But before we let Bell and others write the present story, we must remember that there are also a “staggering number” of young people who want the straight up, unvarnished truth. They want doctrinal edges and traditional orthodoxy. They want no-holds-barred preaching. They don’t want to leave traditional Christianity. They are ready to go deeper into it.

I am one of these. Wanting to go deeper. Take me Lord.

Read the review of Rob Bell's book. If you need to read the book. I have decided that at least right now I don't need to. This and number of other reviews are enough for me to know what I may or may not be missing.

The Gospel is too precious and important to be commodified in this manner. The questions he asks are too important to leave so tantalizingly unanswered. Universalism is a heresy, not a lure to use in order to sell books. This much we know, almost a month before the book is to be released.

I read Albert Mohler whenever I get a chance. And I agree with the things he writes. I also find myself agreeing with Justin Taylor who has been so criticized over the last few days.

I am only quoting the last paragraph here but you feel free to follow the link to the website and the full piece.

I don't believe that Justin Taylor and others jumped the gun in their assessment over the last few days. Nor I believe that this will be the end of the Church. In a strange way I actually think that this is good. The 'unmasking' of false teachers is always a good thing.

Now the question is ... what will you do about it?

This series was originally posted in LEAN Thoughts (our old blog).  This is Part 1 of a 6 part series on the process and experience of setting up a LEAN Prototype (or Kaizen) in a very difficult environment: a 75 year old Tool & Die Shop.  Come back for the rest, leave comments and feel free to contact us with any questions.

The company was a medium-sized tool and die shop that manufactured stamping dies for the automotive industry. The basic process to build a die is as follows:

1. Engineer the part forming process (blank, blank, form, form, trim, trim, …etc.)
2. Design the die using 3D Computer Aided Design software (CAD)
3. Order the components from the Bill of Material (blocks of steel, cylinders, etc.)
4. Mill the blocks of steel so they are square on all sides
5. Drill bolt and dowel holes in the blocks of steel
6. Build sub-assemblies by bolting the blocks to steel plates
7. 3D machine sub-assemblies
8. Build the die by bolting sub-assemblies onto die-sets (Upper and Lower)
9. Try-out the tool in a press, adjust until it creates a “quality” part that fits the fixture

During a trade mission to Mexico I had the opportunity to visit several automotive plants where I saw first hand and for the first time just how powerful LEAN manufacturing could be. I am not talking about taking a few steps out of a process here and there. I am talking about entire organizations committed to continually driving waste out of their companies. In one case a seat manufacturer was using approximately a third of their one million square foot facility. And on the floor the proud general manager showed us the series of ever shrinking lines on the floor that marked the continuous reduction in used floor space.

At their customer’s plant I next watched in amazement as nine different vehicle models rolled past me in no particular order off the same assembly line. I thought to myself “if they can get thousands of parts to line up like that and turn them into so many variations of vehicle there has to be a way we could do the same thing back home.”

When I got back from that particular trip I knew I wanted to implement LEAN manufacturing into this 75 year old job shop but I did not know where to start. I decided to use an extended Shift Change meeting to bring everyone together. When they were all seated I enthusiastically explained that I was going to read a chapter out of a book that talked about the Porsche motor company. I told them to substitute the name of our company every time they heard the name “Porsche.” I figured this was high praise indeed for a tool and die shop. And sure to win my audience over.

The chapter I read talked about how Porsche had transformed itself from a grossly inefficient organization building one-off, hand-crafted cars, into a LEAN company producing a consistent product by taking variation out of their processes. Every example they cited, from parts that never fit properly, to a complete lack of flow on the shop floor exactly matched, in my opinion, the issues we faced.

When I finished reading I looked up expectantly and asked for people’s reactions. I could not have been more wrong about my audience’s reaction. Instead of general agreement and a unanimous desire to immediately embrace a new LEAN culture, I was faced with people yelling at me about how I “obviously did not understand our process.”

“Sure,” then cried “anyone can figure out how to make the same car over and over again. That’s easy! But here” they explained “we never make the same tool twice. Every tool is a unique work of art that has never before and will never again be created.” I’m paraphrasing of course. But in other words as far as they were concerned no two manufacturing processes were ever the same for us.

