I’ve written before on the enormous losses Harvard recently sustained as a result of the investments of its endowment funds and capital accounts.   The Boston Globe has now published an article on how the losses happened.  It’s a familiar story and good lesson for anyone managing their 401(k) account.  People made aggressive investments notwithstanding cautions about risks, the aggressive investments produced very strong returns for a time, and the investment decisionmakers overlooked the risks, focused on the returns, and then took an uppercut when the markets went south.  They forgot the basic questions all investors should ask:  what am I looking to achieve with my account, and how much risk am I willing to take to try to achieve that goal?  These questions should be asked regularly — not just when the markets experience a downturn.

A key skill of any manager is getting the best from their staff and other people.

And one sure fire way of doing this is to understand what motivates people!

David McClelland was an American professor at Wesleyan University and Harvard in the United States before he died in 1998. While at Harvard, he spent more than 20 years studying the way people are motivated and how they address their achievements and needs.

After years of research he published a book called “The Achieving Society” in which he discussed the three types of motivational needs he discovered: affiliation motivation, authority or power motivation, and achievement motivation. He found that everyone, regardless of their level in the workplace, experiences all three of these needs on some level – whether they need to motivate others or be motivated themselves.

The need for affiliation covers the idea that everyone needs to have positive relationships and, as a result, everyone is motivated towards developing some sort of interaction with others. Those who fall into this category, also labeled n-affil, want to be liked and work well in teams.

A person with a need for authority and power, also referred to as an n-pow person, wants to make a huge impact on the world.

They want their ideas to be heard and also focus on making sure others see them as prestigious or with high status.

Those who feel a need to achieve, or the n-ach people, are highly motivated. They set a lot of challenging goals but remain realistic at the same time. Those who need to feel as though they’ve achieved their goals constantly seek to hear feedback from others.

Most people possess all three of these characteristics but spend most of the time leaning more towards one than the others. The one that a person leans towards most will determine what type of worker or manager they will become – objective, determined, flexible, etc.

Achievement motivated individuals, however, always seem to get the best results in the end! Or do they……

So your action point for this session is to get to know what drives your people and then use this when developing them, when helping them, when giving them corrective feedback – you name it!

If you are treating two people the same then chances are that you are not doing it right.

]]> http://seaverqin.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/something-we-should-know/ Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:00:04 +0000 SeaverQ http://seaverqin.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/something-we-should-know/

It was written as early as 2004 by author Ezky that journalists will be victims of bloody terror killings.  The massacre in Buluan town, Maguindanao may be election violence-related, but it is a terrorist act no less.  It is a footnote to the presentation by Ezky that members of the media will not be spared from the bloodthirsty terrorists, whether in Mindanao or elsewhere.  While the author is not necessarily saying it for the first time since journalists have been known to have suffered execution at the hands of terror groups, in this case the author is saying that journalists en masse were hoarded and killed like animals.  The same way the alleged Ampatuan private army killed the Mangudadatus and the media in Maguindanao in what is now known as the Maguindanao massacre.

Recently, Harvard University Hazard Institute (HHI) and John Carroll University experts led by Dr. Patrick Meier and Dr. Jen Ziemke partnered in organizing an event called International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2009) in Cleveland USA on October.  Among the underlying issues for organizing the crisis mapping conference was the study of Dr. Ziemke on violence against innocent civilians. Manual map coding as part of the study was done by Dr. Ziemke to denote about forty years of conflict in an African country.

Dr. Ziemke’s findings are about the tendency of armed individuals and groups to commit violence against civilians when they are losing power.  Her case study was Angola.  She may have been saying the same about Colombia, Iraq, about many other countries in Africa and other parts of the world.

Are the Ampatuans losing power?  If they are and Dr. Ziemke’s findings are right, the political clan must have been losing power a long time ago.  The mass burial ground where the journalists were uncovered is notoriously called in Maguindanao as “Killing Fields.”  Among other things, the Ampatuans are suspect in the killings of many other enemies allegedly including a colonel in the uniformed services.  Like the others, the colonel’s vehicle was also buried in that same site.  Whether the equipment used was the same backhoe with the Ampatuan letterings in them, is no longer material.  The fact is, that site is full of bodies and is literally a mine of buried automobiles.

Perhaps the national security officials missed this part.  Although they were made aware of the Ziemke doctrine months before the Buluan Massacre, they did not have the intelligence that the Ampatuans are indeed suffering from pangs of anxiety over impending defeat.  What they knew about the incident was posthumous data, and really too late to make any judgment calls. At the time when rape and murder was taking place and the bodies were being mangled, all the authorities knew was that there was hostile boarding by the MNLF Tornado Command of the vehicles of the Mangudadatus and media persons.  No information about the bloodletting.  And yet it was known all over Maguindanao, including among the Mangudadatu clan that there will be violent acts that will be heaped upon them by the Ampatuans.

It will appear thus that the massacre was bound to happen.  In the South, among the tribal groups, there is an abnormal  cultural feature called the “ridu.”  It is similar to the vendetta, or blood feud between warring clans (or tribes) in other societies.  Muslim tribes take “ridu” very seriously and only put an end to it when well-meaning third parties initiate negotiations and settlement between the warring parties.

In this case, the “ridu” was brought a notch higher.  Supposedly, the Ampatuans were not expected to harm women.  And furthermore, there was no justification for involving media persons in the carnage.  But the act happened just the same and the women were even raped.

It is even claimed that the sister of Mayor Toto Mangudadatu while being raped by a prime suspect, stabbed the alleged rapist-murderer with her ball point pen in an area around the midsection.  Compelling evidence if the wound actually is there.  But this is all water under the bridge.  What happened will not bring back the victims to their loved ones.  And nowhere in history will journalists ever be safe again.  Along with many innocent civilians in this and selected other areas in Mindanao or elsewhere that there is serious conflict, as Ezky had many years ago foretold.

