The Noble Savage and Paradise Lost

I finally got to see Avatar this past weekend (IMAX 3D, real high end stuff) with son D this past weekend.  Really impressive technical achievement from my vantage point (in a high back, velour coated chair).  The experience is really bordering on immersive, the visual clarity of the large screen and depth of field is stunning with a nice complimentary edited audio track.  It is the first time I've seen a CGI film where the eyes didn't have that funny "shark eye" look.  It is something to experience.

At the same time the story has that vague Rousseau-like obsession with the uncorrupted nature of "savage" man.  Technology, and trade are ultimatedly corrupting evils driven by man's pride, vanity and avarice.  Of course, the fact that the fictional Navi could never make this movie, or derive any pleasure from seeing it, is an irony more than one person has commented on (not to mention the fact it has made more money than any movie previously made).  Add to that a fair dollop of pantheism, and you have a very new age fantasy of the paradise Western Civilization has lost for us.

Does any of this square with my understanding of life in primitive cultures?  No, but it's probably best to ignore the cultural labels so obviously hung from Mr. Cameron's work.  I'll go see it again because it's an entrancing piece of visual work, and I'll try to convince myself, to paraphrase S.Freud, sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke.

"I don't see the votes for it at this time."

Nancy Pelosi announces she can't come up with the 218 votes necessary to pass the Senate version of health care reform. 

Pelosi: House won't pass Senate bill to save health-care reform - washingtonpost.com

Of course the Washington Post advances the microeconomic meme; it's lacking "this", or "that". I think the larger (and more important) conclusion is the huge government mandated restructuring of American health care is dead (maybe permanently). By the time the government gets around to trying this again medical technology will have advanced so far only the social justice types will consider it worth pursuing. For now the American people don't want it, and moderate politicians reading the tea leaves and always concerned about self-preservation have decided not to follow their leaders off the cliff. In the meantime, I hope congress gives serious thought to straightening out the insurance stuff (level playing field for individual and company purchased medical insurance, loosening of preexisting condition clauses, allowing selling across state lines), make sure things work and make sure people can decide what level of risk they're comfortable with in their purchase of medical insurance.

What will this mean? I'm hoping the end of most of the all-encompassing, impossible to kill, top down government schemes by the self-anointed elite who believe their every thought is a revelation, and their every worry requires government intervention. The Republicans will hope the midterms will bring them a reversal of their electoral fortunes, and the majority of Democrats will realize the president, while well thought of, is advancing a very unpopular agenda. I'm hoping for gridlock and majority approved, incremental changes which can be evaluated as they are instituted.

For me as one citizen and a guy who has worked in medical device development for the past 15 years a good news day.

Liberty and the failures of markets

After all the spin masters have finished commenting on the implications and (later tonight) results of the Massachusetts special election, I still believe what we're witnessing is a general pushback against the insistence of progressive political elements that the social safety net we operate above is not sufficient for it's task, or in possession of enough prescriptions to assure our confidence in it.  Of course all of this has to do with the level of individual and social risk we feel comfortable living with as a society.  In the health care reform debate I wish we had been more explicit about what the tradeoffs involved here really are.  Are we willing to trade a certain level of medical treatment development for the a guarantee of a government funded minimum level of care for individuals?  The markets can't decide that question for us although they will eventually show after the fact the broad decisions of the population in terms of preferred purchases.  Can we live with the individuals who either through fortune, or poor decision making, make a decision which results in their harm?  Is the government responsible for constraining the many, to protect the few?  Do the majority of citizens wish for such a government?

In my work I'm often forced to think about "What is safe enough?", and "How do we know we're done?"  The strictly business types don't exactly welcome this line of questioning.  They want to get to market.  Who's right and protects the greater public good?  I don't know, but I want to at least know the process so I can hold someone accoutable.  Here's my process flowchart for addressing failure modes and effects analysis for medical device risk management.  It doesn't tell you how to do a good job, but it gives you a framework to make decisions in.

History

I suppose we never really think of ourselves as living in the midst of historic events, we still have to worry about paying the utility bills.  Still, the last week has been both horrifying and interesting.

It's been 6 days since the shallow 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince in Haiti.  Estimates this evening are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the structures which collapsed during that minute long assault.   That country has been a basket case for so long, it's not surprising so many people died.  If you compare the magnitude 7.1 Bay Area Earthquake of 1989 (65 fatalities) with the Haiti quake it rapidly becomes apparent the major difference between the outcome of the two events is the poverty and lack of building codes in Haiti.  In my opinion both of these conditions are driven by the horrible political heritage of that land and the tenuous nature of social stability among its' people.  Satellite views of the area not only show the horrifying devestation of the quake, but also the social partition between Haiti and the Dominican Republic which also shares the island of Hispaniola.  Of course for all of the money spent there, so little has improved for its' people.  Still, this is a humanitarian disaster, so I send my donation and hope it makes some small difference in the lives and deaths of Haiti's people.

In Massachusetts, republican State Senator Scott Brown has come out of nowhere in the past month to challenge democrat Martha Coakley for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.  In Massachusetts alone, that development would be astounding, but Senator Scott Brown would represent a 41st vote for the Republican Senate Caucus and the end of the Senate Democrats fillibuster proof majority.  With the current Health Care Reform bill (pick Harry Reid or Nancy Peliosi's effort) being advanced as a strictly partisan offering which rewards partisan allies, and creates another huge entitlement program under the subterfuge of advancing healthcare for those without coverage, I would prefer an actual bipartisan bill which would look to improve medical insurance coverage without totally revamping the medical care system in this country.  I would expect we'll know by this time tomorrow how things went.  I'm trying to be optimistic, but elections are tough to predict.

On a professional level, my efforts to totally revamp the Risk Management system at M continue with another set of VP level edits.  More details tomorrow.