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Learn from the past

Japan/Manchuria :: Russia/Ukraine

May 15, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

I was re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s 1981 book Practicing History and came across an article she wrote for Foreign Affairs, in 1936. It was entitled “Japan: A Clinical Note.” It smacks of today’s news.

Historical context

Japan invaded Manchuria on September 19, 1931. They established a puppet state, called Manchukuo, and occupied it until the end of World War II. 

Tuchman’s opening paragraph

“Ever since the Manchurian incident, Japanese foreign policy has been reaping the world’s condemnation. Unlike an individual, a nation cannot admit itself in error; so Japan’s only answer has been to tell herself that her judges are wrong and she is right. To strengthen this contention, she has built up the belief that she acts from the purest motives which her fellow nations willfully misunderstand. The more they disapprove, the more adamant grows Japan’s conviction that she is right.”

Do we ever learn from history?

Here’s Tuckman again, later in the book.

“If history were a science, we should be able to get a grip on her, learn her ways, establish her patterns, know what will happen tomorrow. Why is it that we cannot? The answer lies in what I call the Unknowable Variable – namely, man. Human beings are always and finally the subject of history. History is the record of human behavior, the most fascinating subject of all, but illogical and so crammed with an unlimited number of variables that it is not susceptible of the scientific method nor of systematizing.”

Prepare for the future?

Russia is not Japan. Today’s inflation is not 1970’s inflation. Today’s banking issues are not the Savings & Loan crisis of the past.

But …. Human nature is consistent. Become a “people person” to better understand the future.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories Tagged With: minihistory, preparedmind

The Evolution of the Networked House

May 9, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

This is a story that has nothing to do with the internet. It has to do with health, safety, and quality of life. And, if you’re like me, you’ve enjoyed the benefits of a networked house for a long time.

“Back in the Day”

You used candles and kerosene lanterns for light at night. If you got careless a fire ensued and maybe, just maybe, you burned down the house.

You used a privy or outhouse for your toilet needs. Or maybe you lived in a tenement with a water closet for twenty people. Nice, but it emptied into a cesspool in the “back yard.” Not too sanitary.

You only occasionally bathed because you had to haul water from the well and then heat it on a wood-burning stove. Good thing that everyone smelled as bad.

You had coal delivered so that you could heat the house in the winter. Oh, dad had to stoke the furnace in the morning before he went to work.

If someone got sick you had to “run into town” to fetch the doctor (who may, or may not, be home.)

The networked house?

From the late 1800s until about 1940 the houses and apartment we’re familiar with today slowly connected to a series of networks: electricity, water, sewer, gas, and telephone.

Edison’s vision was for a lighting system, not just a light bulb. New York’s Pearl Street Station was started in the 1880s and provided electricity to about one square mile. Now we flick a switch, not strike a match for light.

New York City relied on well water until 1842, when the Croton Aqueduct brought water along a forty-two-mile journey. Pressurized, filter water could then be brought into a house (or tenement) and be trusted to be free of many contaminants.

Water closets finally connected to a network of sewers and took sewage away. Chicago’s sewer system was started in the 1880s (requiring raising many city streets up to 14 feet) and was the largest in the world by 1930.

Natural gas pipelines were constructed in the 1920s and gas slowly replaced delivered coal for heating purposes. Basements became habitable and houses could be heated throughout the day.

Although telephones were in use in the late 1800s, the real growth came after switching technology was developed and continuously improved in the early 20th century. As the old Yellow Pages ad used to say, “Let your fingers do the walking.”

Perspective

Sometimes I look at today’s innovations and wonder “so what?” Moving from Web2 to Web3 may make a difference to someone looking for a new way to move money without using banks but, again, so what?

Bitcoin or a working toilet?  Which one do you think will be seen as a more important innovation a hundred years from now?

Looking back in time I see numerous innovations that solved real problems and changed lives. We need more “mechanicians.” (FYI, that’s an 18th century word for artisans skilled in the creation, operation, and repair of machinery that “did stuff.”)

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories Tagged With: minihistory, preparedmind

R101: Gas bags, an overweight dirigible, and politics

May 2, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Germany started flying rigid airships when they launched the Zeppelin line in 1910 and successfully carried passengers globally for thousands of flights. This form of civilian air travel was interrupted by WWI but resumed after the war.

In 1928 the Graf Zeppelin took passengers on a 112-hour non-stop flight from Germany to New Jersey. Over the next nine years it flew over a million miles, on 590 flights, carrying freight, mail, and thousands of passengers around the world. Safe and reliable.

So why did England decide to design their own airship rather than copy the airframe of the Germans? Pride? Anti-Germany sentiment? Not sure.

R101

In 1924, the British government launched competitive efforts for a new airship, pitting the government against a private contractor. The result was two airships, the R100 and R101.

The government R101 ended up twenty-three tons over design weight and was then lengthened for additional gas bags to improve lift. It was ready for air-worthiness testing in October, 1930. And here is where politics played a deadly hand.

Lord Thompson, the royal Air Minister, demanded the R101 to be shown at an air show in London on October 20, 1930. However, he also had planned a round trip to India to “show the flag” over a major part of the British Empire. So, with a total of seventeen hours of flight test after the retrofit, the R101 launched for the first leg to India during the night of October 4th, the latest opportunity to meet both schedules.

