Made in Japan?

[CusworthRovers]

I was thinking a pair of Farrah's just to add a bit of class to the cultured Bovine that has the ability to refrain from discharging a bucket of shit, at will. That said I suspect the Farrah's would be too tight to hold the pre-shit gas. I think scientifically, we'd need to be looking at ladies pregnancy pants (obviously stylish ones in a denim effect to give the Bovine some dignity).

[RobTheRover]

Elasticated waist isnt a good look though, Cussy.  Given the state the world is in, the last thing any of us need right now is a bovine uprising, demanding River Island pants rather than Mothercare.

[River Don]

Farrah's are real Knacker Crackers, they were just fine when you were 15 and all you had in your pocket was a front door key and a dinner ticket... Try a pair now with a wallet and a phone, Christ it's enough to make yer eyes water.:cry:

[Thinwhiteduke]

Does anybody think the day will come when man can harness Trouser Gas?

In a way, already being done up and down the country, where sewage works are using methanegas from sewage waste to power the works themselves. The Salt End Sewage Treatmnent works in Hull being a case in point.

[CusworthRovers]

That explains where Hull is then, I thought it was a place called 'isthatyou-youdirtybas**rd'

[Savvy]

Gallows humour is what the British are famous for.

When my grandad died I took the day off for his service, he was cremated. The next day I went back to work still upset and in the canteen, one of the lads says to me \"Have a nice barbeque yesterday?\" and about fifteen others pissed themselves with laughing. I laughed myself, even though it hurt. My mate who said it though came up and gave me a big cuddle, and the rest of the boys made a fuss and took me under their wing as I was a young lad then. This banter and support got me through a very tough time.

Its what has made the Railways a great place to work over the years Chris! The inate ability to not take each other too seriously and have the crack, is what makes the place tolerable! who else would turn out at silly o'clock in all kinds of weather if you couldn't have a laugh with each other! long may it continue! I spent sometime pissing about moving boxes about in a Warehouse and realised leaving the rail industry was probably not the best career move I made!

[Savvy]

Billy, following on you post on a serious theme, the Japanese will be fine and will no doubt re-build in a manner designed to combat any increased threats to their structures.  The vast majority of their economy recovery following the second world war can be attributed to a gentleman called William Edwards Deming. He was sent to Japan by Eissenhower at the end of the war, and he told them that if they would embrace the principles that he taught them, they would have the rest of the developed world screaming for protection within 5 years.  The rest as they say is history, no one takes the piss out of Japanese quality now as they did when me and thee were kids eh?  Being in the industry that you are, can I recommend a book for your reading list. If you can get a copy of \"Out of the Crisis\" by William Edwards Deming Cambridge Press 1986 it will change your thought processes no doubt, it certainly did do mine!!!!

Never heard of that Savvy, but I'll definitely dig it out. Ta for the head-ups.

I find Japan fascinating. How a country can go from being more bestial than Nazi Germany (at Nakning in 1937, in three weeks of carnage they massacred Chinese civillians at 30 times the rate that the Nazis killed Jews at Auschwitz, and without the efficiency), to being flattened by American fire-bombs, to being a peace-loving, uber-efficient global manufacturing machine, to becoming a stagnant economic disaster-zone in the space of one lifetime is amazing. They must have a real culture of \"Yes sir - we do what you say.\" Fantastic when it is put to positive use - bloody awful or terrifying when it isn't.

Me and you both Bill, you'll find that the majority of what they do is not rocket science, its basic common sense combined with the ability to listen as well as talk.

Whilst at Sunderland University I had the opportunity to visit the Public works department at Washington. The example being made was how a public sector company could work in the private sector. The bill of goods was the public works being able to quote you for a set of double glazed windows ratber than Safe style UK or Everest et al, and the public works would undercut and fit said windows!  At the factory, the final product involved a ten stage process which included as the last stage, you've got it, \"inspection\".

Now the Japanese have a process called \"poka yoka\" which is basically a mistake proofing system.  The basic tenaments are that as a process you accept no defects, you create no defects, and you pass on no defects, if all of this is achieved at each stage of the process, final inspection becomes obsolete, unfortunely in this country, we've not managed to get on that paradigm yet!!!

[Berkshire Rover]

Another example was quoted by an American management guru called Tom Peters. He gave the example of a contract between an American firm and a japanese manufacturing company. The contract was for tens of thousands of a specific component that had to be manufactured to a very tight specification but allowed a small % (1% I think) to be outside the tolerance. When the shipment was delivered, the Amercians found a package that contained the 1% that were out of tolerance, and were clearly labelled as such!

[Viking Don]

Billy, following on you post on a serious theme, the Japanese will be fine and will no doubt re-build in a manner designed to combat any increased threats to their structures.  The vast majority of their economy recovery following the second world war can be attributed to a gentleman called William Edwards Deming. He was sent to Japan by Eissenhower at the end of the war, and he told them that if they would embrace the principles that he taught them, they would have the rest of the developed world screaming for protection within 5 years.  The rest as they say is history, no one takes the piss out of Japanese quality now as they did when me and thee were kids eh?  Being in the industry that you are, can I recommend a book for your reading list. If you can get a copy of \"Out of the Crisis\" by William Edwards Deming Cambridge Press 1986 it will change your thought processes no doubt, it certainly did do mine!!!!

Never heard of that Savvy, but I'll definitely dig it out. Ta for the head-ups.

I find Japan fascinating. How a country can go from being more bestial than Nazi Germany (at Nakning in 1937, in three weeks of carnage they massacred Chinese civillians at 30 times the rate that the Nazis killed Jews at Auschwitz, and without the efficiency), to being flattened by American fire-bombs, to being a peace-loving, uber-efficient global manufacturing machine, to becoming a stagnant economic disaster-zone in the space of one lifetime is amazing. They must have a real culture of \"Yes sir - we do what you say.\" Fantastic when it is put to positive use - bloody awful or terrifying when it isn't.

Me and you both Bill, you'll find that the majority of what they do is not rocket science, its basic common sense combined with the ability to listen as well as talk.

Whilst at Sunderland University I had the opportunity to visit the Public works department at Washington. The example being made was how a public sector company could work in the private sector. The bill of goods was the public works being able to quote you for a set of double glazed windows ratber than Safe style UK or Everest et al, and the public works would undercut and fit said windows!  At the factory, the final product involved a ten stage process which included as the last stage, you've got it, \"inspection\".

Now the Japanese have a process called \"poka yoka\" which is basically a mistake proofing system.  The basic tenaments are that as a process you accept no defects, you create no defects, and you pass on no defects, if all of this is achieved at each stage of the process, final inspection becomes obsolete, unfortunely in this country, we've not managed to get on that paradigm yet!!!

Not sure there's such a thing as a mistake-proof system. Certainly not in Japan anyway, as recent events highlight. Probably the stupidest place on the planet to build so many nuclear power stations, given the geology.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Billy, following on you post on a serious theme, the Japanese will be fine and will no doubt re-build in a manner designed to combat any increased threats to their structures.  The vast majority of their economy recovery following the second world war can be attributed to a gentleman called William Edwards Deming. He was sent to Japan by Eissenhower at the end of the war, and he told them that if they would embrace the principles that he taught them, they would have the rest of the developed world screaming for protection within 5 years.  The rest as they say is history, no one takes the piss out of Japanese quality now as they did when me and thee were kids eh?  Being in the industry that you are, can I recommend a book for your reading list. If you can get a copy of \"Out of the Crisis\" by William Edwards Deming Cambridge Press 1986 it will change your thought processes no doubt, it certainly did do mine!!!!

Never heard of that Savvy, but I'll definitely dig it out. Ta for the head-ups.

I find Japan fascinating. How a country can go from being more bestial than Nazi Germany (at Nakning in 1937, in three weeks of carnage they massacred Chinese civillians at 30 times the rate that the Nazis killed Jews at Auschwitz, and without the efficiency), to being flattened by American fire-bombs, to being a peace-loving, uber-efficient global manufacturing machine, to becoming a stagnant economic disaster-zone in the space of one lifetime is amazing. They must have a real culture of \"Yes sir - we do what you say.\" Fantastic when it is put to positive use - bloody awful or terrifying when it isn't.

Me and you both Bill, you'll find that the majority of what they do is not rocket science, its basic common sense combined with the ability to listen as well as talk.

