Lions Park: a park born of love

I took a tour this afternoon of Raleigh’s Lions Park with the park director, Mark Wilson. On the way out he handed me a photocopy from a book which tells of how the park came to be.

Reading it blew me away. A huge number of Raleigh citizens and civic leaders banded together to donate their time, money, and sweat to create this park. I truly had no idea. What a contrast to today’s park process: one which has been accused of completely ignoring the citizen involvement.

I’ve retyped the article in its entirety on my East Raleigh blog. Reading it will open your eyes to this jewel in our midst (a midst that was once known as “North Raleigh”)!

Another bogus quote, this one from Tocqueville?

Got an email with the following alleged quote at the end:

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

— Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), French social philosopher, author of “Democracy in America”

As he was a famous French historian, Tocqueville gets quoted (and misquoted) constantly (see this site for a prominent example). A Google search today lists 186 results, which isn’t much if this is indeed legitimate. Wikiquote says its unsourced.

My thought is that its bogus. Maybe I’ll track it down, too.

Great Atlantic Warranty now North American Warranty Solutions?

Great Atlantic Warranty, the car warranty scammers, has apparently put on a disguise to try to throw search engines off its track. According to this post GAW is now working under the name North American Warranty Solutions. The domain has been active for all of three months. Great Atlantic Warranty’s former website is now a hand-coded page, and (surprise, surprise) it says GAW is out of business!

Great Atlantic Warranty, as a selling agent, has stopped selling new vehicle service contracts. Great Atlantic Warranty has submitted all contract information to the respective warranty plan administrators.
Who do I call if I have a claim?
If you have purchased a contract, please refer to the cover letter you received with your contract, or the actual contract, for the appropriate customer service contact information. If you cannot locate this information, but you have your contract # or Owner ID #, please click on “I have a Contract Number” below.

> I have a contract number.

If there was no reason to be suspicious before, there is now. Can’t say I’m surprised, though.

The good news is that the net is quickly closing around this clown. The gig is up. As Einstein once said, “you can run, but you can’t hide!”

Or was it Thomas Jefferson? I never know.

Thinking: not just for brainiacs!

Rita Mae Brown once said that insanity is “doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” I suppose insanity might also mean expecting people to apply critical thinking skills to anything.

I’ve been poking through MT.Net‘s logfiles and I’m pleased to see so many searching for the Thomas Jefferson Bank Quote. As of today, MT.Net is the third Google result for those search terms. That’s all fine and good. What drives me up the wall is when I go to the pages linking to the quote, in many cases the linker is presenting the quote as fact, not even reading that I’ve debunked it! Um, did anyone read the post? What kind of fool would link a quote to a post that clearly says the quote is bogus?

No wonder America is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to using our noggins.