Toronto, Ontario; Shanghai, PR China; Kalamazoo, Michigan
Pearson Airport T1: Between Gates E77 and E78, colorful glass cylinders enclosing light bulbs, suspended from overhead arches. Design by Norr Architects for OTG, a company operating high-end restaurants at the airport, including Hemant Bhagwani’s Marathi Indian. (Terminal 1, Pearson International Airport, Toronto, Ontario) 20170401Shanghai Pudong Airport: Whimsical rooster themed installation on middle of airport, lightens the spirit on the long walk from the airplane, through immigration, to the Maglev train. Impressed on short ride hitting 430 km/h peak, before slowing down at western terminus. (Pudong International Airport, Shanghai, PR China) 20170402Zhangwu Sichuan: Dinner for Qingming Tomb-Sweeping Day, since public holiday on a Monday still has most people off work. Chose Sichuan resto near Tongji University, left half of dishes filled with red peppers too spicy to eat. (Zhangwu Sichuan, Shanghai, PR China) 20170403People’s Park Pond: Father with small net skimming somethings from top of pond, and placing into small bucket for son. Game players involved in own activities in the background. Tuesday is still an extended Qingming weekend holiday, the park was popular with families. (People’s Park, Shanghai, P R China) 20170404Shanghai Gallery of Art: Yin Xiuzhen 2005 TVT-Rocket installation of three cloth towers, extends from third floor in light well up to 6th. Gallery is open to public, and closer to the Bund, but maybe the Whampoa Club upstairs enjoys less traffic. (Shanghai Gallery of Art, Three.on the Bund, Shanghai, P R China) 20170404Rockbund Art Museum: Song Dong 2017 Back Image, screen plus 50 benches. Extensive show covering long career over 6 floors. Well curated contemporary art venue, building walls show a sense of humour with dimensions marked everywhere. (Rockbund Art Museum, Huangpu Qu, Shanghai, P R China) 20170404
College of Design and Innovation, Tongji U.: Ph.D. seminar @snousala on Quantitative Methods. What is the difference between data, information, and knowledge? Describing the context before diving into big data tools. (College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University, Shanghai, P R China) 20170405Tongji U: One of many bikeshare clusters on the sidewalk boulevards in Shanghai. Mobike orange, Ofo yellow and Xiaoming blue services don’t have dockng stations, it’s easy for a subscriber to scan a barcode with a mobile phone to unlock the clamp, ride away, and drop off near destination. High volume cheap bikes everywhere are a sharp contrast to the North American style of higher quality infrastructure spread further apart. (Tongji University, Shanghai, P R China) 20170406Jz Club: Thomas Stabenow presents Li Xiaochuan, world touring famous bassist lending legitimacy to local trumpeter. Went to wrong venue in the Former French Concession, had to take taxi to meet SN late. Jazz Club is truly underground, maze of tunnels opens up unexpectedly into courtyard. (Jz Club, Julu Road, Shanghai, P R China) 20170406Baker & Spice: Convenient intercept meeting in Former French Concession, with scholars coming from Canada/Finland, China/Finland and Netherlands/Canada. Multi-hour discussion in the relaxed corner of a bakery cafe, with a toddler racing circles on a tricycle. Will consult calendars for next face-to-face with extended colleagues. (Baker & Spice, Former French Concession, Shanghai, P R China) 20170407Buynow Xujiahui: Shopped for Lenovo Yoga Pad Android, tired of hoisting powerful ThinkPad X230T around. Lightweight pen-based device matches OS on mobile phone, screen larger and can sketch notes. New alternative to netbook, without Windows or Mac OS. Full experience of registering purchase with tax authorities. (Buynow, Xujiahui, Shanghai, P R China) 20170407Yangdian Taoist Temple: Upper and lower level rooms each house one or more deities representing a variety of qualities, ringing two large buildings in the courtyard centre. Gate fee gave me a bundle of joss sticks, I followed the cue of others to light them, bow four directions, and then stand the sticks up in an urn of ashes. Musicians playing, priests chanting, echoing through the large compound. (Royal Qinci Yangdian Taoist Temple, Pudong, Shanghai, P R China) 20170408
Royal Qinci Yangdian Taoist Temple:
Woman bowing 3 times in 4 directions with joss sticks that are then left to smoke in the brazier. Couple taking paper foil joss paper from a bag, for deposit into a cylindrical brazier. From a distance within the temple, wind and string musicians can be heard, while priests’ voices are unamplified. (Royal Qinci Yangdian Taoist Temple, Pudong, Shanghai, P R China) 20170408
Chinese herb pot: Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner prescribed extra large quantity of herbs, with diagnosis of bronchitis and fatigue from travel to Asia. Three bags, each to be decocted for 45 minutes for a first serving, and then with added water on a second day. Electric clay pot was originally bought by son #2, as a better alternative to simpler steel pot on stove. (Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170409Sugar Loaf Bakery: Pastries made on-premise available mid-morning, but breakfast sandwiches out, so friend had the last croissant warmed with ham and cheese. Good conversation in a quiet corner at the back, catching up on news missed over the last month. It seems as though I visit venues that are more distant, than the places just down the street. (Sugar Loaf Bakery, Queen Street East, Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170412Hua Sheng: Busy day in Spadina Chinatown, where Good Friday isn’t an observed holiday. Since local stores on the east side are mostly closed, biked cross town on a sunny day to pick up Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa cough syrup. Looking for some symptomatic relief at home. (Hua Sheng, Chinatown, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170414Distillery Loop: TTC driver enjoying clear weather, pausing streetcar before scheduled northbound departure. Southern terminus of the Cherry Street line is a flat wide open, usually unoccupied yet unavailable for other purposes. The 514 line started running along King Street in June 2016, complementing the 504 line that runs farther east, and then north. (Distillery Loop, Cherry Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20170415
Queen Street Dental Centre:
Watched 3-D printing of a dental crown made in 9 minutes in the neighbourhood office. Had chipped crown last installed in 2005. Dentist built up to original shape, and then use computer copy function. Onsite production saves cost of impression for temporary, and setting up room for second visit. Manufactory still expensive, maybe 5 to 7 year payback. (Queen Street Dental Centre, Queen Street East, Riverside district, Toronto, Ontario) 20170418
OCADU Richmond Campus: Full house at Systems Thinking Ontario, @DaveMallery explaining thermodynamics as a foundation for ecological economics. More of a challenge than I would inflict on a grad school class, this session was organized on request by the group while I was away. As I was skimming the prereadings, I came to appreciate how much systems theory I have internalized over 20 years. (OCADU, 205 Richmond Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20170419OCADU Richmond Campus: MuSIASEM briefing @uomo_macchina channelling @MarioGiampietro Kozo Mayumi method of accounting for analyzing socio-ecosystems, to simulate possible patterns of development. Presenting at Systems Thinking Ontario, guest visit from McGill University. Characterizing metabolic patterns of Socio-Ecological Systems. (OCADU, 205 Richmond Street West, Toronto, Ontario) 20170419Sky Dragon Resto: Lowkong Society Spring Festival dinner, second course of BBQ meats being served. More casual than the fall festival, maybe a signal that winter is over. (Sky Dragon Restaurant, Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20170423Woodbine Beach: Mounds of earth signal that lagoon is man-made, and the beach is renewed each spring for warm weather recreation. Public park opened in the late 1970s was originally a marsh, with major dredging in the 1920s. (Woodbine Beach, Ashbridges Bay, Toronto, Ontario) 20170427
Shwarma King : Slight diversion for Middle Eastern buffet, surprised at homemade dishes in large variety. Oriental cuisine a welcomed change from Asian cooking, fits our family demands for dairy-frer, gluten-free lunch. Resto seems family-operated, shows that food fast didn’t have to be fast food. (Shwarma King Buffet, Kalamazoo, Michigan) 20170430
The idea of managers being proactive only dates back to 1964, as classes of functions described by Abraham Zaleznik: homeostatic, mediative, and proactive. Predispositions may or may not be altered through educational development.
