Little Pigeon: August 2009

Monday, August 24, 2009

Talk Show Hosts . . .

For Glen Beck to consider Obama a hater of white people identifies Beck as racist. Obama is 1/2 black and 1/2 white. Tiger Woods is more asian than black. To consider either Obama or Woods "black" shows one is racist . . . and stupid. Hopefully Glen Beck will go the way of Don Imus . . .

--
Thanks, John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN

Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/

The Comma Sutra, Making Grammar Sexy Since 1875

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Cash for Clunkers

Cash for Clunkers is just another government handout except this time to people with money. We have become a country of parasites.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Health Care - Letter to Rep Roe, and Sens Corker and Alexander

Having a government run health care system is similar to having a benign dictator instead of a democracy. The problem is, who selects the dictator. Without competition there is no motivation to keep costs low. Living in a Republic requires risks and failures. We cannot afford to do what we can do, less than a half century ago 70-years-old men and women died when they developed serious diseases. Newborn babies died when they were born with serious diseases. Today we can keep them alive at the cost of millions of dollars. If you want to help you will keep government out of the health care industry.

The unfortunate part is that our senators and representatives, you, are not with the people. You have separated yourself from the people. You have given yourself a Health Care plan better than the one you will give the people you represent. It is truly the Federal Government against the people.

Remember the French Revolution? France still practiced feudalism in the 18th century. The nobles and clergy enjoyed special privileges. They did not have to pay taxes. The common people did not have power and freedom in politics. They worked hard and had to pay heavy taxes. The nobles and clergy made up the First and Second Estates in the Estates General. The common people (i.e. the middle class (bourgeoisie), peasants and artisans) made up the Third Estate. The nobles and clergy could outvote the common people easily though the Estates General was always not called by the king, who ruled as an absolute monarch. The common people became discontented with the privileged classes. Sound familiar?

Louis XIV had spent too much. His successors did not cut down expenses. Louis XVI also failed to improve the financial situation. He dismissed ministers who tried to introduce financial reforms. By 1789, the government was bankrupt. Sound familiar?

When Louis XVI finally called the Estates General to solve financial difficulties, the Third Estate did not agree with the unfair system of the Estates General. They formed the National Assembly to make a constitution. People were afraid that the king would suppress the National Assembly. The hungry Parisians, who suffered from bad harvest, burst out their anger by attacking the Bastille prison (for political prisoners). The Fall of Bastille started the French Revolution. It spread out to other parts of France. Sound familiar?

Keep that in mind when you consider your position on Nationalizing Health Care. When you take the United States of America into socialism.

This is a sad time for We the people.

Friday, August 14, 2009

The Warren Harding Error

Recently I was reading about the subconscious decisions we make. On the conscious level we do not treat tall people differently than we treat short people. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that height---particularly in men---triggers a certain set of very positive unconscious associations. About half the companies on the Fortune 500 list were asked questions about its CEO. Overwhelmingly, the heads of big companies are white men. But they are also almost all tall: on average, male CEOs were just a shade under six feet tall. Given the average male is five foot nine, that means that CEOs as a group have about three inches on the rest of their gender. This statistic understates the matter. In the U.S. population, about 14.5 percent of all men are six feet or taller. Among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that number is 58 percent. In the general American population, 3.9 percent of adult men are six feet two or taller. Among the CEO sample, almost a third were six feet two or taller.

It is possible to staff a large company with white males but it is not possible to staff a large company without short people. There simply aren't enough tall people around. Yet few of those short people ever make it to the executive suite. Being short is probably as much a handicap to corporate success as being a woman or an African American.

This stereotyping is not limited to the executive suite. Researchers who analyzed four large studies that had followed thousands of people from birth to adulthood calculated that when corrected for variables such as age and gender and weight, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary. That means that a person who is six feet tall but otherwise identical to someone who is five foot five will make on average $5,525 more per year. One of the authors, Timothy Judge, points out, "If you take this over the course of a 30-year career and compound it, we're talking about a tall person enjoying literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage."

It appears when making some very important decisions we may not be as rational as we think.

What is called the Warren Harding Error is, in its simplest form, the decision he would make a good president based solely on his appearance which was tall, dark, and handsome. The word "Roman" was occasionally used in descriptions of him. He served two years before dying unexpectedly of a stroke. He was, most historians agree, one of the worst presidents in American history.

Abilene Paradox -- Jerry B. Harvey

On a hot afternoon in Coleman, Texas, the story goes; a family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests they take a trip to Abilene, fifty-three miles north, for dinner. The wife says, "Sounds like a great idea." The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out of step with the group and says, "Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go." The mother-in-law then says, Of course I want to go. I haven't been to Abilene in a long time." The drive is hot, dusty and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is bad. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted. One of them dishonestly says, "It was a great trip, wasn't it?"

The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic." The husband says, "I didn't want to go . I only went to satisfy the rest of you." The wife says, "I just went along to keep you happy. I would have to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that." The father-in-law says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.

This is a benign but dramatic illustration of the consequences of groupthink. Every member of the group agreed to do something they didn't want to do because they thought the others were committed to doing it. The result was that no one came away happy.

Teamwork -- Patrick Lencioni

"If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time."

