ExposureBlog

Juan Cole (talking about blogs) offers a concise discussion of distributed vs centralized systems and introduces the term choke point hegemonies–a term that will probably find its way to Wikipedia before the week is out.  As it turns out, his discussion is also useful when analyzing organizational structures, especially when trying to learn why information flow within the organization is blocked at certain points.  Recommended.

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall—in his hilarious response to blog critic Lee Siegel, noted that blogs are a “boon for information and an enemy of thought. In most hands it’s more a medium of exchange than reflection.  The technology can leave us too little time to mull and digest.”  Good points to consider when researching that case.

Suppose you’re a plaintiff lawyer with an injured client.  You suspect the defendant, a large construction company, has some very bad work practices that put employees of subcontractors at risk.  You only have so much time and funds available.  After the eyewitnesses—and of course, the safety guy—who should you depose? 

Some of of my clients on the Plaintiff’s side like to go top down–deposing the CEO or the President of the company first, then work their way down to the managers.  Others prefer to work their way up–foreman to supervisory personnel.

At some point–usually with the mid-level managers they will encounter something like dense fog obscuring all further discovery: the malady known as CCA: Command Chain Amnesia.

While you or I might remember inconsequential meetings with people that took place years ago—and may even remember what was said, there are highly-paid people working as managers who won’t remember talking with anyone.  They will be unable to recall meetings, conferences and even what they took in college.  One president for a VERY large Texas construction company claimed on the record that he didn’t really know anything about electricity (the case involved an electrocution.)  When it was pointed out that he also had an engineering degree, he said he couldn’t recall taking any courses that had to do with “electricity.” 

Amnesia isn’t limited to the corporate world.  A CIA analyst by the name of Tyler Drumheller is writing a book that will no doubt shine a bright light on command chain amnesia in the run-up to the Iraq conflict.  It seems he told both his boss, a man named John E. McLaughlin as well as the Director of the CIA himself that the intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction was seriously flawed–well before the information was used in speeches by both the President and by the Secretary of State.  When asked to comment, neither McLaughlin nor Tenet could remember ever talking with Drumheller. 

So, I suppose it’s a waste of time to be angry with the mid-level managers when they fail to remember important details.  It seems to affect the big guys as well.  There are, of course, few things that can be done to make someone remember something, especially when doing so makes them look foolish. For the person asking the questions, this can pose a real problem.

I did hear once about a case in which a feisty trial lawyer (is there any other kind?)–after hearing a deponent repeat “I don’t remember” for about four hours—finally demanded to see the man’s medical and personnel records.  Seems he wanted to find out if they guy was taking drugs that would cause amnesia—or in the alternative, why a company would even hire someone who couldn’t remember anything. 

Thankfully, command chain amnesia doesn’t usually cause problems for the those who have it.  Some, like George Tenet,  go on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In the summer sun, the inside temperature of an automobile with the doors closed can rise 19 degrees in ten minutes and 43 degrees in an hour.  Anytime you prepare to lock and leave an automobile, take a few seconds to “sweep” the car or van visually to make sure you haven’t forgotten something–or someone like a baby, toddler or pet.  Left inside a closed automobile, a child’s core temperature can reach the lethal 107 degrees F.

Broadband, here.