In the time of Estrada, serious talk going around in international circles was that Mindanao will become another Afghanistan.  It was even made a subject of a large international conference held in Mandarin Hotel with the people of Erap proudly receiving all the attention as the potential victim of Afghanistan-like terrorist mayhem and atrocities.  And the big brother role of the US will go to the Australians being the next door neighbors of the country and being that the Aussies can easily bring in troops to Mindanao for “humanitarian assistance.”

That is sheer bullshit.  Mindanao will not be Afghanistan.  Not if the people in this country will be wise to tell the ogres to stay the hell away and leave us in peace.  The solution is to remove the source of the hostility and the means with which to commit these barbaric atrocities.  That is easier said than done.  But it has just got to be done despite that ingenious  plan to turn Mindanao into a bigger killing field.

Preity Zinta was in love with Bombay Dyeing owner Ness Wadia for more than four years. They bought the IPL team Punjab Kings XI. Until this every thing was good between them. But at the time of IPL-1 only the misunderstandings took place between them.

By the time of IPL-2, Preity and Ness’s love story came to an end. Now Ness Wadia is with another girl who belongs to a business family. Preity Zinta has concentrated on her movie career. With the item number in Main Aur Mrs Khanna she has started her second innings in Bollywood.

But that movie became an utter flop. Recently she has announced that, she is going to Harvard University for her further studies. This news raised some gossips about her new boy friend. Here the name in the news is Vikram Chattwal as Preity’s new boy friend.

But Preity said that, she is going to Harvard only for education. Recently she has bagged an offer to pair opposite Aamir Khan. We have seen them together in Dil Chahta Hai.

You’ll see a new splash page when you open the site as well as a new banner at the top of my blog.   This is a panorama, not big enough for Gigapan I’m afraid, of the Harvard Pond, in Harvard Forest, Petersham.  This is a lovely spot, right off Route 122.  We happened to be driving by and noticed this beautiful island with some very interesting tress.  The autumn foliage colors made the day.  Harvard Forest is owned by Harvard College and represents a significant effort on their part to engage in ecological research and practice related to forest management.  This is a very worthwhile place and you can read more about it here:

http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/

To answer one question – no, there wasn’t any ships in the port while I was there. (ding dang!) I would have loved it and definitely would have taken pictures and posted them.

I was also asked about how much a person can see during a port stop in Boston. I think it all depends upon how much a person would like to see and how long you’re in port. If you want to do everything — well you can’t. But you can certainly see A LOT with proper planning and a good port-of-attack plan with a minimum of eight hours to do it. If you do your research and know what you want to see and do (and stick to your plan) then I believe that you can see all the major attractions that Boston has to over in a single port stop.

I was also asked to post more photos, so they are below. Enjoy and thanks for the questions!

A sidewalk marker for the Freedom Trail

Downtown Boston near the waterfront

On the Freedom Trail near Quincy Market

Historic old City Hall downtown (see Ben Franklin statue)

Historic neighborhood near Copley Place

Historic Harvard University

More historic Harvard University

Dr Kruz Nutty

The Citizen Media Law Project announced the launch of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University’s Online Media Legal Network (OMLN), a new pro bono initiative that connects lawyers and law school clinics with online journalists who need legal help. OMLN will provide free assistance on a variety of legal issues, including business formation and governance, copyright licensing and fair use, employment and freelancer agreements, access to government information, pre-publication review of content, and representation in litigation.

According to the National Trauma Data Bank and a Harvard study, more uninsured patients die in the ER than those with private insurance.  The ER patients without insurance get less care, get transferred more often and die at a higher rate than those with health insurance. The study said, helpfully, that “most survived their injuries” but the insured were almost 200% more likely to die in the ER than the those with health insurance:

In the study, the overall death rate was 4.7 percent, so most emergency room patients survived their injuries. The commercially insured patients had a death rate of 3.3 percent. The uninsured patients’ death rate was 5.7 percent. Those rates were before the adjustments for other risk factors.

Now for those of you unfazed by the 5.7% death rate, consider that it’s almost twice the death rate for those who have insurance. :

Uninsured patients with traumatic injuries, such as car crashes, falls and gunshot wounds, were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital as similarly injured patients with health insurance, according to a troubling new study.

The findings by Harvard University researchers surprised doctors and health experts who have believed emergency room care was equitable.

“This is another drop in a sea of evidence that the uninsured fare much worse in their health in the United States,” said senior author Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and medical journalist.

Considering even doctors were surprised, I wonder how many of them have been in an ER with no insurance themselves.  I have been that patient, and I did suffer injurious care and almost died. Do I think that I am the only one who had that issue, obviously I am not.

Since researchers couldn’t pin down an easy answer for this huge disparity in care, they tried to “account for other factors,” or look for other reasons that those without health insurance die at a rate 200% above those with insurance.  Researchers couldn’t find much, because even “taking other factors into account,” still netted an 80% increase in the death rate, which I suppose could be a victory if those without health insurace only have an 80% higher risk of death in ER?  Still, it’s a crazy proposition to make:

The researchers took into account the severity of the injuries and the patients’ race, gender and age. After those adjustments, they still found the uninsured were 80 percent more likely to die than those with insurance — even low-income patients insured by the government’s Medicaid program.

I am not sure what Medicaid program protection offered, but it’s clear that those with private health insurance, when at the mercy of the ER staff (which is always a dubious “privilege” given the 1 in 3 medical error rate and medical staffers “murderous actions” causing their errors to account for the 6th leading cause of death in America) live almost 80-200% longer than those without health insurance.

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By Eleonor Picciotto

According to Michele Lamont, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University, wondering “How do we define and attain the Good Society?” is the basic normative question college students should ask.

The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies hosted a talk last Friday afternoon on the “Measures of our Success” to over 100 attendees.

Via a videoconference call from Paris, Jean-Paul Fitoussi, President of the Observatoire Francais des conjonctures economiques, explained how today, nations and societies look to their Gross Domestic Products, social networking and happiness ratings as determinants of success.

Fitoussi said the measures of the societies are imperfect and only partially reflect reality. “The measure of our future is the most important factor,” he said. “Health, education, security, economy and social relations determine people’s capacities of freedom.” Those factors determine the sustainability of life.

He claims that Sophists would have said, “ We want to make out GDP the measure of everything: performance, well-being and quality of life,” and says that measures of performance must be viewed with cautions.

“ I applaude people who don’t think hapiness is not measurable at all,” said Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. He adds that sustainable objectives and measures of freedom are necessary determinants for mortality, mobidity, literacy and communication.

Sen emphazises the importance of how societies have functioned in the past. “ We have to ask ourselves: What would it be like in the future?” Sen asked. “Once we recognize we are in a crisis, give us a focus on the policies we should follow.”

As Fitoussi mentioned earlier “there is in France a debate about the debate on the question of national identity, whether if its is a positive or negative concept.” On the same line, Lamont addressed the fundamental issue of what is the true definition of a successful society.

“Individual resilience is the wear and tear of everyday lives,” said Lamont. Public policies, social inclusion as well as democratic participation, cultural membership, intergroup relation, collective action based social network, identity and hierarchy and the emphasis on capability shape the emotional and physiological responses to condition the sustainability of our societies.

Marleen de Smedt, fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International affairs at Harvard,  agreed with the panel’s conclusion that “as much attention should be given to social connectedness and social relations as to the effect of the economy on the well-being and success of a society.”

In reference to ethnic boundaries, Lamont asked why does the 38% rate of HIV in Botsuana, considered as the best government in african state is higher than the 8% rate of HIV in Uganda, considered as the most corrupted african governemnt.

The answer to the difference depends on  “How governements have been able to modify their population in the collective sense of who they are together” says Lamont.

“ Wealthier is Healthier,” Peter Hall, member of the Krupp Foundation and professor of European Studies said. “ The multiple dimensions of social relation includes the social resources of a society.”

Miguel Glatzer, a full-time lecturer at Umass Dartmouth, said he was amazed “how important social network and connected relations are to wel-being, independent of income and traditional definition of health care.”

The social network, the social status a person enjoys, the social hierarchy and the symbolic representation that define the purposes of a community of who belongs where are the key dimensions of life’s social relations and social ressources vary on which people draw to cope with the challenges of daily life.

He said the success of societies does not depend on how well they accumulate social ressources, but on how well ressources are distributed.“ Governments should think equally hard of the unattended effects of policy on a structure of social relation instead of focusing on the markets,” Hall said, “Just as we think about the conservation of natural ressources, we should think about the conservation of social ressources.”

The factors of GDP, happiness, social connectedness and dermining carateristics were emphasized respectively by Fitoussi, Sen, Hall and Lamont, for her to conclude that,

“ The secret of successful governements result in the choices we all make.”

Philippe J. Bernard, an utopist, President of the NGO Prospective 2100, was satisfied by the “debate that was not governmental but sociologic and economic in general.”

Martha Ferede, a Harvard Graduate, said she enjoyed the discussion after having listenned to the arguments of all participants, “”the traditional ways of measuring good societies don’t always work, but you can do something about it.” She then compared the quality of the two-hours panel to a “Chef’s top selection.”

“The Measure of Our Success: How Do We Attain the Good Society?”

Center of European Studies at Harvard University

co-written by Peter Hall and Michele Lamont

It was a bizarre, magical request that apparently even cash-strapped Harvard University couldnt refuse. Its a combination of dodge ball, soccer and track, Rush said about the once-fictitious game, introduced to the world through J.K.

Rowlings Harry Potter [website] novels.

Source:
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1212981

Story from the Wall Street Journal, by the Dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey S. Flier.

Excerpt:

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

[...]Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

In order to have an economy recover, you need people running government who actually understand health care and economics. My lunch-time book is Regina Hertzlinger’s “Who Killed Health Care?”. Regina teaches at Harvard University, as well. She talks about how we need to lower costs and improve quality by introduce elements of choice and competition. Her plan is similar to the Republican’s Patient’s Choice Act. Consumer-Driven health care is the right solution to the problem of rising health care costs. Obama’s plan just adds fuel to the fire.

The right way to reform health care without sacrificing liberty

Consumer-driven health care:

Health Care: Fostering Focus Factories
with Dr. Regina Hertzlinger
(8:46)

Choice, Competition Should Drive Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(5:21)

The Republican Plan (“Patient Choice Act”) is consumer-driven:

Obama’s False Health Care Choice
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(10:39)

Ideas for Free-Market Health Care Reform
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(8:30)

What’s wrong with Obamacare, Medicare, RomneyCare and CanadaCare:

Competing with the Government
with Dr. Michael F. Cannon
(7:34)

Medicare: A Model for Reform?
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:34)

Lessons from Massachusetts Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:18)

The Canadian Health Care Experience
with Sally C. Pipes
(7:45)

Puncturing the Myths of American Health Care
with Sally C. Pipes
(about 8 minutes)

The financial crisis hits the super-rich as well, says Forbes 400, the ranking list of the 400 wealthiest Americans which was updated this autumn. Within one year they lost a combined $300 billion, about 205 billion Euros. Number 1 on the list is Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, with an estimated net worth of $50 billion. He had to swallow a loss of about $7 billion. Hit even harder was the investor Warren Buffet who ranks second. According to the American business publication Forbes he lost $10 billion.

