Blog Content 2006
Second International Conference on Interactive Mobile and Computer Aided Learning, 18-20 April 2007.
Amman, Jordan.
Focus The conference aims to promote the development of Mobile Learning in the Middle East, provide a forum for education and knowledge transfer, expose students to latest ICT technologies and encourage the study and implementation of mobile applications in teaching and learning. The conference will also present an opportunity for educators to develop new skills and to stimulate critical debate on theories, approaches, principles and applications of m-learning, hence facilitate dialogue, sharing and networking between diverse cultures with regard to the optimal use of emerging technologies. The conference will provide participants with the newest state of the art on portable devices and their role in university education and potential benefits for learning purposes. Examples of the implementation by laptops, palmtops, mobile phones, PDA, smart phones, WAPs, GPS and a navigational system, WWW-access via Bluetooth, WLAN or GPRS will be presented, accompanied by experimentations to demonstrate their coherence and feasibility. The conference will promote Jordan as the e-country of the Middle East and PSUT as an ICT Center of Excellence.
Dear Colleagues,
The IMCL2007 conference, hosted by Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman, Jordan, cordially invites students to submit papers to a special Masters and Doctoral Colloquium which will be organised in conjunction with the conference in the period 18-20 April 2007. The IEEE Education Society has allocated funds for students attending IMCL2007. Up to 15 students may be financially supported by fully covering there accommodation in Amman Holiday Inn for 3 nights, in addition to providing access to all conference activities, local transport between conference hotel and venue, conference proceedings and stationeries, conference dinner and lunches, and trips to Jerash and Petra. IMCL2007 will also apply for another grant from IEEE Foundation in order to provide support for students' international travel.
Please visit the conference website at http://www.imcl-conference.org for more information, or/and contact me at the address below.
With warmest regards and best wishes.
Yours Faithfully,
Professor Dr Al-Zoubi A. Y.,
Dean of Scientific Research,
Princess Sumaya University for Technology,
Amman, Jordan.
http://www.psut.edu.jo,
http://www.imcl-conference.org,
Office: +962 6 5356574,
Mobile: +962 777355 299.
You may know students with an interest in this conference, especially if there is free transport and housing!
Blooks are in.
Blogs that become books are called "blooks." The article at Business Week Online (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2006/tc20060425_299851.htm) gives examples of two successful books coming out of blogs on experiences in Iraq.
A great site to understand how to get from a blog to a book is by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff at "The Blog to Book Project", (http://www.blogtobook.com). They have a very useful ezine as well.
Sectarianism and Insurgency in Iraq.
Here are a few recent reports that I found useful:
1. Scenarios for the Insurgency in Iraq by Alan Schwartz (http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr174.html)
Workshop to look at various futurings on the outcomes of insurgency. Warning: the USIP website seems very slow.
See especially the collection of links to related articles at the bottom of the page.
2. US Institute of Peace: Panel Discussion on Sectarianism.
(http://www.c-span.org/homepage.asp?Cat=Current_Event&Code=Iraq&ShowVidNum=24&Rot_Cat_CD=US_Iraq)
Participants included Eric Davis, Reidar Visser, Phebe Marr, Michael Rubin, and Nabil Al-Tikriti.
These are outstanding summaries of state-of-the-art thinking on sectarianism in Iraq. Great sound-bites for media professionals as well.
Phebe Marr: http://www.usip.org/specialists/bios/archives/marr.html
Eric Davis: "Politicized religion. They start with a political agenda and mobilize religious symbols defined in sectarian terms to promote those identities." Wow! That sounds exactly right.
Dr. Davis said,
"To really understand what is going on in iraq, we have to go to the 1980s and the 1990s, see the type of sectarian regime that Saddam Hussein brought to Iraq after seizing power in 1979;
how the framing of the iran-iraq war, especially due to the threat that Iraq felt from neighboring Iran, led to the whole huddisea Saddam campaign during that war;
how that led to economic decline, how that in turn stimulated the seizure of Kuwait;
how that in turn led to the bombing of Iraq, bombing it back to levels of industrialization that it had in the 1960s;
how the subsequent February to March 1991 uprising or intifada led by the Iraqi government's own statistics led to 300,000 people being killed in the south, primarily Shia;
how the UN sanctions regime after that put extreme pressure on the Iraqi poor and pauperized much of the Iraqi middle class, and in effect, destroyed the whole welfare state that had been set up as a result of the 20-fold increase in oil prices between 1970 and 1980.
And the collapse of the state-- the state welfare system, and the collapse of a national market, the collapse of an education or national education system, tended to push people back into localism and regionalism,
and into ethnicity and into religion, psychologically in part, to escape the horrors of everyday life.
I would say that is this opportunity structure which led to the rise of the sectarian entrepreneurs."
Phebe Marr paper on the new leaders in Iraq: (http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr160.pdf). Dr. Marr is author of many outstanding analyses on the history and current social environments of Iraq. A summary of her current project of envisioning the future of Iraq: "http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.viewContributors&bioid=62&emailthis=sendtoafriend).
The Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop and the Institute of Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley announce a new immigration website: http://www.iir.berkeley.edu/immigration/index.html. The web site is designed to provide researchers, instructors and interested citizens with substantive content pertaining to immigration issues, including resources for studying and researching immigration, teaching courses with immigration content and providing easy access to news stories on immigration in the US and abroad.
I was pointed to a 2003 movie called 'Power Trip' is described at http://www.powertripthemovie.com. This film describes what happens in a monopoly electricity authority when it attempts to become self-supporting in a competitive economy. Many of the challenges faced by managers and employees would be exactly the same as those in Iraq when state monopolies and government bureaus are forced to modernize their administration.
History of Empires in the Middle East. http://www.mapsofwar.com/index.html
The "Imperial History" flash graphic shows empires in the Middle East from Egypt in 1450 BCE to modern nation state formations.
Details on the Mongol capture of Baghdad in 1258 can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(1258).
See the list of references at the bottom for more links on the Mongol conquest of the Middle East
(200,000-1 million killed?).
Smart people in groups, aren't. Researchers Chip Heath and Rich Gonzalez found that
"Interaction with Others increases decision confidence but not decision quality.
(Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 1995, Vol 61, No 3, March, pp. 305-326).
They found that interaction with others does increase confidence in the group decision, but does not increase accuracy of the decisions. Interaction forces people to justify and explain decisions, which can be a good thing, but not always.
This is echoed in Guy Kawasaki's blog.
International Literacy Day is celebrated each year on 8 September. Literacy is essential for sustainable human development in today’s society. Yet 781 million adults—two-thirds women—cannot read....Literacy Sustains Development is the theme of this year’s International Literacy Day to be celebrated around the world on September 8. In his message for this day, the Director-General of UNESCO Koïchiro Matsuura stressed that
“Literacy is widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful tools of development, which makes its relative neglect all the more frustrating.”
(http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=50415&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html).I posted a few months ago about this as well, but today is a reminder about the global emphasis needed. The ability to learn, and to teach yourself anything you want to learn is critical, essential, and necessary.
In my opinion, ignorance and narrow-mindedness promotes hatred of people different; critical thinking skills are the tools to to accept diversity, but not intolerance. Our family has used "critical thinking tools" for years and we practice thinking through alternative views of issues to see how others might interpret the same set of data.
Sources of tools:
Critical Thinking Company, (http://www.criticalthinking.com/index.js);
Timberdoodle Educational, (http://www.timberdoodle.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=38);
Sonlight Curriculum (especially "The Fallacy Detective"), (http://www.sonlight.com/critical-thinking.html).
MY HERO is a not for profit educational web project that celebrates the best of humanity. Their mission is to share an archive of hero stories from around the world. This is a great place to see the best of people serving other peple. (http://www.myhero.com/myhero/)
For Women By Women (FWBW) - Turkey
This initiative aims to bring amateur and professional female photographers together to help create change in the current status of women in Turkey and stop violence against people, especially towards women. The women's photographs are exhibited during various events in Turkey and globally - as well as online. The artists' goal is to create awareness about the issue of violence against women and to foster positive change in the lives of women at risk. The initiative also aims to help provide funding for women's organisations and shelters by offering the photographs for purchase online.
(http://www.comminit.com/experiences/pds2006/experiences-3611.html)
I like this project of documenting life, especially instances of abuse and treatment of other people as "things" to be dehumanized.
Resource library for non-profit organizations.
(http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/free_management_library)
The focus and scope of the Library is on highly practical content in regard to management for managing yourself, other individuals, groups and organizations - whether for-profit and/or nonprofit organizations. This is a fast-growing collection of very useful tools and resource links.
