Beaches Jazz Festival, Toronto; Panamania Arts and Culture Celebration, Toronto; Battle for the North, Toronto; Clawson, Michigan; Washington, Iowa; Fairfield, Iowa; Port of Dubuque, Iowa; Oregon, Wisconsin; Chicago, Illinois; Warren, Michigan.
Woodbine Park Main Stage jazz: @ParcXTrio from Montreal @BeachesJazz playing intensely. Audience seeking shade on a bright summer day, a few chairs with canopies on a large field of grass. Park ringed by food trucks offering a variety of cuisines. (Woodbine Park Main Stage, Toronto) 20150718 Photo album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviding/sets/72157653719486144Taddle Creek Park. Ilan Sandler (2009) “The Vessel”, 4 kilometres (the length of Taddle Creek now buried under urban Toronto) of stainless steel rod bent into shape. Water flows into an underground cistern for reuse to irrigate the park. Installation was commemorated in June 2011, commissioned by the City of Toronto. (Taddle Creek Park, 40 Bedford Road, Toronto) 20150720Beaches Jazz Festival: Workshop by @occhipintimusic and @pilar_tw for @beachesjazz on “Turning Pop and World Roots Music into Jazz”. Intimate audience in church basement. Michael Occhipinti started with recordings of original pop songs (Broadway, Beatles), compared to jazz interpretations. Pilar joined for duos with selections from the Sicilian Jazz Project repertoire. (Mennonite New Life Centre, Queen Street East, Toronto) 20150721 Photo album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviding/sets/72157655775030139
Panamania: Outdoor stage @youareStars @NPStoronto @TO2015 Games #Panamania Arts and Culture Program, with Pat McGee on drums, Torquil Campbell vocals, Amy Millan vocals. Plaza filled with fans, girls singing along. (Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) 20150722 Photo album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviding/sets/72157656240622815B-Boy competition: Battle for the North #BFTN2015 @TO2015 #Panamania Arts & Culture Program, The FAM as hometown favourite. Sold out community event, children in the front row, international judges will run workshops over next few days. (Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Distillery District, Toronto) 20150723Sushi in Clawson Michigan. Adam ordered 50 piece party platter for three of us, just before kitchen closed. Noble Fish is reputed to be the best sushi around Detroit, and we agree it was great. There’s a few tables and a sushi bar at the back of a Japanese grocery store, so a lot of clients prefer takeout. This is walking distance from Adam’s place. (Noble Fish, 14 Mile Road, Clawson, Michigan) 20150724
Regional cuisine in Iowa: Enjoying lunch just off town square, at a classic locale in small town Iowa. Seated at the round table, as depicted in the painting on the wall: a group of locals that used to meet everyday for breakfast, and then again for lunch. Restaurant had been in operation done the 1960s, now on third owner. The walleye serving was mammoth, a great order of fish with battered fries. (Frontier Family Restaurant, Washington, Iowa) 20150727Argiro Student Center queue: Vegetarian lunch was a good excuse to visit the Maharishi School of Management, but the lineup to enter the cafeteria servery was too long. We ran up the exit staircase to peek into one dining hall, where finding a table for a group of four would have been a challenge. Lots of people moving around with food on trays. Parking lots outside were full. With the menu of the day feature Chinese sweet and sour tofu, we opted for the buffet at Pizza Ranch in town (and ate too much, there). (Argiro Student Center, Maharishi School of Management, Fairfield, Iowa) 20150729Ice cream! Dairy Bar is a local institution since 1950. Sundaes and soft serve ice cream cones. Picnic table outside in the shade. Unfortunately no choices for people sensitive to milk. (Dairy Bar, Fairfield, Iowa) 20150730Starboard paddlewheel. Artifact from the National Landmark Steamboat William M. Black, now on dry land at Paddlewheel Plaza at the National Mississippi River Museum. Only a brief stop on the drive from Fairfield Iowa to Madison Wisconsin, just before crossing the river eastbound. (Port of Dubuque, Iowa) 20150731Systems science summit, Wisconsin. Closer to home than #ISSS2015 Berlin, Timothy FH Allen and David Ing, ex-presidents, met to exchange ideas. Small sandbox discussion, could have accommodated more guests for the barbeque. Diana enjoyed watching the horses out back. (Oregon, Wisconsin) 20150731Overlooking Chicago River: Lunch in River North, hosted by Charlie and Marianne, who bought me into their family when I was a graduate student in 1980. Discussed their children Michael and Cathy, who are now in their 40s, married and with their own children. Ongoing commentary about the water craft passing on the river below: kayaks or power boats? (Chicago Chop House, River North, Chicago, Illinois) 20150801
Sunday morning dim sum. Routing back home, Adam and Ayaka hosted us for brunch at a Chinese restaurant nearby. The popular dim sum selections are available from the pushcarts, and we ordered rice noodles from the kitchen. Clientele was predominantly non-Asian, so some entertainment from first-time diners at the next table. I now have a little headache and a slight feeling of depression, so it’s either the warm summer humidity, or the MSG level is higher than back home. (Golden Harvest, Warren, Michigan) 20150802
