Because I Can

Can I Get out of Lean Six Sigma for Religious Reasons?

At our work, we do Lean Six Sgima (LSS). LSS is a process improvement technique that is the equivalent of perpetual motion. In my organization, we do it on all kinds of things and have a practically unblemished record of utter failure. Despite the thing being an enormous money and time pit, we tell our parent organizations how successful it is.

This is a lie and lying is a sin.

Can I get out of doing LSS for religious reasons?

Recursive Failure

... or is it recursive success?

Over at Paul Kedrosky's blog, he's got a post that elicited this portion of a comment about the dangers of raising taxes:

"It's just rich people trying to spend more of their discretionary on another boat, or an Aspen ski trip. Get over it. We need that money for useful investments you can't be bothered to make: health care, education, the environment"

It dawned on me that the commenter is sowing the seeds of his own failure. The problem with building better schools and infrastructure is that some people will make use of them to improve themselves and then they might get rich! Either this is recursive failure or recursive success.

On the one hand, the commenter despises the rich. More people buying boats and taking ski trips? How disgusting! Perhaps steps can be taken to improve education and infrastructure, but prevent people from getting rich. Maybe we could do it with a Special Master of Compensation.

On the other hand, this could be recursive success. The new rich people provide the commenter with both targets of hate and vast amounts of tax money. Outstanding!

Hmm. Which is it?

Pricing = Rationing

Ezra Klein in the WaPo gets it half-right.

"Look at Canada," says Charles Krauthammer. "Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we."

So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford.

Bingo! Absolutely right. State-of-the-art health care is a luxury good. It's limited and right now you get what you can pay for, paying for it by someone, somewhere earning it. It's just like everything else we buy. By Ezra's logic, everything you pay for is rationed.

Clearly, this is just another illustration of why we need Yacht Reform now!

Quote of the Day

From the Raiders' broadcast team during yesterday's 45-7 thrashing by the Saints. About Drew Brees carving up the Raiders: "I don't think they can complete this many passes in a practice, just throwing against the air!" Look for it about 2:05 into the highlights over at NFL.com.

Cheezburger of the Day

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Let all the Angels in Heaven Rejoice!

... my wife's car now fits in the garage!


Just a little more work and we'll have room for the MGB.

ADHD Dog

Bodie the Wonder Dog eats everything and rushes about all day looking for a playmate. I've taken to calling him ADHD Dog.

moar funny pictures

Why Teach if no one Wants to Learn?

Hot Air linked to this Time Magazine article from 20+ years ago discussing black poverty in America. There's a lot more to it, but I'm fast-forwarding to the solutions part. In essence, the theme is that blacks in the ghetto lack positive role models because everyone with gumption has fled.

In a recent paper, Anderson laments the growing cleavage between what he calls "old heads and young boys." Old heads were the traditional neighborhood mentors of ghetto youth. Their message, Anderson writes, "was about manners and the value of hard work, involving how to get a job, how to keep a job, how to dress for a job interview, how to deal with a prospective employer." But with work scarce and cocaine permeating the ghetto, young blacks now tend to dismiss old heads as old fogies preaching a message as irrelevant as antidrug lectures ...

Twenty years of failed programs, from community development to public housing, point to a depressing conclusion: little will be done to make the ghetto an acceptable place to live and raise children. This by no means suggests abandoning those trapped in the inner city. Rather, the emphasis of both government and private philanthropy must be on helping the black underclass escape the social isolation of these inner-city wastelands.

Emphasis mine. My recent mockeries of people crying "racism" at every turn is based on this: you can't teach someone who resists learning. So long as you focus on racism, you create that resistance by setting up a ready-made excuse for failure and a suspicion of success.

For an individual, the content of the accusations is meaningless. Success is based on hard work, a willingness to learn and a pleasant demeanor. It doesn't matter if you're an oppressed minority or a member of the capitalist oppressors. The keys to success are universal. Marinating in accusations of racism undermines the motivations for the first two and obliterates the third. The endless focus on racism is dooming whole generations to poverty and failure.

The solution in the Time magazine article linked above missed one, crucial part to helping out the underclass, be they black, white, brown or whatever. Their solution doesn't require the underclass to have a passion to escape their poverty. Without that, without the willingness to learn from others who have escaped, they're screwed.

Setting up my Manspace

Yesterday I finally mounted my workbench top on my cabinet bases. It's a small workbench, only 6' long, but it's the first one I've had in years. I love it. I've been saving glass jars from tomato sauces and the like and can now begin to sort my screws and nails within them. I used to use plastic bins that I bought at the store, but I found that glass jars work much better and, best of all, they're free and totally eco-friendly. We recycle our glass, but why spend the energy melting down the jars when you can recycle them yourself without the melting part?

I've still got boxes of stuff scattered throughout the garage that I need to put away. There's plenty of artwork and oddly-shaped things that will have to find a home somewhere, perhaps not at our house. I'm hoping that by the end of the weekend, I can call for my MGB to come home and receive its engine and transmission that are waiting here for it.

In the meantime, our Maximum Leader is watching over the process.

Blackout!

We're experiencing a power outage where we live. It looks to be pretty widespread. I'm having to blog by candlelight, just as my ancestors did. Now I know how the pioneers must have felt, blogging by wireless Internet device as they made their way across the prairies in their hybrid covered wagons.

How Far Will You Go to Visit a Favorite Business?

My daughter's bike needed repair. In the past, I've gone to Bicycle Warehouse in Pacific Beach. I've always liked them - their service is cheerful, quick and of excellent quality. I moved recently, so Bicycle Warehouse is now a bit of a drive. There are lots of bike repair shops between here and there and the work I needed done wasn't significant.

