It occurs to me that I am America

The West – and America, in particular – is in the same boat as late 1940s Japan. We are in such deep debt that we cannot capitalize out way out of this financial nightmare. We, too, need a revolution in the way we operate. Let’s do it, then. Let’s do it at the ultimate government level.

We’ll begin now. So what are our basic principles? Any solution should be adaptable and able to evolve. Nothing too specific, like “we pay one million dollars to every county to implement computer tracking in prisons” can be listed, as that isn’t a principle. Our only principle will be this: The business of the Federal Government is to ensure a fully functioning infrastructure to support growth of a creative and innovative society.” In effect, that surmises the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the U.S. Constitution in one sentence. But we have to deal with a word in that sentence: infrastructure.

I think it is safe to say that we all will agree that roads are infrastructure. Having a system of roads allows for people to move to where they are needed to work and to where they want to live and find happiness. I’ll say the same for sidewalks. Look! We’re well on our way.

Early in the history of electricity, the electric grid was viewed in this same way. The same is true for potable water distribution and sewage collection. Though maybe more controversial than roads (maybe because we’re just not used to it), I claim that these things are also infrastructure.

The military, police, prison systems, and executive cabinet positions, such as environmental protection and public health are also infrastructure, in my book, but in a more specific way than they are practiced today. The fact that we need these things in order to ensure protection of the fundamental principle and resources makes them infrastructure, maybe, but that doesn’t give any of them a blank check to inject themselves into any and all parts of our life. It doesn’t give them unlimited funding, either. Public health can run the FDA and regulate the production of medicine and cigarettes, but it shouldn’t be able to say that it is illegal for us to smoke pot. It can only present the real data that is known about any of these substances and study what is not yet known. The military is charged to protect the country, but having a standing army at full-war readiness levels all the time isn’t a foregone conclusion. We have to play within the system, after all, and nobody is smart enough to micromanage every earthling on the cheap. This leads into another – and the most vital – part of infrastructure: education.

When was Civics taken out of your high school? When were you last expected to understand the full breadth of risks associated with something you ingested, instead of relying on a seal of approval from a governmental watch dog group? And how would have you been able to research the structure of mortgage investments to determine whether you wanted to risk the funds in your 401k in those securities or not, should have you wanted to? Do you realize that everyone gets a cold sometimes, or do you go to the emergency room when you cough? No governmental reform will succeed in providing the bedrock for a happy and innovative society if the people under that government are ignorant of what is out there and why. Having the knowledge (or access to it) to assess the outcomes of our decisions is the way society has grown over the millennia and it is no less important now. Education, then, is infrastructure for us, going forward. Without it, nothing else really matters.

What can help to support a good education infrastructure? Some of the basics are ensuring full access to everyone, that students are not hungry, and that they can see the board and the books in order to read what is being taught. Thus, equality and some basic form of health assistance is infrastructure for an innovative society.

Without any detail, these are only the first level definitions of the word “infrastructure,” which is vital to our basic principle. We don’t need to worry about funding, implications, existing social or business roadblocks or anything else yet. We only need to agree on two things: 1) what is the point of having a country and 2) what principle guides that country’s government. Still, I feel that these claims are being less accepted by the “right” as I move along. But I don’t understand why. This all seems perfectly obvious to me.

This is not meant to be a full list of what should be in infrastructure. Perhaps you, my dear readers, can offer opinions.

The Land of Pharma: The Toyota Production System

A lot has been made of Toyota being a benchmark of Quality lately. This is due, of course, to the incredible lack of quality that has popped up in their vehicles designed and produced during their march to the top of the world automotive industry. There has been little detail around the reasons for this failure save the normal weak explanations like “they grew too fast” and “they got greedy.” What a horrible shame this is and what a freakishly perfect example of the ineptitude of major media, as well. Please, dear reader, allow me to do my best to fill in the back story. I will keep it concise.

In 1945, the US blew up Japan and then took it over (concise enough?). We had a reconstruction policy that was, in a word, perfect. We did everything we could to instill what we believed to be right (after all, if Western Society didn’t believe it to be right, we wouldn’t be doing it) and set up Japan to be even better at it than we were. Years go by and in the latter part of the century, while the US was producing the Chevy Luv and other such nonsense, Japan had put their shoulder to the wheel. Toyota, the largest car company there, knew that the only way they could ever compete was to make superior product. Still on the outs from having had nuclear weapons dropped on them, they couldn’t ever invest capital in the same way GM or Ford could. Enter, the Toyota Production System (TPS).

The TPS espoused that if one never wasted anything (no rejected parts, no downtime for workers or machines, no scrap that could be used elsewhere) then they would have a “lean” system that produced only Quality products. This is to say, if you never have to reject anything, you never made anything that had to be rejected in the first place. Brilliant, huh?

