Value-Steam mapping a electronic transactional process is dumb; Value-Stream maps are meant to show not so much what is happening as what isn’t, where work “in progress” is actually sitting around waiting to be worked on. Given large enough quantities of electronic data, it may also sit in queues and take time to process, but Click Here to continue reading.
Stairway to Heaven is the most popular rock song ever written. Like most things that are wildly popular, it is a little over rated. But if you believe that good poetry has a religious function it is worth paying attention to. For it is an expression of the religious sensibilities of most of the boomer generation. It is the Catechism of America’s secular religion.
You can read the lyrics here or you can listen to it below.
You got to love a rant that uses the line “You can always tell when someone’s typing on an Apple” as part of a smack down. Especially when it fits.
The worst famines of the last 100 years were all caused by government policy. Think of Mao’s great leap forward or the horrible Ukrainian famines. So while it is tempting to dismiss Stuart Staniford’s “Fermenting the Food Supply” as being to alarmist, we should not forget that government’s have a track record of causing massive starvation in the name of the greater good.
The weakest part of Mr. Staniford’s argument is where he argues that Ethanol plants would still be profitable even without government subsidies. Especially given the fact that he does not seem to be taking into account the fact that government has been mandating that the refineries put an increasing amount of Ethanol into their gasoline blends.
But this weakness is overshadowed by the graphs he made showing how fast the Ethanol industry has grown and how much of our food supply is already being burned. Anyone who thinks that Ethanol is the wave of the future should look at those graphs and image what will happen if the growth in Ethanol production continues.
Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising. Lead investigator Steven Riechman, assistant professor of health and kinesiology, and Simon Sheather, head of the Department of Statistics, along with colleagues from The Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, have recently had their findings published in the Journal of Gerontology.
H/T Vanderleun
People across South Asia are struggling to cope with a severe shortage of affordable wheat and rice.
There have been queues outside Pakistani shops in towns around the country, and flour prices have shot up.
Wheat flour is a staple foodstuff in Pakistan, where rotis or unleavened bread are eaten with almost every meal.
Last week Afghanistan appealed for foreign help to combat a wheat shortage while Bangladesh recently warned it faced a crisis over rice supplies.
Global wheat prices are at record highs. Problems have been compounded by crop failures in the northern hemisphere and an increase in demand from developing countries.
From The Speed Trap Exchange…..
You see them everyday, Speed Traps. The police may be out in the open, hiding behind bridge abutments, or passing overhead in an airplane. As is obvious from the traffic flow, the speed limit is grossly under-posted and universally ignored.
Traffic is moving safely and expeditiously, but not legally according to the posted speed limit. As fast as the pen can be applied to paper, driver after driver is issued a speeding ticket that results in exorbitant fines, points on their driver’s licenses and insurance surcharges.
Fortunately, you know about the speed traps on your regularly traveled routes, but what about those times you are on unfamiliar streets and highways? If only there was a way you could share your knowledge of speed traps, in exchange for the speed trap knowledge of others.
The site has lots of interesting articles relating to how speed limits are set and the latest scientific research as to what safe speeds are. And of course they have an exchange where people post information relating to speed traps all over the country. I was surprised to see that there where some speed traps that I recognized on the the list.
Whilst discussing the finer points of a recent surgical proceedure, we got to wondering why I.V.s are placed in top of the arm (forearm or back of hand). I hypothised that perhaps arteries ran along the bottom of the arm and veins ran along the top of the arm (as I had barely enough knowledge to grasp that arteries carry blood away from the heart and veins carry blood back to the heart, and it would seem to make sense they would want an in-bound lane, so to speak). So I did a very brief search on “where to insert an I.V.”, and found a step by step tutorial for it. My favorite bit?
Select a good insertion site. A 20g in the back of the hand can be a pain in the anus for the patient, especially if it is in his dominant hand. It’s fiddly and frequently occludes with dorsiflexion. There are usually plenty of veins on the forearm…..well at least have a look. And don’t forget the basilic veins hiding under the forearm.
Make sure you shave the area with a surgical shaver if he/she is a hairy fellow. The tapes will adhere better and remove easier. Don’t use a disposable razor that might damage skin integrity. Confucius say; “pulling out arm hairs of big man sure way to hear sound of one hand slapping.”
Strange as it may seem, the dead have quit rotting in German cemeteries — they are turning into wax-like corpses. Will the use of burial chambers solve the problem? Or is extensive soil reconditioning the only viable alternative?
Cemeteries are supposed to be the quietest places on earth. But that notion may soon have to be laid to rest: Exhumation experts are currently conducting large-scale digging operations in German graveyards, belying the very concept of eternal peace.
Corpses are no longer decaying in many German cemeteries. Instead, the deceased become waxen, an uncanny process that has become so rampant it can no longer be ignored.
The week before Christmas I was told by our multi-site IT manager that we had to upgrade our shipping software. This piece of software has no data validation and an inadequate interface that requires us to adapt fields for different uses on different shipments. Because the software does nothing to alert users to errors and Click Here to continue reading.