« February 2005 | Main | April 2005 »
When King George 5th lay dying at Sandirngham, a notice was pinned to the gate saying "The King's life is drawing peacefully to a close"
Today, Terri Schiavo dies amidst hysteria. The Pope has a feeding tube. Prince Rainier is on a ventilator.
What is going on?
"I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring". ~~ the last words of Richard Feynman, physicist, d. 1988. That is how I plan to go
| | | |
| | |
The one person you can never really see is yourself.
Well now you can
Go to Lands End and go to "My Model"
Load your real data and then see yourself as others see you!
Then "lose" 20 pounds and see how much better you would look.
I have reached the stage at 195 pounds at 5 11 when all the clothes I tried on the real me made me look like a blimp.
I think that I am going to have top retire from the world like Marlene Dietrich
| | | |
| | |
Here is the story in the Guardian today
(GUARDIAN PHOTO BY BRIAN MCINNIS)
Business creates office for shoestring budgets
By Ron Ryder, The Guardian
Dan James of silverorange sits on the steps of 224 Queen St., which will soon become Queen Street Commons, where people can work in an office atmosphere and use all the trappings by paying a monthly fee.
For a growing number of entrepreneurs, the word office is archaic and the only desktop they usually need is on the screen of their laptop computer.
But even these high-tech, light-travelling business people have times when they need some of the trappings of the old-fashioned office, trappings like a mail box, a fax machine or a table at which to meet clients.
A new business in Charlottetown’s downtown aims to help this breed of worker by giving them access to walls and a roof without forcing them to take a lot of overhead.
Queen Street Commons, a joint project of Cynthia Dunsford, Dan James and Robert Paterson, promises to offer members access to the services available at most offices. The partners are renovating former law offices on Queen Street into an area where independent workers can enjoy the facilities and community of an office environment, at a cost that fits a shoestring budget.
James, CEO of silverorange, said the Queen Street Commons addresses a problem that he and his partners ran into when their web development business was just starting up.
“There were a lot of expenses,” he said. “You had to have fax, offices and phones available even though a lot of time you were using these things at about one-fiftieth of their capacity.”
James said the alternative was simply doing without.
“There are people who we have been talking to who are consultants who may do a lot of their work out of home offices,” he said. “But when they meet with clients they’ve been doing it in local coffee shops.
“We felt there would be a lot of demand from different people who don’t need an office all the time but who want to have access to an office’s services . . . Some of the people we talk to say they’ll be in here almost every day. For others it’s worth the $35 monthly membership charge just to have access to the boardroom here for two or three meetings a month.”
When the Commons is up and running — the first section is due for a May 1 opening — members will be able to book boardroom space, use a common fax machine, tap into high-speed Internet from any available desks, receive mail or hang out in a shared lounge. The second section — due in June — promises more isolated workspaces, lockers for valuables, and amenities like a shower and laundry machines to accommodate members who choose to run or ride a bike to work.
James said the idea seems to be striking a chord, especially among consultants and people in creative fields.
“Almost everyone we talk to ends up telling us about someone who they think this would be perfect for,” he said.
“We’re not sure how many members we’ll want, that will depend on how much the people who join plan to use the commons. We’ll stop adding when it becomes clear that people are having trouble taking advantage of the services they’ve paid for. Then we’ll move into another space or maybe buy a new property.”
James said silverorange would have benefited in its early days if there had been a way to access office services without office expenses. He said he doesn’t know of any similar operations but that he can see how it will be valuable to either people starting out or those who may never need all the trappings of an office of their own.
“It’s kind of something that we see working like something between a co-operative and a business incubator,” he said.
“If this thing pays for itself, silverorange will be happy. It’s something we thought would help other people. We don’t really expect it to be a big profit operation.”
| | | |
| | |
My regular visitors will know that my hope is for a new renaissance. This time, instead of "remembering" the wisdom of the classic world, my hope is that we may of "remember" the wisdom of the natural world which our pre urban ancestors knew so well.
Modern Galileo's are starting to show us a natural world that we have ignored. Like Galileo, they are often denounced by the establishment, but like Galileo, it is hard to deny what your eyes show you. So my hope builds. A new science of seeing the patterns is emerging in the social sciences.
if you are a new parent and wish to remember how all humans raised their children until now check out Jean Liedloff in her book - The Continuum Concept - that shows us how traditional societies raise children.
If you want to design a building or an organization or even software check out Christopher Alexander's 4 book masterpiece - The Nature of Order
I have been searching for a book that would help me understand development and growth itself.
This Easter weekend I came by accident across what I feel is a masterpiece that adds the human development story to all of this emerging perspective. . I "knew" that there had to to be a mathematical underpinning to the rules of nature. I have been looking at the ideas of Fibonacci numbers and the idea of Phi - the Golden Mean. For me math is the Telescope. Any theory that could topple our current Cartesian world-view had to have rigor. No math = no rigor.
There is no controversy that the universe is governed by rules and by math's. We see the math in Newton and Einstein. Physics is disciplined. Social Science is however Alchemy. It is not related to nature or to nature's inherent math. It is mumbo jumbo. Hence it goes no where, is open to endless debate and has made life more confusing. Parents are confused as to how to raise children. Organizations are confused as how best to organize (Imagine ants, bees, elephants, birds etc being confused as how best to organize or to raise their young). Humans are the only species on Earth who have lost sight of the most basic work of all: how to raise our children and how to organize to provide best for a tribe.
Who do you know in the field of organizational design or in child rearing advocates looking at nature for guidance? Isn't it odd that we accept the rules of nature in physics and have found them very helpful but that we ignore them when it comes to us? I did not even know until a few months ago that nature does have a math and an order for all development. More worrisome is that this knowledge is not even new. All the great artists and mathematicians have known about these relationships for centuries.
Fibonacci numbers show us the math of nature in the shape of all things from flower petals, to the human face to the structure of galaxies. Surely, I felt, there must be an order then and an accompanying structure of math's that drive all forms of development. When I say development I mean that the sequence of growth that goes from an acorn to a forest, from a stream to an ocean must be the same because all other processes have such an innate order. If all other parts of the universe have rules then so does life. If these rules can be "seen" in patterns, then growth itself must have a pattern.
There is. Today I found a book on the web that has enough answers for me to rejoice that there is a road open to find such a pattern and to support such a pattern with rigor.
The book is called The Design of Life - Human Development from a Natural Perspective. It is written by Dr. Norman Rose, a disciple of John Waskom. You can download the pdf. Here
Snip:
"So what perspective does this book take on What's-It-All-About? Since the theory contained here is committed to all that is inherent and natural, the answer is simple:
The purpose of life is to fulfill its natural design and progression.
Fine, but what does that mean? It means that each form of life, at each stage of its development, is urged to perfect its equipment, according to its design. Crystals (minerals are alive, aren't they?) are bound to the expression of a simple geometric design and progression. Plants must fulfill their geometry, too, plus a life cycle: growth, reproduction, and demise. Animals must fulfill their geometry and their life cycle, plus instinctive and learned behavior patterns. In all these cases, there is an imperative.
Failure to do these things will jeopardize the individual and the species. Design and progression must be fulfilled. For humans, fulfillment of design and progression likewise includes geometry, life cycle, and behavior patterns, plus an imperative toward mental, emotional, and spiritual development.
All together, this imperative could be described as movement toward ever-increasing levels of self-awareness and self-efficacy; in short, it is the
development of character."
Just ponder what Rose says here for a moment.
For all of us concerned with how we live today and how our children are struggling, I urge you to try this small jewel. For more context, you can explore the rules and the math if you try some of the links in this short post. The blinkers of dogma from both the machine world and from New Age silliness will fall from your eyes.
| | | |
| | |
Old Operating Room London(Wikipedia)
TORONTO - Hospitals are failing to control antibiotic-resistant "superbug" infections that kill as many as 8,000 patients each year and cost health-care systems at least $100 million annually, a CBC News investigation has learned. Canadian hospitals have fewer rules than restaurants when it comes to infection control measures – and that has experts calling for mandatory national standards. (CBC)
8,000 deaths a year. That is a huge number. Until recently we accepted the idea that surgery was always an option. Modern anesthesia and antibiotics gave us that impression.
But things are changing back to the pre modern age when going to a hospital was a last resort and was often a death sentence. Infections that cannot be controlled are on the rise. In addition, a plentiful supply of clean blood cannot be taken for granted. We also tend to underestimate the impact of anesthesia on the brain.
We are also witnessing a push back from Hospital administrators who are telling us that there is no problem - or if there is - it is small and it is our fault and not theirs. This is ironic, as the pioneer of seeing the risks, Ignaz Semmelweis was hounded out of his hospital by the same kind of professional blindness.
In the pre anesthesia era you chose an operation as a last resort. Here is a neat anecdote of Samuel Pepys, bladder stone operation that gives us a graphic idea of what such an operation was like. You had to be at death's door to accept this. The greatest surgeon of the pre anesthesia era was Robert Liston. You asked for Liston because he was fast. He once amputated a leg in less than a minute. He inadvertently took off two fingers of an assistant in the process!