What Makes Someone or Something Persuasive? -- ---Malcolm Gladwell

During the 1984 presidential campaign between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale for eight days prior to the election, a group of psychologists led by Brian Mullen of Syracuse University videotaped the three national nightly news programs which at the time were anchored by Peter Jennings at ABC, Tom Brokaw at NBC and Dan rather at CBS. Mullen examined the tapes and excerpted all references to the candidates, until he had 37 separate segments, each roughly two and a half seconds long. Those segments were then shown, with the sound turned off, to a group of randomly chosen people, who were asked to rate the facial expressions of each newscaster in each segment. The subjects had no idea what kind of experiment they were involved with, or what the newscasters were talking about. They were simply asked to score the emotional content of the expressions of these three men on a 21-point scale, with the lowest being "extremely negative" and the highest point on the scale "extremely positive."

The results were fascinating. Dan Rather scored 10.46---which translates to an almost perfectly neutral expression---when he talked about Mondale and 10.37 when he talked about Reagan. He looked the same when he talked about the Republican as he did when he talked about the Democrat. The same was true for Brokaw, who scored 11.21 for Mondale and 11.50 for Reagan. But Peter Jennings of ABC was much different. For Mondale he scored 13.38. But when he talked about Reagan, his face lit up so much he scored 17.44. Mullen and his colleagues tried to come up with an innocent explanation. Could it be Jennings is just more expressive in general than his colleagues? The answer seemed to be no.

Now here is where the study gets interesting. Mullen and his colleagues then called up people in a number of cities around the country who regularly watch the evening network news and asked them who they voted for. In every case, those who watched ABC voted for Reagan in far greater numbers than those who watched CBS or NBC. In Cleveland, 75 percent of ABC watchers voted Republican versus 61.9 percent of CBS or NBC viewers. In Williamstown, Massachusetts, ABC viewers were 71.4 percent for Reagan versus 50 percent for the other two networks; in Erie, Pennsylvania, the difference was 73.7 percent to 50 percent. The subtle pro Reagan bias in Jennings's face seems to have influenced the voting behavior of ABC viewers.

Thinking the results may have been simply a fluke, four years later, in the Michael Dukakis---George Bush campaign, Mullen repeated his experiment, with the exact same results. "Jennings showed more smiles when referring to the Republican candidate than the Democrat," Mullen said, "and again in a phone survey, viewers who watch ABC were more likely to have voted for Bush."

The Lion and the Dolphin

The king of the jungle was walking along the seashore one day and saw a dolphin breaking the surface of the water.

"Brother Dolphin," said the lion, "how fortuitous that we should meet! I'm king of the jungle and you're king of the fish. It makes perfect sense to me that we join forces, become allies, and rule earth and water."

"Your proposal makes a lot of sense," the dolphin replied. "Let's become partners."

Not long after, the lion was again walking along the shore when a wild bull challenged him. The bull turned out to be a fierce fighter and pinned down the king of beasts. The lion called to the dolphin for help. The dolphin heard the lion's cry and earnestly wanted to join the battle, but couldn't leave the sea. Eventually the lion prevailed, and the wild bull fled into the woods.

At that point, the lion began to scold the dolphin: "a fine ally you turned out to be. I could have been killed. You didn't do anything to help me."

"Don't blame me," said the dolphin. "Instead, blame nature, which made me swift and mighty in the sea but useless on land."

Aesop's Moral:

when choosing allies, consider their abilities as well as their willingness to help.

Cheyne and W

W and Cheney will eventually have to respond to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity we can expect future finger pointing between the two and what used to be their staffs. For Bush to have gone soft would require him to believe he was wrong and that will never happen.

Over populating

As with the animal kingdom, people over populating puts a strain on food and water. And, as with the animal kingdom people over populating will be taken care of by starvation. So, let India and China have as many children as they like. Nature will take care of the overage. The United States must stay out of it and be prepared for war.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Bonuses for Not Finding Another Job

City Manager:

City Commissioners:

I am:

John Jenkins

425 Patterson Lane

Gatlinburg, TN 37738

865-430-4427

Reference longevity bonuses:

Bonuses are for performance beyond what is expected for one to remain hired not just because a person has no place else to go thus remaining in the current position. As the 80/20 rule attests, 20% of city employees are doing 80% of the productive work. 5%-10% should be fired and 5%-10% deserve recognition bonuses. When asked the question "How many people work for the city?" any answer other than "About half." is an exaggeration. By giving additional money for just being present degrades and insults the system.

Mayor Jerry Hayes should resign. He was not elected to abstain. Every one of you should go on the record as for or against every vote unless you have a personal stake in the vote. On this vote Mayor Hayes is an observer and like 5%-10% of the city employees should be fired. Since he is elected he did what all politicians do and that is stand solidly for and against anything.

Get rid of bonuses for any reason other than outstanding performance and make sure the person doing the rating is not a relative or a member of the same church or a neighbor. Congratulations to Commissioner McCown for being the only one to not cave to internal politics.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Hillary and the translator

Am I the only person stunned that the United States does not take its own translators on trips to non-English speaking countries? Translators can start wars with their mistakes. Remember Jimmy Carter and the Polish?

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Showing Their Appreciation

We can only imagine how the two journalists expressed their "personal" thanks for whatever Billy did for them. Being released by the morons of North Korea they wanted to do Billy, that should be do for Billy.