UPDATED: Intellectual dishonesty oozes from anti-intellectual intent -- honest.

(Wed., 8:00 a.m. note: Supplementary to the New Albany Today link below, another posting at the same site considers this topic: blog (Freedom of Speech) site.)

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According to Wikipedia:

Intellectual dishonesty is the creation of misleading impressions through the use of rhetoric, logical fallacy, fraud, or misrepresented evidence. It may stem from an ulterior motive, haste, sloppiness, or external pressure to reach a certain conclusion. The unwary reader may be deceived as a result.

On February 23, February 22 and February 21, the Freedom of Speech blog presented lists of city expenditures. These pages of numbers were not explained or given context, with the transparent intent of the anonymous author being to incite unrest among “mad as hell” taxpayers.

Nothing new there, and yet imagine a telephone book filled entirely with numbers, but no names. What use would such a random listing be, anyway?

Ex-councilman Maury Goldberg of the New Albany Today blog noticed several of these expenditures lifted from FOS and cited in a random anonymous posting at the SOLNA spitwad blogyard, and he resolved to do the impossible – at least by New Albany standards.

Maury asked. He asked city controller Kay Garry to explain the quoted expenditures – and also asked who her had requested them prior to their posting at FOS.

Go to Maury’s City Expenditures posting to read the rest. Anyone care to guess which two councilmen the numbers passed through, gooselike, before coming to rest with Erik/Erika?

The point isn’t to indulge in conspiratorial speculation, but to illustrate that some of our “neighbors” are rather unscrupulous when it comes to the presentation of information, especially those quasi-religious numbers.

Gads -- some amongst us are being intellectually dishonest, although perhaps such shortcomings can be rationalized by their fundamentally (and willful) anti-intellectual worldview. Apparently the “rules” need not be obeyed if to do so would inspire cognitive dissonance with predetermined prejudices.

In the end, numbers are neutral and apolitical, although they can – and are – being used toward political ends in the city of New Albany. Numbers are helpful tools for mankind, although they can – and are – being used as weapons in the heated political climate hereabouts.

Numbers can facilitate understanding – but they won’t set you free.