MRI accidents

I spent hours (literally) this week, stuffed into an MRI machine, getting whole-body scans done. Won't know the outcomes until next week, but in talking about it to some of my colleagues, it became clear that they'd never seen or heard of the interesting occupational safety aspects of operating an MRI. The "M," of course, stands for "magnetic," as in "magnetic resonance imaging," and that implies big honkin' magnets, run off supercooled helium, not just line power. So the magnets stay on all the time, and that means you really should keep ferrous materials like, say, office chairs, out of the room. See the pictures below for examples.



The object in the shot on the right appears to be an IV pole; hope it wasn't hooked up to a patient when they wheeled him or her in.

While looking for something else ...

... I found the linked press release on the Ann Arbor government web site. We're the third most "walkable" city in the country, says here. Could be because it's such an impossible city to drive in.

#317 in a series: why I hate Michigan

The picture below was taken at 6:00 PM. At 2:00 PM, there was no snow on the ground.

I hate this, I hate it, I hate it. It's March 21, for Christ's sake! (Although we did go camping only a couple of hundred miles north of here one May 1st and got six inches of wet snow between 4:00 and 8:00 PM. Broke tent poles and everything. But that was aberrent. This has been the norm, this year.)

The way things used to be

A long, long time ago (i.e., the mid-90's), the workings of Moore's law had not yet had their inevitable effect on data mass storage technologies. Corporations were forced to face the fact that they had lots and lots of data (a gigabyte was a lot, back then, believe it or not) on rotating media (disk drives, to the unwashed), and no good way to back it up, since (again, believe it or not) disk was decidedly not cheap, as it is now. In fact, lots of disaster recovery plans were based on laboriously copying data from random-access media (disk drives, again) to sequential access media (that would be ... tape). Trouble was, the cheapest formats of tape didn't hold all that much data, so in order to achieve the volumes you needed, you had to have lots and lots of silly little tape cartridges lying around. And of course, you didn't want them literally lying around -- you wanted them stored in some structured way, so that when disaster struck, you could find the backed up data and get it copied back from tape to a disk ASAP.

The schemes that what was then called the plug-compatible industry (meaning makers of mainframe and large-Unix system peripherals that would mimic IBM hardware) came up with (IBM itself came up with a few, too) were often bizarre. Rooms full of so-called tape robots, for example, basically booths with tapes stored around the sides, their position supposedly known to the software running the device, and with a robotic arm in the middle that would yank out the appropriate cartridge, plug it into the one or two actual tape drives in the installation, and later on, return it to the right storage slot again. Some of these things (when they weren't catching fire -- that's another story) had pass-through windows so that the robots could, in theory, hand tapes to each other. That any of this ever worked is almost beyond belief -- even though many of us were deeply involved in it -- leading to a mantra for those times: "I / we hate tape!"

Anyway, because of a variety of pressures, economic and otherwise, many of these plug-compatible companies were flaky places to work. They tended to get execs who had been fired by IBM or were for some other reason not ready for prime time, and their approach to running an organization was often as far-fetched as the design of their products. And with that, we reach the point of this whole piece, namely another of our old holiday communications, from 1996 or thereabouts, intended to be a faithful reproduction of the employee outreach efforts of such employers. There are a number of inside jokes which won't make a lot of sense, unless you were living the dream, back then, in the far off days when moving parts in mass storage devices weren't considered a bad thing.

Really bad ...

Let's say that Fred over here comes to me and asks me to certify that his baseball bat is a harmless piece of sports equipment. As the duly authorized authority on such things, I do so. Then Fred whacks you in the head with the bat. The Supreme Court subsequently rules that since I certified Fred's bat as harmless and I must know what I'm doing, you can't sue Fred for whacking you.

Trouble is, everybody including the GAO and my own staff (at the imaginary regulatory authority I've created for the purposes of this thought experiment) knows and has said publically that I'm underfunded, understaffed, and underclued. But still, since Fred conducted some kind of clinical trials for his bat and I accepted them as good science, Fred is off the legal hook.

That's basically what just happened in the realm of medical devices. The Supremes ruled that a man who was critically injured by an allegedly defective Medtronic inflatible heart catheter can't sue Medtronic, since the device was FDA approved. And apparently the ruling may be extended to cover drugs, too. This is one to watch.