I still went to Bicycle Warehouse. They fixed the bike immediately and the fix was so simple that they did it for free.

What businesses do you go out of your way to visit?

Disco Eventually Died, Too

... probably from sheer boredom induced by relentless overexposure. Every time you heard a disco song, you could count "1..2..3..4 and 1..2..3..4.." to the beat. Sort of like the current beat in the media. "1..2..3..4 racism! 1..2..3..4 racism! 1..2..3..4 ..."

ATLANTA -- The campaign for mayor of this city, which has long promoted its racial tolerance, veered into controversy Thursday with the release of a memo urging black voters to unite around an African-American candidate and block the election of a white mayor.

A local group known as the Black Leadership Forum called for African-Americans to consolidate their support around Lisa Borders, president of the Atlanta City Council and one of several African-American candidates, according to a memo circulated on the Web and to local media.

OK, everybody! Put on your Danskins and puff out your hair! Unbutton your shirts down to your navels, guys! It's time to boogie!

Accusations of racism - they're like Disco, only you can't dance to them.

Is Obama Deliberately Trying to Torpedo the Economy?

As I've thought about my post yesterday wherein I showed that a family of four will have an additional $70,000 of debt over the next three years courtesy of the Federal government, it got me thinking and somewhat afraid.

Our family is doing pretty well. We can pay off loans and are trying to knock out our mortgage ahead of time. Having said that, there's no way on Earth I can take on an additional $70,000 over the next three years, particularly when the years beyond that will be equally bad. If I can't do it, how can anyone expect the average family, making about $40-50K to do it? We're getting buried, all of us.

Is it deliberate? Victor Davis Hanson thinks so.

I think the key was not so much the spending excess or new entitlements. The point instead was the consequence of the resulting deficits, which will require radically new taxation for generations. If on April 15 the federal and state governments, local entities, the Social Security system, and the new health-care programs can claim 70 percent of the income of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, then that is considered a public good — every bit as valuable as funding new programs, and one worth risking insolvency.

Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to do with market-driven needs, acquired skills, a higher level of education, innate intelligence, inheritance, hard work, or accepting risk.

In essence, Obama is deliberately setting up a crisis where the only possible solution will be to tax successful people into submission. In previous posts, I've argued that Obama's goals are not to increase jobs or improve the economy, but to save the planet and redistribute wealth. In my mind, there's no way adding $70,000 of debt to every American family is anything but a deliberate effort to kill capitalism and hence, the American economy.

In the end, we will all be equal. Equally poor.

Your Cash for Clunkers Dollars at Work

Here's a '94 Caprice wagon being sacrificed at the altar of ecoidiocy. The last few seconds make watching the whole video worthwhile.

A Little More About Mimi Hall

Yesterday I snarked about Mimi Hall of the USA Today, claiming she was unclear on the concept when she wrote about how the deficits will hinder President Obama's political goals. When I wrote it, I knew I was being unfair to her and that she was just one of tens of millions of people who have the same detached view of the debt.

If you read the editorials, mostly on the left, but also sometimes on the right, it seems as though people think that the government debt is not their problem. It's spoken of in the abstract about this kind of bond or that amount of borrowing and the numbers are incomprehensibly cosmic - they don't translate down into individual human terms easily. Allow me to try to do so.

A trillion dollar deficit means that each of us just borrowed another $3,000. Ths year's $1.6T deficit will mean that we all just borrowed $4800. A family of four just borrowed $19,200. It's our debt, money that the government borrowed in our name. There's no plan at all to pay it off. Next year, according to the Administration, that family of four will borrow another $18,000. The year after that it will probably be close to $15,000. In three years, a family of four will be an additional $70,000 in debt with no plan to pay it off.

When Mimi and the others write about the deficit and talk about this or that politician's hopes being dashed they're dealing with abstract, second- or third-order effects in their lives. Even if Barack Obama was my best friend in the whole, wide world, I'd be totally enraged that the dingbat put me $70,000 farther into debt. I wouldn't care too much about his political hopes and dreams.

It's Hot

... so we're not doing much of anything today.

People Unclear on the Concept, Hall of Fame Edition

Mimi Hall, writing in the USA Today, is unclear on the concept.

WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit will hit a record $1.6 trillion this year, a figure that could threaten President Obama's agenda, complicate 2010 congressional campaigns and set up big political battles over government spending.

Here's our response, in the form of an open letter.

Dear Mimi,

You owe that money. President Obama is spending your money and your children's money. I'm glad you're worried about his political prospects. While you continue to do so, please get out your checkbook and begin writing checks to pay off the debt.

Sincerely,
K T Cat and Jacob the Syrian Hamster

Dolphins Are So Cute!

They're playful and lovable and smart and kind and gentle ...

So the other evening we were watching some Shark Week wannabe program on PBS (what a waste of borrowed Chinese money!) where they were cataloging all these predators off the coast of South Africa, but when it came to the dolphins, it was all sweetness and light. They talked about this mammoth annual sardine run where zillions of the little guys swim up the eastern coast of South Africa. All along the way they get devoured by everything in sight - sharks, seagulls, whales and ... dolphins.

How come the dolphins are never portrayed as the mass-murderers of the sea? The poor sardines are just trying to swim up north and the dolphins are herding them into big balls and inhaling them as fast as they can. What a bunch of jerks.

Dolphins - engines of death.

Why the Interweb Tubes Exist