Do you remember back in the 1990's when this whole ISO 9000 thing got started? At the time it looked to me much like the more recent Global Warming craze. We had a bunch of poorly educated managers who thought they had stumbled onto the panacea. I think this lame brain idea came out of Europe. At the time and now, I did not see Europe as the leader in anything except unionization. What it did was to create a mass of paper work that did not produce anything. I never heard one of those who were out promoting the ISO 9000 idea ever refer to Phil Crosby, the father of "Zero Defects". I worked with Phil and understood how simple the concept was and how it worked. It did not require a mass of paper work like the ISO 9000 system. I never heard anyone who was promoting the ISO 9000 program use and real statistics. I don't think any of them could tell you the odds of drawing to an inside straight.
The reason that I bring up the ISO 9000 thing is that we have to be on our guard that some nut will come along who can give a good speech or has the booming voice of a used car salesman and sell us a bill of goods. Think about some that have come after the ISO 9000 fiasco. Things like Global Warming or fears that the oceans will rise and wipe out New York City in a flash. How about Green Energy? How about Energy Independence? If Green Energy has a cost at least 10 times that from oil and coal, why don't we just test the whole concept now by putting a 10 time tax on oil and coal energy? They could not do that to "prove" the merits of the concept because most of the people in the USA would have starved or frozen to death. Every time I hear any politician propose same plan for energy Independence, I what to puke. Why don't they propose something like TV set Independence or Shoe Independence.
The bottom line is that we seem to have far too many con men and too few people with brains. At least in the days before cars, TV and the Internet, many of the con men were confined to their local areas and could not do much damage. Think what it would have been like in the 1600's when they were burning witches if they had all the modern means that we have now? Con men are every where and it seems that our modern society fosters their growth. I can look back on my college days and pick out many of those individuals who were at that time con men. Many matured into even better con men and were part of the "dot com" and "real estate" bubbles. I guess my warning is to always be on guard for the con man. Remember, "If it sounds too good to be true, it is most likely not true".
When you vote in November, remember that we now have con men who operate at the speed of light
now.
PS------------I forgot to mention "New Math". How did we do on that one? Our kids are now about the worst in the world in math. Who was the "con man" who got our unionized school teachers to adopt "New Math"? Isn't it strange how we can never find the "con man" who started all the dumb things? If you really want to get depressed, see how long of a list of "new" things to help our kids learn that were the product of our unionized school teachers, I can't even come up with one!! Getting the idea?