World Public Opinion Poll: Iraqis speak.
100% of 1,150 Iraqis surveyed said that they would prefer a strong central government and hot have militias.
The poll also states,
"Shias have mildly positive views of Iran and its President, while Kurds and Sunnis have strongly negative views. Shias and Kurds have mostly negative views of Syria, while Sunnis are mildly positive. Shias have overwhelmingly positive views of Hezbollah, while Kurds and Sunnis have negative views."
(http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/249.php?nid=&id=&pnt=249&lb=brme)
I am delighted to see support for my findings from August 2005, reported elsewhere on these Civilsocietyiraq webpages:
Kurds mistrust their near-neighbor Turkey, but Shia business owners and managers have little fear of Iran.
Kurd vs. Arab group similarities. See my chart at http://civilsocietyiraq.seedwiki.com for a comparison of group homogeneity between Arabs of Basra and Kurds of Europe. Bottom line: Kurds are more homogeneous in their primary social group relationships than are even the Arabs of Basra--that is, in the groups that are their main social gatherings, most people are like them in ethnic, religious, income, literacy, and other identities.
Lightning and modems. A strong lightning storm over the weekend destroyed my computer modem, although I found that hard to believe until I spent hours working on it myself and then called technical support. Dead.
Then the shopping via dialup internet to see what were the options for replacing it. Then a few hours to go to a store, buy a replacement and install it, requiring another hour on telephone hold waiting for technical support because the installation instructions were a bit incomplete. But, now it is back on, and seems to gain a better signal than the old modem. Another storm rolled through just now so I quickly shut everything down and unplugged power and phone lines. I have not had a lightning problem in over six years, so I am grateful that everything has worked so reliably. This was a good reminder for me, and a lesson to other family members.
Critical Analysis: Criminals can't blame society, and Islamists cannot blame anyone but themselves for their behavior. (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/16/opinion/16manji.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin).
Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is the author of "The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." "...violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads....The good news is that ordinary people of faith are capable of self-criticism."
THE CORPORATION: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power
by Joel Bakan. I've been reading on the history of corporate social responsibility.
In 1916, Henry Ford learned a legal lesson about corporate social responsibility. Ford believed that his Ford Motor Company could be more than just a profit machine. "I do not believe that we should make such awful profits on our cars," he is reported to have said. "A reasonable profit is right, but not too much."
John and Horace Dodge had helped Ford start his company and were major shareholders. They hoped to finance the start up of their own car company from their share of Ford Motor Company profits, but Mr. Ford distributed excess profits to customers in the form of price reductions on automobiles. The Dodge brothers took Ford to court, arguing that corporate profits belong to shareholders, and that Mr. Ford had no right to give shareholder's money away. The judge agreed.
The case of "Dodge v. Ford" still stands for the legal principle that managers and directors have a legal duty to put shareholders' interests above all others and that corporate officials have no legal authority to serve any other interests. This is known as "the best interests of the corporation" principle.
Breakpoint Iraq: Civil War, Iran, Hezbollah, and Lebanon. What are the options that remain for peace?
(http://www.investorsinsight.com/otb_va.aspx?EditionID=368)
George Friedman at http://www.Stratfor.com has posted a very powerful essay on the new situation in Iraq, which was reprinted in John Mauldin's "InvestorsInsight" newsletter. Mr. Friedman presents a thoughtful description of the main players in the conflicts in the Iraq-Iran-Lebanon realm. His summary is that there are a limited number of options for the West to support: semi-autonomous, oil-rich Shi'a territory in southern Iraq managed by Iran and southern Lebanon also managed by Iran. This is not to slander Iran, but merely to put together the facts in a way that appears logical. Even so, there is no good news in the Middle East for non-combatants.
Read the blog by President of Iran (http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/); click on the second flag at the top right to read in English. Click on the (more) link at the bottom to finish reading the autobiography until 1988. Not a lunatic, but an intelligent, articulate leader of one of the most powerful countries in the Middle East-Central Asia region, "chaostan" ( a phrase from Richard Maybury).
Champlain College Global Modules. Gary Scudder is nurturing online forums (Global Modules) for students to participate in as a way to promote critical thinking skills. "We get the students involved in specific linked Global Modules, but also actively involved in larger discussions about contemporary world topics. I'll know we've arrived when students just start popping onto the site because it's interesting and second nature for them."
Description: (http://www.champlain.edu/portals/alumni/champlain_view/spring06/index2.php)
Global Module site: (https://my.champlain.edu/public/global.modules/mBoard/)
"I think the discussion that we got going on Lebanon proves exactly the point that you're making. "
Dr. Scudder uses the discussion forums for open conversations, distributing questions through student networks and inviting them to contribute to the discussions. If other professors/lecturers could also participate, it might give them opportunity to see what were the real questions and opinions of students that they could address during lectures or learning experiences. Students blog/discuss and lecturers read what are opinions of students and then they could shape lectures to address real issues on the minds of students.
For example, why do Muslims hate westerners?
(http://www.metransparent.com/texts/memri_arab_intellectuals_under_threat.htm)
or the recent PEW poll on Muslim-Christian opinions about each other.
(http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253).
Measuring Intellectual Capital in businesses. (http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/2006-2977_web1.pdf). The under-recognition of intellectual capital can lead financial markets to favour traditional rather than research-intensive businesses. It also affects the allocation of resources within companies. Research depends on human qualities and analytical ability, or else is becomes just data. Distilling large amounts of data and information into a few succinct, important summaries is a skill that the best bloggers and newspaper writers demonstrate. I need to learn to sift data more quickly and to distill it into a more usable form.
NOAA weather map of temp and pressure. Rapid weather changes in temperature and barometric pressure make me ache. Michael Bell at Columbia.edu helped me find a wonderful weather map at
(http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/), that shows average changes in barometric pressure over the past 58 years, with the dark blue areas having less change than yellow/red areas. Similar data is available for temperature.
"Everybody thinks they are experts at learning. "After all, most of us have gone through years of university education and emerged on the other side with a piece of paper 'proving' our ability to assimilate information. However, I'm not concerned with book learning; I am far more interested in learning from our own errors and mistakes or, somewhat more accurately, why we often fail to learn from our own past failures." (http://www.investorsinsight.com/otb_va.aspx?EditionID=348)
James Montier is the Director of Global Strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort Watterstein, a London and Frankfurt based investment bank. In this article he shows the inability of graduate students to learn from simple investment gaming experiences. "The major reason we don't learn from our mistakes (or the mistakes of others) is that we simply don't recognise them as such. We have a gamut of mental devices all set up to protect us from the terrible truth that we regularly make mistakes...We have a relatively fragile sense of self-esteem; one of the key mechanisms for protecting this self image is self-attribution bias. This is the tendency for good outcomes to be attributed to skill and bad outcomes to be attributed to sheer bad luck. This is one of the key limits to learning that investors are likely to encounter. This mechanism prevents us from recognizing mistakes as mistakes, and hence often prevents us from learning from those past errors."
"One of the reasons I suggest that people keep a written record of their decisions and the reasons behind their decisions, is that if they don't, they run the risk of suffering from the insidious hindsight bias. This simply refers to the idea that once we know the outcome we tend to think we knew it was so all along."
In summary: when I do good I think it is because I am smart; when I lose I think it is because of bad luck or some other person's actions.
Even pigeon experiments by B.F. Skinner are mentioned to show that none of us creatures easily learn from our mistakes--although we should.
Edge Perspectives! John Hagel & John Seely Brown.
(http://www.edgeperspectives.com/)
blog at: (http://www.edgeperspectives.typepad.com/)
"Our point of view is simply stated: the edge is becoming the core...
The edge is where the action is - in terms of growth, innovation and value creation. Companies, workgroups and individuals that master the edge will build a more sustainable core."
For me, the article means to look more to the application of the new findings in my research and learning, and stop looking at the trivial and historical aspects.
Learning from the past.
We are great believers in the value of past experience. So often we hear the dreaded words - this time things are different - and every time those words make us cringe. As students of economic history we believe we can learn a great deal from the past. In the world we observe, things are rarely that different.
In John Mauldin's July letter posts commentary by "The Absolute Return Letter - July 2006"
by Niels Jensen and Jan Vilhelmsen at (http://www.investorsinsight.com/otb_va.aspx?EditionID=362),
Significant quotes:
"Emerging market hedge fund managers beat the market in positive markets and underperformed in negative ones"
"On average, emerging market hedge fund managers do not deliver on this most critical element of hedge fund investing - the ability to protect investor assets in difficult times."