For five immersive days, a team of six researchers had the opporunity to collaborate on ideas on rhythmic shifts (mostly based on Systems Changes Learning) and anticipatory systems (in the legacy of Robert Rosen). The 2024 Banathy Conversation was organized by the Creative Systemic Research Platform Institute, facilitated by Susu Nousala, Gary S. Metcalf, and […]
Systems Processes Theory has been under development for many decades, led by Len Troncale, a past president of the International Society for the Ssytems Sciences. Many have found getting a grip on the science to be a demanding task, both in scope and in depth. Over many decades, Lynn Rasmussen was a collaborator, refining and […]
The Socio-Technical Systems (STS) perspective, dating back to the studies of Eric L. Trist and Fred E. Emery, was on the reading list of organizational behaviour classes in my undergraduate and master’s degree programs. It wasn’t until 15 years later, when I got involved with the systems sciences and David L. Hawk, that the Socio-Ecological […]
Civic Tech can be described as projects using technology “for the public good“. Civic Tech may be related to, but different from Gov Tech. For the May 2024 Systems Thinking Onrtario, we had two knowledgeable guests in conversation. Dorothy Eng, executive director of Code for Canada since 2021, related her professional journey from engineering to […]
On my May trip through the UK, I accepted an offer to lead an Expert-Led Session at the University of Hull. I had previously been a Research Fellow of the Centre for Systems Studies, but haven’t travelled to the Hull for some years. As we worked out the arrangements, I found out that the seminar […]
I’ve been checking on the breadth of some personal research on systems thinkers. (The list is incomplete, and may orient more towards systems scientists). Searching on Scopus gives an h-Index that counts scholarly references (with a boost, for the first person on the list who received a Nobel prize in chemistry). The list below is […]
David L. Hawk (American management theorist, architect, and systems scientist) has been hosting a weekly television show broadcast on Bold Brave Tv from the New York area on Wednesdays 6pm ET, remotely from his home in Iowa. Live, callers can join…Read more ›
Following the first day lecture on Philosophy of Chinese Medicine 1 for the Global University for Sustainability, Keekok Lee continued on a second day on some topics: * Anatomy as structure; physiology as function (and process); * Process ontology, and thing ontology; * Qi ju as qi-in-concentrating mode, and qi san as qi-in-dissipsating mode; and […]
The philosophy of science underlying Classical Chinese Medicine, in this lecture by Keekok Lee, provides insights into ways in which systems change may be approached, in a process ontology in contrast to the thing ontology underlying Western BioMedicine. Read more ›
In conversation, @zeynep with @ezraklein reveal authentic #SystemsThinking in (i) appreciating that “science” is constructed by human collectives, (ii) the west orients towards individual outcomes rather than population levels; and (iii) there’s an over-emphasis on problems of the moment, and…Read more ›
In the question-answer period after the lecture, #TimIngold proposes art as a discipline of inquiry, rather than ethnography. This refers to his thinking On Human Correspondence. — begin paste — [75m26s question] I am curious to know what art, or…Read more ›
How might our society show value for the long term, over the short term? Could we think about taxation over time, asks @carlotaprzperez in an interview: 92% for 1 day; 80% within 1 month; 50%-60% tax for 1 year; zero tax for 10 years.Read more ›
The appreciation of change is different in Western philosophy than in classical Chinese philosophy. JeeLoo Lin published a concise contrast on differences. Let me parse the Introduction to the journal article, that is so clearly written. The Chinese theory of time is built into a language that is tenseless. The Yijing (Book of Changes) there […]
In trying to place the World Hypotheses work of Stephen C. Pepper (with multiple root metaphors), Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful positioning. — begin paste — Philosophical perspectivism maintains that substantive philosophical positions can be maintained only from a “perspective” of some sort. But what sort? Clearly different sorts of perspectives can be conceived of, […]
Finding proper words to express system(s) change(s) can be a challenge. One alternative could be diachrony. The Oxford English dictionary provides two definitions for diachronic, the first one most generally related to time. (The second is linguistic method) diachronic ADJECTIVE Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “diachronic (adj.), sense 1,” July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3691792233. For completeness, prochronic relates “to […]
The selection of readings in the “Introduction” to Systems Thinking: Selected Readings, volume 2, Penguin (1981), edited by Fred E. Emery, reflects a turn from 1969 when a general systems theory was more fully entertained, towards an urgency towards changes in the world that were present in 1981. Systems thinking was again emphasized in contrast […]
In reviewing the original introduction for Systems Thinking: Selected Readings in the 1969 Penguin paperback, there’s a few threads that I only recognize, many years later. The tables of contents (disambiguating various editions) were previously listed as 1969, 1981 Emery, System Thinking: Selected Readings. — begin paste — Introduction In the selection of papers for this […]
