ThinkingShift

The Seattle Times carried a disturbing article recently about Pacific walruses. Seems earlier this year, thousands of walruses were killed in the midst of a stampede brought about, according to scientists, by climate change. The disappearance of sea ice caused the poor creatures to crowd onto the shoreline on the Russian side of the Bering Strait. Apparently, walruses can’t swim for long periods unlike seals. They have to heave themselves up onto ice or land to rest but, as the ice is rapidly disappearing, as many as 40,000 walruses made their way to land where they can become extremely skittish and stampede. A polar bear or a helicopter for example will cause a rush. Scientists estimate that as many as 4000 walruses out of a total population of 200,000 may have been crushed, including calves. They are also saying that the stampede matches predictions of what could happen to walruses should the ice recede, but they’re surprised by the magnitude.

By how much has the sea ice receded? Well, apparently sea ice cover fell to a record minimum in September 2007 - 4.13 million sq km, beating the previous low record set in 2005 by 23%. One specific ice mass that has been studied by scientists has slimmed down from being a 3.3m-thick slab of perennial sea ice to just half a metre. The slab lost 70cm off its top and 2.2m off the bottom, which is apparently 5 times what is normally expected. The amount of ice is not the only issue of concern, it’s also the thickness of the ice.

Arctic Ocean surface temperatures are to blame. They were 3.5C warmer than the historical average and 1.5C than the historical maximum. The warming is most likely caused by ice-albedo feedback, which is the heating up of increasing amounts of open water that absorb the sun’s rays. The more ice, the more the sun’s rays are reflected rather than absorbed.

And so ice-free summers are looking a lot closer than we thought and poor walruses may continue to stampede and die. In fact, the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by 2012 according to scientists.

Source: BBC News. Image credit: ABC News

I was ferreting around YouTube last week and came across this video. Could be good to show to kids to easily explain what climate change (or the better term, climate destablization) is all about. Seems the video was made by a high school teacher in the US and it’s called How it All Ends.

There’s also a related video called How it All Ends: Index, which outlines an expansion pack of videos you can look up. Frankly, I’d start with this video. He even covers arguments for skeptics.

Just shows you what one passionate person can do.

From one of the blogs I regularly read (Nobody’s Business) comes news even I can scarcely believe. The Chicago Police Department sure has the Christmas spirit going for it. They have issued a Winter Holiday Public Awareness Bulletin that quite clearly states the categories of people who should be considered suspicious in their city. Click on the image below to check out the suspects:

So if you’re thinking of visiting Chicago - don’t take notes, use binoculars, cameras, shoot videos or consult a map. Because if you’re seen doing any of these suspicious activities, you might be ratted on to the Chicago police. I would think that a foreigner would be hard-pressed navigating themselves around Chicago without consulting a map. Even with many maps, I managed to find myself lost in some dubious looking area of Chicago under some bridge. Is this a descent into paranoia or what??!!

And if you happen to be in Hull, UK simply don’t take any photos. A hapless amateur photography, simply practicing the techniques of street photography, was hauled off by police and his film was seized, mainly because members of the public were anxious about this dude taking photos - the insinuation being he was taking photos of possibly sensitive material (I suppose buildings for example). The dude said he was not disguising the fact he was taking photos; avoided taking photos of children; and only took shots of passers-by. This was his first attempt at street photography - and it’s probably turned him off for life! Mmmm…..seems to me Google Street View does the same thing: snaps people going about their business in public spaces. Note to Google: don’t take Street View to Hull.

After reading this Business Week article, I was super tempted to apply for a job at Serena Software (bummer for me that it’s located in San Mateo, California - a bit far to travel to a new job). Seems they’re quite enlightened employers because they’ve started up an initiative called Social Networking Fridays. The company has 900 staff with the average age of employees being 41. They’ve just launched Facebook Fridays - employees will be allowed to spend one hour a week on Facebook, updating their profiles, collaborating with colleagues and clients, and recruiting for the company.

Serena is also setting up a Facebook group for employees only to serve as (gasp!) an alternative to a corporate intranet. Smart dudes. The employee Facebook group will exchange documents, share marketing videos and corporate information.

I work in a Government agency where access to Facebook (and a lot of other sites) is blocked. I can only dream of a company like Serena!

Thx to Eric for the link.