Stunned and disappointed at their reaction I humbly thanked everyone for their time and feedback and adjourned the meeting. “Well that didn’t go exactly as you planned” my executive assistant joked.

But just then a strange thing happened. Amid the continued grumbling from many of the employees as they walked out, I was privately approached by a couple of individuals who told me “you know, there is a lot about that story that makes sense here.”

Click here to cancel reply.

A few days ago we started reposting an old series on a LEAN Prototype. The entire story will be posted at MSA's website over the next few days. It is a great little series we plan on turning into a one piece PDF for broader distribution. There are a lot of misconceptions on what LEAN actually is. Lots of buzz that ebbs and flows.

We approach it in a way that goes beyond lean and focuses on the sustainability and the management of the improvements. Here and elsewhere I will hopefully get a chance to describe what we do and how we do it in more detail.

Too often, and for too long, American “Christianity” has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah.

I read this by Dr. Moore with tears in my eyes. So much of it rang true and so much of it made my heart ache (because it is true). But he finishes it with a bang when he says "It’s sad to see so many Christians confusing Mormon politics or American nationalism with the gospel of Jesus Christ. But, don’t get me wrong, I’m not pessimistic. Jesus will build his church, and he will build it on the gospel. He doesn’t need American Christianity to do it. Vibrant, loving, orthodox Christianity will flourish, perhaps among the poor of Haiti or the persecuted of Sudan or the outlawed of China, but it will flourish."

Amen.
Amen!

Google Instant provides results as you type. This is bound to keep SEO experts and marketing wonks awake at night trying to figure out what new user behavior it might engender.

For one thing, there are now a small number of golden tickets: if a searcher hesitates for even the shortest time between typing letters, auto-suggestions and results show up… and presumably most searches start with a Latin character.

So I thought it would be interesting to find out what the first suggestions are for queries searching with each letter of the Latin alphabet. And here they are:

A	Amazon	N	NetFlix
B	Best Buy	O	Orbitz
C	Craigslist	P	Pandora
D	‘dictionary’	Q	‘quotes’
E	eBay	R	REI
F	Facebook	S	Sears
G	Gmail	T	Target
H	Hotmail	U	USPS
I	Ikea	V	Verizon
J	JetBlue	W	‘weather’
K	Kohl’s	X	XBox
L	Lowe’s	Y	Yahoo
M	MapQuest	Z	Zillow

Note that only D, Q and W bring up a generic word, rather than a brand name directly. This might seem slightly surprising (since appending ‘.com’ to all these brand names will get you straight to their web site), but entirely consistent with this sort of behavior.

Note that these are not the same as the results brought up if you simply enter a single letter in to the search box. If you simply search for ‘H’, you’ll be told about Planck’s Constant and hydrogen – but if you start to type a search with ‘H’, Google thinks you’re most likely to then type ‘otmail’, and the results show accordingly.

Because of that distinction, I’m sure that SEOing your web site for a targetted single letter won’t help – the suggestions are presumably based on vast statistics about which phrases users end up typing after initial stems.

I also tried the same test on Google’s mobile search, vainly hoping that there might be some sign that people might be looking for different things when they are mobile. Maybe ‘directions’ might beat ‘dictionary’ when on the move, eh? But no: they were all exactly the same – bar one. (Strangely YouTube beat Yahoo on the mobile auto-suggest.)

I am sure this list isn’t curated: one hopes that would have put paid to dusty old MapQuest… But there are a few interesting entries in the list. Do more people search for REI than ‘realty’? (Who are REI?) And is ‘Sears’ really the most popular search starting with ‘S’?

What is DSL?

Damn Small Linux is a very versatile 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution.

Damn Small is small enough and smart enough to do the following things:

• Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD)
• Boot from a USB pen drive
• Boot from within a host operating system (that's right, it can run *inside* Windows)
• Run very nicely from an IDE Compact Flash drive via a method we call "frugal install"
• Transform into a Debian OS with a traditional hard drive install
• Run light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of Ram
• Run fully in RAM with as little as 128MB (you will be amazed at how fast your computer can be!)
• Modularly grow -- DSL is highly extendable without the need to customize

DSL was originally developed as an experiment to see how many usable desktop applications can fit inside a 50MB live CD. It was at first just a personal tool/toy. But over time Damn Small Linux grew into a community project with hundreds of development hours put into refinements including a fully automated remote and local application installation system and a very versatile backup and restore system which may be used with any writable media including a hard drive, a floppy drive, or a USB device.

DSL has a nearly complete desktop, and a tiny core of command line tools. All applications are chosen with the best balance of functionality, size and speed. Damn Small also has the ability to act as an SSH/FTP/HTTPD server right off of a live CD. In our quest to save space and have a fully functional desktop we've made many GUI administration tools which are fast yet still easy to use. What does DSL have?

Just a bookmark so I don't forget about this later.

Those of you not based in Canada will not see today's Google Doodle. I am sharing it here for you and to wish you all a Happy Canada Day!

Press on!

There are surely no rules. But in the middle of a challenging but thoroughly enjoyable process of writing my next book, here’s what is working out for me:
1)    Get up early. I’m up at 6am every day, including weekends, to work on the book. Perhaps if I didn’t have other commitments – radio, newspaper column, blog, children – I’d be able to stay in bed later.
2)    Read people whose ideas or research you understand value. Read lots. Take notes.
3)    Read people whose prose style you admire and ask yourself why. These are rarely the same people as mentioned in (2), by the way.
4)    Keep the momentum going. At the moment, having done much of my research, I’m trying to do 300 words every day as a minimum. This low target means that no matter what other commitments I have, I have no excuse not to skim through what I wrote yesterday and add to it. This keeps morale high. It also means that when I can devote a full day to writing, I don’t have to spend hours reminding myself what I was thinking.
5)    Write quickly but expect to do lots of rewriting. I think there’s a virtuous spiral: quick writing means you can let go of earlier drafts that aren’t working. Slow writing puts you under pressure to get things right first time. That doesn’t work for me.

I follow the Undercover Economist with some regularity and thought this a good starter list for future reference.

My problem is that I write at night after everyone has gone to sleep... and this is not always the best time for my brain.

“It’s time the province decided if it’s really committed to this or not,” argues Doug Tessier, senior vice-president of development and implementation for the agency responsible for implementing the government’s multibillion-dollar electronic health records (EHR) strategy.

Progress on the province’s EHR file was hampered by the eHealth Ontario scandal surrounding compensation for consultants, Tessier says. The scandal triggered an audit, which concluded that the provincial government mismanaged over $1 billion and ultimately led to the resignations of former health minister David Caplan and former deputy minister of health Ron Sapsford.

“The swirl and scandal has hurt us,” says Tessier, considered the government’s expert on electronic health systems.

But Ontario’s EHR woes predate the scandal, Tessier says, arguing that there have consistently been delays in making key political decisions since the province first committed to implementation in 2000.

Deliberations on major decisions within the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care have often taken two years, Tessier says. “If you are really committed to this, two years is too long. … To my mind, if the government is not committed to something, they hem and haw.”

Moreover, even the basic, legal framework for patient EHRs —  which will require changes to laws governing patient record management and privacy — still isn’t in place, more than seven years after the province established the agency, Tessier says. Not only are “two or three pieces of new legislation” still required, “but we’ve also got to undo a number of pieces of [existing] legislation.”

The government must also do more persuade health regulatory colleges to overhaul policies that impact on EHRs, Tessier argues. “Let’s put our arm around them and gently bring them into the 21st century. ... With the regulations, the legislation and the policy changes that government has to do, that’s not so gentle. That’s on the critical path. If they don’t do it, we’re blocked completely.”

Tessier also argues that Ontario’s program to encourage physicians and other health care providers to utilize EHRs must be expanded. Under the program, the government absorbs 70% of costs associated with a physician’s move to EHRs. “But it only goes to 9600 [of 24 600] physicians.”

Physicians should be required to use EHRs, including applications such as e-prescribing, and to that end, the government should make the use of EHRs a condition of payment for medical services rendered, Tessier says.    

Tessier also notes that Auditor General Jim McCarter correctly identified that implementing EHRs in Ontario has been complicated by a decision to build the broad information technology infrastructure before developing applications. As McCarter stated in his report, that situation might have been avoided “had there been an overall strategic plan driving the EHR initiative from the very beginning.”

Tessier says there’s also a need for more standardization of platforms and systems. Ontario’s hospitals have developed at least nine different internal electronic records systems, some of which have cost as much as $100 million, he notes. Scores of subsystems have also been developed in labs, pharmacies and clinics. Ontario physicians use at least 20 different electronic records systems. 

Integrating those systems is problematic as many are incompatible, because of commercial competition between system vendors.

Moreover, such systems must somehow reach Ontario’s 13 million patients, said Bill Albino, former head of Smart Systems for Health Agency, the non-profit provincial government agency responsible for establishing a province-wide technology infrastructure.

In a speech at the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics in March 2008, Albino estimated that a properly functioning EHR system would yield annual cost savings of at least 6% across the province’s $42.5-billion system, or about $2.4-billion. He argued the savings would be even higher as EHRs improve patient outcomes.

Brian Hutchison, a primary health care analyst at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, says there are consequences to Ontario’s failure to adequately invest in EHRs. Had the government recognized that EHRs quickly pay for themselves, and invested earlier, the health care system would be delivering improved care, he says. “It was a tactical error. We’re now paying the price.”

Without comment.
Just reporting it.

Children as young as three years old are vulnerable to advertising, contrary to past research that suggested such marketing only had an impact on older kids, according to a new U.S. study.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and University of Michigan found that children aged three to five succumbed to the same marketing pressures as young adults, in that they understood the advertiser wanted them to buy something and that buying the product could make them happier.

"Young children are able to identify brands, to know what it stands for, know what this company sells," co-author Bettina Cornwell, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan, said Monday during an interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens. "They have a relatively profound understanding of brands that are marketed to them."

This is contrary to past research that suggested children weren't affected by brand symbolism until they were between the ages of seven to 11, she said.

However, Cornwell explained that the previous understanding was based on past studies that focused on the brands and products that generally had no relevance to children.

"But when you talk about the toys and foods they enjoy and that are marketed toward them, they really do have a strong understanding," Cornwell said.

In the two-part study, published in the journal Psychology & Marketing, researchers first assessed brand recognition levels in 38 children aged three to five. Children were shown 50 well-known brand names on cards and were asked if they were familiar with them.

"Almost all of the children, 93 per cent in our study, were able to recognize McDonald's readily, but they can also recognize Shell Oil or Pepsi, or even Toyota," said Cornwell.

Cornwell explained that brands such as Shell might be associated with adult products, but more likely the children recognized that Shell also had stores that sell nicknacks and junk food.

In the second part of the study, researchers found children were more likely to associate related products to brands that had been specifically marketed toward them.

"What I can say is we now understand more about how the young child develops his understanding, in the sense that their ability to understand the brand is also related to their social development. Now we can say the child understands, if you will, the mind of the advertiser. 'The advertiser wants me to understand this brand as carrying meaning, not just something that I want or that I have.'"

Cornwell said she didn't know if such early understanding of brands could result in a long-term brand loyalty, which is what many marketers are trying for when they reach out to children.

"We don't have longitudinal data, but one could argue that early child associations to an experience and a brand could have a positive influence on what they want to purchase in the future," she said.

Her hope is that the research and understanding it brings will be used by government regulators to protect preschool-aged children from undue marketing pressures.

"[The children] make decisions about what they need and want based on this brand-symbolic communication. It's a brand they need because 'I want to be liked by other children, I want to be popular,' and yes, that could expand the repertoire of purchases they might be interested in," said Cornwell.

I think as parents we already knew this. My little boy was able to differentiate all the logos well before he turned 3. In fact he knew which family member had which account at which bank.

I can't even imagine that past research even thought that children weren't affected by brand symbolism until the ages of seven to 11. Can you believe that?

This is with brands ... what about all the other messages? Sexual content? More and more cartoons have lines and messages not appropriate for the little ones watching them.

What are we doing to our children?

So if art imitates life... and the art in media is an imitation of adult life... and then our children imitate that. How much of their innocence are we robbing them?

What on earth are we doing to our kids?

The Merge

It was announced at WordCamp San Francisco last year that WordPress and WordPress MU would be merging codebases. This has now happened in 3.0-alpha, and we’re working on smashing bugs and tidying up a few screens. If you’re currently using a single install of WordPress, when you upgrade to 3.0 you won’t see any of the extra screens associated with running a network of sites. If you’re currently running MU, when you upgrade you’ll notice a few labels changing, but upgrading should be as painless as usual. If you’re going to set up a new WordPress installation, you’ll be asked as part of the setup if you want one site or multiple sites, so that’s pretty simple. If you want to turn your single install into one that supports multiple sites, we’ll have a tool for you to use to do that, too. So if you’ve been worried about the merge, have a cup of chamomile tea and relax; it will all be fine.

This is really exciting for me. Can't wait to test it and to use it... It is amazing how much the WordPress folks have done and now to come to this... I can't see any other blogging platform coming close to these guys.

Google has perhaps more than any other company become “The Internet Company.” It’s grown hand in hand with the internet and its entire business model has from the start been totally focused on the internet as a delivery platform.

And let’s face it, Google is a pretty interesting company. In fact, we think it’s so interesting that we put together this infographic with a ton of facts and figures about Google. We’ve been digging through Google’s SEC filings, news articles and the trusty old Wikipedia to get plenty of interesting data to include. We hope you like it!

Found this through one of the folks I follow on Google Buzz ... But there was no easy way to link to it from there on Posterous (or at least for me)... this is him - http://bartcollet.posterous.com/

OTTAWA — Health Canada handed out millions of dollars to a national eHealth agency without properly accounting for how the money was spent, says a new audit.

The finding raises doubts about Health Canada's own record of accountability even as it conducts due diligence before deciding whether to give Canada Health Infoway Inc. another half-billion dollars.

The internal audit examined a $400-million, five-year deal the department signed in 2007 with Infoway, created to ensure all Canadians have an electronic health record by 2016.

Infoway received its first cheque, for $38.7 million, in October 2007.

But the auditors suggest the deal was so badly crafted that Infoway was not required to provide enough information to Health Canada to ensure the money would be well spent.

"The information in support of the initial instalment of the new funding was inadequate to verify the validity and appropriateness of the projected expenditures under the terms of the agreement," says the newly disclosed audit, completed in May last year.

"In the absence of detailed project information, (Health Canada) cannot effectively assess the eligibility and reasonableness of reported budgeted costs."

The audit also disclosed that the Health Canada official who approved the $38.7-million payment did not have the authority to do so.

Auditors spotted the lapse, and the department fixed the problem 11 months later - by having an associate deputy minister retroactively approve a cheque that had already been cashed.

The weaknesses cited in the audit turn the accountability spotlight on Health Canada, which has frozen $500 million in fresh funding for Infoway for more than a year while it conducts what it calls "due diligence."

Other eHealth initiatives in Ontario and British Columbia have come under fire after allegations of misspending and poor oversight.

But Infoway, created in 2001 and given initial seed money of $1.2 billion, has emerged largely untarnished after close scrutiny by the auditor general of Canada in a report last fall.

Sheila Fraser cited a raft of contracting and reporting problems at Infoway, including one contract that ballooned to $726,000 from $144,000 without competitive bids. Fraser also found 13 contracts in a sample of 35 that were signed only after the work had begun.

But her probe found none of the accountability nightmares that have plagued eHealth Ontario.

The latest Health Canada audit also found a few problems at Infoway, including travel that was not authorized in advance, as required.

The report also said Infoway's internal compliance audits were not fully objective and independent, but auditors nevertheless gave Infoway a generally positive review. No evidence was cited of improper spending.

Health Canada says it has since tightened the rules in its 2007 agreement with Infoway. A spokesman say a total $226 million has been released so far under that $400-million deal.