So as everyone else in manufacturing realized that Toyota cars lasted forever, that their margins were fat, and that their manufacturing never went down, everyone began to adopt the same principles.

Let me say that you are probably saying to yourself “this TPS thing is just common sense like ‘waste not, want not’ and a dozen other old-timey sayings” and you are right. Don’t let that fact distract you.

Anyway, to get to the point, the culprit here in the takedown of Toyota is greed. And not necessarily bad greed where they just want cash, but the kind of greed that is tunnel-vision and just turns the eye away from the foundational principles that made something great in the first place. For the people that developed the TPS, the overall goal was always Quality. Being “lean” didn’t equal profits directly. Lean equaled quality products, which equaled a good reputation, which equaled sustainability, which equaled profits. But all of those equal signs got confusing, and something was identified as “waste” which was actually one of those intangibles that must exist in human culture: measure twice and cut once because well-meaning people get it wrong sometime. Here, it was the process engineers that thought “That should get it” and they didn’t measure again. And that culture of peer review seems to have been lost overall, as a lot of little issues keep popping up for Toyota now.

Don’t get me wrong: I believe in “waste not, want not” and the principles of the TPS get you there in a lot of ways. But like any tool, it is only as good as the folks using it. So up here in the Land of Pharma, we measure a dozen times and then talk about cutting, because medicine isn’t a car.

Land of Pharma - Good News, no matter how long...

It has been quite awhile since we revisited the Land of Pharma. This time, I am only putting forth some good information published in the Wall Street Journal on 03 Feb 2010:

Lancet Retracts Study Tying Vaccine to Autism
By Shirley S. Wang
The study that first suggested a link between vaccines and autism and spurred a long-running, acrimonious debate over the safety of vaccines has been retracted by the British medical journal that published it. The withdrawal supports the scientific evidence that vaccinations don't cause autism, but isn't likely to persuade advocacy groups that believe in a link.
A new autism study shows clusters of high autism rates in parts of California. WSJ's health columnist Melinda Beck joins Simon Constable on the News Hub with more.
The 1998 study of 12 children triggered worry among British parents that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine caused autism, and many decided not to immunize their children against measles, according to Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet, which issued the retraction Tuesday. He called the study the "starting pistol," though not the only cause, of the controversy.
Concern about the safety of vaccines, particularly regarding the preservative often used, thimerosal, which contains mercury, spread to the U.S. as well. Research has shown that as many as 2.1% of U.S. children weren't immunized with the MMR vaccine in 2000, up from 0.77% of children in 1995, according to a 2008 study published in Pediatrics.
"This retraction by the Lancet came far too late," said Paul Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a coinventor of a vaccination for babies against a gastrointestinal virus, Rotateq, that is marketed by Merck & Co. "It's very easy to scare people; it's very hard to unscare them."
A widely cited 2004 statistical review of existing studies by nonprofit health-information provider the Institute of Medicine, which traced the vaccine theory back to the Lancet study, concluded there was no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Some autism activist groups, however, continue to advocate against vaccinations for children, despite the lack of scientific evidence for such a link.
"Certainly the retraction of this paper doesn't mean that MMR doesn't cause autism and it's all a farce," said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association. It is "possible" that the MMR vaccine causes autism, she said, but "the science is not there in terms of the mechanism." The concern is that measles virus has been found in children's intestines after vaccination, said Ms. Fournier.
"No one is anti-vaccine," she said. "It's a matter of having vaccines be as safe as they can."
A study published in 2008 by researchers from several universities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined children with gastrointestinal problems who had autism compared with those who didn't have autism. They concluded there wasn't any evidence that the vaccine was responsible for autism.
Ten of the 13 authors of the original paper, all of whom were researchers at the Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine in London, partially retracted the paper in 2004. However, the first author, Andrew Wakefield, didn't. Dr. Wakefield, who is now at the Thoughtful House Center for Children in Austin, Texas, didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
"Many consumer groups have spent 10 years waging a campaign against vaccines even in the face of scientific evidence," said Dr. Horton of the Lancet. "We didn't have the evidence back in 2004 to fully retract the paper but we did have enough concern to persuade the authors to partly retract the paper."
The Lancet decided to issue a complete retraction after an independent regulator for doctors in the U.K. concluded last week that the study was flawed. The General Medical Council's report on three of the researchers, including Dr. Wakefield, found evidence that some of their actions were conducted for experimental purposes, not clinical care, and without ethics approval. The report also found that Dr. Wakefield drew blood for research purposes from children at his son's birthday party, paying each child £5 (about $8).
The Lancet's Dr. Horton said the journal was particularly concerned about the ethical treatment of the children in the study, and that the children had been "cherry-picked" by the study's authors rather than just showing up in the hospital, as described in the paper.
The authors "did suggest these children arrived one after another and this syndrome was apparent, which does lead you to think this is something serious," said Dr. Horton.
"I hope this brings closure to this controversy," said Fred Volkmar, an autism researcher and professor of psychiatry at the Yale Child Study Center who wasn't involved in the Lancet study. "My fear, unfortunately, is that this won't totally allay the fear of all parents."
In the 1998 paper, Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues described 12 children with gastrointestinal problems. Eight experienced symptoms that were thought to be related to the MMR vaccine, according to their parents or a doctor, and nine of the 12 children exhibited autistic behaviors.
Dr. Wakefield has been outspoken about his concern about the measles vaccine. He has continually pushed the view that the vaccine caused autism, said Greg Poland, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Mayo Clinic and director of the vaccine research group in Rochester, Minn.
"With the retraction, the hypothesis that he put forward has been debunked," said Dr. Poland.

