Failure to Learn

BP suffered from an all-too-common "learning disability" which was the fundamental and underlying cause of the Texas City Refinery disaster on 23 March, 2005 which killed 15 and seriously injured two hundred, according to Professor of Sociology, Andrew Hopkins, of Australian National University.
Direct costs incurred by BP well exceeded $3 billion as $2 billion and $1 billion respectively went on compensation for the victims families and the subsequent recovery and overhaul of the Texas City site and Refinery. Reputational and share price costs are probably immeasurable.
It is easy to ask why the operators simply didn't allow the liquid distillate to be released from the distillation column with the 9ft high level exceeded many times before the liquid eventually purged into the atmosphere some 158ft later. All it took was an idling work vehicle to set off the massive explosion and resultant fire.
There were no warning alarms to indicate the exceeding of safe liquid distillate levels; there was no process HAZOP identifying the criticality of the hazard; and finally, there was no corrective action taken as a result of the chronic overfills of the column that had become an operational norm. The focus on process safety took a very distant seat to that of occupational safety.
According to Professor Hopkins the lessons from Esso Longford (1998), the NASA Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003) disasters and the Texas City disaster are so similar it's striking--they failed to learn from previous mistakes. BP was so attentive to the 'high frequency-low consequence' events of lost time injuries they were found to be inept and "systematically inattentive" to the risks associated with the 'low frequency-high consequence' events relating to process safety incidents.
There are many lessons out of this disaster, all tabled in detail in Professor Hopkins' book, Failure to Learn: the BP Texas Refinery Disaster.[1] But the key lesson for all organisations is to actually commit to taking action from the learnings from related incidents.

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The Traveling Psychologist

Coming to the world's most cosmopolitan city has its advantages and disadvantages. To understand Shanghai you have to appreciate its size, 6,000 square metres about four times the size of London and its costs - the sixth most expensive city in the World. Having said this in Western calculations daily life is still inexpensive compared to living in England. However this essay is not about Shanghai directly, or its geography and economics, but its, feel, its sounds, and its senses. In other words what is it like to come to Shanghai and actually live everyday in a city, that like New York, never sleeps.
When I first arrived in Shanghai I was put-up by some relatives of my Chinese girlfriend in a small apartment near Shanghai Indoor Stadium. However they were about to move and so within a short time I found myself helping them to move to their new apartment closer to the husband's business area. Within another two months I had moved again, this time to my own apartment in an International School where I was employed to teach English, some science and psychology. This school was located in the new area of Pudong where most Westerners who work for the big companies such as General Electric and General Motors rent expensive houses and villas in guarded enclosed grounds. For some reason the Chinese fear for Westerner's and always insist on almost locking them away when not at work. I had spent three years in China, first in JinHua (Zhejiang Provence) and then two years in Wuhan, known as the cauldron of China as it is so hot there. So when coming to Shanghai I was not a new foreigner to China but by and large an old hand.
However Shanghai is not like the rest of China, it is a mega-city and crowded with foreign nationals, with embassy's to serve them and restaurants to please all tastes from which ever country you hail from. So at first I was actually disappointed as before in JinHua and Wuhan I had been special, people were interested in you, invited you places and to their homes, but in Shanghai you are one of many and so you lose that feeling of being different very quickly. I did not like Pudong, it is like living in a graveyard, there are times you can walk to the local Carr Four supermarket (French) and hardly see another person except for some American teenagers running about on skateboards and mountain bikes, well out of the price range of most Chinese. In a word for me it was, boring and felt like a suburban desert rather than a bustling over-populated China. At the end of six months my contract with the school ended and I took up a post with a Chinese psychology company as its Clinical Director. It was an easy job as I only worked one day a week for what a Chinese would have to work two months for. They wanted my "name" more than me so I started using the spare time to teach business English to Chinese companies and started my own business giving Western style counselling to the local people. This also meant another move to my present apartment at Nanpu Bridge on the Puxi side. Every night the streets are full of traders selling, dubious food, trinkets, clothes, flowers and abundance of other merchandise and of course the cheap DVDs!! (Piracy here is like no other country - everything is copied and sold openly in the street). From about 6pm to 11pm the outside street from my apartment is full of people, walking, shouting and buying/selling almost everything you can think of. This can be a little annoying sometimes trying to get past them to your apartment block entrance and just going thirty metres to the Chinese supermarket is a trial of dodging motorbikes that insist they have right-of-way on the pavement. I never move out of the way but feign deafness and frustrate their progress as much as possible.
Once you are settled in Shanghai, job, place to live, confident about taking the Metro and buses everywhere then you can start to explore. At first you do the usual things go and see the Pearl TV Tower and the decide whether to spend the 100 rmb to go to the top and then deciding not too. You can also pay to go to the top of this building which has an unusual square cut out at the top and see all of Shanghai; again though frugalness got the better of me and I decided not to pay but to photograph instead. Not far from there is the under-water tunnel to the Bund area (the old colonial buildings) leading to the Peoples Square. Again you only do this once and having paid my 50 rmb you get to visit three museums underground and then take the little train under the river through a tunnel that is lit by a laser show as you pass through. The first museum is the Sex Museum and a really funny place to visit. I guess it is my English dry wit that sees things from an ironic point of view when visiting something that is showing traditional sexuality that is not reflected at all in the populace at large. The other two areas are the aquarium (a little dull) and a light show ( a little weird) where you sit in a dark room by yourself and listen to the sounds of people moving about in the room and trying to scare you. (Did not scare me but I did laugh at one point). Once through the museums you can go off on the tiny train through the tunnel to the Bund on the other side of the river. As for the rest of Shanghai you tend to explore as you go - and so with all the teaching in different parts of the city I eventually went everywhere. If you like shopping you can go to the cheap areas outside any major district but in the main centres you can see world-class shopping department stores and high-class clothiers. However Shanghai's main shopping is often at big-city prices and you have to be quite rich to shop here as you would in London, Paris or New York.
The night life here is rich in choice but many foreigners frequent the bars and night-clubs. I never really like this scene in Shanghai as they tend to attract irresponsible Westerners who get drunk, insult Chinese women and tend in general to behave badly. There are many tourist areas with bars and cafes that are designed to catch the unwary pocket - they charge sometimes 100 times the value of a drink or food in these places. Better to seek out the bars and clubs the Chinese use that are friendlier and less expensive. The nightclubs tend to play techno-music all night - this is not only very boring music but also repetitive and sounds somewhat fake. You are better to go to places that play live music; some of the Chinese rock session bands are quite entertaining. The difference though from the West is they try to ply you with food all the time and drinking is actually secondary to their idea of a good time. There are plenty of theatres and cinemas as in most big cities and that is purely a matter of taste.
On a daily basis as in any city when you are working and trying to make ends meet you start to take the city for granted and all those treasures that tourists talk about you pass by without a single thought. Shanghai is about making money, being in business and trying to succeed. Many Chinese migrate here from the smaller cities, towns and countryside hoping to join the big company and make their fortunes. However like many large commercial cities many have their dreams dashed in the struggle to just make a living to pay the rent and eat a decent meal once a day. Most of my friends in Shanghai are girls, this is for two reasons, one, most of my students and work colleagues are female anyway and secondly I prefer female company. However so many of them are unattached, smart, working, but very lonely. Shanghai seems to exude loneliness especially for girls coming into the city from outside. You also see how strong Shanghai born women are here too - they tend to be intelligent, confident and classical in their dress and habits. They also tend for the men to be too successful and therefore scare off the local men who want a more timid girl to marry. The Chinese love to control each other and so strong women here can be lonely too. (Even if they are in a relationship).
The big question is will I stay in Shanghai or move on? I like the city and its people, with its bright evening lights and sultry atmosphere. Shanghai has a lot to offer and you would be hard put to find other big cities as clean and tidy (at least in the main areas) and with so many green areas full of trees and water features. My favourite thing about the city is the statues! They are everywhere, but what I enjoy about them is that they are of normal scenes, people and comic invention. They add a certain vitality and amusing interest to street scenes where normally the pavement is empty except for the millions of people who pass by.
Maybe I could settle down here for a while but I know I suffer from wanderlust and sooner or later will say goodbye to Shanghai and hello to my next adventure.