"If our read is proven correct, then global equity markets will enjoy a decent spell over the next several months before markets start to discount the point at which the U.S. economy finally tips over and lands in the next recession. At that point in time, you do not want equities in your portfolio."
New data on Iraq. The International Republican Institute released in July their summary of a poll of 2,800 Iraqis taken in Iraq at (http://www.iri.org/mena/iraq/2006-07-19-IraqPoll.asp) They report,
"Seventy-eight percent strongly disagree or disagree with the idea of segregating Iraqis according to religious or ethnic sects." A powerpoint presentation can be downloaded at: (http://www.iri.org/mena/iraq/pdfs/2006-07-18-Iraq%20poll%20June%20June.ppt).
The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other
(http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253)
The survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project was conducted in 13 countries, including the United States, from March 31-May 14, 2006.
The first section of the report analyzes how people in predominantly Muslim countries and non-Muslim countries view each other. This section examines the positive and negative characteristics Muslims associate with Westerners - including Muslim minorities in four Western European countries - and the traits that non-Muslims associate with Muslims.
Section II focuses on opinions about the state of relations between the West and Muslims. It also explores reasons people give for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity, attitudes to the recent controversy over cartoon depictions of Muhammad, and Muslim opinions on whether Arabs carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Section III deals with the opinions of Muslim publics as to whether they see a struggle in their countries between modernizers and Islamic fundamentalists, the concerns that Muslims and non-Muslims alike share over the rise of Islamic extremism, and Muslim views on terrorism and Osama bin Laden.
According to the polls, Muslim publics have an aggrieved view of the West - they are much more likely than Americans or Western Europeans to blame Western policies for their own lack of prosperity.
For their part, Western publics instead point to government corruption, lack of education and Islamic fundamentalism as the biggest obstacles to Muslim prosperity.
Even among Europe's Muslim minorities, roughly one-in-seven in France, Spain, and Great Britain feel that suicide bombings against civilian targets can at least sometimes be justified to defend Islam against its enemies."
It seems all about "How can I get more from those who have things that I want."
Seth Godwin advice to authors. Seth is a favorite author and his blog offers a lot of good advice to writers.
(http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/08/advice_for_auth.html)
The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you'll need later.
World Record for unamplified WIFI signal, 2005. The team from iFiber Redwire, set a record of 124.9 miles between wifi-linked notebook computers. They did have a 12-foot satellite dish, and there was actually an amplifier used to increase signal strength. Other components: Z-Com XI-325HP pcmcia card, Linux OS, and Xetron RF relay. This contest for 2006 has not yet been announced. 125 miles between notebook computers! With no isp.
(http://www.wifiworldrecord.com/2005writeup.html)
I've know Curt Rhodes of Questscope for many years, watching him give vocational training to street kids in Jordan. He does good, honest work, with a high success rate for getting kids back on track to make a better life for themselves.
New theories on ethnic identity and conflict: "On the Theory of Ethnic Conflict" by Francesco Caselli and Wilbur John Coleman II, December 2005.
"We present a theory of ethnic conflict in which coalitions formed along ethnic lines compete for the economy’s resources. The role of ethnicity is to enforce coalition membership."
(http://www.gep.org.uk/seminars/pdf/Caselli.pdf)
Introduction to soclal and business networking. A Ecademy Networking Introduction Tutorial on how to meet people and introduce them to others so that all will benefit: (http://www.ecademy.com/tutorial.php)
One Phone Call Away: Secrets of a Master Networker by Jeffrey Meshel.
Mr. Meshel describes his love of connecting contacts so that they can help each other. Favorite quote: "It is not how many people you know, but rather what you know about those you do know." The point is that each person you meet has something to offer to others, and has needs that others might help to meet. A networker is someone who connects resources with needs, and not always thinking only of himself. I have a pretty good breadth of relationships, but have not done a good job of defining the resources they offer or the needs that they have that others might meet.
I have been helped by the Apple Address book that gives a lot of room to add notes about contacts, and I've started adding things like website links to a few contacts. I'm not inclined to add photos of anyone.
The World Bank has a valuable collection of documents and weblinks. (http://www.worldbank.org/). A new area I just discovered was their Private Sector Development Blog, at (http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/). Another is on the use of ICT for development, or e-Development (http://faostat.fao.org/).
Favorite e-news links in marketing and communications.
*Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (SEPW _AT_ LISTSERV.UH.EDU).
*Information on how to have a website found: (http://www.searchenginewatch.com).
*FastCompany business news: (http://www.fastcompany.com/homepage/index.html).
They publish newsletters: FastTake weekly newsletter; First Impression Daily Inspirational Quotes; FC Now staff blog summaries; Transit Authority Business Travel Tips.
*E-Cademy Social Network for business people. (http://www.ecademy.com/).
*I also look once in a while at LinkedIn and SCOPE developments.
*ChiefMarketer: chiefmarketer, Directtips, and E-Centric. (http://chiefmarketer.com/newsletters/index.htm)
Favorite E-news on research, analysis, trends-watching.
*World Future Society: (http://www.wfs.org/index.htm). They include all disciplines and produce fascinating analyses and speculations about the future, and the trends that will create that future.
*International Institute for Peace Through Tourism, (http://iipt.org/), fostering and facilitating tourism initiatives which contribute to international understanding and cooperation, an improved quality of environment, the preservation of heritage, and through these initiatives, helping to bring about a peaceful and sustainable world. It is based on a vision of the world's largest industry, travel and tourism - becoming the world's first global peace industry; and the belief that every traveler is potentially an "Ambassador for Peace.
*EU Research Information System: (http://ec.europa.eu/research/). The most recent newsletter on research in the humanities said, "I think we, the humanities researchers, have to make it our business to present our research outcomes to potential target groups in a language they can understand. In other words we have to make ourselves more comprehensible. I firmly believe that at institutional, regional and national level, the humanities will be increasingly expected to use their own specific methods and instruments to help explain current phenomena and developments and to attempt to predict future developments. Of course the results of this kind of research are not likely to be directly applicable, nor are they meant to be. However the humanities can produce knowledge that will allow policymakers
and decision-makers to obtain a clearer understanding of the world around them." (Issue 6, page 4).
Measuring Conflictability between Iraqi groups. Social contact theory usually shows that amount of contact + type of attitude + knowledge about other groups can affect the social relationships between group members. Social Distance theory usually describes the differences in values and behaviors and attitudes that contribute to the quality of relationships between different groups.
In the conflict between groups of Iraqis, there are issues of Distance/Contact, Attitude, and Knowledge, which I call DAK. I have not found studies testing the combination of these elements on intergroup conflict. Please let me know if you have heard of anything appropriate. I believe that time between stimulus and response would also be important, but that is a different thing to measure. My current data on Iraqis in Basra and the Netherlands measures contact between groups, homogeneity within groups, and some attitudes.
So, as the intergroup warfare increases in Iraq, is there much hope that an outside analysis will make any difference? Do the opinions of non-combatant victims matter? We are seeing exactly what was predicted in 2002-3, that when the restraints of Saddam's regime were removed, there would be tribal warfare. This has not happened in just the past few months, but it began centuries or millenia ago, and only has temporary calm when violent dictators control everything.
TED Talks. (http: //www.ted.com/tedtalks/index.cfm?flashenabled="1")
TED is a series of public lectures, including the below video or audio presentations available for download so far this year.
-Larry Brilliant is an epidemiologist who led the successful WHO campaign to eradicate Smallpox. He was recently named Executive Director of the Google Foundation.
-Jehane Noujaim is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, responsible for Control Room and Startup.com.
-Cameron Sinclair is founder of Architecture for Humanity, whose motto is "Design like you give a damn."
-Pastor Rick Warren is author of The Purpose-Driven Life, which has sold 30 million copies worldwide.
-Dan Dennett is a Tufts philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, most famous for his books, Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin's Dangerous Idea (1995). In this talk, he responds to the presentation by Pastor Rick Warren, taking issue with claims in his book, The Purpose-Driven Life.
-Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources.
-Majora Carter is the Macarthur-winning founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization dedicated to holistic community development, sponsoring projects that create jobs, protect the environment and bring beautiful green space to the inner city.
-Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life.
John Sviokla's blog on technology with case studies from his professorship days.
http://www.svioklascontext.com/
A 2 may, 2006 article compares junkyards and film companies is very insightful on the behind-the-scenes of mergers and acquisitions thinking.
Apple Computer & 3rd Quarter Report. (http://www.Apple.com).
Apple shipped 1,327,000 Macintosh computers and 8,111,000 iPods during the past three months,
which represents a 12% growth in Macs and 32% growth in iPods the past 12 months.
