Just yesterday I learnt about the H-index and it’s competitor the i10-index (not the one from Hyundai).

I think it is just the two of them at the moment. Just like in the early days of boxing when we just had the WBA and the WBC. But who knows, there may already be a bunch more paper indices I don’t know about.

Citations in academia are an odd beast.

They are considered a proxy for the ‘importance’ of an academic paper. And on this basis are grants awarded. Now this is pretty messed up because academics, being clever, have long ‘gamed’ the system by structuring their efforts to improve their indices, rather than just pumping out good work.

In fact it can be argued that efforts that are aimed at improving the indices automatically take academics away from areas of uncrowded activity (white space) where genuine innovation is more likely to be achieved,

Consider this; the more important a paper is the more often it is read. This is 100% true because academic papers are so boring that no one would read them unless they were genuinely interested in the contents.

Before the internet there was no way we could measure how many times a paper was read. All we knew was that a paper was printed. A paper might have sat on 1000 library shelves around the world and never, ever read – to this day.

Hence, in order, to measure the worth of an paper and its author(s), the citation indices were born. A paper is cited because it describes a bunch of things that saves the author of a new paper from writing a bunch of things or, worse still, trying to prove a bunch of things.

Essentially a citation is a valuable short-cut. A short-cut that proves that we are all standing on the shoulders of those that have gone before us.

In the absence of a direct measure of readership, citations were the best proxy we had. But an imperfect proxy at that.

Sometimes, for example, a paper can be heavily cited because it nicely summarises some information that other authors can use in their introductions. Yet in no way does it introduce, for example, new science.

Also, when cited a paper probably has a greater chance of being read by others because they may be compelled to ‘chase’ the reference. A citation is a very poor advertisement for a paper, but it is one nevertheless.

Clearly in this era of e-journals the value of academic papers can be measured directly through readership.

Firstly, however, we need to get papers from behind the paid ‘firewalls’. I often need to read academic papers even though I am not an academic. Just yesterday, for example, I wanted to get a paper on patent enforcement studies in Australia. Wiley’s wanted to charge me $35 for the privilege and I demurred.

Eventually I girded my loins and forced myself to get a copy through the RMIT University library system (which I have access to as an Adjunct); it is so convoluted that in itself it presents a barrier to entry

Fortunately the move away from the old cartel of ‘paid’ journals has already begun. Once it is completed we then need some new indices. Actually we would probably need two indices; one for the level of readership and another as a measure of innovativeness.

Let me explain – a great review, for example, can be highly read but introduce no new (say) science. Don’t get me wrong – a good review is a very valuable thing, but it isn’t the whole picture. In any case, the level of readership can be very easily measured on the internet – Scribd for example measures how many times an article is read and what the ‘engagement time’ is.

A index for the measure of innovativeness poses a greater challenge. At one level great innovation can often be measured by the number of people that initially disagree with the contents of a paper. And eventually the number of people that agree. There are other factors as well – I will leave this challenge to the social engineers.

For grants I personally would weight my generosity to those with greater innovativeness indices, but that is just my personal prejudice. I have noted that the authors that attract high readership can often be older and simply more adept at playing the system; from these people we do not necessarily get innovation unless they take on the responsibility of fostering the young innovators.

Finally, to show how silly the current H index is, I have attached my own profile below. The last time I was employed at a university doing research was in 1991. And yet this apparently tells me that I am a good practising scientist (or similar). How messed up is that? If I could get a job in academia (say convert my adjunct position to full time) I could argue that I am worthy of grants over and above some young up-and-coming scientist that is probably capable of great work. Having said that I would have to go for grants in the very boring field of physical polymer chemistry (where the index was earned) and that just isn’t going to happen my friends. Once in one lifetime is more than enough.

In general people that are left brained are also linear thinkers and people that are right brained are more likely to be abstract thinkers.

Hence one can understand the assumption that these pairs of descriptions are describing the same items; it’s a case of the correlation being so good that it isn’t even noticed.

And yet I know a few examples (scatter points in the wrong quadrants of the plot if you will) that defy the correlation.

So here is my current most likely hypothesis on the matter:

Abstract thinking is also divergent thinking and linear thinking is convergent thinking. The former attempts to open up a line of thought to consider many options, whereas the latter closes things down and minimises the set of considerations.

Pros and cons in both – the former may not miss opportunities but takes much longer to arrive at a conclusion; time can be a killer. And divergent thinkers can also drive convergent thinkers mad because they have too many options to pick for communications; often resulting in a null set.

