CAMPAIGN TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED

    President Obama has clearly been listening. If you watched his recent State of the Union Address you would have noticed that he has incorporated many of my key points into his agenda for the coming years. I will leave this site up as proof that our President still hears progressive voices and as evidence that our agendas now appear to overlap in every respect but one. The one disagreement we have is that unlike President Obama, I would continue to push for single-payer health care instead of the sloppy compromise currently in place. Perhaps we can continue to urge him to make this a priority.

    Nonetheless, at this time, I perceive my continued candidacy to be redundant.

    To all of those who supported me and helped me spread my ideas, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Though my campaign is likely at an end, it has clearly ended in victory. 

    I feel we can all take comfort in the knowledge that everything we believe in and everything we were fighting for will make it into the national debate with our President, Barack Obama, recommitted to our ideals and bravely leading us into the future.

    I am giving my full support to President Obama in his reelection campaign.

PEACE,

Robert G. Berke

Unlimited Energy Sci-FI

I am contemplating a new book to start where "Human" leaves off, after I finish "Artist" (which is unrelated to Human). In the new book, I will have Dr. Bayron stumble upon a mechanism for creating unlimited, unexhaustable energy. His discovery will put the power companies, the oil companies, the coal mining industry, and many others out of business. Furthermore, the discovery will make possible all kinds of new technologies from light sabers to insterstellar travel literally overnight.

I think a great action/suspense story can be built around the efforts of any number of groups to prevent the technology getting out. I also think there would be tremendous food for thought in the implications of such an energy source.

I am sharing this idea here now because a lot of people came to me with wonderful thoughts about Human after it was completed and too late to incorporate some of those ideas. I figured, I would do an experiment with crowdsourcing, by publishing my idea long before I can take pen to paper on it and getting the feed back first.

Please share your thoughts with me in the comments section or wherever.

Thanks,
Berke

The Grateful Dead Business Model

The Grateful Dead. Their imagery and the passion of their fans has never diminished in the years since they first started performing. In these two books, some very brilliant and educated guys have studied the phenomenon of the Dead and in doing so have uncovered some extremely powerful business methods that can--in fact SHOULD-- be replicated by every business. The Deadheads are not mere loyal consumers, they are active partners in the band's success. Can you say the same about your customers?

FREE E-Book!

ABOXOFRAIN.com (aka lookoutofanywindow.blogspot.com) is pleased to announce the pre-release of the new novel, Human, by Robert G. Berke.

Mr. Berke is a frequent contributor to this blog. Though he has been a prolific writer of short stories and articles, Human is his first full length novel. The novel is 330 pages long (approximately 96,000 words).

Human tells the story of Elijah Smith, a wealthy entrepreneur who is beset by an unnamed disease which has been slowly eating away at his nervous system. In an effort to preserve his life notwithstanding the inevitable death of his body, Smith recruits a brilliant neurosurgeon to lead a team in creating a detailed virtualization of every part of his brain.

The project is successful, but it quickly proves to have had an unforeseen consequence as Smith--or at least the virtual Smith--discovers that he now possesses some very powerful and very dangerous information. When Smith reveals this information to his friend he sets a string of events in motion which immediately imperils all of his friends and family, and possibly millions of other people.

Through powerful storytelling, Berke confronts the question of what it actually means to be human and whether an individual's humanity is necessarily trapped within a corporeal body or whether it can be extracted and installed like software onto a technological platform.

Ultimately, the fate of the world depends on the answer to the question, "is Smith still human?"

"This is a book you will find yourself discussing long after you have put it down."

The author's publisher, MultiModoMedia Press, has authorized us to give away 10 copies of the electronic version of the book in either Kindle, I-Pad (I-Books), or Nook format to any reader of this blog who will agree to read it and submit a review.

For details on this give-away, send an inquiry to: info@multimodomedia.com

We have also been asked to spread the word that multimodomedia press is seeking submissions according to its submission guidelines.