- 75% of Macs sold during the quarter used Intel processors.
- International sales accounted for 39 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
- iPod hold a US market share for music players of over 75 percent: - iPods: 8,526,000 sold in three months.
- Portables: 798,000, up 60% from previous quarter (even with significant price difference, more people are buying portable computers instead of desktop computers).
- Desktops: 529,000, down 14% from previous quarter.
Call for proposals for id21 insights content.
There is an open call for proposals to collaborate on an issue of 'id21
insights' at the UK Institute of Development Studies (www.ids.ac.uk).
We are inviting potential 'guest editors' from the international
development research community to propose a topic for an issue of 'id21
insights' due out in early 2007. We are looking for submissions on
research topics we haven't covered before.
Submissions should consist of the following:
* A 500-word outline of the proposed theme, with an
explanation of its relevance to id21's target readership of policymakers
and development practitioners in developing countries.
* A list of up to 10 possible articles and who would write
them, with a brief description of subject matter, research findings and
policy recommendations the articles would cover.
Look at (http://www.id21.org/insights). Before submitting an outline we urge you to
familiarise yourself with the format and editorial style by viewing
previous issues of 'id21 insights' on the website.
Please submit proposals of no more 1000 words by 1st September 2006 to:
Shanti Mahendra, id21, Institute of Development Studies
(www.id21.org)
Creating Abundance.
Last night four of us met to formalize the startup of a new organization, _Creating Abundance_. We have been playing the board game, Cashflow, for almost a year, and have come to appreciate each other, and have grown in our desire to do more to help children and youth to make wise decisions about how to make and invest money. This parallels a project I have pushed for Iraq, and should be very rewarding.
What to communicate? Differences between assets and liabilities. We all know young people who borrow money to buy things that cost money and keep on costing money without giving much back. If something makes money, it is an asset; if it costs money, it is a liability.
A pioneer in Amsterdam is The Geldschool (http://www.degeldschool.nl/index2.html) by H.L. Hollertt and Gijs Starre. Mr. Starre is rumoured to have played the financial intelligence game, Cashflow, more than 2000 times to teach principles of investment.
Iran vs. Basra Business.
1. Ingroup homogeneity (a closed network of social group membership) and the perception that Iran would battle to promote an Islamic republic in Iraq showed a significant relationship. (F(1,60)=11.210, p<.01. Levene: .419, p<.1.
The correlations and percentages of responses indicated that members of more open social groups (less homogeneous group membership and more contact with outgroup members) saw Iran as more aggressive in its intentions to promote Islam in Iraq.
Members of closed social groups (more homogeneous group memberships and less contact with outgroup members) saw Iran as less aggressive in its intentions towards promoting Islam in Iraq. This was very highly correlated by rigorous statistical testing.
2. Group homogeneity vs. domination by Iran.
Those with strongest ingroup homogeneity and least outgroup contact, 18% of responses, expressed less expectation that Iran would seek to dominate the people of Iraq.
Those with least ingroup homogeneity and more outgroup contact, 28% of responses, expressed more expectation that Iran would seek to dominate the people of Iraq. These categories of responses were not significant at the p<.05 level, but are worth looking at again in depth.
There were _no_ significant levels of response (other than item 1, above) to threats of
foreign political domination,
control of natural resources, and
promotion of Islam by
Russia,
USA,
Turkey, or
Iran.
There were five significant correlations found between closed ingroups and threats from foreign nation-states, but four of these were suspect correlations because of uneven variance in responses; when this was compensated for, the correlations became insignificant for all except the point given in 1, above.
What does this mean, in simpler terms?
That in the community of Basra business leaders surveyed, those who were in very closed social groups with little contact with those outside their groups did not feel threatened by foreign nation-states. But, those leaders who were more connected to social groups outside of their own main social contacts, _did_ feel threatened by Iran's intentions to promote Islam in Iraq.
Interesting, yes? Do you have any opinions on why this might be true?
A friend, Farouk, suggested that it is because there strong trade and education connections to Iran, used by the SCIRI/DAWA/Badr coaltions, where there are motivations towards greater homogeneity of worldview; those with less homogeneity of political and trade connections, mostly the lower classes, are more connected to other social and political networks which gives them more fear of Iranian influence, especially since they were the ones to bear the main loss in the war with Iran in the 1980s.
Jaafar says that it is because "most of the Iranians are Extermists (sic) and we saw many people have been killed because they believed in liberalism, also most of Iranian followers cheat the people by Islamic ideas in the same time they are thieves ....The religious people didn't understand the others with modern ideas.'
HealingIraq.
One of the better Iraq blogs: (http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/). Recent posts discuss the challenges of Iraqis attempting to enter Jordan, and the Jordanian responses. Jordan, socially and politically, is a much more connected place than is Iraq. The community of bloggers seems to demonstrate this--bloggers in Jordan get together in person, but in Iraq they remain isolated and individual. Jordan has a high rate of interconnect between bloggers, but Iraq does not. A comparison of the blog social networks in Iraq and Jordan would be very interesting.
"When the Shiites Rise" By Vali Nasr.
From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006.
Summary: By toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has liberated and empowered Iraq's Shiite majority and has helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This development is rattling some Sunni Arab governments, but for Washington, it could be a chance to build bridges with the region's Shiites, especially in Iran. VALI NASR is a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.
Terrorists are not who we think.
Peter Bergen of Johns Hopkins University recently published the conclusions of his in-depth study of 75 Islamist terrorists who had carried out four major anti-western attacks. According to Bergen, "53% of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of reference, only 52% of Americans have been to college." Against this background, the backgrounds of the British bombers should not come as a surprise.
The men who planned and carried out the Islamist attacks on America were confused, but highly educated, middle-class professionals. Mohammed Atta was a town planning expert; Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's chief of staff, is a paediatric surgeon; Omar Sheikh, the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl, is the product of the same British public school that produced the film-maker Peter Greenaway.
The French authority on Islamists, Gilles Kepel, has arrived at a similar conclusion. The new breed of global jihadis, he writes, are not the urban poor of the third world - as Tony Blair still claims - so much as "the privileged children of an unlikely marriage between Wahhabism and Silicon Valley". Islamic terrorism, like its Christian predecessor, remains a largely bourgeois endeavour.
Dear Reader Book Club. (http://www.dearreader.com/). This email book club sends out (free) several pages per day of the first chapters of current books in the fields of: non-fiction, business, mystery, horror, fiction, teen, science fiction, audio books, and other types, including classic literature. This gives me opportunity to get an introduction to several new books each week, before deciding if I want to read the whole book.
Learning from Slime Mold: Human disease under investigation.
Overview of slime mold.
Medical investigation introduction to Slime mold. (http: //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid="1378071&blobtype=pdf")
Not a fungi, but a protozoa. Communicating, but without a central nervous system.
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd="Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14871595&dopt=Abstract").
T. Nakagaki, of Japan, believes that behavior of the Physarum (the giant amoeba) in creating networks in search of food can mimic optimal network configurations for city traffic patterns.
Paul Fisher of LaTrobbe, believes that Dictyostelium slime mold can address mitochondrial diseases that attach genes of the mitochondria, like epilepsy and dementia. The simple cell structure at the molecular level gives molecular behavior similar to that of humans. wisc.
Question: is a slime mold food-hunting network a social network?
The SANS Institute runs an ongoing survey of how long it takes an unpatched Windows XP computer to be infected; the latest data shows an improvement in the average time to infection of 20-30 minutes. The minimum time was under 20 minutes as recently as a year ago. For the latest data, see (http://isc.sans.org/survivalhistory.php).
No God but One. Imad Shehadeh gave a very insightful comparison of theological bases of Islam and Christianity: "All lines of Arabs came out of primary monotheistic belief in the creator God. Kaaba was the 'Beit Allah', 'the house of God', not 'house of gods... The Kaaba system focused on the One Creator God, with lesser dieties as mediators. The Quran abolished mediation.'"
Summary: If my friend believes in a different God it is easy for the relationship. If we believe in the same creator God, it is a challenge to our relationship, but gives opportunity for learning.
Dr. Shehadeh continued: "Same subject, but different predicate." Relational and moral differences are the point of our best discussions, not debating a different subject of the One Creator God." The Subject is God, the predicate is the verb of what God is and does?. The word, "Allah" is the same in Muslim and Christian faiths because of historical, textual, and semantic proofs.
Dr. Shehadi was brilliant in his claim that dismissing other faiths as "wrong" was much easier than acknowledging that there is only one God, and that it is we who create barriers to relationships through our "closed" groups that say another person is wrong instead of accepting that another person may just be different in perspective.
