Perspectives in public health

What's that called again?

2011-12-12T10:52:00.002-05:00

What do you call it? That thing where people get together, compare notes, and leave with everyone knowing more than when they arrived? There are many low-odds high-damage risks, way too many to deal with them all individually. There is at least one certain high-damage risk, that corruption will infect high-places and passivity infect low-places, and stupidity and paranoia will

The promise of World Peace (1985)

2011-11-14T08:50:00.001-05:00

Long before "Occupy Wall Street" some saw events unfolding and started building a response to them that will "survive spring break." Excerpts from "The Promise of World Peace", a statement by the Baha'i Universal House of Justice, October 1985 Peace .. is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet,

On restructuring government and power on earth

2011-11-08T12:58:00.000-05:00

I think you (Yangbo) touched a key issue, and a systems thinking one, in the comment that "Of course, no system of governance can be perfect but can nonetheless be amended through continuous improvement. " The twin questions of what a "more perfect" (!) system of governance would look like, at all, let alone how to get from here to there,

Pathways to a sustainable future

2011-10-26T11:30:00.000-04:00

(From a discussion in a Systems Thinking forum in LinkedIn this morning.) I think there is great hope for the future already visible amid the catastrophic failure all around us of the old ways that make it harder and harder to believe that "This will work, just keep doing more of it." The paradigm needs to change. The pathways we need to

Zen of agile programming

2011-09-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

There's an interesting thing called the "Agile Manifesto" which is a set of guidelines about how to write software that actually works and is actually helpful to customers. I love the overlap with my favorite guru of systems, John Gall, in his book Systemantics: How Systems Fail, and his principle #15: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that

The power of dyads

2010-12-26T04:56:00.004-05:00

Maybe love is a feature not a bug, and they came to the ark in pairs for a reason. Lately I've been spending a lot of time reading books on how to make groups of people better able to do the work that "meetings" are supposed to help with. People, as individuals, have a lot of problems when viewed as "problem solving" units or agents. We have terrible and selective memory, flawed

Electronic Health Records not so great -- Rand Corp.

2010-12-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON – Hospitals' use of electronic health records has had just a limited effect on improving the quality of medical care nationwide, according to a study by the nonprofit RAND Corporation. The study, published online by the American Journal of Managed Care, is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that new methods should be developed to measure the impact of health information

Then a miracle happens

2010-12-23T05:11:00.001-05:00

Miracles do occur! My wife and I went to the annual Baha'i conference on Social and Economic Development in Orlando earlier this week. The session on dealing with how to design and run development projects in fragile post-conflict countries, such as Iraq or Afghanistan was particularly enlightening. Here's a picture of my summary of the recommended strategy: In words the steps are: Invest

Zen and college admission webform flaws

2010-12-23T03:46:00.000-05:00

So, it seems the widely-used on-line college admission form has a substantial flaw. I think the real flaw is a little further upstream. Today's New York Times describes the situation. (picture is from the "demotivational" web site. ======== With Common Application, Many Find a Technical Difficulty in Common, TooBy JACQUES STEINBERG (Dec 22, 2010)The Common Application, the admission

Bill and Mellinda Gates Foundation looks at education - MET

2010-12-11T10:45:00.005-05:00

Classes exist, not just classrooms. This is important! I'm reviewing the press release on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Measure of Effective Teaching MET program (Educational measures) and a glimpse into what characteristics of teachers, perceivable by students, correlate with successful outcomes. Many of the quoted characteristics overlap with characteristics of successful

On secrecy and surprise

2010-12-11T07:09:00.002-05:00

After the mathematician turned jungle explorer had an affair with the chief's beautiful daughter, the chief pondered a suitable punishment. "You will be executed at dawn some day in the next week such that it will be a surprise," he declared, and the explorer was put in jail on Sunday evening to contemplate his fate. The chief was known to be a man of his word, so the logic engines began to

Kindle is to book as Electronic Health Record is to ... what?

2010-12-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

Dan Newman writes in todays WSJ on why he does NOT want a Kindle for Christmas, and it's worth a read. Excerpts below: (A Kindle for Christmas? Spare me!) I should be the perfect candidate for an e-reader: I own thousands of books, lack space for more and often schlep several heavy volumes in my bag. So when I begged my family to refrain from getting me a Kindle for Christmas, they were

Math education, discipline, and catching up to Shanghai

2010-12-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

This is a much shorter version of a recent post on math education. I'd like to challenge a basic assumption behind the solutions presented to teaching math and physics. I was a physics and astrophysics undergraduate major in college. I love math and physics, couldn't get enough of it. On one exam, as a senior, we were allowed to bring in a 3x5 inch notecard with laws of physics on it.