The Plaintiffs in this series of trials think so.  Former Corpus Christi welder Ernest J. Solis is the plaintiff in a trial being held in Cleveland.  His is one of 3,800 other lawsuits regarding Parkinsonism and welding fumes that have been consolidated in federal court there.  The toxin alleged to cause the Parkinsonism is manganese, an element occasionally found in welding fume–and, oddly enough, nuclear fallout.  Manganese is certainly a neurotoxin, but the symptoms it produces are fairly specific and don’t always correlate with classic Parkinsonism. According to Leikin and Paloucek, in the well-regarded (by me anyway) Poisoning and Toxicology Compendium, manganese-toxic patients “have a tendency to fall backwards, not have a prominent tremor and do NOT respond well to dopaminomimetic medication as opposed to idiopathic parkinsonism patients.” I’m betting one of the experts for the defense in this case will be Denver physician Scott D. Phillips.  He wrote an article in Greenbergs Occupational, Industrial and Environmental Toxicology, in which he had this to say about manganese: “Symptoms (of manganese exposure) are typical of parkinsonism. However, the brain lesions from manganese occur in the striatum and palladium in distinction to parkinsonism, in which the substantia nigra is damaged.”  He cites A Barbeau et al, “Role of manganese in dystonia,” Adv Neurol. 14:339, 1976.  Damage to the striatum and palladium is something that, presumably, can be differentiated from damage to the substantia nigra.

Then there’s the issue of naturally-occuring manganese in the environment.  For example, an average cup of tea may contain 2-7 ppm of manganese.

Making matters even more difficult for the Plaintiffs, the conditions of exposure to welding fume are going to be difficult to quantify years after the fact, especially when there may be no clear record of the specific types of welding rods that were used over the time period.  I can imagine the request for production: “all invoices for welding rods going back to 1960, all industrial hygiene monitoring results from 1970 to the present. . .”

Of course, I haven’t seen the court documents, but if the Plaintiff is asserting that welding rods -> manganese -> Parkinsonism in the welder, then it might be a tough case to make.

Prediction: 8:4 Defendant.

From pre-owned body parts.  Worse, there’s currently few federal regulations protecting the consumer. This AP article, appearing on the MSNBC site, tells how you can protect yourself somewhat.

As someone who has both a PC and a Mac, I’ve used Stuffit for years.  Stuffit is a little utility that does two things very well: it compresses files and it decompresses folders and files.  Stuffit is great if you have to send a big group of files to a client—put em all in a folder, compress it with Stuffit and then email.  Very easy.  For years Stuffit was made by a company named Alladin Software.  So I was a little surprised when I received a Stuffit upgrade offer from a company named Allume.  Well, generally, upgrades are a good thing, so I sprung for the $19.95, downloaded the zip file and installed it.  Except. . .I had to first UNinstall my trusted earlier edition. 

So I did.  Then I discovered that the new Stuffit (version 9), um. . .didn’t really work on my machine.  Given a file to decompress, Stuffit would churn for minutes and minutes and the result was an empty folder.  I tried using it on earlier stuffed files and the same thing happened.  Now, as someone who archives a lot of documents, this was not good. 

I went to the Allume site and discovered that they are actually a company called Smith Micro.  That was both news and a weird coincidence.  Back in the mid-90s there was a great program called Hotline. All it did was catalog phone numbers.  Click on the number and the phone would dial (via the modem.) Very cool and essential to anyone who uses the phone a lot.  When Windows 3.1 showed up, Hotline came out with a Windows version.   Then, for reasons unknown, they vanished off the planet.  The company that made Hotline was named Smith Micro. 

So, did my old friend Smith Micro sell me a copy of Stuffit that didn’t well, unstuff?  Maybe, but not likely.  Regardless, I unloaded the new, helpless version of Stuffit and reinstalled my old version 8–which I had bought at Microcenter a few years ago.

Now, Stuffit 9 might work on some computers, but it didn’t on mine.  And if I hadn’t kept the old CD of version 8. . .well, I guess I would be trolling the “Stuffit 9 help forums” looking for answers.  Not a good way to spend company time.

Couple of morals here: 

1. Just because it’s an upgrade doesn’t mean it’s better,
2. Beware when a software company changes names
3. Beware when there’s no phone number for tech support–only support forums.
4. Always keep an installable copy of your software on a CD.

A young woman enters a hospital to give birth, gets an epidural and dies.  The hospital denies any wrongdoing, but there seems to be a lot of evidence to the contrary.  Read the article and decide for yourself.  I’m also including a link to RID, Reduce Infection Deaths.  Worth looking at.

Mountain flying.