Class affiliations in southern Iraq. In a session on the future of Iraq at the conference last week, someone asked, " What is being done with class analysis in Iraq?" The initial response was that class analysis has not been attempted well since the long-ago writings of Batutu. But, as a follow-up, Dr. Juan Cole gave one useful perspective:
The Sadr party=the poor; Dawa party=lower middle class; sciri/Badr Corp=bourgeois."
While there is no regular class structure to measure or validate, perhaps this look at political party affiliation has something to offer. Especially if struggles are over power and control, not ideology. Is there any data anywhere on census, voting, or economic sectors?
Self-publish or perish.
  |
Theological Education Matters The flurry of literature on the crises afflicting theological education seems to have abated somewhat, but concerns about the future of institutionalized theological education linger. Some efforts to deal with these concerns simply recycle existing conditions. It is likely that the more effective efforts will be international in scope, learning focused, deeply concerned about theological education in relation to a biblical ecclesiology, committed to service within society, and increasingly decentralized in structure and affiliations. Published by EDCOT® Press for CanDoSpirit Publishing. Available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover format at http://www.lulu.com/candospirit. |
What is democracy?
Social networking. After the initial excitement of social networking software like LinkedIn, Friendster, and MySpace, things cooled off a bit. Getting lots of contacts to sign up to be in your network doesn't really benefit you much, unless you are selling something. In view of this, several blogs this week point back to the core reasons that people join and use social network systems: to stay in contact with people that are already valued and important. Examples of blogs this week: Guy Kawasaki: Fred Stutzman: Stowe Boyd.
In these, Mr. Boyd is articulate about the future impact of creating a liminal space where relationships are nurtured and enjoyed. The openness of an internet-mediated space gives freedom, and such freedom of thought is not possible in other arenas where "acting normal" is necessary if someone wants to have security in an academic or traditional corporate environment.
This relates to the questions about homogeneity from yesterday. Creativity and innovation has a difficult time surviving in a non-tolerant environment, whether of peer-dependent or legal origin. In his writings on "The Open Society," Karl Popper asked the same questions several decades ago. They are still relevant.
Dutch Cabinet Dissolves. Surprising news last night was that the cabinet of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende dissolved after coalition party members were at odds over actions of immigration policies. This morning, Mr. Balkenende is to meet with Queen Beatrix to offer resignation of his coalition party from parliament. The Dutch parliament is built on complicated coalitions among the dozens of parties and groups, which leads me to wonder about stablity of governments. Are governments with more parties sharing power more stable than governments with few parties?
Stability is one aspect, but what about innovation and responsiveness to stakeholder needs? A monolithic or monopolistic organization can implement radical changes quickly, but may not represent the interests of all members of society. An organization with full representation of all parties is impossible to move quickly or to be innovative. This applies to businesses and non-profit organizations also. Top-down, authoritarian leadership can move and change quickly, ignoring (temporarily) needs of stakeholders, but the alternatives are not always effective in being creative and adaptable to new environments of work.
Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon, By Stephen Biddle, Foreign Affairs. Posted April 18, 2006. (http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/34762/).
Another article giving a detailed comparison between the US entanglements in Vietnam and Iraq. Bottom line: there are some similarities, some dangers in longterm policy, but yet some very significant differences. Iraq is not Viet Nam. Iraq is a communal war, not a "peoples' war."
SHOULD WE "DEMAND" CIVIL WAR IN IRAQ? by Sean Matgamna.
(http://www.workersliberty.org/node/5265).
from The Alliance for Workers' Liberty.
This is a general analysis of Barry Finger's call for "Troops Out Now."
"What we refuse to do, and it is the crux of our dispute with Barry Finger, is raise a "demand", Troops Out Now, whose likely, calculable, practical consequences we do not want." What might be the implications of a sudden and announced pull-out of western troops in Iraq? Mr. Matgamna claims that this question needs to be studied carefully. Last week an intelligent, thinker in the Middle East told me that a sudden withdrawal was the only solution, "even if the Iraqis all killed each other, because it is their future and if they want to completely destroy it, that is their decision, not those foreigners."
Shiite Revival. (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060701faessay85405/vali-nasr/when-the-shiites-rise.html)
When the Shiites Rise, By Vali Nasr. From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006.
Summary: By toppling Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has liberated and empowered Iraq's Shiite majority and has helped launch a broad Shiite revival that will upset the sectarian balance in Iraq and the Middle East for years to come. This development is rattling some Sunni Arab governments, but for Washington, it could be a chance to build bridges with the region's Shiites, especially in Iran. VALI NASR is a Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future.
This is a thoughtful article looking at the big-picture implications of a Sunni-Shi'a conflict in the Middle East, and how everyone stands to lose if/when this happens.
Dear Reader. (http://www.dearreader.com/)
The Dear Reader mail book club that sends out (free) several pages per day of the first chapters of current books in the fields of: non-fiction, business, mystery, horror, fiction, teen, science fiction, audio books, and other types, including classic literature. This gives me opportunity to get an introduction to several new books each week, before deciding if I want to read the whole book.
Education & Terror. The British newspaper, The Guardian, published an article clarifying the educational background of some of the recent criminals. I excerpt some of their findings to show that many of the new international criminals are not poor, uneducated fanatics.
Similar to what my data on Iraq has shown, the very rich and the very poor are not always the types of people with the most disatisfaction with life.
Amman Message. The Jordan conference gave a lot of visibility to statements and principles of government representatives of the Kingdom of Jordan. One intriguing distribution was the "Amman Message," a statement by the Chief Justice of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The full text is available at Amman Message and رسالة عمان.
I'm back after 12 days in Jordan to present one paper on increasing impact of professional writings and one article on research in Basra in 2005. For the second paper, I was also the session moderator/chairman. That was a very interesting experience, and I hope I did not offend too many audience participants as I cut short their comments in order to keep the flow of the interactions moving along. There were some sessions with very poor moderating, and I may write up what I learned as I studied and prepared ahead of time for this role. The moderator must keep a balance between encouraging participation and keeping the questions and comments short enough to stay focused.
There were also many presentations that were nothing more than an "expert" reading a long paper out loud and then acting surprised when the moderator said that their time was up.
Iraq Virtual Science Library. More and more useful resources are coming online, indicating an irreversible shift away from paper and towards online. This week, announcements were made about the new online academic and professional journals available online free to qualified subscribers. https://www.ivsl.org/ (Iraq Virtual Science Library).
Protein Bars. I am away from home and office quite a bit, and often am traveling during mealtimes. I feel healthier when I have a good amount of protein every few hours. Until recently, I was able to buy "Weight Care" brand bars that had slightly more protein than carbohydrates. But, the company stopped making the non-chocolate types that I prefer.
So, I looked around and found recipes for homemade protein bars.
Here is my favorite so far, giving me a 60 gram bar with 23 grams protein, 8 grams carbohydrate, and at a total cost of 0.75 euro/bar. That is using my favorite protein powder with four types of protein instead of the cheaper whey-only protein powder, which would give me the similar bar but at a cost of 0.35 euro/bar. The store-bought Weight Care bars were 1.12 euro/bar.
Mix well: 1 cup whole, old-fashioned oats, 1/2 cup bran, 6 scoops protein powder, and 1 cup non-fat powdered milk. Mix in 5 tablespoons peanut butter. Add 3/4 cup water and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix all together very well and spread in a oiled pan. Freeze for one hour. The bars will be firm and can be separated, wrapped individually in plastic or paper. These are very tasty to me, but are a bit gummy. But, they are very cheap for high-quality protein, and low carbohydrate. Sorry for the confusion of grams and cups. I will try to convert everything to metric later on.
Victory 66. I visited a refugee/immigrant center in Brussels, located at Rue de la victorie 66, near Brussels zuid/midi station. Six computer internet stations and space for about 20 people at small cafe tables, it is a clean and neat place for people to drop in for a cup of coffee, to talk with friends, and to get a bit of food. When I was there, the visitors were mostly Russian and Polish-speakers, but with others from the UK and North Africa. Very interesting as an example of what can be done on a very low budget to provide a service that is well-appreciated by those immigrants wanting a place to be with friends. I have also visited similar places that also offered a second-hand clothing shop, childcare, and counseling. The challenge is to move beyond charity to perpetual indigents, and to provide job training and placement assistance, and even networking to find housing. Government systems until very recently were somewhat able to take care of many indigent people, but the available funding is being stretched to where it cannot provide even basic shelter, food, and medical care. And, there seems a growing resistance to paying higher and higher levels of taxes to provide social services. Work for food programs are seldom seen in most communities, although it has been successful in places where it is coupled with vocational training and placement.
