Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Category Archives: Quality
Toyota, 3-Sigma, and Us
It’s not often that I agree with Charles Krauthammer, but in his recent opinion piece, “Toyota and the price of modernity“, he is on the right track when he says,
The question is: How do you distinguish the idiosyncratic failure from … Continue reading
Making Free Markets Work: Tell No Lies
In the October 29, 2009 New York Times, financial commentator Floyd Norris offers up a solution to excessive executive compensation and the bubbles that plague our free enterprise system. In his article, ”To Rein In Pay, Rein In Wall St”, he suggests … Continue reading
PDSA – Hammers and Saws
PDSA = HAMMER
PROBLEM SOLVING = SAW
PDSA is a method that drives forward by constructing new knowledge. It begins with theory. Corrective action is a problem solving method that a is reactive, rear view mirror process. The method begins with … Continue reading
My Letter to Obama
As an interesting exercise, I decided to draft a letter to Obama offering some Deming inspired advice. I just wanted to see what I would come up with.
First, I carefully acknowledged his accomplishments as a candidate and his undeniable leadership … Continue reading
Hiring the Best People
Although you can do your best in choosing, you cannot choose “the best”. There is no way to determine who is best. Bestness can only be determined in the context of the system in which people act. That system is … Continue reading
Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge
I have always been fascinated by Deming’s adoption of an SOPK model — an interactive system which, as a whole, embraces an appreciation of systems, understanding variation, theory of knowledge, and psychology. His work propelled him toward new ways of … Continue reading
Why Three Sigma?
(Read a more extended discussion of 3-sigma in my sticky post, “What’s so Special about 3-Sigma?”) Continue reading
Putting People to Work
Your enterprise is the system of knowledge shared by your organization’s members. Facilities, tools, equipment, materials, and capital are only useful to the extent that your enterprise’s leaders, managers, and workers know and apply theories and methods that put these … Continue reading
Deming’s 14 Points
1. Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
2. Adopt a new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken … Continue reading
What’s So Special about 3-Sigma?
It goes like this… Continue reading →