Does what we expect to happen influence our awareness?

Do we now live in a society where anyone, courtesy of technology, can cry foul at a word or a thought and demand change or retraction?

have been working these past few years as a Washington, DC, city guide. It’s a bit like working for the fire department.

  To Apologize for Kindness You may recall that after the Newtown massacre where 20 children and six adults were murdered, an inter-faith memorial service was held. Reverend Rob Morris, a Newtown Lutheran Minister, one of whose young parishioners was among the dead, gave the benediction at the service. Reverend Morris was subsequently forced to […]

  Warning: May Offend Gays, Police Officers, Horses or Those Who Love or Hate Them Brit Sam Brown, a student at Oxford, was arrested a few years ago during a night out, when he ask a mounted police officer “Excuse me, do you realize your horse is gay?” He was charged under Section Five of Britain’s […]

  The Big Squeeze  The current unfunded pension liability of five of Illinois’s state run pension systems is $96 billion.  The amount is so large that Standard and Poor, the credit rating agency, downgraded the state to A minus, making it more difficult for the them to borrow money in the form of bonds. Governor […]

Political Correctness Strikes Albany My gun frenzied friends no doubt know that New York recently passed a measure designed to inhibit the use of fire arms to commit crimes.  Its effectiveness will be long debated. The measure passed in the middle of the night, Albany style, because Governor Cuomo wanted his law, now. Yesterday, Republican […]

  Mayor Overrules Brigade Leaders London’s Mayor Boris Johnson is pressing ahead with cuts to the London Fire Brigade (LFB) which would result in a decrease of 520 firefighters.  A dozen stations and some 18 engines would be closed or placed out-of-service. The LFB is one of the world’s largest fire services, deploying about 5,800 […]

The rest is history though the lessons are widely applicable to firefighting and should not be lost: