Real trains? Those are the trains with a real engineer, not a microprocessor, running the train.
The first unreal train was Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) out in San Francisco. Originally designed for fully automatic, hands off, no engineer running, to save on California labor costs. Half way thru the project a design review showed the automatic control system was downright dangerous. The central computer (a Data General Eclipse if memory serves) would order a train to close doors and accelerate out of the station. The computer assumed that the trains did as ordered, and so, if it had ordered train 1 to depart the station, it assumed the station was clear and ran train 2 right into it. At the design review it was pointed out that should train 1 suffer anyone of a myriad of ordinary faults (blown fuse, broken wire, loose connector, etc,etc,ad nauseum) it would fail to depart the station as ordered, and the computer would ram the next train right into the back of it.
The project was too far along to redesign the cars and add a real engineer's position. They gave the poor engineer a windshield to look out of, and a big red panic button to slam on the brakes. Nothing more. The engineers rode along with the central computer running the train, and the engineer sitting in the front waiting for a catastrophe that required him to hit the panic button.
Couple months after opening, a BART train drove right off the tracks. It was the end of the line, and instead of heading back, the train drove forward off the end of line. It plowed thru a huge sand pile left as a bumper and wound up looking foolish. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
They asked the engineer why he had failed to hit the panic button before the train ran off the tracks. The answer went something like this. "I've been sitting in the front of that stupid train for 8 hours doing nothing. I must have not been paying attention, and we were off the tracks before I could do anything about it."
Lesson learned. Until the guy sitting in the front of the train is actually running the train, throttle, brakes, open and close doors, whistle for the grade crossings, watch the block signals and don't go thru a red signal, he will doze off, text message, read a book, anything to relieve the boredom, he isn't going to be alert enough to do any good when the automation breaks down.
Better not to have automation. Have the engineer actually run the train. You gotta pay him just to sit there, might as well have him operate the train. Save money, omit the automation.
Friday, July 24, 2009
One more thing Obama didn't talk about
Those TV ads. We have ads for prescription drugs. Drug selection oughta be the doctor's job. When patients come in, asking for drugs they saw advertised on TV, a lot of doctors will proscribe them thinking they don't hurt and it makes the patients happy. Health care costs would decrease if those drug ads were off the air.
Then there are the TV ads from lawyers, looking for malpractice plaintiffs. Those drive up the cost of health care. Back in the good old days it was unethical for lawyers to advertise at all. We ought to revive those ethics.
Finally there are the ads from power wheel chair makers claiming they can get medicare to pay the whole cost of the power wheel chair.
These health cost increasing ads are on Fox News all the time. More often than the GEICO gecko.
Then there are the TV ads from lawyers, looking for malpractice plaintiffs. Those drive up the cost of health care. Back in the good old days it was unethical for lawyers to advertise at all. We ought to revive those ethics.
Finally there are the ads from power wheel chair makers claiming they can get medicare to pay the whole cost of the power wheel chair.
These health cost increasing ads are on Fox News all the time. More often than the GEICO gecko.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
What Obama didn't say last night
He didn't say that the United States spends 18% of Gross National Product (GNP) on health care, twice as much as any other country in the world. The price of all our exports is jacked up 18% just to pay the workers health care. Imports are cheaper than domestic manufactured by 9 to 18%, just because of sky high US health care expenditures. One reason everything for sale in Walmarts is made in China is that health care is cheaper in China.
Insuring everyone in the country is not the health care problem, the health care problem is excessive health care spending. We ought to be cutting our health care costs in half, Obama wants to increase them by another trillion dollars. We can't afford what we have now, and Obama wants to make it more expensive.
Obama didn't talk about parasitic lawyers sucking up god awful amounts of money thru malpractice suits. That the malpractice award money goes to the lawyers, not the "injured" patients. Could he be currying favor with the trial lawyers?