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The Sociology of Human Behavior

This evening I decided that I would try a small experiment to test the theory that we all tend to "judge" others based on appearnace and come to some conclusions about the way that person is from those perceptions.
For the past 6 months I have been network marketing and have had a rather conservative picture on my Facebook profile. Tonight I changed that to a photo that was of me 3 years ago when I had my Wiccan shop running full time. The Witches Haven in Cedar City Utah.
I was not so surprised to see what the result was. The immediate result was that I received comments of shock...one even saying...WOW! Others were less "shocked" and ranged from a thumbs up to "I didn't have any clue". This is not a negative thing and my theory was not to show negativity versus positive resulting reactions but to see raw reaction...period.
I placed a status statement shortly after placing the picture on my profile that stated, "I changed my profile picture here to make a point. Whether you call your clergy Bishop, Father, Rabbi, or High Priest,etc...never judge by the cover as we are peaceful and only wish to assist our fellow man."
I am happy to state that while my theory was proven that we all make judgments or we tend to have pre-conceived ideas of one another we also have the intelligence to think about these ideas and notions and make informed decisions about our final judgment.
I hope that we all will take the time to think about how we are judging others based on appearances only and that we will stop and think about all of the reasoning and conditions that played into the way they appear. This article will be appearing in a post on my blog and by the time this is posted the picture on my FB profile will have been changed back. I neglected to mention that apparently it did have the affect that people were no longer friend requesting me and some chose to leave and that was also expected. I have left it on my blog as it portrays who I truly am...away from the politics...and out of the "lime light" as it were.
May we all be cautious about the way we are treating one another because of the language we may speak, the clothing we may wear, the creed we may hold ourselves to, and just treat one another with the respect that deep down we all deserve. In the end nothing else matters but the fact that we are all here on earth and we are all human and have feelings, emotions and frailties.

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Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born Michael Luther on January 15, 1929. He later changed his name to Martin. Martin Luther, both an activist and clergyman, is known to be one of the most prominent leaders in the African-American civil rights movement.
He grew up in the segregated southern States during the time when African-Americans were ostracized and discriminated against. He attended public school in Georgia and graduated high school at the age of fifteen. In 1948, he received the Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Morehouse College, a distinguished African-American institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated.
While attending graduate school in Boston, Martin met his future wife, Coretta Scott, a strong and powerful woman who shared his views and cared deeply about civil rights. They were married soon after and eventually had four children, two sons and two daughters.
It was no surprise that Martin became a pastor as his father and grandfather were both pastors at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Up until his death, he served as co-pastor alongside his father. Aside from being considered as one of the civil rights icon, he was recognized as a martyr by two Christian churches in America.
On August 28, 1963, the peaceful march in Washington took place. He gave his "I Have A Dream" speech to more than 250,000 people who gathered to hear the famous national speaker from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Later that year, he was named as Time's Man of the Year.
He was arrested several times and became a target of violent threats. After one of his arrests, he wrote the famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, narrating his beliefs and hopes for the future of America. His many protests helped convince the U.S. Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This act made it illegal to treat African-Americans or other ethnic groups unfairly.
It was the same year (1964), at the age of 35, he became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil obedience and other non-violent means. In the spring of 1968, he travelled to Memphis, Tennessee to lead the protest in support of African American garbage workers to give them better working conditions. While standing on the balcony of his motel room, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray, a convict who had escaped from jail.
Martin Luther King, Jr. will always be remembered for his unselfish devotion to raise public consciousness in America and the peaceful means he used to make the changes. Martin Luther King, Jr Day is annually celebrated on the third Monday of January.

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The Sociologic Of Political Silence

The hegemonic categorization of the Jamaican landscape is primarily the justifiable reason for the sophisticated demonstrations and social hemorrhaging. This group of elitists has exponentially benefited from playing the proletariat class. They have not offered their clientele the respect of voice on matters of social concerns or political mismanagement. The present government’s socio-economic policies are chiefly responsible for the erosion of much of the social fibre and economic livelihood of the Jamaican people. The poor are not only suffering but they are also hemorrhaging while the business class offers the society stillness as a tool of needed social change. PIOJ (2004) report, Economic and Social Survey Jamaica, report confirms that the national poverty stood at 16 per cent. Of the 2, 650,900 inhabitants, there are 424,144 poor people, which absolute valuation seems not to perturb the hegemony of this society. In order to attain that social society that we all desire, justice through actions and deems must be a hallmark of the leadership.