Whilst at Sunderland University I had the opportunity to visit the Public works department at Washington. The example being made was how a public sector company could work in the private sector. The bill of goods was the public works being able to quote you for a set of double glazed windows ratber than Safe style UK or Everest et al, and the public works would undercut and fit said windows!  At the factory, the final product involved a ten stage process which included as the last stage, you've got it, \"inspection\".

Now the Japanese have a process called \"poka yoka\" which is basically a mistake proofing system.  The basic tenaments are that as a process you accept no defects, you create no defects, and you pass on no defects, if all of this is achieved at each stage of the process, final inspection becomes obsolete, unfortunely in this country, we've not managed to get on that paradigm yet!!!

Not sure there's such a thing as a mistake-proof system. Certainly not in Japan anyway, as recent events highlight. Probably the stupidest place on the planet to build so many nuclear power stations, given the geology.

Wrong.

Japan has no coal.

They have no oil.

They have 150million people and one of the world's most powerful economies.

How are they supposed to provide energy for it? Once the WWII plan of enslaving 500million Chinese and Koreans and making them run on treadmills linked to dynamos went tits, they didn't really have much choice but to go nuclear.

It's always a risk. But even now, after the worst quake to hit Japan for 1000 years, the odds are that they will contain this problem. It's not going to be remotely like Chernobyl

They might have a contamination problem for a decade. They might have a few thousand people with health problems. That's the gamble.

Now compare and contrast that against what would have happened to their economy, their standard of living, their life expectancy and their technological ability to withstand earthquakes if they HADN'T gone for nuclear power. If they hadn't been technologically advanced enough and economically rich enough to pay for seismic-resistant houses, and to manage a rescue system, you wouldn't be looking at 15-20,000 dead in the quake, you'd have had 1-2 million dead from their houses falling in on them.

It f**king well terrifies me that there's going to be a naive, ignorant green backlash against nuclear power, by comfortable middle class bleeding-heart Westerners.

Do you know what one of the biggest killers in the developing world is? Lung disease caused by constant breathing in of smoke from wood and dung fires that are used for heating and cooking. Do you think the 2 million people a year who die those agonising early deaths after years of being debilitated by the illness would prefer for their grandkids to carry on living like that to satisfy some green conscience in England? Or would they rather their country end up with electricity coming from nuclear power stations, and accept the fact that every few decades, a few thousand people might die in an accident.

[Viking Don]

Japan isn't the only country in the world that has no coal or oil. So does that mean that that the African nations should follow their lead? Sorry Billy, but they're not gambling with just their own nation's well-being.

As an advocate of nuclear-power I don't really go down the green line, if it can be done safely then it's another short term answer. Where does the fuel come from? You know that supply is also limited. In this country we don't have to worry about geology as such, but we have other issues to concern us. Terrorist attacks being among them.

I find it quite frustrating that having a view against nuclear power in geologically unstable areas necessarily puts you into the green welly brigade in the minds of some people. Nuclear power at the moment is an expensive option when we could be ploughing that money into real long-term solutions.

I've heard the argument that the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine etc. It's bullshit. The wind does always blow, and the Sun does always shine. The tides are unstoppable and geothermic energy is there for the rest of humankinds existence. It's just a case of forming a worldwide energy policy. Unfortunately it's secular politics that get in the way, so in the meantime let's just be happy to gamble on our future eh? For what exactly? An even smaller MP3 player or phone that will wake you up with a shag followed by a cup of tea and a cancer-free fag?

And really, being the one of the biggest economies in the world, they could have just paid for some oil/coal, like we do.

And it won't be a problem for just a decade. These materials have half-lifes of thousands of years. If it goes up, that area will be uninhabitable pretty much forever, in a human time-scale.

I do share your optimism that it's not going to be as bad as Chenobyl, but my crystal-ball obviously isn't as high grade as yours.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I wasn't suggesting that you were a naive green type - I just lose my rag on this issue because it energy is THE most important problem facing us over the next century. Get it wrong and we f**k up our own economy at best. At worst, we cause global tensions that could tip us into major conflict. And that's before you look at the moral case of how we support the poor t**ts in sub-Saharan Africa or the worst places in central Asia in developing a humanely decent standard of living.

