It was difficult for me working against fourth ward Alderman Timmy Evans.  I liked his people.  They were better than some, try as they might to distinguish themselves.  I was carpet bagging, coming into their precinct/ward from my own ward, the fifth. There are fifty wards in Chicago./… Read full post »

Some years ago, after many academic adventures I found myself taking an introductory programming course as a general requirement for graduation.  The best part of the course was the computer problems book.  It encapsulated all the uses for a computer up to the undergraduate senior level.&nb… Read full post »

The short and simple answer is yes. The various authorities and means available to him are as diverse and varied as our government agencies.  Most obviously as Commander in Chief the president commands the military.  The military will carry out his orders. The military should also record hi/… Read full post »

The major task in marketing is categorization.  For instance once you have categorized groceries you can compare the UPC codes sent against the categorized items you have and kick out the ones that are new.  Assuming that you have correctly categorized the current ones and no one complains/… Read full post »

Mark Ames has written a rant against Michigan passing the right to work law:

http://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/right-to-work

Howard Zinn would have been proud.

While all his facts seem correct he has missed the point about the Wagner act. The reason for all the atrocities he lists and for the Wagne… Read full post »

The greatest and most difficult issue facing humanity is social segregation. This issue allows all other issues to fester unaddressed. The fictional town of Pottersville has one significant advantage over our real civic arrangements: Potter lives in Pottersville. The cost per student at The Cairo IL… Read full post »

Chanukah is packaged as some sort of gooey sweet adjunct of Christmas.  Maccabees were sick twisted.  They hated the Greeks.  That’s understandable:

-Oh, you have a god; well of course we can include him.

-He’s the greatest? Hmm, work with me here, we conquered you, righ… Read full post »

The problem with taxes is that people refuse to think systemically.  Take tax rebates for instance. Imagine everyone got a million dollars from the federal government.  It sounds good until you realize that prices would have to rise.  Admittedly there is a lot of slippage and friction/… Read full post »

This is an example of the dog that didn’t bark.  Arafat was killed by polonium poisoning.  This poison has the property of leaking residue all over the place, which residue is traceable to whichever nuclear reactor created it.  Any intelligence agency worth anything has its own p/… Read full post »

You can do this for any city.  Here are my picks for the Chicago buildings to use for the four ministries in 1984:

Ministry of Truth:

http://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/Building/1063/Leo-Burnett-Building.php

Ministry of Peace:

http://www.chicagoarchitecture.info/Building/1051/The-Boeing-Cor… Read full post »

I was disturbed by Romney’s reference to “his kids” in the second debate.  Being a northerner he might be ignorant of all the various implications of that phrase in American culture.  Still being from Utah he shouldn’t be.  I suppose he was talking about Massach/… Read full post »

You would think that if econometrics and modeling had any validity at all then the issue of the cause and resolution of the great depression would be resolved.  Obviously they don’t.  The debate generally centers on some well propounded common sense axiom that has been violated and th/… Read full post »

The OJ case was remarkable in that it encapsulated all the deficiencies apparent in our criminal justice system.  Part of the difficulty of recognizing the problem is that it is so easy to dismiss incompetence without recognizing its systemic nature.  The vagaries of state law and tradition/… Read full post »

How odd that Romney doesn’t reveal his tax records.  It seems like he is not serious about running for president. He must have known of his ambition for some time, perhaps not ten years but at least a few.  I find it hard to believe that anyone will be worked up… Read full post »

If you were to ask anybody from Tanzania to Toronto how to get something done in the United States, what would they tell you?  Say I wanted a tax on wind chimes, how do I accomplish that?  They would tell you to hire fund-raisers, lobbyists, advertising agencies, pay for results, flip/… Read full post »

All forces are points.  In particular, gravity is a point source.  If you wish to distinguish between falling and weightlessness suspend two balls in front of you.  If they move, ever so slightly, toward each other then you are falling.  If they do not, then place them in the oppo… Read full post »

Some years ago, George Ball wrote an article entitled: How to Save Israel In Spite Of Herself.  I remember observing at the time that if he knew anything of Jewish faith it should be that the last thing Israel wanted was a savior.  In it he propounded, as though it were/… Read full post »

This is a perfect example of common perception inflated to economic theory.  It tells you to wait in line and take what’s coming to you.  The fundamental fallacy is the belief that the game is fair.  The moment you start depending on the efficient market hypothesis, you find your/… Read full post »

Large office buildings are unoccupied during the weekends.  Even when they are occupied, office management, by custom if not fact, feels entitled to turn down the heat.  On Monday mornings the heat is turned up again and the ice that has collected on these buildings falls off onto the stree/… Read full post »

The real numbers as described by the decimals can be completely counted for each order of decimal place.  Take all the real numbers from zero through one.  For one decimal place, they are the numbers 0.0 through 0.9, there are ten of them or 10¹ real numbers and this list is/… Read full post »

I am always startled at my own innocence and naiveté.  Every Chicagoan knows that the police killed the Moran gang.  The papers reported it as:

-Men in police uniforms.

This may be the origin of that journalist’s trick that persists to this day:

-Men in government army unifo… Read full post »

There was a wonderful summer when my friend Phil had a boat in Monroe harbor and we sailed the beer can race each Wednesday. One of my fondest memories is working the wheel while we rounded the crib, keel over as far as I dared.  I was worried until I realized,… Read full post »

When I was a kid, there was urban renewal.  This meant many vacant lots with construction debris, rebar, huge piles of dirt; they were perfect.  When they rebuilt the neighborhood, the adults asked us what kind of playground we wanted.  We tried to tell them: construction debris, rocks… Read full post »

Occasionally you will read a business story about some great CEO flying in to save a sale.  At first you will nod approvingly about a hard working executive protecting his company.  But then you might wonder, doesn’t this company have sales people? Is he going to fix general ledger ne… Read full post »

In order to restore or conserve a work of art, you have to redo it.  You have to paint over the painting, rebuild the statue, or buy another piece of hardware to replace the found object.   Regardless of how cunning or clever you are, you are forging the artists work.  It… Read full post »