But in these difficult times when announcing deficits are on the daily agenda, it is much more interesting to take a look at the winner: Marc Zuckerberg. Within one year the founder of Facebook climbed up from place 321 to place 158 of the Forbes 400. Originally the 25-year-old entrepreneur launched Facebook only for students of Harvard University. After some expansion steps, however, the social network today has more than 300 million members. Zuckerberg explained to Stern, a German news magazine, that it is his goal to gain one billion Facebook users. In Germany, also according to Stern, three-fourths of the 40 million internet users are already members of an online network, and this number is rising. But not only private networks are booming, also in business online networking is growing in popularity such as the business internet portal XING. But futurologists forecast much more: The personal presence on location will not be necessary any more. Research clusters can join their forces in networks. They can study in the same fields of research without being in the same laboratory. Nike picked up this trend: At the Nike+ 10km Human Race the runners don’t have to be present at any of the 30 race venues. Entrants only need a sensor and the corresponding software and with this, they can do their races by themselves at home. Afterwards they synchronize their data via the network. The Nike+ Community has grown to 1.2 million members from 142 countries at the Human Race in 2008.

But the topic of networks does also play an important role for the industry, e.g., to profit from results of the latest research or to educate employees. To push such networks between industry and academia, first and foremost platform- independent solutions and standardized interfaces are essential. The importance of standards is something the machine vision industry recognized early on, and consequently introduced the GigE Vision Standard. At the last Vision show, the three big associations, Automated Imaging Association (AIA), European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) and Japan Industrial Imaging Association (JIIA), entered into an agreement of cooperation for the common development and promotion of new standards in machine vision.

If you also know about the importance of networking: Become a member of our INSPECT network to share existing knowledge over thousands of kilometers. Our goal is one billion users as well – help us in attaining this!

Stephanie Nickl

Editor INSPECT

I am not sure if I got it right in the headline.  So with a few more words I hope to do a better job.

Princeton coed Margaret Sullivan, class of 2012, posed nude in DIAMOND, a “Harvard” magazine, and she assumed that if she only used her first name no one would uncover her real identity, she couldn’t be googled.   She said she posed because she is a poor Princeton student and needed the money.

Maybe she didn’t know she would be on the cover of DIAMOND and it is damn hard for any cover girl to remain undercover. 

Now the Diamond text just above the picture reads- “Who knew smart people could be so sexy?” 

Well who knew that a Harvard magazine could be so stupid to assume that any smart woman would pose on their cover?  Or who at Harvard would asume that a sexy woman couldn’t be smart?  And how could any woman assume that after being on a cover of a “sex” magazine she could still remain undercover?

Or, of course, this could be all hype.  If not, the Diamond editor could be just another undercover agent for the blues.

di Simona Maggiorelli

In the mood for love di Wong Kar Wai

L’ Atlante delle emozioni,  con cui Giuliana Bruno ha vinto nel 2004 il premio internazionale Kraszna-Krausz come migliore libro sulle immagini in movimento, è davvero uno dei saggi più sorprendenti degli ultimi anni per chi si occupa di arte contemporanea e di estetica. Non solo per l’affascinante cartografia di percorsi e di nessi che tesse viaggiando fra architettura, arti visive e cinema. Ma anche per il linguaggio con cui  queste cinquecento pagine sono scritte.  Fondendo discorso accademico e racconto, teoresi e linguaggio rapsodico, «con il piacere – annota l’autrice stessa – di selezionare e organizzare il discorso in forma di travelogue visivo».
Laureata all’Orientale di Napoli e dal 1990 professore di Visual and enviromental studies a Harvard con il suo monumentale Atlante delle emozioni e con libri come Pubbliche intimità, anch’esso uscito in Italia per Bruno Mondadori, Giuliana Bruno ha “imposto” una voce radicalmente diversa nel rigido panorama internazionale della critica dominato da scelte razionaliste, gelidamente concettuali, astratte.

Ci è riuscita “partendo da sé,” dal proprio sentire, rifiutando uno sguardo oggettivante e recuperando alla scrittura immagini e affetti. «E’ vero – ammette la studiosa che in questi giorni è a Roma per la due giorni di studi che ha inaugurato il MAXXI  ( e che ha visto la presenza di Aaron Betsky- e della stessa Hadid) ho cercato un modo di guardare differente, uno sguardo nuovo, per così dire “tattile”. La maniera classica di guardare ci ha insegnato una fredda distanza fra noi e le persone che guardiamo.

A me sembra, invece, che ci sia un modo un po’ più carezzevole di avvicinarsi e di essere toccati dalle immagini. In modo che l’occhio non sia di un voyeur ma di un voyager, per me declinato al femminile, come voyageuse. Insomma mi interessava una modalità più fluida di entrare e di guardare attraverso le cose e di rapportarsi agli ambienti che attraversiamo, a quei luoghi che raccolgono le nostre emozioni, le nostre memorie. Niente è neutro, tanto meno gli spazi della rappresentazione.
Possiamo leggerlo come un recupero delle emozioni ostracizzate dai filosofi?
Le emozioni non hanno nulla a che fare con il sentimentalismo. Sono una forma di conoscenza. E l’immagine ha un contenuto, un sostrato. Al di là di quello che mostra di per sé. Le immagini emotive si muovono nel tempo e non solo nello spazio.
Mentre lei scriveva il suo Atlante delle emozioni, il filosofo Remo Bodei sceglieva per il proprio lavoro  un titolo spinoziano come Geometria delle passioni, due diverse modalità?
Ho incontrato più volte Remo Bodei, è una persona straordinaria, sensibile. Però sul piano intellettuale, innegabilmente, esprime una forma di geometria, mentre, per dirla con Deleuze, il mio pensiero ha molte pieghe.
A proposito di cultura francese, lei prende le distanze dal discorso che Julia Kristeva ha fatto sull’«apparato cinematico». Perché?
Semiologia e  psicoanalisi si sono occupate dello sguardo filmico e lo hanno trattato non solo come testo ma come apparato di una forma di visione. Ho letto molto ma mi sembrava che mancasse qualcosa di fondamentale in quegli scritti. Ovvero che il modello applicato a questo apparato filmico fosse una sorta di trappola lacaniana da cui non si riusciva a uscire. La soggettività veniva rinchiusa in una forma di rappresentazione duplice e spaccata di fronte allo specchio. A mio modo di vedere lo schermo cinematografico è più di uno specchio o di una finestra.  E non mi corrispondeva lo sguardo trascendentale e incorporeo,  questo io-ego come grande occhio, che emergeva da questa lettura lacaniana del cinema che è stata a lungo dominante nella cultura francese.
Così si è rivolta al filosofo Hugo Münsterberg, collaboratore di William James. Un curioso personaggio che riconosceva forza psichica alla rappresentazione cinematografica. Come l’ha scoperto?
Mentre cercavo di mettere a punto un mio diverso approccio al cinema scrivendo l’Atlante delle emozioni mi sono ricordata di avere un libriccino di questo filosofo ebreo tedesco che avevo letto molti anni prima. Münsterberg faceva ricerca agli inizi del XX secolo, in un periodo molto fertile, quando nasceva la psicologia sperimentale. E aveva dato vita a suo laboratorio filosofico sulle immagini.  Nel 1916, dunque molto presto, Münsterberg scoprì il cinema e scrisse  un libro assai interessante. All’epoca nessun filosofo si occupava  di cinema. Né tanto meno si pensava che fosse un’arte. Avendo lavorato molto sulla psiche, invece, Münsterberg riconosceva al cinema non solo la possibilità di rappresentare delle cose ma anche di rappresentare come pensiamo. Parlare di forza psichica del cinema per lui significava riconoscerne la forza emotiva, ma anche cognitiva. Naturalmente lui non andava oltre. Si trattava, invece, di leggere le forme di immaginazione e di rappresentazione cinematografica. Ma il suo pensiero mi è parso comunque importante. Tanto da dedicargli una monografia che sta per uscire negli Usa.
«L’indubbio progenitore del cinema è l’architettura», scriveva Ejzenštejn. è stato per lei una fonte?
Sono tornata a Ejzenštejn proprio per il rapporto che vedeva fra montaggio e architettura. Di  lui, ovviamente, si è scritto molto, ma  un suo saggio degli anni Trenta mi ha spinta a continuare una ricerca trasversale  che associa il cinema alla produzione di spazio in tutti i sensi, non solo  fisico. Come l’architettura anche il cinema è una maniera di “spaziare” in molti sensi. Il primo film, diceva Ejzenštejn,  è l’Acropoli di Atene. Non la caverna di Platone. Proponendo così un modello metaforico molto diverso. Il  cinema  richiama l’attraversamento di luoghi  in una città con una serie di visioni, di immagini in movimento. Lo spettatore non è più intrappolato nella caverna platonica. Ma l’accostamento fra l’architettura e il cinema funziona anche se si pensa al  solo fatto che l’architettura non si contempla. Si recepisce con il corpo, con la sensazioni.
Nel suo lavoro il cinema di Antonioni occupa un posto importante. Come regista capace di creare «uno spazio mentale» e di raccontare per immagini il mondo interiore dei  personaggi. Ci sono registi oggi ai quali riconosce una ricerca analoga?
Sì amo molto Antonioni, con il suo modo di filmare quasi minimalista riesce a tracciare personaggi a tutto tondo, non meri caratteri. Antonioni non parlava del personaggio attraverso l’azione, ma con l’introspezione che traspare dalle sue inquadrature. Talvolta anche di bellissime architetture vuote. Basta questo per restituirci il mondo interiore di un personaggio, il modo in cui sente e vive. Una cosa che ritrovo per esempio in Wong Kar Wai, regista di In the mood for love. Anche se  con un’estetica diversa, ritrovo nel suo cinema un certo modo di guardare il rapporto fra uomo e donna, lo spazio psichico, lo spazio della memoria, lo spazio dell’immaginazione, il tempo. Si ha la sensazione che questo spazio contenga una durata che non riguarda la  “velocità”. Questo sguardo differente torna anche in molte installazioni di arte. Lo trovo non di rado espresso nelle immagini in movimento che oggi si vedono nelle gallerie d’arte.
La videoarte, integrando più linguaggi d’arte, apre nuove possibilità espressive?
In Pubbliche intimità ho insistito molto su questo cambiamento che a me pare molto interessante. Non è la morte del cinema ma un’estensione dello sguardo filmico che entra nelle gallerie e nei musei proponendo un modo diverso di relazionarsi con le immagini. Non è più la contemplazione della pittura come immagine fissa, ma comprende il movimento dell’immagine, il movimento dello spettatore e il movimento di un tempo che direi interiore. Nella concitazione della vita metropolitana alcune opere di videoarte e installazioni offrono un modo di riappropriarsi del tempo,  dell’interiorità.  In un certo senso queste nuove forme di arte ci invitano a guardare le immagini guardandoci dentro e a guardarsi dentro per vedere meglio fuori e, spero, per cambiare.
Nel tempo breve, ellittico, di un’opera di videoarte le immagini talora ,possono arrivare ad avere un “calore” speciale, una deformazione quasi onirica, poetica.
E’ una dimensione che riguarda il “tenore” delle immagini ma non solo. Penso, per esempio, a certe opere sonore di Janet Cardiff: seguendo la sua voce si entra in uno spazio. Altre volte c’è una piccola videocamera che ti permette di percepire la forma di relazione che l’artista ha con il mondo. è come se ti facesse entrare nella sua mente, nella sua maniera di sentire. In una sua installazione realizzata dopo l’11 settembre, ricordo, aveva collocato delle casse in un luogo molto grande. Gli spettatori potevano muoversi e ascoltare dagli amplificatori oppure mettersi dove  volevano. L’atmosfera che si veniva a creare era molto particolare, intensa, partecipata. Ognuno in silenzio seguiva il filo delle proprie immagini interiori, ma al tempo stesso era vicino agli altri. In un momento molto duro per New York, in un museo, stranamente si aveva la sensazione di poter attraversare questo trauma in maniera anche pubblica, sociale. è un aspetto del cinema che mi ha sempre molto affascinato e che qui trovavo allo zenit. L’installazione di Cardiff permetteva di essere al contempo molto dentro di sé e insieme di condividere con altre persone  emozioni, sensazioni, pensieri, forme di discorso. Di nuovo a Berlino qualche mese fa ho incontrato una sua installazione. Ho notato che i più giovani avevano spento tutto, telefonini, iPhone e quant’altro e ascoltavano a occhi chiusi. La dimensione in cui si era trasportati non aveva nulla di nostalgico, niente di religioso. Era come se l’artista ci invitasse a fermarci un momento. Per non essere sempre spezzati tra le cose, per trovare un modo, anche solo per un istante, di connettersi con gli altri e con il nostro mondo interiore.

