An unusual advertisement appeared in a London newspaper in 1910:

WANTED: Volunteers for a hazardous journey. Small wages.
Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger.
Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

It did not work as he planned. It was hazardous and bitter cold. It became painfully obvious that a safe return would be, at least, miraculous.

The honor and recognition came from their failure. I reviewed the book, Endurance on BC quite some time ago. Fine book, great story. From the mouth of deadly failure, Shackleton led his crew through the travails and dangers of a winter iced into pack-ice at the bottom of the world as their ship was slowly crushed. They lived on ice floes, braved the currents and winds of the seas near Antarctica and won immortality when they all got back through his leadership, their courage, seamanship and the bravery that is like the inventor or scientist’s spark, the artist’s flash of insight. They beat the odds because they fought hard and smart and they prevailed..

Bob Clarebrough in The Space Review looks at the subject from other points of view. He writes on management and is studying “innovation in the private enterprise space system”. He sees Shackleton’s successful failure as something for which,

… we celebrate his heroic leadership and tenacity which resulted in the rescue and safe return of all his men. The same can be said of the exemplary leadership of Eugene Krantz during the high tension of Apollo 13’s return to Earth. Today, these failures are major sources of learning and are studied by managers around the world as they go about developing their own skills as leaders. That’s why we need failure—it’s how we learn. And the emerging space industry needs it, too.
It would be wrong to call for more failures caused by poor workmanship or downright carelessness. The key point is to plan for failures, value the learning they provide, and act on what has been learned. 

Falcon 1 finds knowledge in failure. From the BBC

He wrote on SpaceX and the recent failure to launch its Falcon I as

SpaceX would have learned very little from a successful launch. There would have been no urgent reason to review the design of the rocket, people’s roles and responsibilities, the processes and procedures they used, or the overall project management. Arguably, SpaceX now has significantly more knowledge about launching rockets than other space entrepreneurs who have yet to fly. 

and quotes Thomas Watson of IBM who said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”

In my life I did incredibly well at keeping my failure rate high. Learning from the mistakes and not making them again came harder. Still, I learned photography from the Ansel Adams photo book series and a lot of experimenting and learned to see by looking at a lot of photos, paintings, drawings and graphics. Very few people merely succeed. An unbroken procession of successes would be reasonably impossible, boring and not lead to new ways of seeing or thinking. Of course I was not launching spacecraft.

A fine book Inventions and America Today (also reviewed when I first started writing for Blogcritics) is Inventing Modern America by David E. Brown. David tells great stories in his biographical sketches of inventors. Many are examples of those whose most lasting discoveries were the result of learning from previous failures and the “lucky” accident (wherein the questing mind sees the possibilities that have opened from the unforeseen event)…

MORE at Blogcritics and, in a similar article, at Desicritics.

Travel
Science

That is amazing and should give impetus to those who truly want to change their “life styles” in order to keep themselves alive. It is not useless to stop smoking because it has been going on so long or because you are no longer so young. The results can be seen much more quickly than thought.

The 14 July report noted

For smokers with asthma, quitting smoking can improve lung function test scores by more than 15% in less than 2 months. 

The findings appear in the second issue for July 2006 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

Neil C. Thomson, MD, of the Departments of Respiratory Medicine and Immunology at the University of Glasgow, and seven associates studied 11 asthmatics who continued to smoke and 10 who quit for six weeks. After only one week of no cigarettes, the researchers said that the lung function test results of the non-smoking patients had improved to a “considerable degree.”

Blogging

The company plans a news conference and announcement of the siting of a plant in Oklahoma. They plan to build an MG TF coupe to compete in the Mazda Miata class. The machines should have a selling price in the neighborhood of $US 20-25,000 and be produced starting in 2008.

It also will assemble a convertible TF Roadster version at MG’s now-shuttered factory in Longbridge, England, and three sedan models in China. American and European operations for MG Motors will be based in Oklahoma City, 90 miles north of the new factory in Ardmore, Okla.

The Nanjing Company is creating a unique niche in the world car market by restoring a famous marque and thereby attracting a loyal base of MG enthusiasts, many of whom live in the US. The MG Owners Club based in the U.K.

run out of a large MG parts shop near Cambridge, England, has about 40,000 members worldwide. Many live in the United States, despite the brand’s 26-year absence here. 

MG began in the 1920s as Morris Garages and became an international symbol of freedom and non-conformity in the 40s and 50s when soldiers brought them and their memories back to the States. I even remember Rock Hudson folding himself into an MG TD in some long-ago comedy. The movie is forgotten. MG TDs can never be forgotten. In many ways they are the symbol of the sports car that was. David E. Davis, Jr. who runs an on-line magazine called Winding Road says — and I cannot argue as the once owner of an MGA 1500 coupe,

“MG was really an integral part of the foreign car revolution that started in the late 40’s and early 50’s,” Mr. Davis said. “They weren’t terribly good cars, but they were so different and they were so much fun to drive that we all forgave them for their lack of reliability and fragility. 

Nanjing promises the coupe, a roadster made in the British facility and three sedans made in China. Happy faces may be found in the MG Enthusiasts Club in Britain. At least, hopeful faces. The site includes a Buying Guide. A new $20,000 model might make it easier to own the MG marque than these prices:

Australia was a popular destination for new MGAs and the cars’ ongoing desirability has ensured high survival levels with most of those available being 1500 and 1600 Mk 1 Roadsters. 