It gently crashed a few hours later against a high French hill. But because hydrogen was used for the gas bags, forty-six of the 54 aboard were killed in the ensuing fire.

The official board of inquiry found that it was “impossible to avoid the conclusion that the R101 would not have started for India on the evening of October 4th if it had not been that matters of public policy were considered as making it highly desirable that she should do so.”

Lesson

Political pressure and operating decisions are a deadly combination. Beware.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories Tagged With: minihistory, preparedmind

Hon, please pick up some Bayer Heroin on your way home.

April 25, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

The search for effective pain medications was urgent in the late 1880s. We still had many Civil War veterans who has suffered horrible wounds and amputations. Many of them had been given morphine for their pain and now found themselves addicted to the drug.

Cities had been growing and the air was polluted with dust, coal dust, and fumes. Asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis were common, and they triggered incessant coughing. People were sick and could not even sleep well to get rest.  But hope was on the horizon over in Germany.

Felix Hoffman, a research chemist at the Bayer Company, synthesized heroin in 1897. And the test subjects, employees at Bayer, said it made them feel heroic. Hence the brand name, Heroin. And, in addition to reducing pain, it worked as a respiratory depressant and reduced the constant coughing.

In 1898 Bayer had two wonder drugs on their hands: aspirin and heroin. Heinrich Dreser, Hoffman’s supervisor, was concern about the potential for aspirin to weaken the heart muscles, so he pushed for the production of heroin, especially mixed with cough syrup. It was marketed as having almost no toxic side effects and that it was non-addictive.

By 1899 Bayer was producing about a ton of heroin annually and marketed it to 23 countries. However, in 1902 researchers started to see the addictive nature of this wonder drug and by 1914 a doctor’s prescription was needed. Ten years later it was banned in the United States.

Lesson

Solutions often create new problems. It was true of the synthesizing of heroin to deal with pain, the after-work cocktail to help with stress,  the overuse of antibiotics, and the morphing of social media. Nice solution — new problem.

Application

Think of a solution you’ve found for one of your nasty problems. Might there be a long-term unintended consequence?

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories

Dandruff, gonorrhea, and halitosis

April 19, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Old, established products often have a fascinating history. Consider, if you will, the story of Listerine.

The story

In 1879 Joseph Lawrence, a St. Louis-based doctor, developed an alcohol-based formula for a surgical antiseptic. He did this in honor of the pioneering surgeon, Doctor Joseph Lister, and he named it Listerine.

He hoped to also promote Listerine’s use as a general germicide.  He licensed his formula to a local pharmacist named Jordan Lambert in 1881. Lambert later formed Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and launched Listerine as a mouthwash.

Interesting, a distilled form was also sold as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea (What?!).

Listerine sales grew rapidly in the 1920s when they “discovered” it could handle a little-known condition, halitosis. Now the specter of “bad breath” could be overcome and your love-life was saved! Ah, the magic of aggressive advertising.

However, this wonder-substance was not finished by any means. It was later advertised as helping with “infectious dandruff” and used as a skin conditioner.

A lesson

Sometimes the marketing of a product gets ahead of the science behind the product. Listerine works for its intended use as a mouthwash. And although I’m not a doctor, I suggest not using it for gonorrhea.

Application

Make sure your value proposition is backed up with a valid value promise.

Filed Under: Learn from the past, stories Tagged With: mindprep, minihistory

Citizen Journalist – do you have a code of ethics?

April 10, 2022 by Bill Welter Leave a Comment

Long ago and far away…

….there was a group that we called “newspaper journalists.” They were the reporters that concerned citizens counted on for information that was used for learning, personal judgement, and decision making.

According to Wikipedia (don’t laugh, it’s a well vetted source these days) a journalist is “a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public.” And a reporter is “a type of journalist who researches, writes, and reports on information in order to present sources, conduct interviews, engage in research, and make reports.”

Journalists were focused on “the news,” not “my opinion about the news.”

OK. Cool. Old fashioned, but so what? Times were different. Were journalists some kind of saint? Didn’t they lie and screw up?

Well, yes, they did. And here is where we come across another role, the editor.

Among other job responsibilities, editors spent time:

  • Ensuring that the written content was objective.
  • Fact checking.
  • Rejecting writing that appeared to be plagiarized, ghostwritten, or published elsewhere.

If both parties were doing their job, intelligent people could get the information they needed to make informed decisions about the state of the world.

But was this a freelance endeavor without guidance? No.

Really?

In 1919, a small group of reporters got together and created the Society of Professional Journalists. That society is still around and, lo and behold, it has a Code of Ethics.

The Code of Ethics is built around four principles:

  • Seek truth and report it.
  • Minimize harm.
  • Act independently.
  • Be accountable and transparent.

And now we have social media and anybody with a computer, tablet or smartphone can become a self-styled journalist and, what’s more, a journalist without an editor. So, unless you want to act like a knucklehead, you might want to consider and adhere to a code of ethics before you write something, forward a post, or even “like” a post.

We have plenty of people willing to lie and with strong opinions about their view of “the news.” Don’t join them.

What we need are people who will take the time to improve the news we use. Have a code of ethics.

Filed Under: Learn from the past

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