da left avvenimenti del 13 febbraio 2009-

It’s been almost 3 weeks since our last minute by minute post, but boy did we have a fun holiday in that locked office toilet. Take it away Godfrey.

20 of 229

After a few more cries of “yippee!” from Hurt and a demonstration of an obvious fire hazard from the women holding candles, Kristofferson is suddenly on a train twenty years later.

The prologue was just his memories!

Rather detailed for a memory. Over a twenty-year period there is no way that he’d recall every detail of his graduation, especially the events he never witnessed. Anyway, Kristofferson is on the train, leaning back with a hat over his face, presumably because it helps him see through time. On top of the train, a whole lot of people are sitting calmly. Black smoke is puffing from the engine and… my god; they’re not fuelling the train with people are they? Shovelling poor passengers into the burner! Of course! That would explain why the smoke is black rather than white, which it would have been ordinarily at that time as the steam engines in the west used wood – not coal. Goodness, gracious! Get off the train! They’re gonna burn you alive so Kris Kristofferson can get to wherever it is he’s going! Jump! Run!

catch the back story here.

Matthew A. Baum (Harvard University) and Henry R. Nau (George Washington University), who taught my first university course, have a new paper titled ‘Foreign Policy Views and U.S. Standing in the World.’

What do Americans think about the US role in world affairs and why do they think the way they do? Americans typically do not think about foreign policy most of the time, and, as a consequence, know relatively little about it (Almond 1950, Lippmann 1955, Converse 1964, Erskine 1963, Edwards 1983, Sobel 1993, Holsti 2004, Canes-Wrone 2006, Page and Bouton 2006, Berinsky 2007). While foreign policy issues can become salient when major international events (like 9/11 and the Iraq War) arise or when political candidates focus on foreign policy (Aldrich, Sullivan and Borgida 1989), ceteris paribus, Americans know and care more about domestic politics (Delli-Carpini and Keeter 1996, Holsti 1994, Canes-Wrone 2006, Converse 1964). Consequently, typical Americans are broadly aware of foreign policy, and have some available attitudes about it (Page and Bouton 2006, Aldrich et al. 1989). However, except in the face of political priming by elites or exogenous shocks, such attitudes may not be broadly accessible when making political decisions, like voting.

And if you know my style by now, you know I can’t resist throwing in a nice chart. The first illustrates the percent of Americans who believe the U.S. position in the world has grown weaker, broken down by party affiliation:

The second two charts show the favorability ratings of the United States and China based on the variations of the share of U.S.  global GDP:

The potential: “Daddy, Miss America wont share her toys.”

Obama vision could be crippled

by rich, greedy US institutions

… and commercial interests who want an arm  and two legs.

1. Sharing knowledge – The Gronstedt Group begins tour  of the SLENZ birthing unit.

The more time I spend in Second Life and  other virtual worlds the more I become convinced  that  SLENZ  joint leader Dr Clare Atkins (SL: Arwenna Stardust) is right: Collaboration and sharing is the key to success in  world education in virtual worlds.

But its not just collaboration within the United States, or New Zealand. It’s collaboration around the world.

The rich, big universities of North America and Europe might be able to afford to go  it alone, but for the smaller and the often poorer tertiary institutions of  the United States,  countries like  New Zealand, and Third World countries – if they even have reliable, affordable Broadband services – don’t have the luxury of NOT collaborating and sharing,  both at an institutional level and at an academic level.

The creation of complex builds, huds, animations and all the other paraphernalia of teaching successfully in a virtual  world, as well as aquiring the skills/knowhow to use them  can cost megabucks: to not share them under OpenSource and Creative Commons license with institutions and academics around the world would seem to be me to be both profligate and selfish. It also could regarded by some , particularly when sold at a high price or with an exorbitant  license fee attached, as both  neo-colonialist and  greedy capitalism of the kind that brought about the most recent crash of world markets.

Second Life behind the firewall

The collaboration thoughts, although first ennunciated  for me by  Dr  Atkins, were brought to mind more recently by  five things: the move by the Lindens, admitted an avowedly commercial organisation,  to  promote Second Life behind the firewall, previously Nebraska, to  commercial, Government and educational institutions at US$55,000 a pop, a princely sum for many cash-strapped institutions around the world;  President Obama’s Cairo vision, proclaimed in June;  a visit by the KiwiEd group to the University of Western Australia, Second  Life site; a Train for Success Gronstedt Group  35-avatar tour of the SLENZ Project’s virtual birthing unit on the Second Life island of Kowhai; and  finally, but not least,  the one-hour keynote address on copyright  by  Harvard University  Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig to  EDUCAUSE09 in Denver earlier this month.

2. Sharing the knowledge: Lessig’s certificate of entitlement.

Obama told  the world,  “We will match promising Muslim students with internships in America and create a new online network … ” something  which  Second Life arguably has been  doing for sometime with  the collaboration already  occurring between individual academics and many smaller institutions creating an “online network, facilitating collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.”

The problem with his vision is that  US commercial – and often Government -  interests  have almost always  worked against  facilitating collaboration and sharing across geographic  and cultural boundaries. Look at Microsoft software. Look at Apple and ITunes licensing. Look at software regionalisation. Look at the record industry. Look at the book industry, where rich English language publishers in the UK and the US split the world into at least two markets.  Look at the way copyright law has moved into  education – and science.

