Martin Bromiley's wife went into the hospital for minor surgery, but suffered catastrophic brain damage from being deprived of oxygen. The surgical team experienced difficulty in ventilating the anesthetized patient, then in intubating her. Instead of shifting focus to an emergency tracheotomy--a priority so obvious that even Bromiley immediately wondered why it had been overlooked--they seemingly lost track of time and spent 25 minutes intensely focused on repeating a failed procedure.
But when Bromiley was given the terrible news, his internal response was not furious rejection but recognition. An airline pilot, he was reminded of United Airlines Flight 173, whose pilots ran it out of gas and crashed while fixating on a malfunctioning landing gear light.
Perhaps because of Bromiley's deep empathy for the surgical team's shocking and deadly error, he found a way not only to spur a useful investigation of his wife's death but to put the experience to good use in the medical field. Medical workers respond well to his parallel experience with error fixation and other human foibles common to highly trained professional teams that face life-or-death emergencies. Teams of this kind need charismatic, self-confident leaders, but they also need trusting communication and a disaster routine that kicks in when priorities get lost, the brain fixates, and the internal time clock stops working: "Get that blood oxygenated one way or another within ten minutes" or "Fly the plane."
The hammock begins
The 7/32-inch rope arrived yesterday afternoon. I spent most of the evening cutting it into 50-foot lengths, hooking them onto a dowel in doubled lengths of 25 feet, and tying up the long ends into bobbins. Now I've tied knots in the first foot or so. The triangle pattern is a little subtle. I hope I was right about multiplying the feeder cord by three to get the finished length, because I seem to be using up the bobbins alarmingly fast. I may have to bone up on those splicing techniques.
Having discovered how to make my laptop read aloud to me, I've spent the day so far knotting while listening to the articles I'd otherwise have sat and read. Unfortunately, the program can't read a Kindle download, because I can't highlight the text in that format. The artificial voice is mildly annoying but comprehensible. You have to make allowances for its inability to distinguish between noun/verb pairs like PRO-ject and pro-JECT. If it gets too confused by a name, it reverts to spelling.
Having discovered how to make my laptop read aloud to me, I've spent the day so far knotting while listening to the articles I'd otherwise have sat and read. Unfortunately, the program can't read a Kindle download, because I can't highlight the text in that format. The artificial voice is mildly annoying but comprehensible. You have to make allowances for its inability to distinguish between noun/verb pairs like PRO-ject and pro-JECT. If it gets too confused by a name, it reverts to spelling.
Rightward shift
If you want to sneak up on someone who's getting drowsy, approach him from the left. Even if he hears you, his brain may interpret the sound as coming from the right.
I'm sure this should help us win elections, too.
CWCID: As always, when I start talking this way on a Saturday, I'm responding to a variety of excellent links from Not Exactly Rocket Science. Some weeks, it's unremitting PC nonsense, but the pickings are good this week.
I'm sure this should help us win elections, too.
CWCID: As always, when I start talking this way on a Saturday, I'm responding to a variety of excellent links from Not Exactly Rocket Science. Some weeks, it's unremitting PC nonsense, but the pickings are good this week.
Scientific corruption
It looks a lot like corruption everywhere else. The danger signs are almost always pretty much the same, the biggest red flag being a hostile and defensive response to questions. When you get that creepy feeling, it's time to check your parachute or gird for total war:
The day to day operation of the lab was conducted under a severe information embargo. . . . Information flowed one way, which was up, and conversation between working groups was generally discouraged and often forbidden.
Raw data left one’s hands, went to the immediate superior (one of the three named above) and the next time it was seen would be in a manuscript or grant. What happened to that data in the intervening period is unclear.
. . . [T]here was a pervasive feeling of fear in the laboratory. Although individually-tailored stated and unstated threats were present for lab members, the plight of many of us who were international fellows was especially harrowing. Many were technically and educationally underqualified compared to what might be considered average research fellows in the United States. . . .
This combination of being undesirable to many other labs should they leave their position due to lack of experience/training, dependent upon employment for U.S. visa status, and under constant threat of career suicide in your home country should you leave, was enough to make many people play along.
Even so, I witnessed several people question the findings during their time in the lab. These people and working groups were subsequently fired or resigned. I would like to note that this lab is not unique in this type of exploitative practice, but that does not make it ethically sound and certainly does not create an environment for creative, collaborative, or honest science.