In the case of, say, a divergent (abstract) thinker there is nothing to prevent each step in the ‘expanding set’ of considerations to be dealt with in a left-brained manner, i.e relying with confidence on the skills of logic, language and analytical thinking. It is unusual but it does occur – my mother is one who has this condition.

Similarly there are convergent thinkers that are quite artistic and have many of the other characteristics of right brain types, i.e. they are more confident with expressive or creative tasks. And yet they will automatically minimise any set of considerations in a proposition.

I suspect that the tendency to be either left or right brained, or to be a linear or abstract thinker is a matter of confidence. We must learn early on in life to lean a certain way and then begin to trust these characteristics.

I am sure the neural pathways that get used are the ones that become neural highways, so there is probably a case of heavy-use leading to imprinting. But we may also inherit certain characteristics as well.

Possibly the ‘scatter plot’ people – the people in the odd quadrants – have had conflicting and unusual early inheritance of both experience and genes. Unsuited parents let’s say. Or grandparents.

p.s. I did in no way ‘consider’ this problem. I first noted these quadrants in a blog yesterday and the question was posed to me, ‘why?’. Since then I have been dwelling on the problem almost entirely subconsciously. However I did formally put the information into my brain in two or three fits of consideration (as I do) and then I have let the brain-computer do its divergent thing, running thousands of scenarios to come up with the best ‘fit’. The ‘abstract’ description is apt because I don’t monitor the process consciously; to do so would be silly because it would slow down the process and stop me doing other things.

Here’s an interesting observation; my mother is an abstract thinker and entirely left brained.

Yet I am also an abstract thinker but half right brained.

Which suggests that the abstract and linear dimensions might be uncorrelated to the left and right brain hemispheres.

Not as I would have expected in the absence of giving the subject any thought.

I was labelled quite recently as an abstract thinker.

Since then I have been thinking about this in what is possibly an abstract manner.

But is it?

It’s a simple proposition; what does ‘abstract thinker’ mean?

A linear thinker could answer this quite easily; “anyone who makes this proposition more complex than I would”.

This hypothesised abstract thinker started by considering this proposition in a twenty variable space and even started questioning the proposition.

Linearising the results of this effort for communications purposes is a process fraught by value-destroying simplifications.

But worth the effort.

And the result is [see above].

A 4 speed lifestyle in a 2 speed economy with a 1 speed mentality.

It’s called a hailstone sequence.

My sunglasses appear to be irrescratchable. Just like me.

A new word!

Uber is in principle a great idea…but

When I book a cab I usually get to see it (on the map on the app) drive all over the place while it tries to find my location.

This frustrates me like crazy since I know they have GPS systems supplied by Uber on their dedicated iPhones.

They must just be just useless at using them.

I think Uber needs to introduce sort of measure of the driver’s ability to use their GPS and build that into the reward structure.

Anthony bemoaned and here I paraphrase…

If you live in a chocolate factory it spoils your appetite for spinach.

The dream of building houses with 3-D printers…it is like a slow moving train wreck within a dream.

The basic problem of building a house in the West is that the building materials now represent less than 20% of the finished cost – the rest is labour and layers and layers of services, many driven by regulations not related to making your house better or cheaper.

So the basic idea is this. If you could sit a big 3-D printer on a block of land and print a house in a day the cost of labour and services to build your house would shrink because these are, to a large degree, proportional to the time it takes to complete the house.

Even if the materials for 3-D printing a house cost more you may still save money.

But there is one little problem for 3-D printing a house…and it’s called gravity. Most of the ‘structure’ in house elements are designed to provide strength in the vertical direction (against gravity) whilst minimising the volume and cost of building materials used.

So most of the so-called 3-D house printers actually aren’t – they are printers for ‘house components’. The components are printed on their side in factory and then used to build a house later on, where they are deployed at a 90 degree angle to that which they were printed.

If one prints a house in-situu, to achieve any sort of reasonable cost, you would need one of these three scenarios:

1. An instantly setting material so you can create void spaces to save material costs where you don’t need material. This is really what is needed and a very tough technical challenge.

2. A ‘dual’ printer which prints a supporting filler to support the strength member material while it sets or dries. This support material may double up as an insulator; this only works for walls but not for span members. For span members the filler would need to be removed afterwards.