Chinese protests turn violent

Even allowing for limited access to the facts, government spin, or even some level of bias in the western press' reporting, nothing in this story sounds good. And it was all over a "not in my backyard" disagreement concerning the location of a chemical plant.

Meanwhile, same source, different topic: rattling the sabre at Taiwan, again.

New Marine Training Regimen

But the flame orange camo is probably a non-starter.

Health Care Fun

A couple of recent stories from the realm of big health care:

Did you know Dr. Jarvik isn't actually licensed to practice medicine? Wonder if Pfizer did, before it signed him up to promote Lipitor. I also did find myself wondering (just because I'm a cynical SOB) if there's any reason why two Michigan legislators are on Pfizer's case -- couldn't possibly have anything to do with Pfizer's abandonment of Michigan? Probably not.

Scarier (who actually pays attention to pharmaceutical ads, after all?) is this story about harvesting organs for transplant. I can't tell from the reportage what I really think about it, but it sounds like the doc (who could get eight years in jail if convicted) did bend a protocol or two.

More Snow

On the off chance you're interested, this is what things looked like from the front door this morning, with snow dog and snow woman returning from their walk.

The end of civilization as we know it

More Americans giving up golf ... told you so, in fact in 1999, as this old WCA item demonstrates.

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9990818

CAN WE AFFORD IT?

There's big money in it, high-profile real estate deals to be done, and a glitzy, glamorous image being presented. People who take part are encouraged to think of themselves as "players" and to spend money right and left. There are magazines, TV shows, and web sites, all trying to give it a positive spin. But underneath it all, there's a tragic story of addiction, loss, and human pathos. Join us tonight when Wood- Charles brings you, "Golf: Clubbed Into Submission."

To some people, golf is still connected with gangsters and the underworld, a legacy of the prohibition era, when golf was illegal throughout the United States. In fundamentalist Islamic cultures, golf is a creature of the devil, inextricably linked with an incident in the 12th century, when dissenting sects in Afghanistan attacked each other with putters. And most Southern Baptists at least claim to shun golf, on the grounds that it leads to dancing.

But lately, perhaps as part of America's general moral decline, perhaps due to our increasing exposure to violence in the media and the lack of stable, two- parent families, more and more of our impressionable adults are turning to golf, some briefly, losing no more than a few weekends and a few thousand dollars in equipment and clothing , others losing livelihoods, homes, marriages, and their sense of self worth. The question has to be: can America afford it?

Golf can be subtle or all-consuming. Two case histories serve to demonstrate the range of ill effects otherwise (more or less) rational people can suffer.

One such history, that of Mr. Ken P., illustrates the middle path. Mr. P. describes himself as a social golfer. He plays one or two games a week, "just to relax," and truly believes that he can quit anytime he wants. However, in the last year, he's left his high- prestige career in the tape software business and is supporting himself with a meagre living in the fastener trade, which he supplements by hustling restaurants for free chicken wings.

More alarming is the story of Tom K. After a lifetime of abstemious behavior, he was introduced to golf by a relative. Within months, Mr. K. had lost his job, and so had everyone who worked with him! While this is admittedly not typical, it illustrates the devastating effects golf can have

What can be done? Golf courses are springing up everywhere. As the rust belt cities of the north try to rejuvenate their aging centres, golf courses look like a quick answer. In Detroit alone, dozens of dilapidated casinos in the downtown area are being bulldozed to make way for golf facilities. Mayor Mel Farr is actively backing the golf initiative, swearing that it will bring employment and revenue to the city. But many worry that all it will bring is tacky landscaping and desperate Mason shoe dealers, hoping against hope that they'll beat the odds. Others propose a conspiracy theory: golf is a minority plot to get mainstream whities hooked on something that will break up their families, enslave them to corporate interests, and divert their attention from more subtle attacks on American values like Lilith Fair and the Teletubbies.

How can you tell if you or someone close to you is involved with golf? Experts say that there are several warning signs: always being short of money; strange tastes in shoes; and a tendency to buy up large tracts of land in the northern lower peninsula. If you think you may have a problem with golf, the American Medical Association suggests trying something cheaper and less time-consuming, like getting a Ph.D. in Particle Physics or restoring vintage motorcycles.

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The Wood-Charles News Service has been brought to you by the Odd Town Tavern and Golf Resort in sunny downtown Ann Arbor, where everyone is trying to promote a new euphemism, "Dumber than a Kansas School Board."

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