came out with an appetite for
reading & writing. These are the basis for a continuing interest in
learning; an interest that I am now trying to develop into a livelihood.
It seems to me that most of the conversation, argument, and policy-making
in the United States takes place in a terrible vacuum: most of us don't
seem to know anything about history. This is why I begin my work with
simple collections of documents of historical value. From this very simple
starting point, I hope to produce more sophisticated works where a person
may find concrete knowledge, for a better understanding of today.
LeftJustified is shareware. Shareware is the cheapest, most efficient, most useful way to distribute small software products to an ever-growing marketplace. From a customer's perspective, it is a really valuable service to be able to use a product before deciding to buy it. Electronic distribution of media is the future of software. It cuts costs, it reduces the use of materials; it offers perhaps the greatest economy of transportation you & I will ever know. To me the most important thing is that shareware implies a basic trust between producer & customer. I trust you to pay for this product if it has value for you. There only needs to be a simple incentive for you to mail off the registration form. It works, and that says volumes about human nature.
LeftJustified is a private company with a clear objective: to provide a valuable service to people, and to employ as many people as possible in a service to society. Everyone needs to make a living. No one needs to get rich. There are plenty of people in this world who 1. have talent and skills to lend to beneficial and ethical work and, 2. are not interested in getting rich. These are the people I want to work with. There ought to be a way to make a living at it & I intend to make it so.
How did this all get started?
To Make a
long story short, I noticed sometime in 1990
that the computer industry was really heating up. I got to thinking about
useful things that one could do with all of the user-friendly technology
coming down the pipe. I'm interested in learning. I read 3-4 books a
month, mostly non-fiction. I subscribe to 9 magazines. I wondered if there
was a way to use the computer as a platform for broadcasting or
publishing. LeftJustified, established in 1992, is the product of those
explorations.
Aside from the Library, LeftJustified provides products and services of interest to the general public and to the electronic publisher. The first of these is LeftJustified inForm, an e-mail service which will send you news and updates about point.B and LeftJustified. You may sign on by filling out a simple form containing your name & email address, with an optional comment about the site.
We feature an extensive line of Electronic Books as Shareware. You may view the Products page to find out more about these offerings. It costs you nothing to download & examine these books. Please note that our current catalog is limited to products for Microsoft Windows™.
We also offer some Artwork developed or captured for use on the point.B site. You may choose from a selection of packages priced at $10.00 and up. These are generally sets of Dropcaps or Line Art. These packages are delivered to you via e-mail following purchase. You may use them any way you see fit except that you may not resell them or make any complete set available for free to the general public.
Here are some specific policies that LeftJustified employs in business.
![[]](/leftjust/cmn/rd.gif){kind=small}
No
Mailing lists:Minimum
impact on resources:It will require constant work & polishing to keep this archive in good condition. Nothing is perfect, but we'd like to strive for a state of perfection. If you find problems in this Web, please report them.
Send e-mail to the Editor (editor@leftjustified.com).
It is most helpful if you can:
1) identify the offending document (by title and/or URL),
2) the offending text (paste the paragraph or feature
into your report), and
3) describe the error, problem, or confusion encountered.
We'll make every effort to respond quickly to your report. We'll thank you very much for the effort.
At last count there are nearly 100 browsers on the market. The variety of features is confusing. Here we attempt to hitch our wagon to the market leaders, the top two or three most popular browsers, while at the same time providing text-only versions for people who must use more limited browsers.
Suggestions
about browsers & user PreferencesNotes
about the format of this collectionNarrow
columns of text are easier to read -- there is less eye travel involved
in negotiating a column of text. On screen, we hope that you find our
columniation of text comfortable. But since we cannot control what font
& point size you render text at, the width of columns may not be
appropriate. We have chosen a layout loosely based on Times Roman at 11
points.White
Space (areas of clear display that break up blocks of text) is helpful
in leading the eye through text. It also helps the reader's
understanding of relationships between different elements on screen. We
try to employ White Space whenever it is useful. The use of a columnar
format also provides lots of white space.This is a map showing the general layout of the point.B website.
http://www.leftjustified.com/leftjust/
point.B Homepage
|---Help - Copyright information - Services
| & Products
Liberty
Library Homepage
|--Spectacles
| |---Heritage
| | |--Index to Collections
| | []-- Documents, Papers, etc.
| |
| |---Humankind
| |
| []-- TBD
|
|---Free
Radicals project
| |--Index to Collections
| []-- Tom Paine, F. Douglass, etc.
|
[]--The
Constitutions
|---Index to Collections
[]-- US, China, Organizations, etc.
[]- e.g. States (of US)
A general Index of documents hosted on this site is available. It also points to some resources on other servers.
point.B [UP] [COPYRIGHT] [LIBRARY] [HELP]
Copyright ©1996 by LeftJustified Publiks. All rights reserved.
Apparently the CIA would agree. It's just that their definition of "benign" differs markedly from mine