Rails across a swamp - why math education is a waste of time in America

2010-12-08T06:39:00.011-05:00

We've had a fascinating discussion of what constitutes core competencies and concepts in math, and now physics education. I myself had benefit of one of the USA's top-10 high-schools, and was an undergraduate Physics major, and just love math and physics. I've also struggled to teach this skill and love to people I've tutored or taught. On reflecting on the struggle, and how to

It's Christmas!

2010-12-05T09:41:00.002-05:00

T'is the time of gift giving! Yay! Time for all good Christians to go shopping! Or is it? I was raised in a somewhat Christian family and, much to the surprise of my parents, spent a lot of time reading by Bible. I had been given one of those "red letter" editions at age 8 or so, with the words of Jesus in red, so, naturally, thinking that was the point, I spent a lot of time reading

And how are we feeling today?

2010-12-05T08:05:00.007-05:00

The string of leaks damaging credibility of the establishment continues -- although I'm talking about newsflashes that show patients have as much impact on their own health as do, gasp, doctors or hospitals. Just shocking. Fortunately, most of these news flashes occur one at a time, so there is a chance for spin-control to counter-balance, neutralize, and finally remove all the punch

You have been pre-rejected!

2010-12-03T17:09:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the Hospital. By the way, you have been pre-rejected, so don't even think about trying to make a permanent friend while here. You're not THAT special. Oh, have a nice day.... I'm simply articulating the implicit message sent to every patient by the hospital. Kind of like "Thou shalt not eat popcorn during the sermon." We may smile at you, but don't think for a moment it's

Should we simply close all hospitals?

2010-12-03T06:23:00.000-05:00

Should we close all the hospitals? Are hospitals good for the health of the country? If we really want to look at "health care" in the country, and do some "zero-based budgeting" with our health care billions of dollars, we should ask this kind of question. This is not entirely an exercise in cynicism or satire. From a population health point of view, it's not clear that hospitals help,

Computerized Physician Order Entry and human behavior

2010-12-02T18:30:00.002-05:00

Successfully installing a Computerized Physician Order-Entry (CPOE) system at some hospitals could make things worse. There are human factors that the designer probably never considered. I want to focus on one example -- the working relationships between doctors and nurses. In some places relationships are harmonious, but in other hospitals there may be substantial tension between doctors

How to improve System performance

2010-12-02T08:43:00.006-05:00

If we think of SYSTEMS a living entities, we get better answers to "How do we improve system performance?" First, as humans we tend to think first about the human beings within a system, and tend to ignore the system as a living entity. This is a mistake. In fact, for a while, for the insight it provides, we should deal with the growing sludge of unexamined problems at the OTHER end of the

On how to fix hospitals

2010-12-02T08:05:00.001-05:00

John Gall, my favorite author on systems antics, nailed it when he observed: "A large system produced by expanding the dimensions of a smaller system does not behave like the smaller system." *This profound truth has implications all around us every day, as we violate it time and again and smash our heads into the same pipe, while instantly denying that a pipe should be "there" or even

Does the Military Overuse Powerpoint?

2010-12-01T13:06:00.001-05:00

We need a word in English for "Bad outcome caused by the use of computers." The military has the same problem with data as hospitals. How much can you cram into a PowerPoint briefing? A weblog post on "The Tank" titled "Does the Military Overuse Powerpoint" reviewed that issue on 28 April 2010. Here's some excerpts from that with my highlighting added in yellow. Does the Military Overuse

Two minutes - the myth of EHR's

2010-11-30T11:17:00.004-05:00

We are assured by government and IT vendors that Electronic Health Records (EHR's) will improve patient care, if only we could overcome those who resist progress. Balderdash. Let's examine this myth. First, there is an assumption that, prior to seeing you, a doctor would read the EHR to get the "big picture", making the visit more efficient. My experience, and that of everyone else I've

Is text better than video for communicating messages?

2010-11-29T13:24:00.003-05:00

There was a a question on the NMC forum about video versus text. Here are my thoughts. I reduced them to a few lines of text (!) as my response there. ====== (The image is from Cognitive Behavior Therapy Self Help Resources at http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/interpersonal1.htm ) Summary of points : 1) many people graduating from college today have never read an entire book. They simply don't

Or, then again, maybe NOT nurses in the lead...

2010-11-28T20:21:00.002-05:00

(continuing my last post) The first problem in any problem should be the "problem problem" -- or, are we asking the right question? While nurses may be better positioned than doctors to reduce costs or increase safety of health care starting right here, that still doesn't mean they know anything about leadership. And, given the AMA's response and leadership within their own ranks, it is

The future of Nursing - and the AMA's response

2010-11-28T12:28:00.002-05:00

Doctors, individually, are nice people; doctors, collectively, are hostile, stubborn, and dense. I'm disparaging the American Medical Association here. There doesn't seem to be much love lost between hospital-based doctors, collectively, and the doctors and others in public health. "Public Health" by the way is concerned with the health of the public, not with insurance for poor people. The

On non-verbal verbal programs. and nusing simulators

2010-11-27T06:29:00.000-05:00

Continuing the discussion, let's look at the ultimate non-verbal learning skill -- language skills. There are two competing models here of how humans operate, and they have very different implications. This is the MBA / Zen training argument from the last 2 posts carried to extremes. One model (or myth) is that humans are really just sort of computing machines. You put "facts" and "rules"

On non-verbal Higher Education programs

2010-11-26T10:18:00.000-05:00

Can higher-education make money with non-verbal programs? In my last post, I go on about problems with the analytical model for science, math, and MBA programs. I quoted this: “Students read about the philosophy of Zen Buddhism, among many other things, and learn about how leading Japanese companies have innovated through sharing of ‘tacit knowledge’ — knowledge that is best

MBAs get no respect in Japan

2010-11-26T08:00:00.001-05:00

According to the NY Times today, the Japanese are abandoning Western MBA programs and creating new MBA schools of their own, with a unique Japanese flavor. Here's a few snippets: “They believe in business know-how gained on the job, not in the classrooms,” said T.W. Kang, a Tokyo-based businessman who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. “They’d say you can’t learn it there. You

How could we have been so stupid?

2010-11-24T04:38:00.003-05:00

There are other ways to become smart, as a society, than having really smart individuals. In fact, having a lot of smart people seems to have been making us, taken together as a society, dumb and dumber lately. Tom Friedman in the NYTimes today bemoans overuse of texting and the dumbing down of students in the US. I disagreed in a comment that may be posted later today. Let me try to

Flying home and TSA today

2010-11-22T09:57:00.005-05:00

Charles White put up on Facebook a link to a picture of a screened actor (one presumes) demonstrating what the new TSA airport security scanners might reveal. The young lady (who we can confirm is female) is carrying a weapon or two. In the hue and cry over this technology, I have to pause and reflect on what on Earth is going on here. Exactly what is the threat all this stuff is supposed to

Building of true communities

2010-11-21T11:16:00.001-05:00

The late M. Scott Peck and the FCE - Foundation for Community Encouragement (which has been resurrected!) have done some worthy thinking and experimentation along the lines of the nature of true community, and a formal facilitated 2-day process for getting a collection of people through the process of forming an actual community, in a very specific sense of that word. I heartily recommend a

Just imagine ....

2010-11-19T22:02:00.009-05:00

If you had a 1 million GigaHertz supercomputer, could YOU make a show that people would pay $1 apiece to see? Surely someone could. Why do I ask? Phaylen Fairchild blogged 11/18 on the "Facebooking of Second Life" and the past and future of virtual reality and Linden Labs. I added a comment, repeated below: There are changes in software architecture that some new company will implement

Humor, joy and despair - short videos

2010-11-17T11:21:00.000-05:00

Here's a recent video full of joy - a flash-mob singing Handel's Messiah at Macy's in Philly. http://www.philly.com/philly/video/106492678.html and here's a recent video full of gloom -- a look at the Federal Reserve System's QE (Qualitative Easing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k

Brief thought on internet security and federal snooping

2010-11-17T10:00:00.007-05:00

There is an effort underway, according to the papers, to expand the US government's ability to eavesdrop on personal conversations that take place in social media, especially things like Skype. People don't trust this snooping to be well-intentioned or well-managed, and don't like it. Businesses don't trust this snooping to be well-intentioned or well-managed, and they don't like it. The

I'm just not myself today

2010-11-17T09:23:00.001-05:00

Hmm. If I'm not myself today, who am I? I've written a number of prior posts on what "shape" a person really is, or where the "edges" are of a person, for various purposes, such as coming up with new ways to improve health or counter depression. One thing that's increasingly clear is that a person's "body", the stuff that is in a tight biological system with itself, does NOT end where their

Gulf Spill report reveals lack of expertise -- of experts reviewing the spill

2010-11-17T06:47:00.003-05:00

I read in the Wall Street Journal that an interim report has been selectively released on the causes of the Gulf Spill at the BP oil rig, although not yet made public. I was saddened by the third hand comments which did not use the terms "mindfulness", "vigilence" or "safety culture", although cheered that specific "bad people" were not named. What was reported had a flavor shown by the

China's unfair advantage -- collective action?

2010-11-16T11:59:00.002-05:00

Today's Wall Street Journal had an article titled "China's 'State Capitalism' Sparks a Global Backlash". The article basically whines that China is somehow breaking unwritten rules to let "market forces" prove how successful they are, by, gasp, actually thinking about problems and taking coherent action to address them. This is viewed as an "unfair" advantage, apparently, particularly since it

Supercomputer - bah humbug!

2010-11-15T06:52:00.005-05:00

The latest news on the supercomputer front is that the Chinese have passed the Americans with a "faster machine". Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, achieved a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second, earning it the number one spot in the Top 500 (www.top500.org) survey of supercomputers.The Jaguar computer at a US government facility in Tennessee, which had held the top spot, was

The king is dead - long live the king!

2010-11-09T11:06:00.002-05:00

One of the tensions and growing polarizations in the US today, as in many countries, is along the axis of whether more or less "government" is a good thing. Both pro and con can marshal vivid and compelling data and arguments and stories and case studies about bad things that happen, which, in their minds, are directly due to even some of the other side's "remedy" being in place. Both sides

Women's gains are slipping

2010-11-08T12:35:00.004-05:00

The New Zealand Human Rights Commission released a report this week, "The 2010 Census of Women's Participation", which shows that women's participation in governance, professional, and public life has started to slide, erasing gains over the past decades, according to the Christchurch Press (8-Nov-2010). (Image at left from flight.org) According to that article, women are "still being paid

On sailboats and community project design

2010-11-07T11:23:00.004-05:00

I was reflecting this morning, after flying out of Nelson and seeing all the sailboats, on the nature of sailboats and what insights those can give to community efforts to tap into existing winds of power in order to get where they are going. Usually, when people think of sailboats, and what makes them "go", they look upwards from the water line at the sails. It's really instructive to look

Blind plus stubborn is not a winning hand

2010-11-06T12:58:00.007-04:00

(A short piece continuing the reflection on some of the reasons why Big IT projects, such as EHR, tend to have such a Big Failure rate.) It is the nature of large scale IT projects, such as Electronic Health Records, that social processes have to change, from the micro scale times the number of people affected, all the way up to the macro scale. These processes involve feedback within levels,

Social Thermodynamics

2010-11-05T22:31:00.000-04:00

My undergraduate work was as a physics major, which has colored my approach to problem solving. Physicists prefer not to waste their own energy on useless computation, so when they are facing a question of "How would X happen?" they usually fall back and ask first "Is it even possible for X to happen?" If it's not possible, then there's no point in straining your brain to figure out HOW it

Complexity, Policy, and Big IT -- reflections on Tricia Greenhalgh's work

2010-11-04T15:46:00.004-04:00

Note - the following hasn't had peer review or a day or so to reflect on it, but it's my initial impressions from Tricia's talk and the thoughts it induced in my travel-weary mind. Still, they might generate a discussion and I wanted to get them down, however raw, before they evaporated. Then I can distill them, cross-reference better to other work, and see if we can work this into an actual

Domestic violence rises in Christchurch after earthquake

2010-10-30T14:41:00.000-04:00

The level of domestic abuse and violence is reported to have risen substantially (50%) in Christchurch after the earthquake in September. According to the New Zealand Herald, Burglaries in quake-ravaged Christchurch are actually down but family violence offences have soared more than 50 per cent, say police. Provisional data showed that burglaries have decreased by 11 per cent in comparison

Women under Perpetual Guardianship of Males in Saudi Arabia

2010-10-30T14:28:00.001-04:00

The government of Saudi Arabia gives women very few rights that are taken for granted in the West. This treatment is not a feature of Islam itself, but is a feature of the particular way Islam has been interpreted by the ruling elite. It is important not to paint Islam with a broad brush, when so much of the practices are local interpretations that vary widely with country and region.

Love and survival - or, no, technology is not what will save us!

2010-10-16T05:37:00.000-04:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article this morning titled "Latino Aging Stumps Experts". Why Hispanics such as Mr. de Leon—often poor, uneducated and without health insurance—live long and strong has long confounded health professionals, scholars and other experts. This week, the first official life-expectancy data released for U.S. Hispanics shows they outlive whites by 2.5 years and

Brainflowing - interesting looking seminar for ITSE in Second Life today

2010-10-14T07:20:00.000-04:00

(image is from artist Alex Gray, at http://www.alexgrey.com/ who has some truly AMAZING images along the ideas of cosmic consciousness and shared human existence. ) Thursday, October 14, 2010 Brainstorming with Brainflowing at ISTE (strengths of Second Life and current alternatives to this Virtual Environment) Copied From here Thursday, October 14, 2010, 6-7 PM SLT (that's 9PM EST) ISTE (

Migration from Second Life to OpenSim

2010-10-14T06:50:00.000-04:00

(The above image was in google images with no creator given. I guess if CEO's can "abandon ship" taking their goodies with them, so can customers or service users!) Prompted by the recent announcement by Linden Labs that they are increasing rents (doubling them) for educational and non-profit organizations, I'm joining the exiting throngs (rats?) cutting down my footprint in Second Life, and

Will technology be our salvation?

2010-10-09T09:50:00.000-04:00

Today's Wall Street Journal has an inteview with entrepreneur / investor Peter Thiel, subtitled "Technology = Salvation". I've written about this topic before, including the immediate prior post, linking to a dark humor YouTube video on "Technology in the Classroom", comments on social media, and on productivity gains from "Sharpening the Axe" The area of need for technology is clear in

Technology in the classroom -- how NOT to do it!

2010-09-09T17:17:00.002-04:00

This is painfully recognizable in some cases! Warning - dark humor, akin to The Office. Worth watching at least weekly and asking .."Is this me?! " http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6svk_R_rVhA Wade

On evaluating teachers by how they teach to the test

2010-09-01T05:46:00.002-04:00

(picture by "Editor B" on Flickr) From today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/education/01teacher.html Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains in Use, and Critics" A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for

Tackling bad nursing management effectively from below

2010-08-24T07:20:00.001-04:00

Here's a post from Those Emergency Blues, and two comments, on it, one of them mine. Your comments would be welcome as well! This is an important issue! Unbearably UnhappyAny experienced nurse can walk in to any particular unit and tell almost immediately if it’s a happy place to work. There’s something about the body language, maybe, or the lack of laughter, or how the nurses present

The oil next time - lessons from Deepwater Horizon incident

2010-05-02T04:12:00.003-04:00

Deepwater Horizon official web site: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/ http://www.facebook.com/DeepwaterHorizonResponse For the latest information visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com Twitter at http://twitter.com/Oil_Spill_2010 or on Facebook at Deepwater Horizon Response. Powerpoint on the role cementing can play in release of undersea gas http://www.aade.org/

Doctors that don't really listen to patients reporting symptoms

2010-04-14T09:44:00.001-04:00

This is a response to "In reporting symptoms, do patients know best?", a piece in the New York Times April 13, 2010. Note: Of course, I don't even discuss the fact that "symptoms", as opposed to "signs" are by definition the subjective experiences of the patients, regardless what factual or biomedical basis they have. My comments The two most egregious incidents I can recall were these. (1

Stanley Fish (NYT) raises work by Jürgen Habermas on religion and science

2010-04-13T05:55:00.003-04:00

My response: A basic principle of scientific cosmology is that "we are not special." In other words, Earth is not at the center of the universe, man (or woman) is not the greatest creation of God (er ... of nature), etc. While the first premise, about Earth's location, has achieved wide acceptance, the second premise has lagged behind, even in the most scientific of circles. I perceive in the

Comment on "Where do atheists come from?" in New Scientist

2010-03-16T06:20:00.001-04:00

For Understanding, Look At Belief DynamicsTue Mar 16 10:16:45 GMT 2010 by Wade Schuette http://newbricks.blogspot.com "All models are wrong, but some models are useful." (George Box, statistician). In assessing belief systems I suspect it would be useful to look less at what belief system a person holds and more at how that belief system behaves when presented with dissonant or

Social media and implications for work and education

2010-02-27T11:24:00.004-05:00

The millenial generation (Generation Y / "digital natives") has arrived, with their tools, and this has profound implications for education and the nature of the workplace. Introduction: Goleman and others have written about "social intelligence" or "group intelligence." [cite] I want to look at a single more directly observable impact of this infrastructure on the nature of "one's own

On resistance to "social media"

2010-02-27T03:53:00.000-05:00

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/military-announces-new-social-media-policy/ February 26, 2010, 5:29 pm Military Announces New Social Media Policy By JAMES DAO Many months behind schedule, the Department of Defense on Friday issued a new policy that, on the surface,

US army and social media

2010-02-27T03:49:00.000-05:00

Gen Dempsey AUSA 02-25-2010
Photo credit Sgt. Angelica Golindano Gen.

On the Tea Party

2010-02-18T06:43:00.004-05:00

Ann Arbor, MIFebruary 18th, 20106:38 amSo, the battle cry is "Anarchists, unite!" ? A different framework is that the problem is not that coordinated groups of people exist, but that such groups as they grow and age tend to become depressingly blind, inefficient, arrogant, ineffective, amoral, immoral, self-serving, and corrupt. If you view that as a fact of life, smaller is better, fine.

Govenment "auto-braking" - as rampant short-term greed prevails

2010-02-17T06:22:00.008-05:00

February 17, 2010New York Times Excerpts from the article on the "gridlock" nature of the problem, leaving out the part about debt. The photo is from an amazing collection of photos of Detroit, on Flickr, by "Detroitderek Photography". I've pondered how to teach "systems thinking" as a whole, but one specific example is brought to mind by the article below -- some very basic facts

Comment on Kristoff - physiology of politics (NY Times 2-14-2010)

2010-02-14T05:26:00.004-05:00

Your article says "“What research like ours may help with is in figuring out how to construct an argument in a way that is going to meaningfully connect with those on the other side,” Dr. Smith said." I think you've fallen into the trap of thinking that logical arguments are what shape perceptions, instead of vice-versa. That may be somewhat true for academics, but I don't think it's true for

What we all got wrong

2010-02-12T22:17:00.001-05:00

What We All Got WrongSat Feb 13 03:04:51 GMT 2010 by Wade Schuette Comments on "Survival of the fittest theory", New Scientist, 6 Feb 2010 p28 Moving to Darwin was a hard paradigm shift, and now moving beyond Darwin will similarly be attacked and wrongly stereotyped as regression, and lumped as fanaticism and enemy action. It is as if the US Congress's protocol ("never yield on anything") is

There is a way out

2010-01-09T06:41:00.002-05:00

The issues we are calling "problems" seem to all be "symptoms" of one deeper actual problem, and if we don't fix that, the symptoms will simply, like whack-a-mole, emerge somewhere else. Of course, nobody wants to fix it, and besides they argue, its hard to fix -- as if fixing the rest of the mess we're all in is easy or cheap. The "it" I'm referring to is the core of civilized behavior, a

Failure of our national security system indeed

2009-12-30T05:47:00.000-05:00

New York Times columnist Maureen Down discusses the "chilling episode on Flight 253" today, and the eerie resonance with Katrina and wondering what planet FEMA was on. My comment on the latest system failure, echoing ever again T.S. Eliot's perception that mankind is always "dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good." ==== I think the most important lesson we refuse to

Thoughts on leadership

2009-11-06T19:42:00.010-05:00

In Sharon Daloz Park's book Leadership Can Be Taught, she describes Harvard's leadership program.A phrase that caught my eye was this:In this view, the function of leadership is to mobilize people -- groups, organizations, societies -- to address their toughest problems....[to] assist people in moving beyond the edge of familiar patterns into the unknown terrain of greater complexity, new

Sharpening the axe

2009-11-01T01:48:00.017-04:00

US President Abe Lincoln once said that if he had ten minutes to cut down a tree, he'd spend the first five "sharpening the axe."Once upon a time, to cut down the "trees" of problems our society was running into, we had the "axe" of "smart people." This mostly seemed to work, and we developed huge systems of education to find "the right people" and make them smart.As our society got more

Mindfulness and fighting wild fires, and the value of simulations for training

2009-10-28T07:46:00.016-04:00

Professor Karl Weick at the University of Michigan has written extensively on the need for "mindfulness" in emergency situations, such as, literally, fighting forest fires.A mindful crew or crew-chief will be aware that they are operating on a mental model, and that model may be incorrect, so they must be alert to even very small signs that they have completely misconstrued the situation.There

Hypnotized in high places - Northwest Flight 188

2009-10-24T04:14:00.013-04:00

( picture of vulcan cockpit from u07ch on flickr -- Click for larger view.)So, yesteday, it seems that a Northwest flight #188 overflew its destination city as the FAA attempted desperately to reach it. According to the NY Daily News,Crew members aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 188 told the Federal Aviation Administration they were distracted during an intense discussion over airline

Untouchables revisited

2009-10-21T04:17:00.006-04:00

Columnist Tom Friedman, in today's New York Times, in a context when another 100 people are being laid off at the Times newsroom, assesses the qualities of "the untouchables" -- those who will keep their jobs when the others are long gone.I think he misses the point that the sea of others is going to drown the few in that mental model of how a solution might work. I suggest a better way, one

HIgh cost of baseball - Pricing the kids out

2009-10-17T10:21:00.003-04:00

Columnist Bob Herbert in the New York Times today, "Pricing the kids out", bemoans the high cost of attending sports games in the fancy new stadiumsMy reply as a comment was this======= Yep. I spent the last 20 years living within 2 miles of the University of Michigan stadium, and have never been there to see a game, and refuse to pay these kinds of prices, let alone be

Learning how to ask for help

2009-10-17T09:16:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I argued that "more math and science" is not what is missing in our school systems.Today, let me start to get clearer on what should be in the curriculum instead.One thing I'm sure would be a great help is a competency in "Asking for help." This seems to be something that should be taught, learned, and mastered by the end of first grade, and then strengthened each year after that.

How to get higher math scores - New York Times

2009-10-16T04:57:00.004-04:00

The New York Times asks how we can improve our nation's children's math scores. Here is the comment I submitted.In short:FIRST, we should address our nation's problems. THEN if we have time and energy left, if people want to learn math and increase our math scores, great.But at the current time, "math" is a distraction from dealing with our actual problems, and, as such,

Closing feedback - learning Chinese

2009-10-15T05:32:00.005-04:00

This is a multi-level post, so I'm going to post this particular post here on newbricks.blogspot.com, a weblog dealing heavily with feedback and social intelligence, and also on my weblog for learning Chinese, whatseas.blogspot.com.In particular, this is a perfect case in point of how to use social intelligence and feedback to reshape and create behaviors, in this case, to help new students

global emotional climate change

2009-10-15T05:05:00.006-04:00

You can say that again!Here's a simple change that will improve all the relationships in your life.When someone around you does something that is worth a compliment, don't settle for just one. Give them a complement, wait a day, and then give it to them again.If everyone does this, it will double the power of these words to shape and recreate behaviors around you in a way that justifies the

Roger Cohen on hope (for a Nobel Prize)

2009-10-13T07:46:00.006-04:00

Roger Cohen writes in his column today in the NT Times of his hope for humanity, and for his column to win a Nobel Prize. :)There are a few snippets I want to grab out of his Chex-party-mix-like posting today. (As if I'm in any position to complain about such writing! Or about anyone who can STAY INSIDE the 820 word limit!)To wit:NEW YORK — I want this column to be good. I want it to be so

Social Neuroscience

2009-10-13T06:40:00.007-04:00

There was an op-ed piece by David Brooks in theTimes,which apparently you now need to be a member of the NY Times to read, on the new booming field of "social neuroscience" -- or, put differently, how society turns around, closes the loop, and alters our biology and our genes.These people study the way biology, in the form of genes, influences behavior. But they’re also trying to understand the

Why discipline destroys creativity

2009-10-11T13:14:00.005-04:00

If you believe that the best you can do, as in the last post, is to get people all in line with you, as a manager, I think the math works out that you have made the "cosine" term as large as it can get, namely 1.0, between each of the staff members and the boss. AS far as that goes, it's good.However, this typically comes at the cost of people so interested in pleasing the boss that

Why academia can destroy good thinking

2009-10-11T10:00:00.005-04:00

The key point I get to below is that it is SYSTEM EFFECTS which are the hope our business teams should have for unboundedly great performance, not INDIVIDUAL EFFECTS. And, sadly, this is exactly the opposite of what is tacitly taught by example in our educational system.Cheryll and I were just talking about our personal experiences in very-high-performance groups, and how it is impossible to

Spiritual solutions - how we can become like termites

2009-10-11T05:25:00.004-04:00

Note -This is a continuation of the prior post, on termites, lasers, and solutions to our social problems an unemployment and failing businesses and failing solutions to global problems like pollution, water supply, global warming, etc.OK, where are we? We know that:Incoherent solutions to fragments of our social problems seem to be consistently making the totality of problems we face simply

Spiritual solution to our current economic problems

2009-10-11T04:39:00.003-04:00

One metaphor keeps raising its hand in my consciousness and asking for attention, so I'll go with the flow and give that one some life and flesh it out this morning with you, dear reader.The image in my head describing humans is basically a termite nest where the termites each have iPhones with GPS service, but the point of the entire structure is to be a huge sort of cosmic receiver. Each

Why should intimacy be healing?

2009-10-10T12:40:00.004-04:00

If we're going to learn enough about the way intimacy can produce a defense against influenza, say, it might help to have a clear mental model of how that mechanism operates. Models don't have to be "right", by the way, they only need to be useful at leading to asking the right questions. Still, a model that we could run simulations on would be nice to have when we're trying to get a handle

Healing and empowering relationships

2009-10-10T06:18:00.005-04:00

"See me, feel me, touch me, heal me"( From Tommy, the rock opera, by The Who)A concept that keeps coming up in looking at how relationships take shape and keep their shape as they are recreated daily is that of active vision.This really needs a term of its own, so maybe I'll call it proactive-vision.What is involved is a kind of looking and seeing people that is not passive, not like the way a

Abusive relationships

2009-10-09T16:32:00.002-04:00

The powerful forces that can generate cohesion and creative vitality among people can also become bent and twisted into a dynamic configuration that persists and intensifies abuse.Sadly, this means that domestic abuse and workplace abuse are common, particularly since they involve the emotional power of authority along with other cohesion. On a larger scale, entire groups, cultures, and

Emotions in the workplace? YES!