Fit the people around an organization; or an organization around the people? Working backwards, say @MitroffCrisis + #HaroldLinstone, from current concrete choices to uncertain futures, surfaces strategic assumptions in a collective decision, better than starting with an abstract scorecard to rank candidates.
Should we do, or not-do? Russell Ackoff, over many years, wrote about (negative) potential consequences: There are two possible types of decision-making mistakes, which are not equally easy to identify. (1) Errors of commission: doing something that should not have been done. (2) Errors of omission: not doing something that should have been done. For […]
The final publication of the October 2016 Relating Systems Thinking and Design Symposium workshop "Some Future Paths for Design Professionals: DesignX and Systemic Design" was published as “Systemic Design Agendas in Education and Design Research” in FormAkademisk, following 2 years of rewrites, reviews and revisions.
Federated wiki is deployed on a node.js server, an environment which has become available on some cPanel shared hosting providers. Here are some instructions written while restoring a wiki site originally installed in 2014-2015 on a cloud provider.
Reading The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis, reminded me of a PhD course at UBC with Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, before they were recognized as Nobel prize candidates.
Before judging democratic systems over authoritarian, examine the functioning of governments through its diplomats, where plutocracy has an alternative in meritocracy, says @mahbubani_k @longnow @asiasocietysfx. [1:19:30] … when people compare the American government with the Chinese government, they say: “This…Read more ›
The story of #JosephNeedham by @simonwwriter, about the scholar behind the 27-volume Science and Civilisation in China starting in 1954 and continuing after his death in 1995. Arriving in China in 1942, Needham discovered gunpowder, printing and the magnetic compass…Read more ›
Talk at @gtalug on Let’s Learn Tech Online @torontolibrary with @p2pu @CiscoNetAcad @TorontoESS. Linux Unhatched online course conducted in groups of 8 to 12, meetings twice per week in person. Non-technical facilitator encourages peers to work out understanding together. Found…Read more ›
The WordPress O2 plugin with P2-Breathe theme results in a Facebook-like or Twitter-like streaming interface. The idea was first presented in 2013, evolving from the P2 theme in 2009 (originally launched as Prologue in 2008) when hosted on wordpress.com. “Beau…Read more ›
Talk at the Centre for Human Ecology, Glasgow, announced at http://www.che.ac.uk/tim-ingold-talks-about-the-sustainability-of-everything-10th-sept-2016/ Video posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncLv9Gk7XrI and https://vimeo.com/182572764 This digest was created by editing the text transcript generated by Youtube. View the video yourself for a more authentic reproduction. Lapses, grammatical…Read more ›
In deciphering Yin-Yang and Five Elements (Five Phases) thinking, #Kaptchuk (1983) has a footnote and then an appendix that clarifies the way forward for appreciating foundations of Chinese medicine favouring the former.
The field theory in psychology by #KurtLewin 1943 derives from classical field theory (viz. electromagnetism and gravitation), predating quantum field theory (viz. subatomic particles). For psychology, Lewin wrote in 1943 how history (and a subjective view of the future) matters. It is correct that field theory emphasizes the importance of the fact that any event […]
Many who cite #KurtLewin haven't read the original 1947/1951 writings, say @strategybuild @ToddBridgman @kgbphd with the "refreezing" part of "unfreezing → changing → refreezing" emerging in a subsequent career of an idea that can be traced genealogically and archaeologically.
Human organizations may learn from wolves, with groups of 2 to 6 taking down elk, and cooperative expert groups of 9 to 13+ taking down larger bison. #DanielMacNulty, #AimeeTallian #DanielRStahler #DouglasWSmith (2014).
Meeting effectiveness is reduced after 7 people are involved, say @BainInsights consultants #Blenko, #Mankins, #Rogers. Follow the Rule of Seven for meetings. Who should come to a meeting is always a sensitive issue, and the basic precept is often “The more the merrier.” But more is rarely better when it comes to making decisions. Our […]
