Category: Allegory, parable, rhetoric

Defending GM?

May, 2014

The April 14, 2014 issue of Time magazine has a brief note about GM and faulty ignition switches. CEO Mary Barra stated in a Congressional hearing, “We will hold ourselves fully accountable.” This was about faulty ignition switches that “caused” 13 deaths. With a great deal if imagination I guess I could figure a way an ignition switch could cause death, but it would take some time.

In 2010, GM sold (not made) 8,389,769 vehicles representing a 2% increase from 2009. We will assume that sales continued to rise, but at a slightly more conservative rate (although there is evidence that the rate of sales increased during this time period). Progression analysis at a rate of 10% per year yields 2013 sales at 8,643,986 vehicles.

Given 13 deaths out of 8,643,986 possible ignition switch failures, the rate of failure is 1.5 x 10 -6. That is 1 in 664,922 vehicles.

For those not remembering their high school algebra, that is a .0000015% chance to have a failure of the ignition switch that would cause death.

Those are pretty fine tolerances to hold some one accountable for, in any industry. I never thought I’d be defending GM after the bailout fiasco, but daymnnn!

Sure am glad Congress is keeping a lid on transportation safety!

From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

YouTube 3 Way Stop Cock

June 2014

At work tonight, I had a patient come in with a common problem that required an uncommon solution. He had prostate problems and required a bladder catheter.  Unfortunately, when the urologist performed a procedure earlier that day,  something tore and the patient had bleeding into the bladder. If there is sufficient bleeding, it will clot and plug up the catheter and cause bladder distention. Believe me, there are few conditions more uncomfortable than urinary retention. We tried the usual remedies but the bleeding continued and required a continuous irrigation catheter. This requires a particular piece of equipment that is not used very often. Of my crew of nurses, only one had ever done this. Before we found her (she wasn’t assigned to this patient), I asked his nurse if she was familiar with this equipment, she said, “No but we can YouTube it.”

I replied, “Search 3 way stop cock from a work computer? I don’t think you want to do that. There is no telling what will come up in that search.”

We found the knowledgeable nurse to teach the procedure, instead.

Greetings from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

Vikings, the Original Weary Travelers

I’m reading a really good book right now. Why am I telling you?

Because, my brother says we are descendants of the Vikings.

Kon Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl, was written in 1950. In 1947, Heyerdahl and 5 others built a raft out of Balsa wood and bamboo and floated/sailed from Peru to the South Pacific to prove his theory that the population of the South Pacific islands could have come from South America. But that’s not my point.

He suggests that there have been 2 significant migrations to the South Pacific. The first was by a Sun God, Kon Tiki, the son of the sun, in about 500 AD. These were tall, fair skinned, bearded people. According to island lore, these were the original immigrants to the islands. The second, in about 1100 AD, of a short, smooth faced, dark skinned people.

Thor and his buddies were from Scandinavia. Well, with a name like Thor, what would you expect? None of these guys were sailors, but obviously came from a strong maritime culture. Heyerdahl mentions early in the book his opinion that Vikings discovered the Americas.

Kon Tiki and his tribe were defeated in battle at Lake Titicaca, Peru (which I would have interpreted as shitty titi, but the Incas didn’t speak Spanglish). This band of Viking people vanished from Peru and showed up in the South Pacific. It was Heyerdahl’s theory that they got there by sea. He immediately eliminated walking and flying (and since the Star Ship Enterprise hadn’t been invented, teleportation wasn’t possible, yet). At the time, the only boats known to the Incas were off shore rafts with sails made of the locally plentiful Balsa tree. So, these modern Vikings set out to prove, and did, that it could be done.

Heyerdahl supports his theory by noting that the stone statues, notable for Easter Island but found through out the South Pacific, very closely resemble the stone statues in Peru. In addition, he notes that the sweet potato, from Peru, is found in the South Pacific and has the same name in both places.

So, my brother is right. Vikings did discover the rest of the world. All we have to do is get them from Solem, Minnesota circa 1000 AD to the Andes mountains in Peru circa 500 AD.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, sharing the knowledge.

Weary

Sex, Cards and the Economy

April, 2015

Somewhere around the year 950 ad, women in a Chinese harem invented a new game that used something called playing cards. Now there you go, you thought a harem was a private potentates whore house, right?

Not so. Wikipedia says this is an Arabic invention to protect and train women for their future as wives. So, why do we have a reference to a Chinese harem 300 years before Turkish/Arabic inventors decided this was the cat’s meow?

I don’t know, but rumor has it that this “card playing” is the origins of poker but there is no confirmation that Texas Hold’em was the game of choice.

Later, in the year 970 ad, the rulers of China approved the use of paper money for public and private debts. Well actually it was only private debts because public debts brought on horrendous torture and death to your relatives until the debt was paid. So, why would the ruler’s of China approve of the use of a worthless dehydrated amalgam of fibers to be used to pay debts? To women? Who lived in harems? Who collected debts for their sexual favors?

And in 1295 ad, about 300 years later, Marco Polo returned to England from his “walk about” with stories of the Chinese using paper money. He was laughed at and thought a fool, because England had not yet come to the use of cards as a form of gaming or paper for the use of money. The rest of Anglo Saxon economic history is there for the reading. Gaming, debts and sexual favors!

So what do we learn from this? Women in sexual service rule the economy? Suckers of gambling rule the economy? The English quickly recognize the link between fools of gambling and the economy? A fool and his money are soon parted?

I’ll let you decide what you think the connections are.

Respectfully submitted from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harem

Weary

Worm Shit

January,  2015

I’m getting close to retiring. So, I thought I’d start planning for it. It seems that old geezers give it up and watch TV or garden. I kinda like gardening and so I’ve been studying up on it. There is a lot to gardening to study up on. Take compost for instance.

They say that compost is the way to go. It improves the yield from the garden and returns to nature what we take out in the form of crops. For instance, you take sticks, brush, grass cuttings and waste from any gardening chore or even from the kitchen and dump it into a container. Add a little ungulate manure and shortly (well, after a few months really) you have compost. Unseen action is the little worms. Worms feed on this stuff and leave behind rich fertile compost!

So that is what I have learned. the best gardens are grown in worm shit.

I bought a new TV.

Some serious thinking from your Grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary