New Readers

They installed new readers with a little screen on the automatic ticket gates in the North Sydney train station.  The former version of gate readers had no screens but were working ok. Some were responding slower than others but we commuters got used to their behaviour. Everything was in nearly perfect order for us, the field mice, in our dimly lit tunnels that smelled soil. 

New machines on the other hand worked 50% of the time, remaining times the screen showed "Invalid ticket" and the giant iron gate remained closed on our face.

For the last two days I have developed some sort of anxiety in my tiny body under my white-grey fur. My pea size heart palpitated horridly as the gates failed on me couple of times both in the morning and in the evening.

I had to try other gates but to my dismay I missed my train while trying to play Pavlov's mouse in the labyrinth. You must note I am no Pavlov's mouse.

In the mean time bunch of fat city-rail workers behind gates, rats who belong to rail workers union, were chatting about tonight's rugby game, arms crossed, and gazing us, exhausted mice with uninterested, pitying impressions, slightly disgusted even.

The valley of the cobras

I still remember that day vividly. I was returning home from the school. It was late afternoon. There was snow on the ground and it was bitter cold. Yet I was in a completely empty state of mind to ignore everything around me.

My father was sent to London on duty. He was coming back home. And I knew he was going to bring me an electrical train set. The nirvana of all toys at the time.

Neither snow, nor bitter cold, nor people and cars, nothing mattered. My legs were gliding on the ground. I was moving in a time travel tunnel. Images around me were blurred. It was the year 1965.

Every boy has a special toy. Mine was that train set.

My obsession with train sets had started the year before. I was 5+ years old back then and I already had an enormous apatite for books. I was able to read newspaper articles thanks to my patient mum who gave in my nagging and taught me reading (I was too little for school). We also had comics at home. One of them was a black and white copy of the comic book titled “The Valley Of the Cobras” by Herge the creator of TinTin series.

In 1935, six years after Tintin had first appeared in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième, Hergé was approached by Father Courtois, director of the weekly French newspaper Coeurs Vaillants (Valiant Hearts). Coeurs Vaillants also published Tintin's adventures, but while Father Courtois enjoyed Tintin, he wanted a set of characters that would embody classical family values — a young boy, with a father who works, a mother, a sister and a pet — in contrast to the more independent Tintin who, the whole of his career, has had no mention of relatives at all. (*)

I was literally fascinated by the Valley of the Cobras that I read it countless times. One of the scenes I was very fond of was the one showing a rather mean character with the name “Maharajah of Gopal” who was playing on the floor with a toy train joined by Jo, Zette and Jocko (the monkey) in a chalet that belonged to an engineer "Monsieur Legrand" who had given the Maharajah a beating on his buttocks for his ill manners a few days ago while skiing outside. The Maharajah upon realising his meanness decides to behave and buys a toy train for the engineer’s kids Jo and Zette. The real purpose of the Maharajah was to offer Monsieur Legrand a job in his Himalayan province to build a bridge.

Now you understand why and how much I was thrilled two years later on that bitter cold afternoon, as I was gliding towards home, my mind completely absent of anything around me and I was imagining nothing but playing with my train set, just like Joe and Zette in that warm cosy chalet in Switzerland with Maharajah of Gopal.

(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo,_Zette_and_Jocko

Craftsmanship

This video shows craftspeople creating hand made parts for an iconic brand Leica.



Hand-made products are still thriving in Italian, Swiss, German and Danish workshops and in other countries throughout Europe.

Yes they are in small numbers and they are mostly for wealthy who can afford them.

But my point today is not to open a lengthy discussion about economic crisis, globalization, far-eastern sweatshops or wealth distribution. Plenty of that stuff is widely covered in media.

I would like to talk about something related to being a human.

When you watch the video you will notice something interesting. There is no music. There are sounds of hand making process and background noise of the workshop. There is no rush. There is buzz.

I could almost feel the cool sensation of creating something with your hands. An intimate bond is woven between you, the object you are bringing into life and the fortunate future owner.

Creating hand-made is a happy process under right conditions. It brings calmness, human touch and humanly sensations into air.

I would like to see hand-made arts and craftsmanship survive. There are indications that they may in fact. So long as Europe sticks to its centuries old brand names and keep authenticity they may hold on in niche markets. As a result we may be able to keep some of those beautiful art forms, craftsmanship and human experience for decades to come.

Anthropology of Aliens

Anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University Toronto was interviewed by Wired magazine on the anthropology of searching for aliens. 

Earlier on TED I watched an interesting talk by Tali Sharot titled ”optimism bias”. This was timely as it made me understand Denning’s points better. 

According to Denning we seem to be over optimistic about our expectations from space travel.

It may be tempting to mark Denning's arguments as being too pessimistic whereas they merely reflect unbiased facts about our fallacies and associated risks.

Here are some quotes from the interview that I find insightful:

If people are drawing generalizations about civilizations elsewhere in the universe that don’t even hold here on Earth, then maybe we should throw them out.

When Columbus showed up in the Americas, well, that didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans. And therefore we should similarly be worried about trying to attract the attention of an alien civilization.

NASA renamed the Mars Pathfinder lander the “Carl Sagan Memorial Station.” Any archeologist or anthropologist will tell you that one of the most effective ways of colonizing territory, at least ideologically, is through your dead.

The idea is that longevity – immortality, in fact — the future and our destiny are all up there (Space). And there’s simply no logical reason that should be the case. We have no evidence suggesting we can live anywhere for long periods of time other than on this planet. In fact, the evidence is steadily accumulating that’s it’s going to be really hard to do anything else (refers to blindness and bone loss in prolonged space trips).

Our 20th century western culture includes Christianity and beings populating the Heavens. But anthropologically speaking, SETI also could be seen as being a reaction to the collapse of traditional religion.

Full interview: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/space-anthropology/

Useful vs Inspirational

The term ‘work related’ seems to have lost meaning. There is so much going on nowadays, so much information exchange hands, is it really relevant anymore to play Big Brother on employees pinpointing bits and pieces that are relevant or not relevant to work?

There are mountains of information out there that can be classified as ’grey’ and still be useful or inspirational for everybody be it individuals or the employer.

Today successful organizations strive to be innovative and adaptive above anything else. They need to be one dynamic ’team’ rather than a clogged hierarchy. It is smart economy ruling; they can no longer afford being static inflexible entities. Hence they need more of an ’inspirational’ stuff than ’useful’ stuff.

Inspiration comes with free individuals who collect their mojo not necessarily from strictly work related resources. Creativity requires free ride.

Advances in mobile technology made people more aware of a bigger world and employees are now stimulated by external, dynamic and rich blobs of information as opposed to being isolated in one lone cubicle.

People seem happier and more content when they are allowed to go beyond a shallow job description and not surprisingly they perform better then.

Sure there will be individuals inclined to spend ridiculous amount of time tweeting or checking out other social media threads at work. But there are other metrics to measure their performance. Bad apples are bad apples, sooner or later they get spotted and they either adjust or pay the price. But you cannot always replace a well performing, motivated, happy and inspired team.