As the number of elders increases dramatically in the next few years, there are questions all elders, and local governments and communities, need to consider: Should a different kind of testing be required for elder drivers? If so, at what frequency? Should there be a standard cutoff age for driving in later years as we have for teenage beginning drivers? Are there medical conditions that should automatically require revocation of driving privileges? Should there be an age at which license renewal by mail is no longer allowed?In the comments, I posed the argument that age should not be the single factor, nor should there be a single factor in determining a license.
We current face massive DNS problems to www.cocomment.com. We are currently hosting our DNS as joker.com and they issued the following statement
Joker.com currently experiences massive distributed denial of service attacks against nameservers.
This affects DNS resolution of Joker.com itself, and also domains which make use of Joker.com nameservers.
We are very sorry for this issue, but we are working hard for a permanent solution.
Thank you for your understanding.Unfortunately, we are also affected by this and cocomment.com is thus often not reachable from various locations. We are currently trying to move our DNS to another hoster, but that unfortunately takes time and as joker is quite busy it’s probably even harder than usual.
We are really sorry about this and apologize for any inconvenience you encounter. We hope the situation goes back to normal soon.
Let's assume you wanted to foster a sustainable and vibrant community over time, and you wanted to be publicly accountable to that goal along the way. What would you do? The city of Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia, came up with 13 indicators of what they believed to be a sustainable community, and then dared to publish their progress for all to see. The Sustainable Community Progress Indicators (SCPI) project is an attempt to focus the efforts of a city and its citizens toward making real progress.
There are four myths about teams which are particularly deadly because each of them is nearly true.
Myth1: Talent is the most important thing in any team
Myth2: The team’s goals won't suddenly change without anyone realising it
Myth3: 'Collaboration' means basically the same thing to all team members
Myth4: You should always play 'win-win'
Read the full posting here.
From Jory DesJardins writing at Pause comes up with this great advice:
All I can tell them is that blogging forces expertise. You must read and interact in order to have something to say. If you don't want to have something to say, don't blog. And don't read blogs. Sure, you can read trade publications, but the act of blogging enforces a deeper thinking of your craft. It's hard to blog about something that you haven't grappled with and come to a conclusion on in some way.
Read the full posting here.
Technorati Tags : blog, blogging, Pause, Bumble+Bee, Artful+Manager
It begins in school. You ought to be good at math; or English, or art, or whatever. If you aren't, you're a bad person. Pull yourself together. Make more effort. Get a grip!
Here's the reality. Some people are good at certain things, some people aren't…but we're all good at something. It's simply something different from whatever the next person's good at.
That's it. Not an "ought" in sight.
Read the full posting here.
From Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users comes this gem:
One of the most interesting things discussed in the Time article is that neuroscientists have established the specific area of the brain responsible for context switching. And unfortunately for some of us, it appears that this part of the brain performs less well as our brain ages. In a nutshell, the older we get, the less quickly and effectively we can multitask. But... most parents of teenagers already know that we have no frickin' idea how our kids manage to do what they do simultaneously. The key issue, though, is that while we now know they're better at it than we (the parents) are, they aren't half as good at it as they think they are.
And chances are, you aren't as good at it as you think you are. ; )
Read the full posting here.
From Geoffrey Moore at Dealing with Darwin comes this insight that might be applicaable to those who have "best in class" in their vision statement somewhere.
Best in class falls between these two goals. It is not sufficiently differentiated to be unique, and thus it does not create bargaining power. But it goes well beyond the minimum acceptable standard, which means you have spent a bunch of resources beyond what you had to and achieved no economic return for so doing!
That’s why “best in class” is a sucker bet.
Read the full posting here.
These were cut/paste from screen shots taken on Monday 3/20/06 at 9:30 PM Eastern.Blogging is an excellent brain activity. As reported here before, studies from Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide show:
- Blogs can promote critical and analytical thinking.
- Blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive, and associational thinking.
- Blogs promote analogical thinking.
- Blogging is a powerful medium for increasing access and exposure to quality information.
- Blogging combines the best of solitary reflection and social interaction.
Read Ronni's full posting here.
New Conversion Table1. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
2. 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton
3. 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope
4. Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1
bananosecond
Be sure to click through for the full listing. Be prepared for a belly full of laughs.
Via Kate at 800-CEO-READ-BLOG comes this inside story on the famous (or infamous) cubicle. I was once a cubicler but was fortunate to have a phone booth type office for the past couple of years and apparently am headed back to cubicleville so I found this was most enlightening.
The cubicle was not born evil, or even square. It began, in fact, as a beautiful vision. The year was 1968. Nixon won the presidency. The Beatles released The White Album. And home-furnishings company Herman Miller (Research) in Zeeland, Mich., launched the Action Office. It was the brainchild of Bob Propst, a Coloradan who had joined the company as director of research.
After years of prototyping and studying how people work, and vowing to improve on the open-bullpen office that dominated much of the 20th century, Propst designed a system he thought would increase productivity (hence the name Action Office). The young designer, who also worked on projects as varied as heart pumps and tree harvesters, theorized that productivity would rise if people could see more of their work spread out in front of them, not just stacked in an in-box.
The new system included plenty of work surfaces and display shelves; partitions were a part of it, intended to provide privacy and places to pin up works in process. The Action Office even included varying desk levels to enable employees to work part of the time standing up, thereby encouraging blood flow and staving off exhaustion.
Read the full article here.
Technorati Tags : cubicles, brains, food, thought, elders, working, learning
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You can't go anywhere. Because you're already there.
- Dominant mindset: is it AJAX, is it RSS, is it geo-located, does it have an API, does it plug into Google Maps, is there a tag cloud? Several people walked out of my session when it became clear that Gootodo had none of these.
- I'm always reminded at events like these - the technology industry is about building technology and selling it; not primarily about improving users' lives. (Again, with some exceptions..)
- The tech industry isn't particularly for or against improving users' lives - it's just not the primary agenda. Cool gadgets, big sales numbers, hefty IPOs - those are the primary goal; genuinely helping users to be more productive is a possible nice-to-have side effect.
- So what do we call the group of people, companies, projects that are primarily about improving users' lives through better technology? The "good experience tech industry"? (GETI? That's not a keeper, just a first draft...) I'm open to suggestions.
Yes, some "get it", some don't!
Sheila McKechnie has said, “People who are homeless are not social
inadequates. They are people without homes.”
Jason says that it’s great to start thing up “on the side.” This is how 37signals started Basecamp. He points out that obscurity is good for getting started so you can screw up & learn from it before every one is watching.
He says “less” is an asset.
1. Less time. You’ll just waste it anyway.
2. Less money. See above.
3. Less software. Keep it simple “Clever stuff” gets in the way.
... it’s all made up anyway. It’s human nature to fill in blanks when we don’t have all the data. So why not make up that it’s something that will change the world for the better? It’s the same amount of work, and you get more accomplished.
Lately I've been having a lot of sidebar discussions with readers about finding that way to make a living at the intersection of What You Love (your passion), What You're Good At (your gift), and What's Needed (your purpose). Knowing your Genius (where your gift and passion intersect -- areas 2 & 3 in the above chart) is helpful in providing focus -- it helps you to set aside self-indulgences (things you love but are not acknowledged as very good at by others) and unfulfilling options (things you're acknowledged as very good at, but don't really have any passion for).
LAW TEN:
Always make your questions bigger than your answers.
“ … all growth lies in the territory of the unknown. What we already know is in the past. What we have yet to discover is the future. Always make your questions bigger than your answers and you’ll keep drawing yourself into a bigger future with new possibilities.”
So why is he so anxious to discredit Broken Windows? One—understandable—explanation is that he makes his own argument more compelling by dismissing all other arguments. (I know all about this tactic. I do it all the time). But a deeper explanation, I think, has to do with the difference between the perspective of economics and the perspective of psychology. Levitt is very interested in the root causes of behavior, in the kinds of incentives and circumstances that fundamentally shape the way human beings act. That’s the kind of thing that economists—particularly behavioral economists—think a lot about. And rightly so: who we are and how we behave is a product of forces and influences rooted in the histories and traditions and laws of the societies in which we belong.
Steel over stone. Fat over bone. Excess over lack. That has always been the natural human aspiration. This has led to mistakes, which is human nature too, but retrogression is not human in nature. The solution is improvement, as it always has been. And the simpler the improvement, the better. Simplified progress. Progressive simplicity.
... these business masters had more than their fair share of what Mayo and Nohria call "contextual intelligence." That is, they possessed an acute sensitivity to the social, political, technological, and demographic contexts that came to define their eras. And they adapted their enterprises to best respond to those forces.You can call it "contextual intelligence" or inspiration or insight or some other term but the great leader recognized an opportunity. Someone in the market place, possibly a significant portion of the market, had an unmet need. The great leader recognized that and figured out a way to meet that need. The great leader got the bus, loaded the right people, process and technology and set forth to meet that need. Without that recognition, there is no purpose for the bus!
What's in a brand name?
That which we call a Dell
By any other name would suck as much.
So the mac mini would, were it not a mac called,
Retain that dear perfection which it owes
Without that title.
The blogosphere is a giant time capsule that offers a panoramic view of our world. It is a collection of personal expressions that represent virtually every human perspective of our times. It is filled with millions of personal accounts, diaries, essays, stories and photos. It is filled with art. It is filled with emotion. It is filled with thought. It is our collective conscience. Better than any collection of books or articles, the blogosphere will capture the story of our existence.
I look forward to getting to a trail and hike in the spring.
You get a water bottle, a snack, your good comfy boots,
your camera, etc. together in your day pack
and arrive at the trail head.
You sign in on the trail log.
Check the sign out comments, usually some good info there.
Almost a real time update that the guide book can not provide.
And start walking.
When it comes to appreciation of writing, I'm a believer that less is more. I prefer poetry and short stories to novels, and essays and short books over long books, and I'm prone to copy down précis and favourite passages and quotes from great books and then give the books themselves away. When I find great ideas or expressions of emotion or word pictures that contain only the number of words they absolutely need and no more, I cherish them. So I got to wondering: What is the greatest single paragraph ever written?