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The categorization of Jamaicans as poor has been declining (Henry-Lee, 2001) but the economic indicators of growth are not impressive as our Caricom counterparts. Looking at the absolute figures, the social realities of the peoples are not marginally measured or understood. Despite the fluctuations in economic growth valuations, rural poverty continues to be higher than the national figures and of those for other towns and cities. Coupled with the economic hardship of poverty, rural Jamaica over the last six months is seeing a dwindling of economic activities. As a social scientist, I believe that the current tidal waves of price increases are eroding the economic livelihood of many of the poor. This situation means that the economic hardship of the people within the context of the hegemony – silence, is destroying the moral and other social fibre of the poor. "What are poor to do?"
‘Once economic growth was taking place, it was that poverty would be reduced’ (Henry-Lee, 2001, p.202) but this orthodox phenomenology may be changing in Jamaican as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at constant prices have been increasing (PIOJ, 2004, p.3.1) with a simultaneous change in economic hardship of the poor while the hegemonic class expand their physical surroundings and amass European amenities. To date, the constant salary, the MTTP (Ministers Tricking the Poor), the minimal bus fare increases (only 67 % - what!), the huge increases in prices of basic foods and increase in political leadership are making the ‘poor’ poorer. Those hurdles are not the challenges of the poor as they wrestle with ‘prince’ and ‘guards’ for sanity. The electricity increases, instructional materials increases, the last blatant disdain by the Prime Minister, ‘Rt’ honourable Percival James Patterson, for the intellectual mindset of the ‘black’ academic is frightening and speaks volume of the private sector’s silence.
The private sector, despite ‘recognizing’ the challenges of governance and policies formulation of the government, continue to hemorrhage in silence, which, I construe, indicates the tenants of the PNP over the economy. I realize that there is no longer a unified Jamaica but a PNP, a JLP group and a business class. This situation was unfolded to me over time as there is not core concern that may create unison in order that Jamaicans can forge around with the interest of all. The socio-political arena has changed globally and nationally for the JLP but the reality is, the average citizenry of this society are still clamouring for hegemony and social transformation though development.
It is the business class that is the engine of growth in all societies and not the public sectors. This group dictates the terms of economic activities and stipulates the atmosphere of governance but the Jamaican group is hemorrhaging from fear and political conformity. Hence, the present proletariat class, the underclass, is left to view the heavens for a haven. When the business class fails to provide that leadership for the society, the ‘labourer’ class will gradually venture in deviant acts as a medium of grappling with political mismanagement. ‘Too many people are comfortable with the present affairs (Bourne, 2005) and silence of the ‘underclass’ is becoming increasingly deafening. If the business class continues with this dialectic silence, the poor may resort to revolution in an effort to understand and come to a rationale of their social space.
The old philosophical construct of poverty is primarily food consumption of the poorest quintile but this definition fails to recognize that poor people are social beings with children. One researcher (Henry-Lee) forwarded a slant that; the poor spend the largest proportion of their earnings on food, which means that the business class must begin to offer a position against any erosion of their economic base. If there are presently 424, 100 absolutely poor people any increase in food prices will see them living how?
According to Rapley (1996, p.7), "state interventions to relieve poverty would inhibit initiative, and would stifle investment because they would rely on increased taxes." Dr. Rapley’s cited perspective is a clear indication of the stance taken by all traditional economists. This stance sees development as solely an economic growth phenomenon that is driven by the free market but many post World War II economists differ on a theorizing for this construct. Lewis concurred with classicalists like Smith and Keynes that development is primarily economic. Rapley (1996, p.16) stated that, "Lewis argued that in a Third World economy, the wage rate was set at a constant level as determined by minimum levels of existence in traditional family farming." This ensured a virtually unlimited supply of cheap labour, which has an advantageous factor in industrial development (Rapley, 1996 p.16). As a social scientist who is concerned with development and its determinants, the researcher is cognizant of the different discourse on the issue but will analyze both schools of thought before coming to a consensus.
The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS, 2002) wrote, "while material poverty affect a large number of households, the Report points to the impending dangers of more widespread and subtle forms of poverty that include poor health, inadequate levels of educational attainment; lack of economic assets or access to markets or jobs that could create the unsafe physical environment; and various forms of social exclusion." This report forwards the core of the post-1950 scholars’ viewpoints on development that is broader than the Classicalists theorizing that was once the epistemological framework on development thoughts. The article points to other non-economic growth theorizing such as health care, education and other psychosocial conditions. Hence, the author will not seek to continue in the pre-1950s epistemological mindset as it is a one sided theorizing but will seek to quantify any validity of the contemporary developmentalists’ perspective on the issue as this include social, political and economic factors. This paper surrounds the social aspect to development in the form of expenditure on health care and expenditure on education with the intention of using those two (2) determinants of contemporary development in order to ascertain any causal and/or associational relationship between expenditure on social programmes and their influence on levels of development.