But its not a new phenomenon. Look at banana republics, created out of Boston,  as a rather ironical and destructive facilitation of collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries.

Triumphs of reason

On the other hand there are triumphs of reason over idiocy. Look at the rise of the ubiquitous PC, compared to the Apple computer, even though using a proprietary Operating System  the rise from the “underground” of  Moodle, compared to say Blackboard; the slow advance of bilateral free trade agreements, even if not the much desired mutilateral  free trade agreements, instead of the trade siege mentality,  which  affected most of the world in the 1930s (and still threatens); the growing popularity of Linux compared to proprietary Operating Systems; and finally the astounding growth of  Wikipedia compared to Encarta or Britannia.

Despite my misgivings I have been heartened over the years by the surprising degree of co-operation and collaboration that has been happening in virtual worlds. That is despite the actions of  those  few Scrooge McDuck-like educational institutions which have purely commercial interests at heart and appear to run closed shop operations, sharing with none.

I was even more cheered recently by a visit to the University of Western Australia when I found that  university, which is in the forefront  of Australian virtual world education, was entering into bi-lateral  virtual “free trade” and/or “free exchange”  agreements with  the likes of Stanford University and others. This mirrors the agreements put in place  by  Scott Diener (SL: Professor Noarlunga) at the University of Auckland with the University of Boise; and Judy Cockeram (SL: Judy-Arx Scribe) and  her work with architects around the world;  and those “handshake”   agreements  or informal sharing arrangements put in place by a myriad of other relatively smaller institutions who have already recognised the benefits of world-wide collaboration.

3.Sharing the knowledge – KiwiEd group tours University of Wester Australia site.

And then there is the SLENZ Project, which 18 months ago adopted as its ruling credo,  complete transparency, with OpenSource under Creative Commons license for all its virtual educational products, developments and knowledge in the hope that others would be able to build on the team’s work. Even though the adoption of this credo was probably due more to the persistence and bloody-mindedness of a then non-Second Life “immersed” and relatively sceptical SLENZ Learning Designer Leigh Blackall than anything else, it has worked and is working.

One has to  agree now that Blackall was right, even though  there is obviously a place for fair payment to commercial (virtual world creators, builders, developers etc) interests, something Linden Labs has recognised  with its protection of its own virtual world product lines (and  unfortunately those created and developed by its residents, even if Creative Commons, full permissions and OpenSource) behind  the walls of Second Life.

Linden Labs is not alone, however, in usurping user/creator rights.  The way  they have covered the issue in their rather draconian and very American Terms of Service is little different from other major US on-line social networking services: if you put it up on their service, they own it.

Virtual World Free Trade/Exchange Pact?

This is despite, or perhaps in spite of “renegades” like the  onetime Arcadia Asylum, making all her magnificent “builds” available to “anyone to use anywhere,  how they like, even blowing it up.”

Like  the tyrants behind the old Iron Curtain the Lindens realise that keeping  control of their residents’ creations inside  their world (and keeping them there), guarantees that they will have to stay there unless they want to pour their creativity, time and work down the drain and start a new virtual life elsewhere.

This leads  me to the thought that President Obama, although paying lip service to “collaboration across geographic and cultural boundaries,” needs to put his Government’s money  where his mouth is and promote a world-wide free trade/exchange agreement for  virtual world education if not for virtual worlds themselves, guaranteeing rights of both personal ownership of  individual products when created or bought in a real world sense,  but also opening up US educational institution virtual knowledge and creativity for the rest of the world to freely add to, and build on.

The President  has the vision  for a better on-line world – which could lead to greater understanding between peoples through education.

If he does nothing except talk. Nothing will happen.

And, I believe, we will find the major educational institutions moving more behind their Ivy Walls – if they are not already there – and American educational institutions (and others in UK, Germany, Brazil etc) adopting  a siege mentality   even though  virtual worlds (all virtual worlds, whether emanating out of the US or China or anywhere else) will only fulfill their true potential of levelling the playing field for all educationally if they are free and open to all.

That is something America can do for the world – all worlds.

]]> http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/steven-pinker-on-malcolm-gladwell%e2%80%99s-what-the-dog-saw/ Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:40:00 +0000 Bob Morris http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/steven-pinker-on-malcolm-gladwell%e2%80%99s-what-the-dog-saw/

Steven Pinker

Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective
Steven Pinker

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures
Malcolm Gladwell
410 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $27.99

The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition. For an apolitical writer like Gladwell, this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left. Unfortunately he wildly overstates his empirical case. It is simply not true that a quarter back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros, that cognitive skills don’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or (the major claim in “Outliers”) that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.

The reasoning in Outliers, which consists of cherry-picked anecdotes, post-hoc sophistry and false dichotomies, had me gnawing on my Kindle. Fortunately for What the Dog Saw, the essay format is a better showcase for Gladwell’s talents, because the constraints of length and editors yield a higher ratio of fact to fancy. Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon values.

Steven Pinker is Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His most recent book is The Stuff of Thought.

* * *

If you wish to read the complete review, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print.

John Harvard, founder of Harvard University, was born in Borough, on the south bank of the River Thames by London Bridge, in 1607. His father owned the Queen’s Head Inn in Queen’s Head Yard, off Borough High Street.

Queens Head Inn yard in ye olden days.

Upon the death of his mother, at the age of 28 John Harvard inherited the Queen’s Head. With his parents gone he sold the Inn and emigrated with his wife to Boston, Massachusetts.

Harvard died a year later, aged 30, leaving half the proceeds from the sale of the Queen’s Head Inn and his extensive library to the new college he was helping to set up. The college was named Harvard in his memory.

All that's left of Harvard University's financial heritage. The Queen's Head has long since called last orders at the bar.