Routledge/Taylor and Francis publishers offer free access to selected articles and book reviews from Ethnopolitics, a very useful source of quality writing. The articles and reviews can be accessed via:
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/pdf/papers/reno_06.asp
The articles and reviews come online about one year after they appear in print.
My father had knee replacement surgery three weeks ago and is already walking and getting around much better than he has for quite a while. I am so delighted that quality of life can be so much better through medical intervention. The other side is that for some people length of life is extended far beyond their sense of quality. That is an ethnic and medical issue, and financial. I'm not ready to research those questions yet.
With more Macintosh notebook computers on the market, our family is looking again for an upgrade. The dual-boot option on the new Macs allows running OSX, Windows XP, and standard Unix. The average age of our computers is six years old, with the oldest being 10 years old and the newest 1 year old. Here is a comparison between the $1500 offerings of Dell vs. Apple Macintosh notebooks. And, the $1100 offerings.
Personally, I was intrigued by the ultraportable notebooks with the dual-boot processors mentioned by IBM and Asus. At $2550, I was slowed down in my thinking. And, that seemed to be without a dvd drive.
An excellent product demonstration is hard to accomplish. This year's "Demo 2006" was won by the company, Network Streaming, and their guide to maximum demonstration is given at Guy's blog. Missing (here) is a direct link to a video of the demo itself. Nathan MacNeill of Network Streaming listed his main points of:
1. keep the presentation as simple as possible,
2. use only 2 main points and repeat,
3. practice over and over and over and over. Great advice for any presentation.
How to measure linking of websites, and gives a search tool that shows link tools such as Google Page Rank, Blogrolling.com, Yahoo!, MSN Search, Alexa Traffic , Technorati Search, and Icerocket. These tools are useful to see who else is linking to my site so that I can return the favor if I like the value they might contribute to readers here.
Using Wikis to teach writing. PatriciaM sent me a link describing the use of wikis to help students feel more confident in written communications. Joe Grohens, from University of Illinois' Department of English, has changed learning to write. Collaboration. Online. Incremental. Low-risk.
Many people (and me, too) use email for collaboration, but this is not efficient. See the commentary on email vs. true collaboration at: (http://blog.centraldesktop.com/comments.php?y="06&m=05&entry=entry060501-194015").
I talked to Kenneth Tyler of Seedwiki today and was even more encouraged with the bright future for wikis. With so many more wikifarms hosting wikis, even more wikis are used for high technology, for academic peer-review processes, for graphics development, distributed database management, and classroom management. At almost three years online, these wikis of the CivilSociety systems are a study in growing with the technology (but not changing fast enough to do all the cool things that are possible).
Once again, the Guy Kawasaki blog introduced me to a fantastic article on how to think different. The latest was a link to posts by Pam Slim. In this letter to hopeful entrepreneurs she rails against executives who forget that they are as human as anyone else.
This population map shows world population by country, with country size according to population.
Amy Gahran writes very well on building a service to others through blogging, which will also build traffic to websites.
"If you view your blog as part of a public conversation, rather than a mere publication, then an easy way to attract more interest and interaction becomes obvious. "
It encouraged me to personally put blog writing time onto my schedule, instead of just leaving it until I have extra time. The past few months I have not had much extra time.
Irrational Exuberance.
Robert Shiller, in his book, Irrational Exuberance, 2005 edition, describes the amplification mechanisms in a market that create an unsustainable growth condition. The amplification mechanisms are both real and psychological, and create "speculative excess." Although dr. Shiller is talking about stock and commodity markets, I wonder if the same principles apply to the 2003 exhiliration and subsequent depression in Iraq. That is, the rapid change of government and removal of political restraint led to unreasonable expectations of what "normal" life would look like, and prevented realistic analysis of how to stabilize the civil systems. As in other types of "bubble" excesses which eventually burst, the emotional bubble of 2003 Iraq rapidly deflated. If stock market cycles tend to move in 25 year trends, as some say, what about pollitical-emotional cycles in Middle Eastern governance? Are there cycles and trends that go beyond regime-change factors?
Gene Munster is an investment analyst with a recent comment on the economic wonder of Apple Computer and its music industry. The iTunes story sells online about 1 million videos per week and 21 million songs per week.
At the embassy: Iraq Development Network
I had a most-interesting discussion last week about the need for Dutch and Iraqi business people to have more contact for mutual benefit. Iraq, especially in the northern areas, has an abundance of trained workers, agricultural land, water, sunlight, fuel, and opportunity for growth. I had not thought of Iraq in those terms, but it is exactly right. Especially in the northern areas which have been a safe place for non-Iraqis to live and work and conduct business.
What is missing?
Outsiders who want to do business. There are a number of incentives available that could contribute to a reallly great life in a new place. It is like Iraq has been reborn, and is without many constraints of other countries where governmental traditions and expectations have limited the freedoms of business owners to innovate.
I agreed to help get a web page going for this Dutch-Iraq business promotion: Iraq Development Network
Structural Religion in Europe.
As I meet young people in Europe with immigrant parents or grandparents, I often try to understand their views on social differences they observe between their grandparents and themselves. If they have grown up in Europe, their opinions on state and politics and social systems usually reflect that of their age-peers. Nothing unusual there, those who grow up and are schooled together usually are trained to have the same values. The interesting part comes when I ask about differences between the religion of their grandparents and what they themselves know and practice. Several things seem to influence their opinions:
-religious identification of their ancestors and level of religious activity that they have observed and have been trained to adopt
- religious activity and identification of their peer group
- type of education, and degree of religious orientation of their school teachers and playmates at younger years
- degree of contact with peers and olders of other religious experiences.
To understand better what is behind the modern attitudes, I am reading, or have read, the following books that address social systems and structures of religion in Europe:
"The Cube And the Cathedral: Europe, America, And Politics Without God, by George Weigel"
"The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church, by Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch"
This is the most difficult to read book I've gone through in a long time. There are a number of assumptions made about the current and past expressions of Christianity and Christian culture. But, the book was focused on learning from the past, and seeking to understand the westernization of the asian-sourced Church. The Greek emphasis on dualism, separating the mystical and unseen elements of life from the real physical world, pulled the Church into the same stresses of clergy-laity, sacred-common, spiritual-physical, and organization-community. This book is threatening to those embedded in religious organizations because it challenges assumptions about "right doctrine" vs. "right living."
"While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, by Bruce Bawer"
This takes a longterm view of changes in European culture, and how tolerance (self-centeredness) forced policymakers to put off dealing with economic and cultural failures until their children found that it was too late to solve.
"Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?, by Timothy George "
This is a realistic look at the assumptions of followers of Jesus and the followers of Muhammad. It addresses assumptions and cultural values that define how we see people who are "different."
"Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, by Bat Ye'Or"
There are three forms of jihad: the military jihad, the economic jihad and the cultural jihad. The Euro-Arab Dialogue is described by the author, but I still do not understand how it is interpreted as a form of jihad, unless the author assumes 5th column-type motives.
And, by Richard Maybury, his article on the 3-sided war in Europe:
"The war in Europe is a 3-sided religious war of western Christians, eastern Christians and Moslems. "
http://www.chaostan.com/map3sided.html
State of Fear.
I just finished a reading of Michael Crichton's book,"State of Fear" .
The book examines the politization of science. Intended to enhance the reputation of quality research, it points out the danger of funding-directed research, and the manipulation of credible research presentations by those with less honorable intentions.
The book uses environmentalism as a forum for discussing truth vs. passion, and accuracy vs. ambition. This book was better documented and referenced than many "scientific" reports that I read, and I applaud Mr. Crichton for attempting to warn readers of the danger of believing what the media reports to be "scientific evidence."
I counted 173 references in the bibliography, and 87 footnotes and citations. At 717 pages, it is intense and extensive.
The warning is real: check your own facts before you repeat them, or someone else will make up data for you.
Non-Literacy.
877 million illiterate adults.
USA NALS estimate of literacy:
57% at level 1-2 in Alabama. This is by somewhat objective third-party measurements, not by donors trying to to justify expenditures.
International Institute for Peace Through Tourism (IIPT)
presents a collection of papers on peace through tourism, including the educational sector. Case studies, SWOT analysis, and overview of types of tourism for peace activism are presented. Concepts presented and debated here apply to many types of short-term travel, study abroad, hospitality services, and cross-cultural exchange projects. Moving beyond inward-focused tourism towards activistic, outward-focused partnership is a great initiative. http://www.iipt.org
Client Relationship Management.
