Chain Chain Chain...Chain of...

While on my lunch break the other night I got on Politifact.org just to see what kind of silliness was going on in the world. Seems a woman, a Ms. McCaughey, appeared on Fred Thompson's talk show, telling about a section of the new health care bill where seniors enrolled in medicare would be required to attend counselling on how to end their lives in order to save the system money. Totally bogus, of course--got a "pants-on-fire" rating. But sure enough, the next day, my Dad sends an email about this very topic, which he prefaces with this comment:

If you are satisfied that NBC and ABC are telling you all you need to know about what the government is doing, you need to start listening to other sources of information.

Funny, since he believes that FoxNews is the only network telling us all we need to know about what the government is doing. Like in 1938 when CBS was the only network reporting that Martians had landed in New Jersey.

It seems sometimes that his thirst for knowledge begins and ends with Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and chain email.
Network news is not what I consider my primary source of information. I prefer to hear from several different kinds of voices with several different points of view. I like PBS and NPR particularly, but the networks and USAToday will suffice for a quick overview. And I don't trust any partisan website regardless of whose side they are on. But in spite of their brevity, I expect the reporting on NBC and ABC, etc., to be at least accurate, something Fox doesn't seem concerned with. (This isn't the only time I've gotten something from my Dad that originated from Fox, and then turned out to be less than factual.)
Politifact.org and Factcheck.org and Snopes.com have teams of people who investigate the stuff that goes out on the internet, and Politifact even goes to the trouble of explaining how they came by their information. Usually it's pretty simple, like a phone call or two. So why is it so hard for Fox to do the same thing?

Just Another Fun-filled Night

What is it about wedding parties that they just won't go to bed???? I had four pages of inventory to do! I didn't have time for all that! Mike from security got the worst of it, though. He couldn't sit down to eat his dinner because of all the noise complaints, and then to top it off, someone pulls the fire alarm at 2:20am. Now we have guests in pajamas coming downstairs through the kitchen. Of course it's a false alarm. Ms. 323 reported that she heard two young drunken male voices outside her door daring each other to do it.
Mr. and Mrs. 407 have had enough. After being moved from 319 because of air conditioning problems, they found the fourth floor full of noisy partiers. The fire alarm was the last straw. They were nice about it, but Mr. valet ticket #---182 called for his car, packed up the family, and left in a huff.
Thing is, on the night shift, we have a certain number of tasks which have to be completed before we can leave. Our overnight houseman (who was helping Mike), our front desk clerks and I were so far behind we thought we were ahead. When our AFOM got to work, he read the report and offered to let the overnight clerks work his shift, and he would just go back home. Fat chance!
Lunch for me consisted of a package of donuts and a cup of coffee at about 6:00am, but I didn't get out of there till about 8:00. Now it's almost noon, and I still haven't wound down. I'm so glad I have the night off!

Setting The Record Straight

My brother is in town, and yesterday morning I sat down with him and we talked awhile about what's going on with him, the things he's reading and learning about, etc. As I listened, I started to think that a previous post was rather unfair to him and my Dad, because it suggested that they may not be too bright. Actually they are very smart people.
My brother works for NASA, used to build his own computers, and has lately developed a thirst for knowledge about finance, marketing, and brain function with respect to social relationships. He's actually invented some computer and robotics products that are being marketed worldwide. (Check the link on the right.) I brag about him a lot.
My Dad was a quality control manager for a series of electrinics companies, also built his own computers (and mine), and knows everything one needs to know about real estate, having owned rental properties since the mid sixties. He's also a pretty good artist in his own right.
So in the future, if I say anything critical about either of them, understand that it's just a matter of disagreement on a position. I have the highest regard for both of them.

Some People (Roll Eyes Here)

Watch John Stewart eviscerate the "Birthers Movement:" http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-22-2009/the-born-identity

Showtime

We went to see "Brüno" this afternoon. Funny, but not as good as "Borat", and definitely not worth $9. Even if you like rude gay humor, wait till this one goes to the dollar theater.

Earlier this week we went to see a play at the Civic Center called "The Little Dog Laughed." It's about an actor who is on the verge of real stardom, if only his agent can keep him in the closet. Things get complicated when he falls in love with his latest rent boy. Cleverly written in a way that introduced characters that didn't exist onstage (like Maris on "Frazier"), and alluding to real life situations and people without ever naming them, the humor was too snappy for Gaby to keep up. On the way home, we were dicussing the play and figured out that it was actually about the writer, He-Meaning-Him, and not really about any of the four characters depicted onstage. Also, the reference to "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in the agent's opening monologue had a lot more to do with the story than was stressed, though some in the audience might remember that the character Patricia Neal played in the movie was a man in the novella.

Gaby has be"friend"ed one of the actors on Facebook.

Lego OKC

Mike from security called down from the second floor, "Ron! You gotta come see this!" In the ballroom, there was a model of our hotel constructed entirely from Legos. Fourteen stories were reduced down to about three feet in height, about five feet in width. Little figures, including Chewbacca were roaming the lobby, and a couple were having a drink in the bar. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
It turns out it was part of a larger project to build downtown OKC out of legos, and it will be on display at a local mall starting in November. I can't wait.
Click on the link to see the renderings of the completed project. In the photo above, the hotel is the dark red building in the back center. The tall building on the left is still scheduled to be built, and will be the sixth tallest building west of the Mississippi River when it's completed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39084468@N04/sets/72157619119527091/

My Family and Politics

This post has been a long time coming, but it's been hard to get all of the different ideas about it into a cohesive presentation. To begin with I should tell you that my Dad, my Mom and I are all registered as Republicans, while my brother is a cynic. My dad is a neo-conservative (i.e. a Rush Limbaugh Republican), I am a moderate (I call myself a Theodore White Republican,) and my Mom is somewhere in between, though not very vocal about her opinions.
My brother believes that everyone is entitled to his (my brother's) opinion, but, like my Dad, is not too concerned about whether the facts actually support his opinions. They seem to believe something is true only if it supports a particular predjudice they might have. I don't express my opinions often, but I'd rather know what's really going on than what someone thinks is going on. On the other hand, I do find the editorials very interesting.
The reason this is on my mind is because I was cleaning out my email inbox the other day, and there was (is) a lot of chain emails sent to me by my Dad concerning how this administration is going to be the ruination of the country. I simply don't have time to respond to all of them, though some of the themes are the same: we are on our way to becoming a socialist (communist) country because a democrat is in the White House, and Obama = Hitler because he campaigned on "change." (Somehow it doesn't matter that McCain also campaigned on change; he just used different terms. So did Ronald Reagan, for that matter.) My Dad gets a lot of email back from me referencing Snopes.com, Politifact.org and Factcheck.org, but not everything he sends is that easy.
There was an episode of American Masters on PBS the other night about Garrison Kieller in which he said something that made me realize my Dad's problem: He gets all his information from people who complain a lot. I believe there are better sources of information.
But anyway, now that I've laid a foundation explaining where I'm coming from, feel I can post about things that come up without causing you, my adoring public, to wonder what the heck I'm talking about.