Disgraced New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was a guest speaker at a Harvard University ethics forum this past Thursday, November 12, 2009.

ETHICS.

Let that sink in for a second. Eliot Spitzer was a guest speaker at an ETHICS forum.

Perhaps Lawrence Lessig, the faculty director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, was absent the day Eliot Spitzer resigned his position as governor in disgrace.

Perhaps Lawrence Lessig missed the part where Spitzer admitted to frequenting high priced hookers.

Perhaps Lessig didn’t realize that Spitzer disgraced his wife and his family.

Ethics?

Websters dictionary defines ethics as: a set of moral principles, the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group.

What does this say to the students at Harvard? What does it say for Lessig and Harvard University? What does it say for us as a society?

Lack of integrity is lack of integrity. Eliot Spitzer has no integrity.

The only people Eliot Spitzer should be discussing ethics with are other johns and hookers.

Have they all gone mad?

Image via Wikipedia

A question posted by Teddy, a science graduate of UC Santa Barbara asked this question:

…Is it known how many calories human thinking takes?  I see in your archives that the brain uses 10% of the body’s energy, and I’ve heard that our brains draw 25% of our blood flow, and that 25% of the heat radiated from our bodies is radiated from our heads, but is this true for all mammals?  For all primates?  How many calories are consumed by the “higher functions” of the brain that are special to humans, and how many by the parts that are found in other mammals?

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Alex Goddard, Grad student, Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School answers…

Hi Teddy,

That’s a good question! I think the short answer is that it’s less energy than you might expect. I’ve tried to explain why I think so below.

First, I’d say that the basic energy expenditure per unit area of brain is probably the same between different types of animals. A human brain uses more total energy than a rat brain because it’s bigger and more complex. This idea probably applies to heat generation, blood flow and caloric requirement as well.

I saw somewhere that the brain uses 20% of your caloric input for the day. I don’t think that number is absolute, but it seems reasonable. So, assuming you eat 2000 calories per day, your brain uses about 400 calories per day. Then, we need to ask, how much is spent on ‘thinking’ or cognitive abilities? (I’m leaving the idea of consciousness out of this, because it has no definition that has been agreed upon)

To start out, we need to realize that the energy expenditure of the brain at rest is really quite high. This is because maintaining a neuron’s baseline is very metabolically “expensive;” before neurons can transmit information, they have to be properly connected and maintained. A neuron’s ability to use electricity to transfer information comes at the cost of a large amount of energy; it needs to constantly pump different ions into and out of the cell (ions carry the electric charge). Maintaining the long nerves that may extend a meter (such as the ones from your brain to your spinal cord) is also metabolically taxing as new proteins have to be made constantly and shipped down the nerve. All these processes require energy, and we haven’t even sent any information down axons yet! I would contend that the amount of energy spent maintaining the cell is far more than is actually spent on sending an electrical impulse down an axon.

Ok, so cell maintenance requires a lot of energy. One could then ask the question, “What about the cognitive functions? How much energy do they require?” I think the best way to answer this would be to first ask, ‘How much of the brain is devoted to cognitive function?” If we could say that 50% of the brain was devoted to cognitive function, then we could say 50% of the energy is devoted towards maintaining cognitive function.

The answer to that question is a hard one to pin down. Most of the brain is involved in non-cognitive processing. The brain must recreate visual space from a bunch of pixels in your eye. It computes the location of a sound based on when the sound hits your right ear versus your left ear (within 2 degrees, I think). It maintains your balance, triggers fight-or-flight responses, and decides how your fingers must move to type on a keyboard. Lots of non-cognitive processes are going on.

Furthermore, cognitive abilities are distributed all over the brain. (For those not familiar with brain anatomy, take a peek here for reference for the following descriptions: http://normandy.sandhills.cc.nc.us/psy150/outerbr.gif )

For instance, a brain scan (functional MRI) of people doing arithmetic showed activity in frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe (although activation of the occipital lobe, the site of vision processing, may have had to do with the subjects seeing the math problem). Language processing and generation is located mainly in the temporal lobe and frontal lobe. Decision-making and determining the consequences of actions is thought to occur in the frontal lobe. Generally, the frontal lobe is thought to be a hot seat of ‘cognitive ability,’ but it is not a pure ‘cognitive center.’ It is thought to be involved in non-cognitive decision making (i.e. determining unconscious preference and value). So to ask how much of the human brain is solely dedicated to cognitive tasks, I’d have to hazard a very hand-waving guess of 5%. And that’s a pretty liberal guess. And most of the energy used is spent on maintaining the cells and connections in these areas, not the actual cognitive processing itself.

How does that relate to other animals, primate and non-primate? Primates have a very similar level of cognitive power. They do appear to have a simple form of language, and may even be able to read! ( http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/chimps.htm ). They can make complicated decisions. Non-primate animals definitely have cognitive abilities as well, such as decision making, risk assessment, and memory formation, though the degree to which these decisions are ‘conscious’ as in humans is quite debatable. I don’t know if I could put a number on how much more brain space and energy is spent on cognition by humans, because it could be the type and amount of connectivity between cells that is more important than the percentage of cells in the brain.

Lastly, I’ll just briefly mention one interesting tidbit of info. The process of being aware of your surroundings apparently requires a lot of energy, which is not surprising. The basic idea is that as you transmit information, it uses some energy. According to one report, “The high resting brain activity is proposed to include the global interactions constituting the subjective aspects of consciousness. Anesthesia by lowering the total firing rates correlates with the loss of consciousness.” That is to say, low conciousness = lower firing rates = less total energy consumed. fMRI really uses a measure of metabolism to determine firing rates:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=12806834&query_hl=4

I hope that provides some insights. I don’t know if we know enough to calculate an absolute number. If you have more questions, please do submit them!

-Alex G

from What are the energy requirements of thought?

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Can anyone translate that answer for the scientifically-challenged folks like myself?

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