He didn't talk about outrageous drug prices. The drug companies claim the money goes to research and development of new drugs. Actually it largely goes to marketing. The drug companies pay full time salesmen to call on every doctor in the country twice a month peddling drugs. Nor did he talk about allowing importation of drugs from Canada, or any other first world country.
He didn't talk about cherry picking insurance companies who give low premiums to company paid plans and charge individuals four and five times as much. He didn't talk about the unfairness of denying the self employed an income tax deduction for health insurance expenditures.
He didn't talk about wearysome FDA approval procedures for new drugs that add millions of dollars to the cost of a drug.
He didn't mention that 30% of health care costs are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. This money does little good to the patient but does lots of harm to medicare.
He didn't talk about fancy technology that does little to improve quality of care but makes a lot of money for the device makers. For instance fetal heart rate monitors, a $10,000 electronic box now universal in delivery rooms, have not improved the infant mortality rate.
Obama's health care plan is to throw another trillion dollars into the black hole. Hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers think this is just fine.
We should attempt to cut the amount we currently spend by half rather than dumping more money into it.
Insuring everyone in the country is not the health care problem, the health care problem is excessive health care spending. We ought to be cutting our health care costs in half, Obama wants to increase them by another trillion dollars. We can't afford what we have now, and Obama wants to make it more expensive.
Obama didn't talk about parasitic lawyers sucking up god awful amounts of money thru malpractice suits. That the malpractice award money goes to the lawyers, not the "injured" patients. Could he be currying favor with the trial lawyers?
He didn't talk about outrageous drug prices. The drug companies claim the money goes to research and development of new drugs. Actually it largely goes to marketing. The drug companies pay full time salesmen to call on every doctor in the country twice a month peddling drugs. Nor did he talk about allowing importation of drugs from Canada, or any other first world country.
He didn't talk about cherry picking insurance companies who give low premiums to company paid plans and charge individuals four and five times as much. He didn't talk about the unfairness of denying the self employed an income tax deduction for health insurance expenditures.
He didn't talk about wearysome FDA approval procedures for new drugs that add millions of dollars to the cost of a drug.
He didn't mention that 30% of health care costs are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. This money does little good to the patient but does lots of harm to medicare.
He didn't talk about fancy technology that does little to improve quality of care but makes a lot of money for the device makers. For instance fetal heart rate monitors, a $10,000 electronic box now universal in delivery rooms, have not improved the infant mortality rate.
Obama's health care plan is to throw another trillion dollars into the black hole. Hospitals, drug companies, insurance companies, doctors, and lawyers think this is just fine.
We should attempt to cut the amount we currently spend by half rather than dumping more money into it.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The stiff in the CAT scanner
It was Friday before a three day weekend. The patient was very old and weak, nearly comatose, when we slid him into the scanner. Started her up and the scanner whirred away. When the scan was done, we slid the patient out.
Trouble started there. The patient had died while the scan was running. Being late on Friday all the doctors had left for the weekend. We couldn't find anyone to sign the death certificate. Couldn't send a body to the morgue without a death certificate. We couldn't go home leaving a dead body in the lab. What to do? Finally we rolled the gurney into the elevator and sent the deceased back up to the ward. Let the ward nurse cope.
I heard that story from our CAT scan sales guy, who had been a CAT scan tech before coming to work for us.
I always wondered about the doctor who ordered that scan. Here he has a patient at death's door, and all he does is order an expensive imaging procedure? He can't tell the patient is in a bad way by just looking at him? Or using a stethoscope?
But I'll bet the hospital billed that CAT scan and Medicare paid for it. A few thousand dollars spent that did nothing to improve or extend that poor patient's life.
Records show that 30% of all health care expenditures are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. How much of that money actually helps the patient, as opposed to just making money for the providers?
Trouble started there. The patient had died while the scan was running. Being late on Friday all the doctors had left for the weekend. We couldn't find anyone to sign the death certificate. Couldn't send a body to the morgue without a death certificate. We couldn't go home leaving a dead body in the lab. What to do? Finally we rolled the gurney into the elevator and sent the deceased back up to the ward. Let the ward nurse cope.