Core nuttiness
Reading a series of articles trying to explain the controversy over Common Core leaves me feeling like a math-challenged second-grader trying to understand an opaque lesson on long division. This shouldn't be a complicated question: does a national standard for achievement give schools an accurate benchmark from which to judge the progress of each grade level and, if so, is that helpful? But then one reads the articles and falls immediately into a pit of murk. The whole concept of testing is flawed because it ignores the wonder of the educational accomplishments of each special snowflake. All academic standards are tools of the patriarchy. A rigid, uniform federal standard squelches individual state innovation and improvement. Tests are unfair, because teachers of poorly testing students are penalized for the crimes of parents or society. Curricula imposed from on high invariably lose sight of their educational purpose in favor of institutionalizing propaganda. Teachers will "teach to the test" instead of developing critical thinking skills in their students. The only way to develop critical thinking skills is to switch from a traditional set of standards or tests to Common Core. Common Core is a benign set of national standards based on an enlightened preference for critical thinking over rote memorization. Common Core is a cookie-cutter set of lesson plans that stifle creativity and prevent teachers from focussing on the needs of real students. Common Core saves money; Common Core imposes unfair costs on cash-strapped budgets. Only a Tea Partier would hate Common Core. Only a corrupt teacher's union would hate it. Parents hate Common Core because it removes control over their children's education to a more and more remote central authority. Parents hate Common Core because it exposes their children's so-called educational attainments to the harsh light of reality.
I recently finished reading Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got That Way." She examines schools in the U.S., South Korea, Finland, and Poland, as judged by the standards imposed by the International Baccalaureate Program, and concludes that a few straightforward reforms can make a huge difference in a nation's schools over a surprisingly short period. First, choose your teachers from the top 1/3 or 1/4 of their graduating classes, then give them the pay that's required to attract such a cohort. Second, combine rigorous standards for achievement with a wide latitude in methods. These two approaches are intimately linked, in that academically excellent teachers can be afforded the professional courtesy of autonomy, as long as you check frequently to ensure that the kids really are learning the curriculum. Finland converted itself from an educational backwater to the world's highest-performing system in just a few years with these limited techniques.
Common Core apparently is a bundled deal; if you want the rigorous, uniform standards, you have to accept a loss of autonomy and innovation, not to mention a hefty dose of propaganda and unintelligible nattering about "critical thinking skills" (however those are defined, they seem to be completely absent from Common Core's promotional materials as well as from most of the debate). We already have a pretty good set of tests in the International Baccalaureate system--why not use those, let teachers make up their own lesson plans, and let principals hire or fire them according to whether they make any useful progress with the kids?
I recently finished reading Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World, and How They Got That Way." She examines schools in the U.S., South Korea, Finland, and Poland, as judged by the standards imposed by the International Baccalaureate Program, and concludes that a few straightforward reforms can make a huge difference in a nation's schools over a surprisingly short period. First, choose your teachers from the top 1/3 or 1/4 of their graduating classes, then give them the pay that's required to attract such a cohort. Second, combine rigorous standards for achievement with a wide latitude in methods. These two approaches are intimately linked, in that academically excellent teachers can be afforded the professional courtesy of autonomy, as long as you check frequently to ensure that the kids really are learning the curriculum. Finland converted itself from an educational backwater to the world's highest-performing system in just a few years with these limited techniques.
Common Core apparently is a bundled deal; if you want the rigorous, uniform standards, you have to accept a loss of autonomy and innovation, not to mention a hefty dose of propaganda and unintelligible nattering about "critical thinking skills" (however those are defined, they seem to be completely absent from Common Core's promotional materials as well as from most of the debate). We already have a pretty good set of tests in the International Baccalaureate system--why not use those, let teachers make up their own lesson plans, and let principals hire or fire them according to whether they make any useful progress with the kids?
Suddenly It All Makes Sense
Been mystified about the bone-headed decisions that have been rolling off the administration's foreign policy efforts these last few years? Turns out there's a good reason Team Obama has gotten worse rather than improving with experience.
In any case, Americans are WEIRD. It's strange to find a foreign policy team that is built around those who have learned how to do American politics for American audiences. You shouldn't expect that to work out well; and, indeed, it hasn't.
Thanks to Ms. Strassel for an interesting report.
...the [National Security Council] has been by procedure and fierce tradition a rare apolitical forum, a place for the president to hear hard reality. NSC staff are foreign-policy grownups, and its meetings are barred to political henchmen.Well, now, shirtless beer drinking after work is not to be held against a man! Being a successful press aide might be; it's not a career often distinguished by men or women of high honor and personal integrity. There are exceptions who are worthy individuals, to be sure.