"Health Canada will include enhanced reporting provisions in future agreements as well as requirements for detailed information," David Thomas said.

But the $500 million promised more than a year ago has not yet been released, even though it was touted as part of the government's Economic Action Plan for responding to the global economic meltdown.

Asked when those new funds might be released, a spokeswoman for Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said only that the department is working with Infoway to "improve internal controls and enhance its approaches to reporting on progress."

"We want to have concrete plans in place to ensure value for money and a prudent use of resources," said Josee Bellemare.

The head of the Canadian Medical Association, which has been pressing the government for the new funds, says the money won't flow until April at the earliest.

"We have been told by senior staff at Health Canada, Finance Canada and Industry Canada and in the respective ministers' offices, that the federal government will release the money only after the first quarter of 2010," Dr. Anne Doig said in an email.

"This initiative for EMRs (electronic medial records) is important and represents an effective tool for physicians to provide optimal health care to patients. Postponing funding would be a missed opportunity for improved patient care."

The department is expected to wait until after Fraser releases her overview of six provincial eHealth audits, set for sometime in mid-April.

And with the Finance Department looking to significantly trim spending, there are fears in the health community that the $500-billion commitment to Infoway may disappear altogether.

Although I never worked for Infoway I have done contract work for other government agencies. The good work that is done is blemished by all the poor management and irresponsible stewardship. So many good ideas that take years to come to fruition (or never do) because of the internal politics of a culture of bureaucrats and career consultants. Everyone trying to extend their life in a cushy role ... not allowing the real workers to impact and transform healthcare for Canadians.

Sad.
Very sad.
We all suffer.
We all continue to take it.

If you've wondered why there haven't been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it's because we've shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5. We're not there yet, but we are getting closer. In January we shipped a new version of Google Chrome that natively supports a Database API similar to the Gears database API, workers (both local and shared, equivalent to workers and cross-origin wokers in Gears), and also new APIs like Local Storage and Web Sockets. Other facets of Gears, such as the LocalServer API and Geolocation, are also represented by similar APIs in new standards and will be included in Google Chrome shortly.

We realize there is not yet a simple, comprehensive way to take your Gears-enabled application and move it (and your entire userbase) over to a standards-based approach. We will continue to support Gears until such a migration is more feasible, but this support will be necessarily constrained in scope. We will not be investing resources in active development of new features. Likewise, there are some platforms that would require a significant engineering effort to support due to large architectural changes. Specifically, we cannot support Gears in Safari on OS X Snow Leopard and later. Support for Gears in Firefox (including 3.6, which will be supported shortly) and Internet Explorer will continue.

Looking back, Gears has helped us deliver much-desired functionality, such as the ability to offer offline access in GMail, to a large number of users. Long term, we expect that as browsers support an increasing amount of this functionality natively and as users upgrade to more capable browsers, applications will make a similar migration. If you haven't already, you will want to take a look at the latest developments in web browsers and the functionality many now provide, reach out with questions, and consider how you can use these in your web applications. Gears has taken us the first part of the way; now we're excited to see browsers take us the rest of the way.

It's getting closer.

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Dallas-Fort Worth has launched Doc Shop, a new marketing program to connect patients with obstetrician-gynecologists modeled after the speed-dating phenomenon that lets single men and women meet multiple potential dates in brief time blocks.

The first doctor-patient "speed-dating" event occurred on Sept. 24, 2009. Two other Doc Shops have already taken place, and seven more are slated to occur this year. The program has been so successful that the hospital is expanding Doc Shop to include pediatricians and may eventually add additional primary care specialists.

Here's how it works: For two 30-minute sessions over a lunch hour, five to six physicians sit at tables and meet roughly a dozen patients who rotate through. Every five minutes, the patients move to the next physician. Doc Shop is designed as a low-cost way to bring patients to the hospital's affiliated physicians, and it is best-suited to primary care where patient-physician personality matches are most important. Doc Shop is free to patients, and participating physicians aren't paid for their time.

To learn more about doctor-patient dating:
- read this American Medical News article

No comment from me. Another link for future reference...