Month: February 2009

Time to Play “Guess The Party”!!!

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The mayor of a small town in California, a guy named Dean Grose, decided to share an Email with some of his coworkers. The Email was certainly in poor taste, was racist, and the ensuing ruckus has prompted the mayor to announce that he is resigning.

What I can’t figure out is which party the mayor belongs to. There is no mention of his political affiliations anywhere.

Recent history has taught us that this is usually a sign that the troubled politician is a Democrat. It seems that the news media will try to avoid mentioning that a politician in trouble belongs to that particular party, while repeatedly pounding home the affiliation of any Republican that is going through a rough patch. It appears to be an attempt to deliberately associate all Republicans with bad behavior, while at the same time distancing the journalist’s favorite party from any link with corruption or poor judgment.

Don’t believe me? Ace of Spades has been documenting this particular form of bias for some time now. It is amazing how often it crops up.

But I’m not sure that such shenanigans is the case in this case, mainly because I can’t find any mention of Mayor Grose’s political party anywhere. It could be that no one really knows, so the media decided to keep quiet until they found out.

Brain Rinse

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“The cat, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.” – Mark Twain

My friend, former Chief Warrant Officer Jim Wright, has made several interesting posts on information warfare.

Of all the words he’s written on the subject, the most important quote is this one:

When information arrives, how many folks ask themselves: How was this information acquired? Is it complete? Is it accurate? Is it biased. Is it relevant? Is there enough detail? Do I accept it because it reinforces what I think I know, or do I reject it for the same reason? How can I verify it? How can I test it? If I can’t test and verify the information, do I accept it anyway? If so, why?

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Those who fail to ask themselves such questions place themselves and those who depend on them, at a significant disadvantage – they will always be at the mercy of those who can observe the universe critically, adjust their worldview appropriately, decide and act.

I have an affinity for that type of inquiry because I am an accredited professional in information warfare – I hold an MBA with a subspecialty in marketing. Some segment of society wages information warfare on the individual practically every day of his or her life. And the individual wages it right back.

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“Shovel Ready” stimulus

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Recently I went to the Chicago Dog show and then down to Hyde Park, where our president used to live, to eat at a restaurant I saw on the show “Check Please” called Calypso. The restaurant was a Caribbean restaurant and the food was excellent. It seemed nice to get some sun and imagine I was in the tropics, if only for a minute.

While driving home on East Hyde Park Boulevard, a major street in Hyde Park, I was driving with a car right beside me and I came up to a monstrous pothole. Since there was someone right next to me I tried to swerve and slow down but still ended up in the hole. The depression was very large and the edges were completely jagged – it was more like a construction site than a pothole.

My tire was flat in a matter of seconds. I pulled over in a residential neighborhood and with the help of some friends along for the ride (I am not a particularly handy guy, although I was game to get out there and do the work) we changed the tire and put on the little spare.

Later I heard that the City of Chicago will reimburse you for pothole damage but I wasn’t able to find the link on their site. I will look into it a bit more but I am not too hopeful that our maze of bureaucracy would be paying me out in my lifetime.

I was looking to get new tires for my car, anyways, since the damn Altima will live forever (it is going on 10 years) so I wasn’t really out much. Glad I didn’t replace the tires FIRST because there was no way any tire could have survived that ditch.

The ironic part of this is that city mayors are scrambling to figure out what to do with the windfall of cash and they can’t even bother to plan to fix a major pothole right near the President’s house.

Cross posted at LITGM