OPEN LETTER TO HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATORS

         Just what "industry" are you involved in, or rather what "industry" do you think you're involved in? The entire premise for the allowance of it taking up space in the fabric of society is the second half of the defining word in the title of "Healthcare Industry". It is existent totally resulting from the need of some to CARE for the ills and injuries of the rest of society's individuals and can provide no value to society without that CARING. 
        The entire function of all commercial endeavor in all societies is to provide value in exchange for value. 
        Given the premiss for it's existance, it is obvious that the prime asset of any organization operating as a healthcare institution is the people working within it to provide that caring. All of that increasingly complicated and expensive aparatus and infrastructure in much of that industry today is just it's set of ever changing TOOLS. Those TOOLS are of absolutely zero value to anyone absent caring people applying informed and caring use of them. All value any healthcare institution can trade for value (profit from) arises from the caring and abilities of it's people to use that set of tools for the good of the institution's customers, the injured and infirmed of the communities in which it operates. 
        The industry in which it operates is fully defined as a  people on people enterprise. 
Employees in healthcare don't usually arrive in their jobs by accident. They are, as a whole, caring individuals seeking a caring environment in which to make a life of caring for the ill and injured around them. As such they are extraordinary members of society. Any erosion of your respect, in fact or inferrence, for that reality threatens the ability of your institution to provide it's only marketable product, those individuals' ability and / or  will to provide a quality level of care to the ill and injured of the comunities in which your organization operates. That threatens the institutions'very continued existance. 
  Therefor be wary. Use maintenance of the respect mentioned as a prime criteria for evaluating cost cutting measures, eliminating recognition programs and events or elimination of incentives or oportunities for employees to serve the community to close budget gaps and include affected employees in those decisions' formation whenever possible or you may start down a path toward having no budget to save!

CORN GLUTEN: MAGIC STUFF?

    As the story goes, decades ago some university agriculture student just happened to notice that along railroad tracks where hopper cars had spilled corn, there were no annual weeds growing! He or she apparently convinced their university faculty to research this phenomenon. The result was the knowledge that the gluten in corn creates a sort of germination barrier on or very near the surface of the soil. Where that barrier exists weed seeds can't germinate into weed plants. Out of this knowledge have sprung a number of "organic" weed control products based on corn gluten. As it so happens the corn gluten is also a very good source of slow release nitrogen. That makes it an excellent lawn fertilizer/ weed control product base. 

    The first product of this kind I'd ever heard of was WOW (for without weeds) sold by Gardens Alive, an online and mail-order seller of organic gardening, household and pet management products. I've been buying and exclusively over-seeding my lawn with their Turf Alive grass seed for as long as I've known about them. Their grasses send roots 4' to 6' deep and carry a grub killer producing beneficial fungus (endophyte) that keeps the lawn pest free as well. I water the lawn maybe once or twice a season on average and it stays green way deeper into drought than anyone else's on my block..
    Well on to what's new! This season I noticed my Ace carrying lawn care products by "Jonathan Green Organics". I have been using a mix of Ringers Lawn Restore, Milornanite, Ironite and limestone pellets exclusively, seasonally adjusting proportions for almost 2 decades. All of which I have been buying at La Grange Park Ace Hardware. This week's flier from them shows Jonathan Green Organic Weed Control plus fertilizer. It is advertised as a corn gluten based product. I'm going to give it a try.
    There are a couple of cautionary notes  to include here. Corn gluten is exclusively a pre-emergence weed control product. That means it won't have any effect on established perennial weed plants.  As an effective pre-emergence product it will interfere with the germination of grass seed you have spread and any grass plant that has has yet to establish itself. I believe it's mechanism is to suppress root development in the soil's surface fraction of an inch where seeds germinate and new plants begin to establish themselves. 
   Well on to the Ace to get some! 

Why the scythe?

    


      Some of us are entertained by what some may consider the off-beat or maybe even weird. My interest in the scythe probably fits in the former category.  I think of it as akin to some of what drives others to become re-in-actors like my former coworker Ray Fawkes. He, sometimes with his whole family,  has been involved in re-living history of various ages from pre-revolutionary America to the Civil War to WWII. 
      Sitting here at my netbook  at ~2:00 AM awakened by a heartburn episode and waiting for the antacid to do it's thing, I opened a whole new world by Googling "blade peening". I opened the door on what one might call the lifestyle of the scythe. 
     There were links to material on industrial processes for the hardening of things like turbine blades but most were about scythe blade peening, the hand hammering of the edge of scythe blades  to thin and harden them so the edge can be as keen and durable as possible.   Most of the latter were to parts of websites devoted to a whole range of simpler lifestyles incorporating various aspects of the "period" ways from the "age of the scythe", which includes almost the entire pre-industrial  era of human civilization.  
     One must remember that the industrial age wasn't the first time the inventive nature of mankind appeared on earth.  There were a host of tools around prior to then, many of which were of designs that were refined by centuries or even millenia of use experience. 
     The industrial age brought with it the attitude that in every case possible, the old way of doing things must be abandoned in total as if there was nothing about it worth incorporating in today's methods and tools. Personally, I find that just plain stupid. Tools used successfully for centuries were used because they worked by lessening the burden of whatever task they were applied to. In each case there must be some aspect worth examining for reference and application via modern technology. I find the scythe to be just about the  perfect example of that.