The Mark 2 and Twin-Cam are rare while the Fixed Head Coupe wasn’t popular here and is also scarce. For practical and aesthetic reasons wire-wheeled cars command better money than those with drilled steel rims.

Prices are reasonable with $15.000 buying an older restoration needing minimal mechanical and cosmetic refurbishing.

Top-quality recent restorations will cost $10,000 more and cars with concourse potential $30,000-35,000.

I bought my 1959 MGA 1500 twin-cam coupe (the coupes were rare and had roll-up glass windows and non-leaking roofs) in about 1963 for $900 — a gigantic sum. It had wire wheels, knock-off hubs and a continental kit I removed. I painted it silver, pulled off the vinyl dashboard cover and finished the wood. Then covered the cracked leather seats with black naugahyde. It was one of the prettiest cars in car-culture Tampa and I made the best of it. I loved that car and even managed (I was thin then) to make love in it. It was the essence of sporty and the crux of fun. I owned a lot of cars after that including a ‘59 Mercedes, a new Saab (sob with a Saab), a raft of wonderful Volvos including two fine Volvo 164s, an Alpine (junk), a new 2001 Jetta built in Mexico (sturdy and fast but conservative) and my beloved ‘86 Bronco 4×4 302 which I am now renovating to get a few more miles out of it (past the 250,000 it has). Nothing touches the MG for joy and dreams of youth and freedom, fun and sex. I scanned an ancient print of me (the cropped out 18 year old) and left in the sexy beauty of that coupe.

Happy memories. Searching for more information on the Chinese group and the state of the UK facility I did discover that MG continues to be made and distributed in some countries — the U.S. is not one of them and the Lebanese showroom may not be full this week. They offer models of MG and, I assume, the Chinese influence could bring the car back to our shores and provide further stability. The future remains to be seen. My view of the past catalyzed by this press release gave me pleasure in the memory of a great machine.

Life
Sports
Fun

The gist of the article is:

Yet again the House of Representatives is considering a vote on the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Amendment, the Wilmot Proviso of the new millennium. It’s an amendment jointly sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat to protect the rights and safety of private users of medical marijuana and exempt them from criminal prosecution. It doesn’t legalize pot and doesn’t even generally decriminalize marijuana. All it does is make sure that those suffering with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other medical conditions won’t be thrown in jail for using the one viable treatment available for their conditions. It restricts federal authorities from interfering with state laws that protect medical marijuana users in the 11 states which have passed medical marijuana laws. 

I responded there and continue to sing the praises of an old friend and a fine legislator, Maurice Hinchey (110th Congressional District – Dem. NY). His stand takes sense and compassion and courage. They are not new virtures for him.

Maurice and I became friends when I began photography and journalism in the Hudson Valley in the early 1980s. He was in the NY State Lesgislature and was nice enough to take me with him one day to hang out together in the State Capitol. I made a lot of pictures that I hope helped him in his, then, new career. One set that he pushed the guards to allow me to shoot — looking down at the bicameral floor of the House — became one of my all-time best sellers as a stock photo.

The silliest part of the day was me, still new to photography, weighed down with all the camera bodies and lenses I owned (Nikon Ftns then), watching Maurice to follow him to any meeting, caucus or floor debate. He stood, formally, and headed off the floor. I grabbed my gear and followed at a run. I was loading film, checking meters and barely noticed before holding a camera to my eye that we were in the mens’ room standing in front of the urinals. Unlike recent movies that consider it de rigeur I was totally uninterested in the urinal shot.

Maurice is now in the Federal House of Representatives. I think he is in his 6th term. He is a fine politician in the sense of the word that comes from JFK’s Profiles in Courage.

Amazingly he continues to win in the 110th which runs an increditble gamut of distance and of outlooks from the most conservative and the radical good ole boys to the aging Hippies of Woodstock and the exurban professionals of the Hudson Valley. Throw in some college and university communities and mix it together. The first race was close against one of those anti- everything, radical rightists, law and order freaks. Now he continues to win and the numbers are not so close.

Having a few good men in Washington makes the country continue to work in spite of the dangers of the present Executive branch.

I add from his web site

Maurice Hinchey was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1992 after serving 18 years in the New York State Assembly, including 14 years as Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Conservation. From January 1993 through December 1998, he was a member of the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services and the House Committee on Natural Resources. He was then elected by his colleagues to the House Appropriations Committee and serves on its subcommittees on Agriculture and the Interior. The congressman is also one of 20 members on the bicameral and bipartisan Joint Economic Committee. Additionally, Hinchey serves on the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Early in his first year in Congress, Hinchey initiated and led the successful effort to preserve Sterling Forest, the last significant area of open space in the New York metropolitan region and an important watershed for southeastern New York and northern New Jersey. He also introduced and saw enacted legislation to create the Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area, the first federal action formally recognizing the fundamentally significant role the people of the Hudson Valley played in the early development of America and its institutions.

Perhaps he is able to cross the red & blue lines of currently dichotomized America because his background was not in an insulated suburb or wealthy, urban barrio:

Born on Manhattan’s Lower West Side in 1938 and raised there and in Saugerties, New York, Hinchey enlisted in the U.S. Navy after high school graduation, serving in the Pacific on the destroyer U.S.S. Marshall. After receiving an honorable discharge, he worked for two years as a laborer in a Hudson Valley cement plant. Hinchey then enrolled in the State University of New York at New Paltz and put himself through college working as a night-shift toll collector on the New York State Thruway. He went on to earn a master’s degree at SUNY New Paltz and did advanced graduate work in public administration and economics at the State University of New York at Albany.

News and politics