Or that was the case, until the Obama White House. By early March 2009, two months into this presidency, the New York Times had run a profile of David Axelrod, noting that Mr. Obama's top campaign guru and "political protector" was now "often" to be found "in the late afternoons" walking "to the Situation Room to attend some meetings of the National Security Council." President Obama's first national security adviser, former Marine General and NATO Commander Jim Jones, left after only two years following clashes with Mr. Obama's inner circle.
He was replaced by Democratic political operative and former Fannie Mae lobbyist Tom Donilon. Mr. Donilon joined Ben Rhodes, the Obama campaign speechwriter, who in 2009 had been elevated to deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. Also present was Tommy Vietor, whose entire career prior to NSC spokesman was as an Obama spinmeister—as a press aide in the 2004 Senate run, and campaign flack for the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and assistant White House press secretary. In fairness, his credentials also included getting caught on camera in 2010 pounding beers, shirtless, at a Georgetown bar. America's foreign-policy experts at work.
In any case, Americans are WEIRD. It's strange to find a foreign policy team that is built around those who have learned how to do American politics for American audiences. You shouldn't expect that to work out well; and, indeed, it hasn't.
Thanks to Ms. Strassel for an interesting report.
Cure it or kill it?
Old and busted: repealing and/or replacing Obamacare. New hotness: "fixing" it . . . by repealing it and maybe replacing it with stuff. As Ramesh Ponnuru argues at Bloomberg View, Obamacare was an attempt to solve the terrible problems caused by forcing insurers not to take the riskiness of their new customers into account. Ordinarily, such a policy would cause healthy people to delay paying for expensive insurance until they got sick. Solution: force everyone to buy expensive insurance right now, a/k/a the individual mandate. Get rid of the individual mandate, and you score lots of points with voters, but then what do you do about the fact that you've just destroyed the insurance market?
It's nice to call a repeal of the individual mandate a "fix," but it doesn't fix much unless we kill the whole bill.
For the children
I'm not sure it's safe to let the little darlings go to school at all. Maybe they should all be home-schooled:
Riggs said her 10-year-old daughter went on a school field trip recently and came back sun-burned. Riggs said district policy didn't allow her daughter to bring sunscreen to reapply.
But, NEISD spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said sunscreen is considered a medication, something children need a doctor's note to have at school.
"Typically, sunscreen is a toxic substance, and we can't allow toxic things in to be in our schools," Chancellor said.
GINI coefficients
Via Maggie's Farm:
Somebody really should start calling it “Income Diversity”. How could progressives be against it then?
Off Message
Pope Francis:
This culture of wellbeing convinced us it is better not to have children! It’s better! You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be carefree [...]What? Marriage has something to do with being fruitful and multiplying? That could have all kinds of consequences!
It might be more comfortable to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog. Then in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness. It is not fruitful, it does not do what Jesus does with his Church: He makes His Church fruitful.
70 Years Ago
The landings at Normandy are part of one of two major campaigns we will commemorate this month on major anniversaries. This one, far better known to Americans, is of much more recent importance.
Nothing I could say is worthy of the occasion. Remember it, study it, consider what it cost, and honor those who paid the price.
Nothing I could say is worthy of the occasion. Remember it, study it, consider what it cost, and honor those who paid the price.
The premature post-presidency
Matthew Continetti on a day in the life of a president who's given up and now only wants to spend time with like-minded people thinking great thoughts.
I guess if he gets too disillusioned he could always desert.
I guess if he gets too disillusioned he could always desert.
Income inequality
Mark Perry argues that individual income inequality in America has been flat for fifty years; what's changed is household inequality, largely driven by the upsurge in single-parent families.
What if income-redistribution problems only increase the prevalence of single-parent families?
What if income-redistribution problems only increase the prevalence of single-parent families?
Not To Speculate, But...
...maybe his entire leadership chain was full of psychopaths.
I mean, it could be true.
Or maybe it's that 4/25 is an Airborne brigade, and like all paratroopers they volunteered three times for positions of increasing danger -- once for the Army, once for the Infantry, and once for Airborne. Perhaps a group that has self-selected for the honor of a life of danger has a particularly strong disdain for someone who deserts his post.
No, it surely has to be the psychopath thing.
I mean, it could be true.