Energy policy is horrifically difficult. It's all very well saying, go for wind/wave/geothermal power, but it has NEVER been shown to work on a scale that could supply major economies. So any country that chucked all its eggs in that basket would be taking a massive risk that they would end up screwing their entire economy.

On the same theme, it's not as simple as \"they could have paid for oil or gas like we do.\" Look at what I said before. If Japan had gone for a far more expensive option, their economy would have been weaker for decades and they would have ended up not having the resources or the technolocgical sophistication to make them able to protect their citizens against the (inevitable) earthquakes.

If Japan had bumbled along with shit GDP growth like us since WWII, and as a result had skimped and saved on its seismic design because their equivalent of Gideon told them that they couldn't afford it, how many people do you think would have died last Friday? And in the big scheme of things, is that better or worse than a nuclear power stattion problem that looks like being contained despite the best efforts of our 24/7 media to suggest that it's the biggest disaster in world history.

[Viking Don]

Well I just think we are far too busy putting economy before humanity. f**k the economy, f**k everyone's economy. When someone gains invariably someone else loses. If we as a species continue to focus on 'our economy' then there's really no hope for us as a species. We'll wipe each other out.

Idealist I am I know, it ain't gonna happen. But if we ever are to understand that the world is just one place then there's hope that natural resources can be shared throughout the world.

Imagine there's no countries etc.

No matter how many MP3 players are produced we still have the same amount of food available. We can't eat fission chips.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I used to think like that.

Go and have a look at the figures for life expectancy vs GDP per capita.

If you don't revise your opinions after looking at those numbers, you're (not you personally - \"one is not\") fit to be called properly human.

Basically, the richer (for which, read: more economically and technologically advanced) a country is, the longer-lived and  healthier its people are.

So your contrsst between \"economy\" and \"people\" is a false one.

It is economic growth that has given us better, healthier, longer lives. And given more of us the chance to become educated and not have to spend every day doing back-breaking manual work to earn a crust.

Me, I'll take the glitches that come with economic and technological growth, if that growth keeps on making life better for billions of people. If a few hundred thousand die along the way, that's peanuts compared to the billion who would have died early deaths if technology hadn't improved their lives and their economies.

PS: That idea that \"some winning = someone else losing\" was proved wrong about 250 years ago by Adam Smith. There are many, many ways in which all sides can win. THAT is why technological and economic development is not evil inherently.

What do you think will get a billion people in Africa out of grinding poverty? Charity? People in the West waking up one morning and thinking \"I'll sell the car and give the money to Mozambique peasant farmers?\"

It'll be econimic development. It'll be when they have a chance to produce stuff that the rest of the world wants to buy and enoug money to buy what the rest of the world produces.

It WILL come. And it'll come even quicker if we don't listen to bleeding heart Westerners drawing wrong-headed conclusions from isolated cases like Fukushima.

[Viking Don]

Not sure what you mean now. I'm not suggesting we go back to the dark ages and start living in caves, we have Science, which is really what has led to the longer life expectancies you refer to.

So just how rich do we have to become before we live forever? Is that the aim?

We in the the west have already achieved a standard of living that I for one am perfectly happy with, I really don't need any more. The world was and still is a beautiful place. It's not going to look any better from the back seat of a Bentley sipping champagne and snorting Coke. I've been educated to a standard that has made it possible to earn a living without doing much more than I'm doing now, in fact, it's more difficult for my poor brain having this lovely discussion with you now than it has ever been been to earn enough money to be happy and healthy.  (I know you hate them things!).

I just want your standard of health and happiness for the entire world, so what do you imagine is holding the educated wealthy world from applying this standard? I'm not arguing about our standard of living, but at the same time I'd rather see what we call the 'developing' world being given a little more help to reach our standards than have our economy spend a few billion so I can live a couple of years longer.

I'm really not bothered about living for a few years longer in a shitty care home in a country where the government steal whatever I've earmarked for my kids, just to keep me barely alive and dribbling for a few more miserable years so they can point to the longer life misnomer. That's just bullshit also.