A Series of Awful Events

...and a Silver Lining

On the 13 of January, 2010, A. Brood & Sons, a fabric purveyor on Fabric Row in Philadelphia, closed after 57 years of service.

One year after America swore-in a President with the charge to bring change following over a decade of Republican Congressional rule and eight years of Republican Executive rule, the people of Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator to replace the deceased Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, presumably because they think it only takes a year to fix everything wrong in the world and to not do so in one year is failure.

Another HIV Vaccine clinical trial failed this week, in the wake of a realization that America will most likely continue to be the only “advanced” country without national health care guaranteed to its citizens.

One of the world’s 90+ year olds (one that I was lucky enough to know) passed on this week.

After using my debit card to buy gas, my identity was stolen. I can’t say enough about the way VISA handled the situation.

A guy, who is one of those guys that you just like knowing is around, who I am lucky enough to work with off the Suburban Farm, announced to me that he has advanced ALS on Wednesday.

But in this same stretch, a woman I have known for quite awhile and is certain to be a wonderful mother, had her first child - a boy.

One thing I’ve learned about breaking things over the years is that it doesn’t matter as long as you’re happy. So keep smiling, dear readers. This is the only life we have.

I Write in Haste

The old Harley scooter is still in pieces as I have yet to acquire a sandblaster and as the chickens have made my Greenhouse Shop into their winter home, where I am less than welcome. Yet, the homestead has something missing. It needs a working scooter. As luck would have it, I am about to inherit one. Of course, it is in the City of Philadelphia. So I am about to drive a scooter something like 30 miles from the Urban to the Suburban Farm.

This might be my last transmission. All the best.

End of the Year

Vacation is almost over, so I'll get back to writing.

Happy New Year, everyone. All the best in the next...

m-65

So what does go on that big work surface?

Ah distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak September… Freshman year of high school, to be a little more descriptive. The high school of Paw Paw, Michigan, at the time, was a 1960s construction, which meant that it had a big "industrial science" wing. One of those classrooms – unheard of in normal public schools today – was an engine shop. Maybe three or four classes a year would cycle through and learn how to rebuild a lawnmower engine. With one piston and less than four horse power (remember when lawnmowers used to simply be functional?), most anyone could spend one hour a day tearing an engine down and putting it back together and get it done in twelve weeks. I was hooked.
The summer after that, I rebuilt another one on my own. I did another one the following summer. Around that time, I met a girl and – more important to this story – I met a girl's father. He went by Roadie. He had a dog named Sandy and a 1967 Chevy Truck with a Pontiac engine in it. That summer, the three of us (Roadie, the girl and me…the guy…) spent a lot of time together and I freely admit that he had a large impact on my life. Those things that I've screwed since wouldn't have happened if I remembered, "whenever you decide to do anything, imagine that everyone in the world knows why you made that decision and see how you feel about it." Sure, it's the golden rule reworded, but it makes a good point. But sometimes it's so hard to remember with some passion on the line! Nobody's perfect, and I digress…
One discussion I remember, on a dry summer day on the front stairs of the house…a mean and probably demonically possessed rooster stalking us, but that's another digression waiting to happen…was about was an old motorcycle he had way back when. That's the way he started learning about engine work. I said to him, "I took a small engines class once and really liked it." He said, "well hell, a Harley engine is just one step over a push lawnmower."
That was a little over twelve years ago. Sunday, I bought a 1967 Harley Davidson two-stroke m-65 motorbike (not a full size motorcycle, but something fun to work on). It came in two boxes of parts that broke the will of the previous owner. So it begins…