Also in the issue of Global Finance from November, 2005, was an article on the explosive growth in software to help understand client relationship management. Most of the sophisticated tools are database system resources that allow users to look for patterns in communications and behavior of clients. Why is this important? Because by understanding better the actions and needs of clients, in all stakeholder (or interested party) areas, those who provide services can better supply what those stakeholders need when they need it. This is not about manipulating customers into buying what they do not want, but rather it is about meeting needs, and not wasting organizational resources on projects and services and products that are not needed. By anyone. Even organizational internal customers need to make it easier for suppliers to meet those needs. Even for non-profit organizations.
For example, Non-Profit Company X that conducts humanitarian projects for poor people. Its stakeholders include: the few end-recipients of its aid; the field workers passing the aid to the end-recipients; the managers of the field workers; the home office administrators who get the resources delivered to the field managers; the administrative offices that support the procurement and delivery of aid; the many suppliers of products and services needed by the home office organization; the donor solicitation systems; the donors themselves; the government and other watchdog agencies who hold the non-profit accountable for doing what it claims to be doing with its resources.
This is a complicated network, with many stakeholders to be satisfied--many clients for many different types of services and products. And, Client Relationship Management software systems can help in all aspects. Without an intelligent system in place, run by professionals, there is no basis for accurate forecasting and futuring. Stakeholders, our clients, want the right information in the right format at the right time to do their jobs better. That is sometimes called data arbitrage, a form of information brokering.
The past is not an adequate predictor of the future,
and wishful thinking and "seat-of-the-pants" management simply cannot cope in the future world we are building today.
Socially Responsible Investment.
November issue of Global Finance magazine described the growing interest in business responsibility. According to this article, the leading indexes for Socially Responsible Investment are calculated by the Corporate Sustainability Assessment by Sustainability Asset Management Research and FTSE4Good.
These indexes are not "ethical indexes," but are rather reflect expert opinion as to the SRI, that is "how companies manage their social and environmental risks." Reasons that companies seek to be known as SRI companies include altruism, but some seek it because of the reflection it gives of improved management processes and assessment of overall commercial, social and political risk. It also includes movement towards full transparency and disclosure of corporate operations.
Middle East Entrepreneur Training in the U.S. (MEET U.S.)
Wind and rain.
This is one of the days that irritates arthitis sufferers like no other: barometer jumping up and down in giant steps, the wind switching rapidly from north to east to west while it blusters at 25-35 miles per hour, and the trees and fences and awnings banging and whistling in the breeze. I wondered about weather definitions and found quite a nice site: BBC Weather!
Futuring and Trendwatching.
Below are links to several websites that offer glimpses into what some of the brightest minds in the world are writing about--concerning the future (I do not have to agree with all opinions expressed in order to point to their sites).
- "Genius Now: Creativity, Innovation and the Future"
- "Ubercool"
- "PSFK: Global Trends Collaborative"
- "Trendhunter Magazine"
- "Treehugger Web Magazine"
- "Social Technologies: Futurist Perspectives and Methodologies "
- "Journal of Extension's Guide to Futuring"
- "New Volunteerism Futuring"
- "Leadership and Futuring: Making Visions Happen", by John Hoyle
Nominal Groups and Conference Participation. 8 March, 2006. I surveyed conference attendees about how they perceived that their own needs and concerns were met by different conferences. The attendees who gave the conference the highest satisfaction scores were those who had their opinions solicited and acted upon. And, of those, the highest satisfaction was expressed by those for whom English was not their first language. For them, having opportunity to give their opinions in writing allowed them to contribute without directly competing with native English speakers for floor time.
That is, by using written opinion surveys, those who were not quite as adept at arguing and debate in English felt that using an NGT (Nominal Group Technique) style of surveying put them on level ground with the native English speakers.
Main point of these two postings: participation increases conference satisfaction. And participation is not the same as attendance. Warming a chair seat at a meeting does not mean that anything useful was accomplished, especially when attendees come with different cultural and language backgrounds.
Conference Participation vs. Attendance. 7 March, 2006.
I was in a meeting yesterday about training immigrant children.
The co-leader asked me to share what I most wanted out of a possible conference to address immigrant needs.
If the conference was to be organized around what he himself wanted to achieve, or about what he _assumed_ that I wanted myself to accomplish, I would not have been very supportive or enthusiastic about what he was proposing.
But, he asked me to define my own "wants" if I was to help with such a conference.
As we talked, he listened carefully to what I said were my own needs for outcomes if I was to be involved.
Then he reflected back to me what he had heard me express, and I had to clarify only a very few points. He really had listened.
Because of this, I knew that he knew what I wanted.
I believed that he accurately understood my desires for the outcomes of the project.
Then, he re-framed a perspective of how such an event could meet our common, shared goals, as well as the particular concerns that I personally wanted to address.
I gave a commitment to help both of us get what we wanted out of such a project.
**
I attend a lot of conferences, and even though I am sometimes part of the organizing and the leading of portions of the events, it is seldom that conference organizers take the time to understand the felt needs of the intended conference attenders.
The conference organizers almost always build the conference around what they want, or what they _assume_ the attenders want, and that is not the same.
If conference organizers do not build a conference around the real, felt needs of the attenders, then the attenders are only in a passive, non-participative role. And, passive attendance at a conference does not often change lives or give good return for the investment of time and money.
Ethnic Football. 6 March, 2006.
Seminar Today Title: Mechanisms of ethnic stratification with insights from the German football league system
Guest: Prof. Dr. Frank Kalter, Prof. Dr. Frank Kalter, professor in sociology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. His major research interests include migration and integration, sociology of the family, rational choice theory, and methods. Dr. Kalter's English publications.
Ethnic stratification, and limits on how high ethnic minorities can rise in certain vocations is complex to study. Dr. Kalter has studied ethnic inequality by looking at the football club participation in Germany. By having access to membership lists and background information on players, he is able to build analyses of factors that seem to limit or level the equal opportunities for minorities. The most important factors in upward mobility?
Education of the father and age at which training began for competitive sport. Why? Education helps define the socio-economic opportunities of the family, including quality of education and quality of the sports environment. Age of entry into competitive sports is the most important factor determining how fast the child gets into a better track of training, more advanced training, and ability to improve faster than children entering training later.
Seven-Day Weekend w/ Ricardo Semler. 3 March 2006.
Fascinating book on business organization systems for the future. Mr. Semler took over management of his father's traditionally profitable, but declining engineering business and began bringing all employees into participation in the reshaping of the company, Semco. "Semler dismantled the rigid management structure imposed by his father in favor of a more flexible organization based on three interdependent core values: employee participation, profit sharing, and the free flow of information."
Many clear improvements over normal business systems can be seen in the book, and in the reports on the group of companies described on the internet. For example, the best people in a company to choose new janitorial equipment are the janitors, not the purchasing agents or the senior management. In other areas of business, it makes sense that the total knowledge base of a company be brought into planning and implementing of every area of business life. Senior managers do not have enough knowledge, enough wisdom, or enough energy to make decisions that will be eagerly supported by every member of an organization. And, if employees do not have a voice in defining new directions of a company, then those new directions are likely to fail.
Mr. Semler is too forward-thinking for most older businesses and business managers to agree with, but for all of us there is a lot to think about. If he is wrong, we who try his way will only have lost some time and some expensive, low-performing middle managers. If he is right, we can gain flexible leadership systems to innovate and grow and build organic growth patterns for the next generations.
"The key to management is to get rid of the managers.
The key to getting work done on time is to stop wearing a watch.
The best way to invest corporate profits is to give them to the employees.
The purpose of work is not to make money. The purpose of work is to make the workers, whether working stiffs or top executives, feel good about life."
Ricardo Semler
"Still the rewards have already been substantial, we’ve taken a company that was moribund
and made it thrive, chiefly by refusing to squander our greatest resource: our people. Semco
has grown six-fold despite withering recession, staggering inflation, and chaotic national
policy. Productivity has increased nearly seven-fold. Profits have risen five-fold. And we
have had periods of up to fourteen months in which not one worker has left us. We have a
backlog of more than 2,000 job applications, hundreds of people who say they would take
any job just to be at Semco. As a matter of fact, our last help-wanted newspaper generated
more than 1,400 responses in the first week..."
From Thunderbird University case study on Semco, http://www.thunderbird.edu/faculty_research/case_series/cases_1998/ricardo_semler.htm.
Minorities: Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics. 28 February, 2006.
31,000 foreigners added to the 2005 population of 3.1 million 1st or 2nd generation foreigners,
1,200 ethnic Dutch were added to the population of 13 million ethnic Dutch.