Or maybe it's that 4/25 is an Airborne brigade, and like all paratroopers they volunteered three times for positions of increasing danger -- once for the Army, once for the Infantry, and once for Airborne. Perhaps a group that has self-selected for the honor of a life of danger has a particularly strong disdain for someone who deserts his post.
No, it surely has to be the psychopath thing.
"Suck it up and salute"
James Taranto is having some trouble with the White House's policy regarding the ideal level of military cooperation with civilian authority. As you've all no doubt read already, the Bergdahl negotiations (as well as rescue initiatives) had stalled for a couple of years in the face of doubts and concerns over the circumstances of Bergdahl's leaving his unit five years ago, but the White House views last week's trade a triumph of the principle that the military should "suck it up and salute." The controversy exposes huge rifts in middle America's views of the military. Taranto quotes a progressive young writer at Salon:
As Taranto notes, Bergdahl failed notably in his duty to suck it up and salute. He also alludes to the failure of our current Secretary of State to do the same while he was in uniform. The progressives have an idea of what makes for an ideal soldier, and it's not much like that of an ordinary American.
Taranto also contrasts the White House's limp ineffectuality in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and incompetence at the HHS or the VA with his ability to cut through red tape and achieve his goals in the Bergdahl trade. It's all about whether he really cares.
The left's blinkered view of military culture is perhaps best summarized by Elias Isquith, a young writer for Salon.com, who yesterday explained the backlash against the Bergdahl deal as follows: "When a member of the military fails to adhere to the far right's rigid formula of what a soldier should be (nationalistic, religious, obedient; conservative) right-wingers . . . come down on them [sic] like a ton of bricks." He cited one example in addition to Bergdahl: John Kerry.What a revealing comment. This Salon writer appears to think that only a nationalistic, religious, obedient, and conservative serviceman would understand why it's wrong to desert in the face of the enemy, perhaps even to give aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime.
As Taranto notes, Bergdahl failed notably in his duty to suck it up and salute. He also alludes to the failure of our current Secretary of State to do the same while he was in uniform. The progressives have an idea of what makes for an ideal soldier, and it's not much like that of an ordinary American.
Taranto also contrasts the White House's limp ineffectuality in the face of bureaucratic intransigence and incompetence at the HHS or the VA with his ability to cut through red tape and achieve his goals in the Bergdahl trade. It's all about whether he really cares.
Hammock practice
I've learned a couple of macrame netting knots, one denser than the other, and am practicing with yarn while I wait for my larger hammock rope supplies to arrive. The two contrasting knots will let me make a pattern on a square grid; something simple and geometrical should stand out well.
The smaller pattern on the bottom right is more of the Clones lace I've been working on for years. It's all about the size of the pixels.
The smaller pattern on the bottom right is more of the Clones lace I've been working on for years. It's all about the size of the pixels.
Doubling down
I guess the White House can't afford another scandal in which Susan Rice is revealed as a shameless liar every time she hits the talk-show circuit, so instead of apologizing for her "honor and distinction" boilerplate they're trying to go on the offensive against critics. White House aides, for instance, are complaining they never expected Bergdahl to be "swift-boated" by his own unit. Are we about to be treated to a spectacle in which the military tries to court-martial him and the White House has his back?
This isn't going to end well. They let the story get out before they started trying to cover it up. Also, I'm not sure that digging up the whole story of swift-boating in 2004 is a good thing for Kerry and his buddies--though admittedly he'll look pretty good compared to Bergdahl.
This isn't going to end well. They let the story get out before they started trying to cover it up. Also, I'm not sure that digging up the whole story of swift-boating in 2004 is a good thing for Kerry and his buddies--though admittedly he'll look pretty good compared to Bergdahl.
Scalp-hunting
It looks as though the Mississippi senate republican primary race for is headed for a runoff between longtime incumbent Cochran and insurgent McDaniel. For many, the race has become about the controversy over Cochran's hospitalized wife and who is most guilty of taking advantage of her pitiable condition. Ace sees it differently:
How establishment is Cochran? Here's longtime House GOP leadership staffer and now self-described bi-partisan "Super Lobbyist" John Feehery reacting to the results last night.
"I guess Mississippi doesn't want Federal money any more. I betcha there are 49 states that will gladly take it."That's exactly the kind of mindset that pervades DC. Politicians are judged on their ability to extract money from you and give it to someone else. Scalp hunting isn't simply ego driven or designed to make people feel good. It's about changing the Republican party.
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