I heard that story from our CAT scan sales guy, who had been a CAT scan tech before coming to work for us.
I always wondered about the doctor who ordered that scan. Here he has a patient at death's door, and all he does is order an expensive imaging procedure? He can't tell the patient is in a bad way by just looking at him? Or using a stethoscope?
But I'll bet the hospital billed that CAT scan and Medicare paid for it. A few thousand dollars spent that did nothing to improve or extend that poor patient's life.
Records show that 30% of all health care expenditures are incurred in the last year of the patient's life. How much of that money actually helps the patient, as opposed to just making money for the providers?
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
New browser needs needs new firewall?
Internet service has been slowing down for some time up here. Might be roadrunner, might be those distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks on gov'ment web sites, tired computer, bad karma, who knows.
So I decided to upgrade Firefox to the new version 3.5. Although the new Firefox rendered pages faster it was less effective at getting onto the web. Lots and lots of "cannot find the such-and-such server" error messages, after a lengthy wait for a reply. Try again later and I could get thru. After a few days of this, I took a look at the mozilla website. They had a tab "What to do if you cannot connect with V3.5" That sounded promising. In short, the Mozilla people claim that firewalls are the problem. Turn the firewall off they suggest. Well, not sure about that, especially as the older V3.0.11 Firefox had been working OK for a year on my Zone Alarm freeby firewall.
But, hope springs eternal, I downloaded the latest copy of Zone Alarm and it works. Not 100%, but a lot better. It reduced the "cannot find server" errors to maybe one an hour, whereas with the old Zone Alarm I was getting 10 or 15 such errors per hour.
The V3.5 Firefox is faster than previous version 3.0.11, and with an updated firewall, things are somewhat better than the older software setup.
Lesson learned. Update your firewall more often.
So I decided to upgrade Firefox to the new version 3.5. Although the new Firefox rendered pages faster it was less effective at getting onto the web. Lots and lots of "cannot find the such-and-such server" error messages, after a lengthy wait for a reply. Try again later and I could get thru. After a few days of this, I took a look at the mozilla website. They had a tab "What to do if you cannot connect with V3.5" That sounded promising. In short, the Mozilla people claim that firewalls are the problem. Turn the firewall off they suggest. Well, not sure about that, especially as the older V3.0.11 Firefox had been working OK for a year on my Zone Alarm freeby firewall.
But, hope springs eternal, I downloaded the latest copy of Zone Alarm and it works. Not 100%, but a lot better. It reduced the "cannot find server" errors to maybe one an hour, whereas with the old Zone Alarm I was getting 10 or 15 such errors per hour.
The V3.5 Firefox is faster than previous version 3.0.11, and with an updated firewall, things are somewhat better than the older software setup.
Lesson learned. Update your firewall more often.
Does California pay too much?
According to a Wall St Journal story, a suburban fire chief was making $186,000 a year. That's about twice what we pay fire chiefs around here. Then he turned in his accrued leave and sick time for a once time salary boost to $241,000. Three days later he retired. Guess what, his retirement pay was based on the $241,000. Plus, he hasn't retired really, he is serving as temporary fire chief and drawing $176,000 as a contractor AND drawing his retirement pay. By the way, he is only 51 years old.
Nice work if you can get it.
Somehow I don't feel very sorry for California's budget problems.
Nice work if you can get it.
Somehow I don't feel very sorry for California's budget problems.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Reminiscing about Apollo
Discovery channel did 40th anniversary of Moon landing stories all day. The TV talking heads marveled at the Apollo computer with "only" 64 K bytes of memory. Brings back memories that does. A PDP-11 with 64K, programmed in assembler, could do most anything. Somewhere I still have my PDP-11 programmers card. Back then programmers were supermen. Now they are mostly dweebs.
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