Why local matters: When a train car overturned in Minot, North Dakota last year, a large quantity of ammonia spilled out, sending up a cloud of poison gas. Local officials quickly tried to contact the town’s seven radio stations to send out the alarm — only to find that there was no one actually working in six of them. They were simply relaying a satellite feed from Clear Channel headquarters in Texas — there was plenty of country music and golden oldies and Top 40 and right-wing chat, but no one to warn about the toxic cloud drifting overhead. It’s …
Notes on Dreaming, inspired by the Sunday Open Space at gassho… In the Ojibway teachings I have received, all the animals at creation were given a gift. For humans, our gift was to dream. According to Elder Basil Johnston, although we can all dream, dreaming – more properly, visioning – is said to be most important for men. Women are said to have been given the gift of self-fulfillment through creating life but for men, we need to find self-fulfillment through a vision quest. And so, as has been the case from time immemorial, young men under the tutelage of …
Beatbugs The folks who live and work at MIT are irrepressable. There is nothing out of bounds for researchers there. Now they are inventing a whole different set of musical instruments which you can read about at the Hyperinstrument Homepage. Included are the above-pictured beatbugs, described as … palm-sized digital musical instruments that are designed to provide a formal introduction to mathematical concepts in music through an expressive and rhythmic group experience. Multiple Beatbug players can form an interconnected musical network by synchronizing with each other, trading sounds, and controlling each other’s music. Since interaction among players enriches the musical …
From a site called ProjectJazz comes this paper called Playing the Live Jazz of Project Management (.pdf). The paper revolves around five principles that apply to both jazz and dynamic management: 1. Plans are enabling, not constricting. 2. Aberrations are normal. 3. You work with what happens. 4. Order is emergent, not pre-defined. 5. Disorder is not chaotic. My favourite of these is the one on emergent order: There is a myth in organization theory that order and structure comes from some strange place out there, that it can be simply imposed upon organized action. This can be seen in …
Dina Mehta lost a cousin in Gujarat last week in a tragic car accident. In traveling back to be with her family, she reflected on the Indian Joint Family, a family structure where everyone lives under the same roof, but the structure of the house is flexible and malleable to reflect the relationships in the dwelling: This is a classic Indian Joint Family – man and wife, three sons and their wives and children. Individual quarters built for each of the sons and their families – yet under one roof with common kitchen, dining and washing areas. Provisions made to …