34,000 ethnic Dutch left the Netherlands for life elsewhere.
Ethnic Dutch families average 1.68 children,
Foreign-born families average 2.34 children (40% more than ethnic Dutch).
25% of new-born children are of foreign-born parents.
Reported in De Telegraaf, page 1, 28 February.
Chaordic Leadership. 21 February, 2006.
This week, again, was full of people, people giving answers to questions I did not have, people asking questions when I had no answers, and people helping me talk through my own questions in search of answers. I find encouragment in the concept that life is a process, not a product, and that each decision counts. Every moment is a decision of how to use life-units.
Confidence comes from reading of giants in science and discovery and faith who decided and decided and decided and chose. And kept on with what they needed to do, even if there is no encouragment or positive feedback.
One such example is Dee Hock, founder of the Chaordic Alliance. Mr. Hock is the founder of the VISA card system. I just reread The Art of Chaordic Leadership. Excellent reminder to be teachable and tenacious.
Global Tax Rates. 20 February, 2006.
There are significant tax differences between countries. Global tax comparisons can be fun to think about. The combination of income tax + sales tax (VAT) can add up to 71% in the Netherlands. For countries with a sales tax, like the USA, it does not show that sales taxes can range from 8-14% on top of the purchase price. In the Netherlands, the vat/sales tax is often included in the listed price.
CivilSociety Financial Intelligence: Comparison of investment alternatives (Not directly related to global tax rates, but net income is related to both taxation and to gross income).
Elections at UNAMI: UN Assistsance Mission for Iraq. 15 February, 2006.
UNAMI presented (10 February) the official statement of the results of the fall 2005 Council of Representatives elections. Secretary-General Ashraf Jehangir Qazi announced the certified results., which were the same as the provisional results announced 20 January. 12 million voters on 7500 candidates for 275 Council seats: approximately 128 seats to the United Iraqi Alliance, 53 for the Kurdish Alliance, 44 for the Sunni-led National Concord Front and 25 for Lyad Allawi's Iraqi National List. Eleven seats are held by Sunni politician Saleh al-Motlak's Iraqi National Conference, and others now held by Turkmen, Christians, and a Kurdish Islamist party. Female delegates hold about 25% of the seats. I use "approximately" because I found allocation differences between various news agency reports on the election outcomes. One site that at least has attractive graphics: historiae.org.
Ibrahim Al-Jafaari is confirmed to remain as prime minister.
BBC presents the key individuals and groups in Iraqi politics overall in Who's Who in Post-Saddam Iraq, and a description of the post-election political parties.
Foresight & Futuring. 10 February, 2006.
I looked at documents on the European Commission's project for futuring, or anticipating trends and projections that can indicate what may or could happen in the region. Science and Technology Foresight is the general project, but it links into studies in social systems, including trends of aging populations and immigrant demographics. See the forum on Social Innovation for interesting perspectives on what might be.
Another source of perspectives on such is World Future Society. Studying trends and changes is not trying to foretell or predict the future, but it can include expectations and "prodromes." It is not limited to mystical experiences, either. But, there is science in the study of change.
For example, Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics predicts ("prognose") that the native ethnic Dutch population will be stable while the immigrant populations will continue to grow. For example, the immigrant Turkish population is expected to grow by 60,000 by 2015-- 2% per year, if I read the stats correctly. The same goes for the immigrant Moroccan population.
Another point concerns attempting to meet European labor needs through temporary migration.
Trust. 8 February, 2006.
My comments in this blog on 17 September are appropriate today. I quote:
" Richard Maybury, in Whatever Happened to Justice?, said, " The two fundamental laws on which most major religions and philosphies agree are:
1. Do all you have agreed to do, and
2. Do not encroach on other persons or their property.
These laws were the basis of the old common law. But only these two. Except for them we have little or no agreement about right and wrong."
European newspapers published cartoons that shamed the venerated leader of Islam, and that broke trust. Because they encroached on deeply-held values. The instigators of the violence broke trust by attacking persons and their property without legal cause. The publishers refused to accept that freedom of speech stops where it encroaches. They refused to accept that there is no freedom of the press in many lands outside of Europe and that the press is seen as an agent of the government in most/many parts of the world where violence happens easily. The instigators manipulated this "unity of press and government" concept in the Middle East to promote their own acquisition of power. And, since demonstrations do not happen on a large scale without permission or support from governments in the Middle East, the internal security agencies of Syria and Lebanon and ... are co-encroachers, and co-promoters of violence.
Another book by Maybury, Thousand Year War in the MidEast: How it Affects You Today, written in 1999, describes in detail the worldview differences that keep Middle Eastern lands in turmoil, and prevents longterm stability of relationships between them and outside powers. And, that is the issue, it seems to me--power.
Those who have power want to keep it and gain more; those who do not have it have no internal moral values that guide them to seek peaceful sharing of power and synergy in relationships. All of life has been framed as "you win/ I lose or I win/ you lose" and there is no third option possible that would say, "we can both win more if we work together." These are value bases, not political and not economic.
The issue is not religious. It is moral, ethical and internal. "Do all you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on other persons or their property" is the basis of western common law, and can be seen in moral codes of many other societies. But, it is not apparently a shared value at the core of any culture where getting and keeping power is the measure of a man.
Fifth Column. 7 February, 2006.
I sense a lot of fear expressed in the media about "Fifth Column" activities of European Muslims. "Fifth Column" comes from a 1936 campaign in Spain where rebel sympathizers inside Madrid joined four columns of rebel troops attacking the outside of Madrid. It now means a clandestine subversive organization working within a country to further an invading enemy's military and political aims.
It seems to sell a lot of column-inches to report that organized Muslim networks are operating in Europe and North America. Without doubt, there are forward thinking Islamic strategists who have plans in place to rule Europe when they have majority in the parliaments. And, it is easy to presume that when that happens, rules addressing tolerance and multiculturalism and freedom of choice will be changed to reflect more traditional Islamic governmental practices. Maybe, or maybe not.
In times of inter-cultural and inter-ethnic tensions, like over the cartoon issues in Europe, there are spikes of emotional response that will polarize the many factions away from a median level of seeking cooperation and common good. They will seek to radicalize their affiliates to make the differences between points of view seem larger and more dangerous. But, after time, emotions will settle down and the baseline level of relationships will normalize. But, there is learning that takes place, and trust is lost, and that causes over-sensitivity and self-protection to take priority over consensus.
Promoting conflict, or seeking to irritate or humiliate others breaks trust, and without trust we cannot improve life for everyone. Life is worse when there is fear, and breaking trust can make us think as if we fear. Build trust and fear becomes less. Trust builds through contact hours over time in mutually beneficial activities. We know how to do that. I've come across a lot of research lately on sociological theories about trust and contact between outgroups (social contact theory). In same cases, increased contact builds trust; in other places, increased contact increases the distrust. That's why this is still classified as a theory--it is not yet a universal rule of life that if mistrusting groups have more contact that they will become more trusting.
For a report on the background and follow-up to the Danish cartoon uprisings, see the February 12 posting on Captain's Quarters. Quote: "So it isn't just a case of a few supposedly inflammatory cartoons appearing in Jyllands-Posten that set this off. This has been a deliberate provocation by Danish Muslims to inflame Islam against Denmark specifically and the West in general -- and it would have happened eventually even without the cartoons."
Tracking of the cartoon controversies can be seen at Michelle Malkin's blog.
Multiculturalism. 6 February 2006.
A seminar today was by Fons van de Vijver of Tilburg University, Netherlands. Fons gave an excellent overview of multiculturalism, and then moved through demonstrations of his research into a very active discussion time. Multiculturalism has different meanings and applications depending on whether you mean terms of psychology, sociology, political science, policy development, or practical lifestyles. The bottom line, as pointed out by participants in the discussion, is that attitudes determine behavior, and behavior is where the problems are seen.
For example, in Dutch society, among ethnic Dutch, public life is the common ground, the liminal space where private affairs are not to be discussed or displayed. To ethnic Dutch, ethnic and religious differences are good and should be celebrated--in private spaces, behind closed doors, as long as basic rules such as 'do not beat your spouse or children" are followed. To other ethnic groups, private life includes control over physical relations or so-called abuse of family members. And, appearance of religious identity is not private but may or should be public!
In terms of acceptance and cultural similarity to ethnic Dutch, immigrants from Morocco & Turkey (Mediterranean with limited or no freedom of religion) were seen as more distant from Dutch culture than were immigrants from Surinam & Antilles (Caribbean with freedom of religion). I wonder if the concept of freedom of choice might be more important to cultural acceptance than only differences in religion or ethnic identi