3. A solid wall where the material is somehow super-cheap and light; light enough and strong enough to create spans. This is the hardest. And again for span members it would have be supported by a filler.

This is what you call a ‘patent spoiler’.

I learnt today that abstract thinkers tend to have a weakness, namely the possession of idiosyncratic obsessions.

I concur.

It takes serious self assessment to identify and isolate these buggers.

The application of sheer will power is required for this linearisation. And maybe also an obsession.

My lovely niece is a 21 year old Gen X/Y mystery.

I have gone out of my way dozens of occasions to help her out, sometimes at great inconvenience and/or cost.

Yesterday I asked her for my first favour (to baby-sit my daughter so that I can attend a party).

It didn’t suit and the answer was ‘no’.

Mmmmm. My problem is that my usual MO is to say nothing and give people say three strikes; she is one down.

But this is family. I might have to say something in a quiet moment.

God knows how the Gen X/Y will interpret my words…”the lips are moving but I don’t understand. I think it’s some sort of foreign language”

Which in pigeon text will look like…”d lips R moving bt I don’t undRstNd. I tink it’s som sort of 4n lngwij”

It’s odd that I can fly from Melbourne to Sydney for $100 and yet the cab ride from the city to the airport cost me $60.

Something isn’t quite right there.

Our cabs are about 3x more expensive than they should because of government taxes and regulations as well as some self-serving cartel like behaviour within the industry.

If the taxi ride to the airport was the $20 is should be this means that air travel is 6.2x cheaper than taxi travel on a per km basis.

Which seem about right given that a plane is just a really efficient bus in the air.

Chief [adj] protagonist in the first novel.

I am having a very late breakfast in a warm East Melbourne cafe.

Outside its dark and I could touch the clouds. Getting here, they were touching me with their tears, obliquely from Port Phillip Bay.

Smashmob are reverbing on the Tannoy. Low, over and over. And over.

Double mac, poached eggs, smashed beans and toast. Coffees up and the toast is brown.

Sooner or later I am going to have to stop cancelling meetings.

You can get a Google browser on the Windows platform but not a Microsoft browser on Android.

One of these two companies needs to grow some balls.

Who would knowingly share their negative feelings with someone they know will tell them to ‘suck it up’?

A martyr, a fool, or a masochist. That’s who.

All human interactions belong to at least two people. They are cannot be measured on an individual.

I believe.

When someone says ‘suck it up’ nine times out of ten they are really saying ‘I don’t care how you feel because nobody cared about how I felt when I was a kid’.

The problem is that we all end up getting what we give. It’s regression to the mean.

I have just returned from Bunnings.

Unlike the rest of the poor souls down there I took my pushie.

A nice slow ride through the back streets. I stopped for a macchiato at the Italian gelateri. I locked my bike right at the front door at Bunnings.

They, the drivers, were log jammed on the Sydney roads as usual. And the car park was full. They all looked very stressed.

Cars…I don’t like. A nice idea at the time. It saved on straw. But really?

I have been pondering tax.

In the ideal world where every transaction is recorded and traceable (i.e. there is no cash) taxation could revert to a very simple scheme.

Firstly, personal expenditure would be taxed on a ‘sliding scale’. The more you spend the higher the (GST) tax rate.

This essentially works towards levelling consumption and opportunity.

Secondly, the cumulative value of assets under control would also impact your tax rate for expenditure.

The more your assets are worth the higher your effective GST.

This works towards levelling stress and opportunity.

And that’s it. No other taxes or levies of any kind in the country. Just personal expenditure tax.

Business isn’t taxed at all and they get to reinvest more in growth. Scamming personal expenses through a business is punishable by death or automatic bankruptcy.

Electronic transfers of money in and out of the country are automatically taxed accordingly.

Taxation is done automatically on a per transaction basis. No one thinks about it. Stress free so long as the sliding scales are fair.

The expenditure tax can be automatically adjusted by government on a daily basis to match their own expenditure.

In this blog I always attempt to write well.

However the first version is always a quick and dirty effort to get the ideas down

Because I am on a phone there are many typos from the Swype keyboard.

This is so frustrating that there are times I have almost defenestrated the phone.

Then there is another phase of review to fix typos and grammos. And I usually miss something anyway.

Then content is added and replaced to improve the structure

I do none of this for emails. Like so many other people my emails are essentially pigeon English.

Some young people only know how to write in pigeon English.

In time I am guessing that pigeon English will become the norm.

That’s not so bad – I reckon English was a lot more fun back before the enlightenment when people just wrote ‘anyway they felt like’.

Just when governments around the world were plotting the end of cash along comes bitcoin

For every action there is an opposite action of equal magnitude.

So there there goes the opportunity to do real-time incremental and automated taxation.

It’s a shame on one level but to be honest we can’t just trust the sort of people that make a habit out of influencing governments for their own benefit.

My nephew, a house guest, made me watch the Blacklist mini series.

It’s not bad but it is full of extraordinary violence.

At least it’s extraordinary for me.

But probably not in America.

In the show anyone that attempts to resist arrest (say by doing a runner) is immediately shot at.

Even if the crime is jay walking!

The cops just seem so angry in America. Especially if you don’t respect their badge.

But then I have noticed that most Americans get very angry when their rights are violated or their entitlements are removed.

Just like 5 year olds.

A couple of weeks back I was pulled over by the police on my bike.

Every day now, when I ride past that spot, I hear a ghost of the woop woop in my soul.

It’s just a little noise; enough to raise my heart beat a unit or two.

If I drove a Mercedes SUV I would probably sue for emotional damages.

I am lucky because I have

Time enough to contemplate

Which is quite a luxury

And quite unusual

And very different to time enough for thinking

And much closer to time enough for love

It’s not that lucky really

Because I wanted it

Engineered it

And got it

So there

Ok, this amazes me…I have just listened to a talk by an institutional investor in Australia [exact sector withheld].

Part A was all about what is wrong with the standard model for investment in their sector.

Part B was their hypothesis for an alternative approach that addresses some of the proposed issues.

Part C was them saying they are actually doing their Part B hypothesis. ‘Please give us money’.

In which case their chances of success are almost zero…by this logic.

The current model is loss making.

Their chances of having identified the problems correctly is probably 1 in 10.

Their chances of having identified a solution to the problems that works is also 1 in 10.

Their chances of executing the solution correctly is also 1 in 10 – it usually takes a few cycles of people trying for this to work.

So their chances of success are 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = 1/1000

A rule of thumb is to only invest in business models that have been proven to work and also proven to be profitable. Ideally you should also invest in teams that themselves have been profitable.

Shame on those who knowingly add unnecessary risk to their investment decisions.

The problem with selfies, taken with apps that know who you (e.g. snapchat, instagram, etc), is this:

We are providing the big web companies with a perfect ‘learning set’ for facial recognition, aka biometrics, of individuals.

Privacy laws side, once they crack this they will know where we are and what we are doing at all times. Any camera will do.

Expect them to start selling this capability in the first instance with a positive spin. For example, they will sell your biometrics to the credit card companies so that facial recognition accompanies every online purchase. Or something like that.

Once in place though, you won’t own your own biometric data; Google and Facebook will. That is, they will own the data that you need to prove who you are.

And if you want to look at it very negatively, if they are subject to theft or a government mandate then you may not be able to enact any transaction for any purpose. Or someone else may be able to enact transactions on your behalf.

And unfortunately the parties that are creating this sort of power also have the means to influence governments and the media.

I can see this getting very messy and I am not usually negative on technology opportunities. This one worries me because competitive pressures force the parties that are trying to do this to out-compete each other in their creation and monetization of these capabilities. That is, if one doesn’t do it another will.

I have fainted four times in my life.

In a student bar in Göttingen.

In a drug den in the Hunter Valley.

In a nightclub in Valencia.

And last night at midnight at the pub in Surry Hills.

I did the pumpkin bolt and thus avoided saying goodnight 100 times over.

Similarities between these events were;

1. No eating for a day
2. Lots of drugs or alcohol
3. Lots of smoking

At one level it’s my brain saying to me “if you ain’t going to stop I’m going to do it for you”.

But then there is also a layer of built up emotional tension being released.

It’s like hitting the ctrl+alt+del keys a few times. Refresh the super ego.

This is a photo of cabbies blocking London streets in a protest against Uber.

It looks like the smart phone represents the death of the militant protest.

In business the whole point of ethics is that they set a higher bar than the legal minimum.

However due to competitive pressures the gap is narrowing.

Only in the practise of law does the concept of ethics get formally reduced to a legal definition. That is, the ethical bar is the same height as the legal bar.

When the rule of law equals the ethical requirements then there are no ethics!

It’s hard to define ethical behaviour (any noun that is variably both singular and plural has to be a tricky one).

But it’s much easy to define what it’s not!

I have just been Telstra’d.

A euphemism for being fucked over by our former national telephony carrier and their obscure (to them and us) customer management systems.

They need to start from scratch rather than continue to upgrade their systems (that probably have vestiges of filing cabinets therein).

The only upside to the experience is that the operator that I chatted to was pleasant and very knowledgeable about footy.

He has temporarily patched the issue.

But I know as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow that this issue will repeat on me.

I know this because one question asked was “are you still using your BlackBerry?” in reference to my sixth last phone.

I suggested to him that this was a non sequitur to rival all others.

We both laughed.

In the world cup sweepstake I got Ghana and Algeria.

I may as well have got Australia.

I was chatting with a right wing think tank member… a thunker… and I suddenly realised their mantra.

It is couched under the terms of free markets but basically they believe that government macro policy should only be introduced that addresses ‘market failure’.

As an aside micro policy is all about putting more money into their pockets and this is ok.

Back to market failure.

We were discussing the so called Patent Box system which in a few countries give companies an extra tax discount for products protected by patents.

The thunker said there is no market failure in the patent system or related corporate investment in innovation and that the patent box is therefore unnecessary.

I countered that the same could have been argued before the patent system itself was introduced. It’s not about correcting market failures but about creating market success.

The thunker was very confused. And remains so.

Some currencies depreciate very slowly…

A few weeks back I was, for the first time, fined for going through a red light on my bicycle.

Due to the increase in cyclists and an increase in shock jocks talking about cyclists, our state government is starting to enforce laws that it never has before.

Ever since that first fine I have been thoroughly furtive about riding through red lights.

So you can imagine my surprise this morning when, on the corner of Union and Edward streets, Pyrmont, I was woop-wooped by a parked and unmarked police car

WTF?

It was a young constable and an old crown sergeant. What he, the old bloke, was doing out on the beat is a mystery.

Maybe he was getting a morning’s worth of “real life experience” on the cycling blitz for his weekly meeting with the commissioner.

Anyway the old bloke opened with this pearler “do you think you own the place?”

For the non-Australians this means “do you think you can just do what you like?”

I replied; “sort of, I grew up there”, pointing to the former wharfies’ pub on the corner which is now a medical centre.

The old bloke paused and looked at me; “are you Noel’s son? “, referring to my dad who had been a crown sergeant himself before quitting the force to become a publican.

Nod affirmative.

” Well how is Noel? He was a great boss and a top bloke. [More details added for the young constable’s sake] ”

My reply followed with a short post-police force biopic.

“Give him my regard from [name withheld to protect the generous].”

Needless to say I got off without even a warning.

It’s good to see some things haven’t changed too much.

These are the 6 common forms of leadership promoted by HR consultants and other leeches:

The pacesetting leader leads from out front but doesn’t bother looking over its shoulder.

The authoritative leader hires minions and yells the mission at them.

The affiliative leader is that rare occurrence when the HR manager is accidentally promoted to boss.

The coaching leader is a self-serving individual who missed their real calling as a school teacher.

The coercive leader is a prick even at the worst of times.

The democratic leader hasn’t got a clue what he or she is doing, so asks the team instead.

NO, NO, NO … they have it all wrong.

The truly great leader is the LAZY leader. Too lazy to fail. Too lazy to care about screwing with people’s heads. Too lazy to be fucked up emotionally. Too lazy to be stupid.

Its not what they do but what motivates them that counts.

When I started this blog I had no idea that it would help me stop worrying about a whole lot of stuff that isn’t worth worrying about.

Today I was approached by the Australian Council of Learned (sic) Academics for my input into some self-serving fantasy they are preparing for our tabloid right federal government.

Without a second thought or any remorse I said no and wished them well in their endeavours.

Bliss.

But what to care about?

Actually I am thinking of writing a crime novel.

I watched the Jack Irish TV series and loved it but then was appalled by the poor quality of the original books.

In fact Australia has never produced a single great crime novel.

The closest we got was ‘The Empty Beach’ by Peter Corris. But it was a case of a false dawn as the author descended into trite facsimiles of Chandler thereafter.

We have had no Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Damon Runyon or even a John le Carre. The last two stretch the category a little I know.

Great, great authors all. Yet they don’t win major awards because of the genre. Le Carre for example has to be one of the living greats; much better than a handful of laureates that I can think of.

Even this I can’t get worked up about.