2009-10-09T16:27:00.003-04:00

[ I need a post here on why human emotions are not some kind of defect in perfect rational machines, and why top workplaces are filled with positive deviance and strong positive emotions. Emotionless, cold, machine-like cubicle farms are NOT capable of high-performance output, regardless how large a whip and other incentives are used, doubly so if the people are in a context where they are

Group size two - and the nature of love

2009-10-09T15:58:00.002-04:00

I need a whole post here about the powerful forces that draw people into groups of size two, what we call "relationships" with others, and that hold them there.On one level, these forces are emotional, due to hormones, or otherwise built in. On another, these are a prototype of dyadic bonding that we need to have correct in our model of how people tend to form into clusters, groups, and larger

drop out , cast away, mutual rejection and violence

2009-10-09T15:28:00.002-04:00

My prior post was on the upwards power of social connectedness. This post is a brief comment on the other side of that coin, the dark power of social rejection.Most human body cells, when they become separated from the body, simply commit suicide in a process called "apoptosis". In deer, if an animal becomes ill and has a hard time keeping up with the pack, very often it will simply stop

Surviving pandemic flu - Herd Immunity revisited

2009-10-09T02:58:00.010-04:00

Are there psychosocial ways to protect yourself from the flu? Given the stakes here, it seems irresponsible not to investigate this method of protecting our lives.Let me state clearly a research question that I realize borders on heresy, that touches profound social and religious emotional content and can lead to heated disputes:Hypothesis: There are psychosocial actions we can take, that we

Thoughts on connectedness, unity, and meaning

2009-10-06T03:50:00.012-04:00

I had the joy of meeting some visiting Chinese scholars yesterday. Amid other things, we talked briefly about the writing of John Donne, and about cosmology. This post is dedicated to them and the hope that our relationship may deepen along lines such as these.No man is an island,Entire of itself.Each is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is

Comments on The Public Imperative

2009-10-05T05:49:00.007-04:00

Picture the world of a busy city emergency room with a steady stream of gunshot victims arriving and an overwhelmed staff. What could you do to improve this situation?Most of the "health care" system in the US, the part not swept up in keeping track of who is paying, is consumed with finding every faster and better ways to deal with gunshot victims.The focus of "public health" on the other

Job source, in simpler terms

2009-10-04T21:57:00.002-04:00

Let me rephrase the gist of the last post regarding jobs.The reason we don't have jobs for everyone is because our corporate management is(a) out of touch with what the world actually needs, and would buy if we could supply it, and(b) unable to figure out how to make that kind of product cheaply.In turn, the reason behind both of those failings is that management is attempting to solve these

Wanted - Leadership on jobs? Ok, here you go!

2009-10-04T05:08:00.006-04:00

The New York Times has an editorial today titled "Leadership on jobs".In part that article says:September was ... the longest unbroken stretch of losses since record-keeping began in 1939 — ... And that understates the damage. ..The unemployment rate for September ... also understates the damage. It would have been higher but for the fact that 571,000 people dropped out of the work force last

Comment to NYTimes on China's consumer spending

2009-10-03T05:49:00.002-04:00

A New York Times discussion piece is titled "China's next stage - spreading the wealth", available a this link for the next few weeks. Here's a reply I wrote, which may or may not end up being posted.==========This discussion highlights some unstated assumptions which need to be made explicit and re-examined.One is that raising a "standard of living" is equal to, or even requires inclusion of "

Where is the bathroom?!

2009-10-01T19:24:00.004-04:00

Watch as CCTV's Aurora teaches a new arrival in Beijing how to say "Where is the bathroom?".卫生间在哪里？(wèi shēng jiān zài nǎ lǐ) Where is the bathroom?

China welcomes foreign experts for Social and Economic Development

2009-10-01T19:08:00.003-04:00

CCTV has a short video on the welcoming of foreign experts in Social and Economic Development.

CCTV online for learning about China and Chinese

2009-10-01T18:49:00.005-04:00

China TV (CCTV)'s on-line web side has a continuing supply of short videos on the language and culture of China.One example today was this young lady who exchanged money and taught us the few words we needed to do that (exchange money, here's my passport, sign here.). To me, there is tremendous power in a video of a real person actually carrying out a real transaction in a real setting in China