As for non-fossil fuels NEVER having been shown to work - can you think of any occasion where it has been tried? Is there any reason WHY it has never been tried? Probably nothing to do with the people who make lots and lots and even more lots of money from Oil, is it? Heard of the guy who invented the diesel engine? Killed, as it was designed to run on peanut oil. Can't have that can we?

Talking of Oil, Libya?

It's the years in between dribbling that are important. Not sure it really matters how long that is for. We have a life expectancy so try and live it.

[Savvy]

Another example was quoted by an American management guru called Tom Peters. He gave the example of a contract between an American firm and a japanese manufacturing company. The contract was for tens of thousands of a specific component that had to be manufactured to a very tight specification but allowed a small % (1% I think) to be outside the tolerance. When the shipment was delivered, the Amercians found a package that contained the 1% that were out of tolerance, and were clearly labelled as such!

[attachment=583]mcl.gif[/attachment]

I also heard of an american company that actually sent a consignment of extra parts along with each shipment to make up for any defects found in the main order. The fact that this costs them money and that defects don't come for free must have never occurred to them! Conversely, who the fcuk would do business with a company that would do this?

[Savvy]

Billy, following on you post on a serious theme, the Japanese will be fine and will no doubt re-build in a manner designed to combat any increased threats to their structures.  The vast majority of their economy recovery following the second world war can be attributed to a gentleman called William Edwards Deming. He was sent to Japan by Eissenhower at the end of the war, and he told them that if they would embrace the principles that he taught them, they would have the rest of the developed world screaming for protection within 5 years.  The rest as they say is history, no one takes the piss out of Japanese quality now as they did when me and thee were kids eh?  Being in the industry that you are, can I recommend a book for your reading list. If you can get a copy of \"Out of the Crisis\" by William Edwards Deming Cambridge Press 1986 it will change your thought processes no doubt, it certainly did do mine!!!!

Never heard of that Savvy, but I'll definitely dig it out. Ta for the head-ups.

I find Japan fascinating. How a country can go from being more bestial than Nazi Germany (at Nakning in 1937, in three weeks of carnage they massacred Chinese civillians at 30 times the rate that the Nazis killed Jews at Auschwitz, and without the efficiency), to being flattened by American fire-bombs, to being a peace-loving, uber-efficient global manufacturing machine, to becoming a stagnant economic disaster-zone in the space of one lifetime is amazing. They must have a real culture of \"Yes sir - we do what you say.\" Fantastic when it is put to positive use - bloody awful or terrifying when it isn't.

Me and you both Bill, you'll find that the majority of what they do is not rocket science, its basic common sense combined with the ability to listen as well as talk.

Whilst at Sunderland University I had the opportunity to visit the Public works department at Washington. The example being made was how a public sector company could work in the private sector. The bill of goods was the public works being able to quote you for a set of double glazed windows ratber than Safe style UK or Everest et al, and the public works would undercut and fit said windows!  At the factory, the final product involved a ten stage process which included as the last stage, you've got it, \"inspection\".

Now the Japanese have a process called \"poka yoka\" which is basically a mistake proofing system.  The basic tenaments are that as a process you accept no defects, you create no defects, and you pass on no defects, if all of this is achieved at each stage of the process, final inspection becomes obsolete, unfortunely in this country, we've not managed to get on that paradigm yet!!!

Not sure there's such a thing as a mistake-proof system. Certainly not in Japan anyway, as recent events highlight. Probably the stupidest place on the planet to build so many nuclear power stations, given the geology.

You may have got my comments out of context Don, I was talking manufacturing.

[BobG]

Billy, Don

I've been reading a book published in the mid 70's By Jerry Pournelle if you're interested. an intelligent Yank with an interest in the (then) future. Although some of his data is obsolete now - and so it should be - he does point to the worrying facts that of all the various 'alternative' energy sources thatwere technically feassible or 'developable' in the 70's, not one was then being pursued. Indeed, funding for every single one of them was being cut by Pres. Carter.