And here is the ones that I played just for fling or two.

abseiling
air hockey
archery
beach soccer
beach volleyball
billiards
bocci
canoe polo
canyoning
catamarans
caving
climbing
coits
croquet
croquet
cross-country skiing
dinghys
discus
fencing
french cricket
gridiron
hackysack
hunting
indoor cricket
javelin
karting
Kegelbahn
netball
orienteering
paintball
paragliding
petanque
racquetball
roller hockey
rugby league
scooter bulldog
shooting
shotput
skateboard
skeeler
snooker
softball
surfing
table football
volleyball
water polo
water skiing
white water canoeing
white water rafting
windsurfer

Here is a list of sports I have played seriously but not for too long. Say a season or two.

badminton
baseball
basketball
beach cricket
beach cricket
british bulldog
centerboard skiffs – holland
cocky laura
cross country
darts
downhill mountain bike
fishing
frisbee
futsal
hash house harriers
ice skating
indoor climbing
judo
juggling
marbles
mini-golf
rugby union
running – sprints
swimming
ten pen bowling

Some of these posts are more of a place to dump random information that I might otherwise misplace and I will probably never need again. Go figure.

Lola asked and I compiled a list of sports I have played. Here is a list of the ones I have played seriously.

bodyboard
bodysurfing
bushwalking
canoeing
cricket
cycling
diving
golf
gym
handball – squares
handball – wall
indoor soccer
lawn bowls
lockie pool
pool
roller blading
roller skating
rowing
running – long distance road
running – long distance track
running – middle distance
skiing
soccer
squash
table tennis
tennis
touch footy
ultimate
waveski
yachting

The truth is somewhere in between.

The power of rebranding…

Dynamic Lifter is actually chicken shit.

Now I know that I still don’t have any problems using it.

But my perception of a reasonable price for the stuff has changed.

Possibly the worst song of all time.

For me, letting go of old habits can be harder than learning new ones.

Especially when I have never perceived of them as habits, nor do I have any idea why I have had them.

For some of my very old habits the removal process is about as difficult and satisfying as attempting to eradicate onion weed from the backyard.

That’s nothoscordum borbonicum my friends.

This little fucker is so pervasive that it’s a lot smarter just to change one’s mental habit of perceiving it as a weed.

After all the concept of a ‘weed’ is totally subjective; there is no formal definition.

Weeds are simply plants that thrive in the presence of humans and that we collectively decide are unattractive and unwanted.

Sometimes letting go of old habits is as easy as letting go of old prejudices.

The odd thing about this ad for a breast cancer research organisation is that they are seeking a ‘cure’ when prevention is probably orders of magnitude easier to achieve.

Everywhere I look I am starting to see proud and independent trees with big strong trunks

Most of the time I write thing just to get the stuff out of my head.

The ideas of a box to both contain and protect your soul makes no sense until you realise that other people may want to box yours.

Here is a list of books that made an impact on me when I read them. There may have been other but I can’t remember them right now, so this list is sort of self defining.

Having said that I keep recalling books to add to this list. So I am treating this blog entry as a work in progress.

Cat in the Hat

Asterix and Obelix

All of Biggles– W E Johns

The stormy petrel – Violet Needham

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

Time enough for love – Robert Heinlein
   
Such is life – Joseph Furphy
  
We the living – Ayn Rand 
  
The hobbit and lord of the rings – Tolkien
  
No bugles, no drums – Charles Durdan

All of Raymond Chandler

All of Damon Runyon

The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

The cruel sea – Nicholas Monserratt

Animal Farm and 1984– George Orwell

Tom Sawyer and the Adventure of huckleberry Finn and roughing it – Mark Twain

All of Kurt Vonnegut

All of Ursula le Guin

The power and the glory – Graham Greene

No highway – Nevil Shute

The Caine mutiny – Herman Wouk

The devil’s advocate – Morris West

Siddhartha – Herman Hesse

Vanity Fair – William makepeace Thackeray

Madame Bovary – Gustav Flaubert

Ulysses – James Joyce

The Turning – Tim Winton

Washington Place – Henry James

Chronicles – Bob Dylan

Both sides of the moon – Alan Duff

Fate is the Hunter – Ernest K. Gann

My wicked, wicked ways – Errol Flynn

Cruising in Seraffyn – Larry Pardey and Lin Parde

The new, new thing – Michael Lewis

There’s one thing about the Chinese that you only find out by having them as customers; they are quite gullible.

