How-To Book Recall, a good illustration of...

A little while ago I caught some news describing how a company had to recall a bunch of books which purported to give readers the info needed to do their own electrical work. The problem is, if you follow the guide, you could get shocked, electrocuted or simply burn the house down.

Obviously a case in which editors and publishers did not exercise any reasonable degree of quality control. To me that shows a lack of pride in one's work.

I've worked for companies, too many times, who rushed the product at the expense of quality. Unfortunately the more consumer oriented portion of the population chalks such negligence up to the ways of capitalism and freedom. That is not good in my opinion because the usual conclusion is that more regulation and maybe new agencies will make it all better.

The trouble is that what results is a blueprint which those who can afford it dance around while stifling honest competition. The facade of the thing is one of reasonable guidelines, but the meat of the matter is much less pure.

I do find that lack of effort to determine that the product is what it should be quite prevalent in the market, and very frustrating when I've been in the employ of such firms. Come to think of it, only the smaller companies I've been part of tend to deliver in a way that engenders pride. Diversified Controls under Bill Grant, and Able Equipment Company under Lennie Ellis are the only two I can think of that were larger than a one man operation. Bill was someone they should do a movie about. But that's another story.

Textbooks have forever been a sham as far as accuracy and quality is concerned. I don't know how many math books had wrong answers to problems in the back of the book. Fortunately, the few times I bothered with homework, I was sure enough of myself to know when they were wrong. To me, that is inexcusable. Either taxpayers pay or people trying to put themselves or their kids through school pay. Texts at universities were rarely better than the trash used in public school. It seems there was an economics book that was flawless. Probably written by Sowell or Milton Friedman.

The trouble is that such haste too often carries over into tangible products. You expect the defects when it comes out of China because it is cheap and you know they crank it out under any conditions they can can.

Perhaps the problem is that you cannot legislate self respect, pride or integrity. The host of agencies and oversight which has cropped up over the last hundred years has not done a whole lot to lessen the assault of junk in the marketplace. Some things may have improved but the overall effort to slide under the radar hasn't. None of the very large "reputable" companies which have enjoyed my services in the past were even remotely honest in how they put out their service or product.

What frustrated me most was that, in the long run, it would not have cost them more to do it right. In the case of textbooks, especially math and chemistry, it was as if they had relevant words and terms in a giant salt shaker and just sprinkled them on the pages at random, calling it an explanation of the principles at hand. I've tutored math and always had to go from the sample problems in the book ignoring the alleged instructions in order to teach the poor tutoree.

It is a challenge to make the information interesting and intelligible, but that is the job of a teacher and a textbook. They do their job quite poorly. At least they did. I am from the pre-handheld computer school of mathematics, and I was quick enough at arithmetic that I rarely used a calculator.

Anyway, I think the issue is actually a mindset, not regulation. Half the book distribution is controlled by organized crime anyway, and that might be part of the trouble with textbooks, but why makers of things and providers of major services follow the same half baked path is a mystery. People will say it is money but a profit motive is not necessarily married to a lack of integrity. Another misconception we've been fed over and over.

Oh well. If you don't understand anything about electrocution, and wiring principles, it may be best to get a friend to test out the how-to book's methods in his home before you try it.