Spikes (2002) posits: "poverty can be regarded as the inability to obtain the essentials of life; for others it is a matter of low income; for others a problem of social inequality". He goes on to say that "poverty can be explained in terms of material conditions, that is basic needs, food, clothing, and shelter; however limited resource interfere with the ability to acquire the essentials. Poverty can be seen as exclusion; the European Union defines the poor as persons whose resources (material culture and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life in the member state in which they live depending on benefits as equivalents as claiming social assistance".
It is frightening to say the least that despite efforts within the technological age people are living in abject poverty that retards the process in which many of these issues should have been addressed. Haralambus (1995)"poverty implies an undesirable social problem that a solution should be found. Basic amenities, for examples, shelter health and nutrition: the latter according to Drewnowski and Scott in Haralambus "is measured by factors in relation to the amount of calories and protein consumed by the individual. Shelter is measured by the quality of living arrangements (dwelling etc.) and health is measured by factors such as infant mortality and the quality of medical treatments available.
When individuals are malnourished, the health of these individuals would affect them in terms of their physical and mental states. A medical practitioner, Dalzell-Ward (1974: 23), commented that "The deprivation of energy foods’ will result in excessive fatigue which will in turn diminish social and work performances and interfere with well-being." The economist Adam Smith states that this would be an indication of reduced economic growth. Professor Todaro (Todaro, 2000) from his perspective, that development envelope social, political and economic changes in peoples lives. Another medical practitioner concurred with Dalzell–Ward (1974) when she said:
In fact many of today’s problems with students are actually health related. Kids are not able to learn sufficiently if they are hungry, tired, hung-over from alcohol, or worried about violence. We need to eliminate barriers that affect students’ readiness to learn. A variety of physical and mental conditions impact students’ attendance and their ability to pay attention in class anger, and restrain from self-destructive impulses.
Eurocentric beliefs have so conquered the epistemology of world ideology that it becomes difficult even for the ‘honest’ advocate to be effective. Individualism-profiteerism drives the engine of social existence that humans only protect themselves, even if it appears that another is being helped in the process. Christianity is a by-product of the Eurocentric system and so helps to explain its true tenet. Europe in an effort to corner all epistemologies of the ontology of man’s existence and creation offered spiritualism. Christianity operates as though it has the sole authority to the ontology of creation. Despite its stance, the ideological phenomenology of Christianity subsumes individualism. Unlike the other traditional epistemological construct of man, humanitarianism is a tenet of their doctrine but they are not the iconic thought because they were fashioned prior to Europe’s delineation of world ideology. References
Macro-Economic theory: A mathematical treatment. New York, United States: St. Martin’s Press.
Baguant, J., Prinz, C., Toth, F.L., and Wils, A.B. 1994. Population-Development-Environment: Understanding their interactions in Mauritius. Laxenburg, Austria: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Banae, Mitiku, E., and Yandell, Dirk. 2006. Development strategies and opportunities: The case of Africa. Review of Human Factor Studies, 12: 114-133. Academic Research Premier EBSCOhost Research Databases. University of the West Indies Library, Kingston, Jamaica. 12 September 2006 [http://epnet.umi.com/].
Beardshaw, J. 1992. Economics: A Students Guide. England: Pitman Publishers.
Bloom, David E., David Canning, and Jaypee Sevilla. 2004. “The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: A Production Function Approach.” World Development 32, no. 1: 1-13.
Booth, David. (eds). 1994. Rethinking social development, theory, research and practice. Longman Scientific and Technical. Longman Group Limited. Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow.
Chambers, Robert. 1989. Rural development: Putting the last first. 7th Edition. United Kingdom: Longman House.
Dalzell-Ward, A. (1974). A textbook of health education. London: Tavistock Publications.
Easterly, William. 2001. The political economy of growth without development: A Case Study of Pakistan. USA.: World Bank. Retrieved on October 12, 2006 from [http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~drodrik/Growth%20volume/EASTER~1.PDF].
National income and social accounting, 4th. London, United Kingdom: Hutchinson and Company.
Findlay, Ronald. 1989. W. Arthur Lecture: National and Global Perspectives on Economic Development – The two models of Arthur Lewis. National Economic Association and the Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy of Clark College.

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