They will believe almost anything they are told especially in matters of deference to incumbents

I think this is because the Chinese never really went through the enlightenment where in the West it became the norm to challenge orthodoxy especially in matters technology.

This will become their greatest challenge.

What do you have when the emotionally insensitive try to protect the emotionally sensitive from dramas?

A very slow moving train wreck.

I don’t mind being the business leader wherever I am at the time. Its normally better than reporting to someone because there are so few really great leaders.

However I have three weaknesses as a business leader:

1. I get bored with any business after a while and then distracted by other butterflies

2. I struggle to get consumed by a business. Basically as I have gotten older I care less and less about money and power. Hence I can’t generate the madness required to conquer and rule

3. I can be very good as a leader of people but again I don’t always practice these skills due to a form of laziness. In these cases I default to leadership-lite. This works-ish

On the flip side I have good strategy skills, I hire great people when I can afford them and I give them space, I am good with stakeholder management, I never shirk reality, I never get scared, nor do I panic and I know what I don’t know.

Query; what are the chances that in the history of the game that a Scrabble board has been repeated exactly, at least once?

A Google search later and some mathematician has figured out that it’s one over a number greater than all the atoms in the universe. That is, effectively zero.

But then my hero steps in:

“The chances are 100%, because it’s happened.

I was a club/tournament Scrabble player for a few years.  Tournament play often involves unusual words, some of which are hard to extend or play through.  Tournament play also has a rule that if both players score zero for three consecutive turns (by passing, exchanging tiles, or having a word challenged off the board), the game ends, regardless of how many tiles remain.

Now consider the following game: 

I open by playing XU (a unit of currency in Vietnam), with the U on the center star, scoring 18 points.

You respond by playing UH (as in “uh, I’m thinking”) directly under my word, scoring 21 (accounting for the double-letter score on the U).

The board now looks like this:

XU
UH

Neither of these words can be pluralized.  The only way I can play on this board is to either (a) hook a letter onto UH to make DUH or HUH (note: DUH was invalid prior to 2006) or (b) play through one of the words to make a longer word, most likely by extending XU into EXUDE, EXULT, or NEXUS.

But to do that, I need to have those tiles in my rack.  If I don’t, I have to exchange and hope I get them.  You’re winning by 3 points, so if you know the tournament rules and realize you have the advantage, you’re not going to play a word even if you can.  You’re just going to exchange tiles to lower the point value of your rack, thereby reducing the number of points you’re potentially stuck subtracting from your score.  So, essentially, I only have two chances to get playable tiles in my rack or the game ends and I lose — with 4 tiles played on the board.

This position has happened in actual club and tournament play more than once.”

Universities, police boys clubs, charities, rissoles….they are all not for profits.

The senior levels of management in these organisations tend to do an ok job because they are motivated by climbing the salary ladder.

But lower down it’s often hours for wages and the minimum effort.

Without a profit motive not many of these organisations thrive. They just exist.

It’s a little sad that we human beings cannot come up with another organisational motivating force that works.

I explained to her that a plank is a poor woman’s push-up.

Found on the internet:

“I am the right brain.
I am creativity. A free spirit, I am passion.
Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of rearing laughter.
I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet.
I am movement. Vivid colors.
I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas.
I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel.
I am everything I wanted to be.”

But before that self-advertisement there was this:

“I am the left brain.
I am a scientist. A mathematician.
I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear.
Analytical. Strategic. I am practical.
Always in control. A master of words and language.
Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers.
I am order. I am logic.
I know exactly who I am.”

Quibbles, quibbles…

What is the practical difference, pray tell, between “I am everything I wanted to be” and “I know exactly who I am”?

This is simply a case of forgetting to do the research before suggesting a result. People with strong left-brains do not always like the familiar, they do not always want to be in control any more than other types, they can be crap at language and words, they can be very unrealistic, and more often than not have absolutely no idea of who they are.

Empathy requires both understanding and caring, where the ‘and’ is used in the boolean sense.

Empathy can be applied to the big issues (macro empathy) or on daily stuff (micro empathy) which is rarer.

Empathy can be a finite resource (most people) or food for growth (a few people).

Those few people that are true empaths see empathy as food for growth and can practice micro empathy on anyone and at any time.

They are generally sucked up, used until exhausted and then spat out.

The rest of us drift in and out of empathy and sympathy, preserving our core goodwill for our precious selves.