Surgery and even a stay in hospital is returning to where it has always been - a vary dangerous choice not to be taken lightly. So what are the stats for your local hospital? What is the PEI experience? We need to be able to quantify the risk now and we ned to stop denying that there is a problem. Lamont please tell us how we are doing.
| | | |
| | |
What is a hero? Surely it is a person who holds himself true to himself - no matter what. It means taking a stand for the truth.
All around, we witness men who have done great wrong who defend themselves by saying that the can't remember! We hear men with firm voices bob and weave. We see so called leaders shift blame to others.
Tonight I watched a remarkable film by Peter Raymond of General Dallaire's return to Rwanda 10 years after the massacre.
My heart broke when he stands, alone, before a crowd of Rwandans and tells that he failed them.
What makes this act of contrition so powerful is that of course that while he believes that he did fail them, it is clear to the watcher of the film that if any person failed Rwanda, it was not Romeo Dallaire. He was made a Senator this week. Few men would have sought such a position less than him but it is a mark of the esteem in which his country hold him that he is so honored.
| | | |
| | |
It is Easter this weekend. On another Easter in 1917, the Canadian Corps changed the rules of war. I wrote this article a couple of years ago for my friends at Veterans Affairs. But while I tell of deeds of long ago, this is a story for our time. All large organizations are caught up in a doctrine that does not work anymore. The status quo can appear to be unshakeable. The pressure of time and for results can stall change. But this old story can help us see how to break out of the current unproductive doctrine.
The story of the Corps is one where a small organization from "over there" learned how to replace a doctrine built by a much larger culture, based on abstractions, process, control and lack of trust with a new doctrine based on practicality, results, order and the harnessing of the human spirit. The story of the Corps is how this small unit rewrote the book and showed the world how to embrace and apply an entirely new set of technology.
The story of Byng is how a man imbued by the old system, could have the courage and insight to see what had to be done and to select the agents of change like Currie and MacNaughton to make the changes.
The story of Currie is how an outsider could develop the leadership required to break free from conventional wisdom. The story of Currie is how a man in the heat of the war of machines could see that it would be the human spirit that would be the decisive factor.
The story of MacNaughton is how a deep thinker could be given the role of thinking through the meaning of the new and of how he was allowed to create a safe container for thinkers and ideas at a time when action seemed more important.
The story of the CEF is how a group of men grew in self confidence and how their feelings of community and competence enabled them to excel in performance while living the unendurable. The story is about an organization that asked itself a number of fundamental questions. Such as, what really is our role? Such as, how does this new technology really work? Such as what truly is the environment that we are working in? Such as, who are we really working with and what do they need to be successful?
These are questions that we often dare not ask ourselves. These are questions that a Learning Organization has to ask itself!
If you have time this Easter weekend - drop by and find out how special they truly were. Here is a good backrounder. Here is the best picture gallery
| | | |
| | |
The CBC will run and interview with Dan and Cyn on Thursday at 8.43 am if you want to know more about the Queen Street Commons
We had a great turn out on Friday last for our first tour.
We will be there to show you around on this Friday at 11 am as well
Construction begins in a week or so.
| | | |
| | |
I have just returned from my Uncle's funeral in the US. As Americans watch an extraordinary intervention by politicians into the life of one woman, I also pondered what is a life as I spent time with my cousins.
15 years ago, my uncle died after a wedding but was revived. When he awoke from his coma, the family were so relieved. But Tim did not awaken. A new Tim entered the life of his family. A man consumed by a rage. A man who had no short term memory. A man whose behaviour became so challenging that he ultimately had to be not only institutionalized but in the final years, all but incarcerated. He was alive but he was not. Tim had gone and in his place was a black hole that sucked at the energy and at the heart of those that loved him. Tim would have been horrified if he could know the pain and anguish that he caused. My aunt is truly a saint. She took it all and kept on going and kept on being loving. My cousins had no closure until his final death a few weeks ago.
So what price life? Just because we can can revive a person, should we? Just because we can keep a person alive - should we? What is life? Is it an end in itself? Or is life also about being a contributor to our community?
It has been the custom of most traditional societies for individuals to take a responsibility for the amount of burden that they place on their community. There is a dignity in deciding when it is time. There is an acceptance in the community that death is inevitable so how you die becomes more important than life itself. Death is surely the greatest experience that we all share.
By denying it - what do we deny? Do we not deny life itself. I find it so sad that we live in a time when we seek to cure death itself. The greatest irony of all comes from the Fundamentalists who seem to most afraid of death. What an irony from a faith that espouses everlasting life after death. What a denial of all the martyrs who chose death over living a lie. What an irony from a faith that was founded upon a man who chose death over a life that could have no meaning!
| | | |
| | |
Recent Comments