One of these things is not like the others

One of these things is different from the rest:

• May 29th: Four Cyclists Dead in Eight Weeks
  
• June 3rd: Councilman Dowd holds forum on East Liberty attacks on bicyclists
  
• Friday:No charges for teen driver untangling flip-flops when he killed cyclist
  
• Tuesday: 8 attack bicyclist in North Point Breeze
  
• Wednesday: Mayor celebrates Pittsburgh's Bronze Bike-Friendly award

It's great that politicians are getting positive feedback and press opportunities for improving bicycling in Pittsburgh. It's terrible that the area still equates killing a cyclist with killing a deer.

Allegheny Alzheimers and Post Gazette Search Results

I don't know anything about Politics, but I do know about Search Algorithms.

When I write a blog entry, I like to embed links when I use an obscure term, refer to an event, or mention something that I might assume the reader knows about - because I hate it when I read something and the context isn't evident.

I have a bad habit of considering my blog posts a work in progress for the first few days after I've posted them - I re-read them, edit them, try to fix the flow, and add links when necessary.

So I was reviewing my previous post about Pittsburgh bicycle politics, looking at the line where I mentioned that Hizzoner Luke Ravenstahl used a Dept. of Homeland Security SUV to go to Star Lake Amphitheatre for a country music concert, and I thought to myself - Hey, that's an obscure reference, you should put an explanatory link in there!

I went to the local paper, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette — whoa, did I say I went to the local paper? Sorry, I went to their website, which I suppose is part of the problem newspapers face nowadays — people go to the website for free instead of the newstand. But I digress.

I went to PostGazette.com, which is a nice website - sometimes slow to load, but that's okay - and I searched for "Ravenstahl Star Lake". No results. I searched for "Luke Ravenstahl SUV". Nothing.


I went to the Tribune Review and got good search results.
I went to Google. Lots of results.
I went to the Burgh Blogosphere. Lots of results: MacYapper , I Love Luke, Tube City Online, Pgh Comet, Pist Gazette, Daily Kos.

I went back to P-G.com's search page and searched for:
Ravenstahl concert : nothing
Ravenstahl SUV : nothing
Ravenstahl scandal : nothing
Ravenstahl ethics : 1 return-- "Ravenstahl, DeSantis stick to the script as ethics issue isn't raised"

I used the P-G's search function to search on "Mona Wallace", which is a name from the Star Lake scandal that came up in the Google results. Shazzam! — lots of stories about the Mayor and his SUV in the Post Gazette. You just can't find them when you search for them directly.

I tried parsing the Mona Wallace headlines into phrases, and searched for them on the PG site:
Mayor SUV : letters to the editor, no news
Ravenstahl personal use SUV : nothing

I thought, maybe I'm spelling it wrong, so I searched on: "Ravenstahl" : this produced all sorts of results. For a while there, I thought that when Luke changed his last name to Steelerstahl, maybe the Post Gazette did a search/replace in the archives. There's still a lot of Ravenstahl responses in the Search function, just none about the SUV brouhaha.

I tried the above search queries in Google and got lots of results. I found a Wikipedia page on Hizzoner the Mayor, and it contained some other stories I tried to search for in the Post Gazette.

Institutional Infonesia *

* Infonesia: the condition of having read some info, but cannot find or recall the source.

Based on the Wikipedia entry, I used the P-G search page for the following terms--
ravenstahl Lemieux : nothing
Ravenstahl stadium : nothing
Ravenstahl New York : nothing
Ravenstahl Burkle : one letter to the editor about the Penguins
ravenstahl oakmont : nothing
ravenstahl tiger woods : nothing
ravenstahl KDKA poll : nothing
Ravenstahl US Open UPMC : nothing

And yet, when you search those terms in Google, all sorts of results show up.


Having said all that, I don't often use the P-G.com Search function; maybe this is par for the course.

I'd like to repeat (sorry) a quote from Milan Kundera in another post:
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
How do people struggle against power when the Search function forgets? What's the Post-Gazette's value proposition when they don't contribute to public discourse?

What was it George Santayana said? Those who cannot <something something> are condemned to <something>? It was a bit like that. Hey, how about those Steelers Penguins?



This is a puzzle for me, and if anybody has any comments about what's up I'd love to hear them. Also, if you find other PostGazette search terms that should produce local news about Hizzoner but don't, please kick in a comment. If any P-G folks would like to weigh in, I'm open to feedback and correction.

Pittsburgh Bicycle Politics : Ravenstahl is a Poseur

Bike Pgh has a series of Q&A's posed to the leading contenders for the Democratic Party's Mayoral Primary - which is the de facto election for Mayor.

Bike-Pgh: How far do you live from the City County Building? If you have ridden a bike to work please describe the ride. If you haven’t ridden to work, what steps would need to be taken in order for you to give it a try?

Robinson: I live less than a mile. I live in Crawford square, The Hill District. I love walking to work. It is a wonderful way to clear my mind. I also decompress on the way home. I can interact with my family right at the door. Walking is great for me. Cycling would speed up the process. I need the time.

Ravenstahl: I have not ever ridden a bike from my home to the City County Building. I would have to make sure I was in shape for the 5 mile ride! It would be tricky because there are highways and overpasses on the way from Summer Hill to the City County Building.

Dowd: According to Google maps, my home is 5.3 miles from the City County Building. During the summer, I ride to work on Fridays. In fact, my first trip to work by bike was with Scott Bricker as my bike escort.

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Here's some photos of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, June 2007, riding a bike in Pittsburgh. I think it's noteworthy that he borrowed a POLICE HELMET and a POLICE BIKE to make the photo op, but if the guy takes his Homeland Security vehicle out to Starlake, what is a reasonable expectation? Also, I think he's got a rainbow reflective trouser clip on one photo - guys like that give Freds a bad name.

Photo Credit: Mary Shaw

Here's a photo of a Pittsburgh Mayor riding his own bike with his own helmet:


Here's what I know about the news media and politicians -- you don't usually get enough info to know what's really going on. Sometimes you'll see a news story about a situation that you have direct knowledge of. When that happens, you form opinions about the people, positions, and presentation - and I believe those are extendable to the larger world where you don't have complete context.

When I look at Ravenstahl on his Police bike with his Police helmet, and compare him to Tom Murphy, I think to myself: Bike-wise, Ravenstahl is a poseur. I believe that may be extendable to the larger context.

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Another excellent Burgh Blog, Pgh Is A City, also has an entry about BikePgh's article.