My Tech World For 2012

     One of the many important technology decisions to make for 2012 relates to the apparently declining reliability of Commonwealth Edison, our electrical energy provider for the Chicago area. One is seriously tempted to invest in a standby natural gas generator given the increase in violent weather that causes power outages over the last few years. The cost is a serious matter. For my little 1000 sq-ft house a system  that costs $2500  PLUS installation would be required. It gives one serious pause. Just how valuable  and vulnerable is continuous access to electrical power?
    On the computing front, There's the business of file sharing that usually involves attaching them to e-mail messages to friends and family. Sending e-mail messages with large attached files which recipients may or may not wish to acquire with my upload speed of  mid level DSL internet service at ~ 430Kbps can be very time consuming. Though not exactly a new product, the Pogoplug has gotten my attention. With a Pogoplug attached to my router with, say, an 8GB flash drive in one of it's 4 USB ports, merely including a link to the Pogoplug location of the file(s) in the message will allow the recipient access to it on the always on Pogoplug whether any computer on my home network is turned on or not. With recent radical price reductions the whole setup could cost less than $50.

   Then there's the issue of clearing the winter snow. I  finally broke down (part way anyway) and purchased a real snow-blower this year. My 6-7 year old  Neuton mower has spoiled me for any gas powered equipment for yard maintenance. The thought of handling that gas and oil is something I can no longer tolerate. I've gone electric. In snow-blowers the options are not quite as many as with mowers. Battery electric ones can't charge in the severe cold of unheated garages in the midst of times when they are most needed. Only 1 battery powered model seems to be on the market, the Ariens Amp 24 . At $1500 to $2000 each, the 2 stage 24" swath self propelled machine is over the top of my budget. My unheated garage would render it almost useless anyway.  I opted for a corded electric model, a 25 lb Toro Electric Power Curve 1800. It was only $299 on line from Ace Hardware, delivered for pickup at my local Ace store.

    I already had a Toro Power Shovel given to me Christmas of 2010. but there are issues with it.

    As you can see, there is virtually no direction given to the ejected snow. Using this into the wind, even obliquely, will make you into a snowman in a hurry.   
   So now all we need some measurable snow. I suppose I should have known that after 30 years of home ownership, as soon as I buy a snow blower the next winter would have little or no snow!

    On to lawn mowing. As I mentioned I have had a Neuton battery electric mower for some years now. I consider it the best dollar for dollar investment in yard care equipment I've ever made. This year there are a huge and growing array of options for anyone else who is fed up with pull starting and handling gas and oil necessary for combustion motor mowers. Amazon.com is a great place to start looking for an electric one. 
    Over the last couple of years I've been toying with an idea for a radical new design for rotary mower blades that should yield up to 20% energy savings and provide a more effective cut especially for battery electric mowers. 
    Charge life is a serious limiter for the applicability of the battery electrics. A lot of lawns are just too big for most such mowers' capacity with current battery technology. The added run time this blade could give could turn the corner for many of those mowers. Gotta get it to market!

Mow the snow?

    Actually this shows you exactly how the  Austrian style  scythe blade moves across the ground in a super efficient manner, requiring no effort to hold it above the ground, unlike the American style scythe. In the grass the blade is too well hidden for it's action to be this obvious. Based on what I've read and seen on this website, I'm almost ready to get one, let my grass grow a little higher than usual and try it out in the back yard. Obviously, the Austrian scythe would be the one I'd buy. I have to read a bunch more and probably wait for a reply to my website message to this guy to decide exactly what type and size blade to get with any scythe I'd purchase. Success in any endeavor is all about just such details.
    Check out some of the rest of the pages on the website linked to in the highlighted text above. 

    This guy with his near perfect technique, shows just why I see this as probably the most efficient hand tool ever invented by man. That's why it fascinates me so much.

Joe Paterno's Nightmare

    Here's the best major publication report based entirely on the Grand JuryReport and setting the timeline of the matter of the acts of Jerry Sandusky which culminated in arraignment on 40 criminal counts 5 days ago! I read the Jury report as well. There are at least 3-4 others who are culpable in the perpetuation of these acts over several years. We'll see how they fare.

    Those "3-4 others" refers only to those Penn State administrators mentioned in the Grand Jury Report. 

    As to any others who may have "looked the other way" or worse in instances related to other victims of his from "The Second Mile" program Sandusky started not part of the Grand Jury investigation, it's all speculation but it wouldn't surprise me. 

    It appears clear from the record that to say Joe Paterno "looked the other way" in this matter is inappropriate. One of the Penn State administrators he called to his home the next day, Sunday after his Grad student reported the event in question (victim 2 of 8) to discuss the incident "of a sexual nature" had The Campus Police Department under his authority.

    As always, see the references linked to via highlighted text above for more detailed information on the subject.

FLIPPING A LID

  
    O.K. so this is clearly not as serious as my blog posts usually are but it's from the POPSCI (Popular Science Magazine) Archives. It's a real article about drug smuggling interdiction. 
    The article, titled:  Mexican Authorities Seize Homemade Marijuana-Hurling Catapult At The Border  is one posted to their website from this last January. I'm not sure when if ever it appeared in their printed magazine.
   

    I think it's a pretty good marriage of my priorities with this blog. Those as stated are gardening, cool technologies and, where possible, a touch of humor. 

    I ran across this while searching their archives for an article from their monthly magazines' segment called "What's New"  that contains little blurbs with pictures of all sorts of new gadgets etc. that are either new to them, new to the market or have been announced by their makers yet unreleased to the market. 

    I was looking for one I recall seeing years ago about a human powered rotary lawn mower. I recall it looked  a lot like any other rotary mower but for size and  the absence of any gas or electric motor. That was replaced by a wheel driven gear train to the blade shaft.

     Anyway... though there was no luck per my search target, there was this about a completely different type of GRASS!

    As always, click on the highlighted text to find the items they link to.