Now, Pournelle doesn't say that any one, or all, of these would have been a panacea. But taken together, they could have made a major diference. He felt, back then, that the need for oil could have been removed entirely by the year 2000 if we had done the research into fusion. He also pointed out that imported oil was costing the US $50 Billion a year even then! even spending 150Bn on fusion research would be a drop in the ocean when the savaings would have so vast. Like you, Don, I'm afraid I have come to the conclusion that pork barrel politics, vested interests and electoral neccesity all act to kill new things that threaten old. And that's why, as I hope I made clear earlier, I do not have Billy's faith in the future. We could do as you suggest Billy, but the pressures continue to grow. At what point will we take seriously the neccesary research and development? When it's too late? When the resources are too thin and the immediate pressures (water, food, climate to name but three) are too big to allow us to divert enough into 'research and development'?

We don't think far enough ahead. We don't think globally. If that continues we're f**ked in the long term. And this is one of the 2 reasons I remain in favour of the EC. It's a step on the road to a world policy setting forum.

BobG

[Viking Don]

Eyup Bob, yes I'll have a look into the author you mention. One of the books that helped me form an opinion about this issue is called 'Fission, Fusion and he Energy Crisis' by Stanley Hunt, part of the Physics degree course when I was at Warwick way back in the 80's. A lot of the information in that is now obsolete as we've supposed to have run out of oil by now! But the strange thing is we don't seem to be any closer to solving the problem 30 years later!

To me the greatest technological advances in this area are ones that will solve the problem long-term, and from the little we know now, that just has to be renewable sources and/or fusion. Of course if we crack the fusion problem then we're made, as there's an awful lot of the raw material in the sea! It will take an awful lot to crack, but I'm sure that one day it will be possible. In the meantime we already have the necessary technology to harness renewables and that could even make the need for fusion superfluous. It is the small-village mentality that stops us making serious efforts. Should we ever become a global economy then we'll be fine, but it doesn't look likely when countries continue to think in terms of their own interests and economy.

Sorry Savvy, yes you're right, and anyway the reactors are Russian-designed so I can't blame the nips. The actual components were probably fine, had they been sited in the relatively geographically stable areas of Russia.

My last post on the subject as I know I'm starting to sound like an old hippy. Which is probably my closest political alliance! Cheers fellas, interesting subject for a few more years I feel.

[Sandy Lane]

I can see both sides of this issue, and imho there is merit on both sides.  I'm part of the optimistic lot as the advances in technology in just my lifetime are mind blowing.  I remember when cell phones were big and clunky, tv's were huge cubes sitting back a foot from the wall.  Now I don't have a flat screen tv, but its just to show how everything changes for the better. That said, it's true that this type of technology vastly outpaced other types, and why is that?  Imo because we have people like Steve Jobs' techy ingenuity as well as marketing savvy to market it and make money.  Again, money making is most likely the determining factor, and nuclear technology etc. costs a lot in research and development, and it's not on the top of the governments lists in terms of priorities, but it should be.  So while being optimistic about the future, it's plain to see where we as human beings are falling down on the job - the power of special interests, presidents being friends with oil producing countries etc.  I for one don't know the answer but we should be putting more pressure on the all leaders to look at the entirety of the world to share the problem and come up with  long term solutions as Japan has done owing to their lack of resources, -- while trying to make small advances along the way,  The G-8 summit or maybe now it's the G8+5 summit is a good start, but where is everyone else?  Also, I believe it lacks the personnel, and resources to follow through on any plan they identify as a group to undertake.

As an aside, my daughter works for GE, who apparently had supplied some of the parts for the nuclear reactors in Japan, and happily they have donated $5 million to the effort, but as another but bizarre aside, a lot of her colleagues sit on large athletic balls instead of chairs at their desks to strengthen their cores and backs.  Now I'm not saying this has anything to do with moving ahead with technology, but maybe they will work faster trying to come up with new technologies as I imagine they tire quickly having to sit up straight all day an all...;-)

Fascinating discussion though fellas.

[BobG]

Hi Don

ISBN 0 352 30906 7  'A Step Farther Out' Jerry Pournelle. Paperback.W H Allen & Co 1980

Pournelle made his name as a writer of sc-fi. But he was/is a scientist too. Quite heavily involved in the Moon programme for example.

Did I know u went to Warwick? I can't remember. Rootes Hall eh.....?! And pissed up in the SU. I left in 1977. So I remember it as a building site But I was in the Arts Centre sit in in 74 just as it opened. And I saw the trillions of cops that came one dawn to overpower anybody and everybody. Nasty that was.

Cheers

Bob