Well, first of all: a very Merry Christmas to all ThinkingShift readers, that is if you celebrate it. If you don’t, maybe you’re just having a relaxing time off work. Either way, to amuse you over the Christmas holiday period is today’s post on “What is interesting to an alien?”.

New Scientist had a recent piece on how our messages to extraterrestrials have gone unanswered and ponders why this is so. One of the reasons for lack of response could be that aliens are too bored to reply according to the article. The alien chat line has so far consisted of four messages - largely mathematical, coded descriptions of the biology of the human race. Now if aliens are anything like me, they’d fail to understand the message because they flunked maths at school or because the topic is just plain dull. An advanced civilization out there has probably visited us so many times that they know all about our physical and genetic make-up according to Canadian astrophysicist, Yvan Dutil. After reading the messages Dutil says: ” they will be none the wiser about us humans and our achievements. In some ways, we may have been wasting our telescope time”.

So Dutil and his seriously smart buddies are now working on composing more interesting messages. But the question is: what on earth is interesting to an alien? They’re probably pissed off with us for wrecking up the world and think we’re pretty dumb. So they’re trying to find some language and common ground to tell aliens things about human society that they’ll find worthy of taking note of. One of these topics is the vexing question of how to cut a cake (no joking).

I’ve not noted this problem because when there’s cake around, I don’t care how it’s cut as long as I can lay my hands on a piece! But apparently mathematicians have resolved the problem of ensuring that everyone gets their fair share of cake. Clearly, this has implications for the equitable allocation of resources in society, which I think any aliens would be far more interested in. So democracy might be a hot topic for extraterrestorials - who knows what sort of political system they might have, so they could be eager to learn about democratic institutions. Perhaps they could study the USA

Maybe aliens would be interested in learning how we’ve managed to snuff out some glorious civilizations through conquest or transmitting disease or through needless warfare. A good lessons learned project perhaps. Maybe we could tell aliens about Facebook and MySpace, heck even invite them to have a MySpace page! But then again, advanced civilizations would probably conclude from social networking sites that we’re only concerned with self, getting plastered onto YouTube and being micro-celebrities.

One scientist suggests that we simply send aliens the encyclopedia (would that be wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica?) and hope that there is enough redundancy for them to spot patterns. Whilst another suggests that we should have a sort of Help Desk with a message ready and waiting should aliens make contact: “We’ll get back to you, once we’ve figured what on earth you’re asking us”.

So if we don’t know our audience, it is pretty hard to compose meaningful messages and questions. Scientists have tried using teenagers to send messages to extraterrestrial intelligence and told them about humans’ internal emotional world amongst other stuff - getting into emotions might have scared them off particularly if they’re like Spock of Star Trek fame and don’t understand human emotions. Heck, even humans find it hard to understand human emotions. Even a Theremin concert has been flung into space. Maybe the aliens didn’t like the music played.

This all had me thinking: what message would you send to aliens? What questions might you ask them? Who should be the spokesperson for the human race? How would we explain to aliens what it means to be human? How do we explain the concept of God? As to our spokesperson or ambassador, if we want to keep ET away from our planet, we could use Prez Bush. And why select a human representative? Maybe a dolphin or whale would have a better chance at establishing contact than a human.

What message would you send? And who would you select as an ambassador?

Mmm…the title of this post sort of sounds like I’m about to herd cattle, but it’s better than “link-dump”, which is what I’m about to do. There are a number of reports I’ve come across over the last few weeks that I want to share with you. And they range in topic from leadership and corporate sustainability, to privacy and digital footprints. So let’s start off.

• Avastone Consulting has released a report called Leadership and the Corporate Sustainability Challenge: Mindsets in Action Report. You’ll need to register to get the report. It focuses on 10 prominent, global organisations across diverse industries and looks at the degrees of achievement in sustainability against a 5-stage sustainability framework. The verdict? Many organisations are missing a crucial step in their journey towards sustainability - the leadership mind-set required to “navigate the complexity of sustainability and proactively work with other key players toward sustainability at the scale needed.”

• If you’re concerned about how your personal details are stored or shared amongst different databases. Or if you’ve ever wondered what happens to information gathered from you for supermarket or store loyalty cards - then read this report called FYI: The New Politics of Personal Information from Demos (UK).

• And if you’re interested in digital footprints and online identify management, then here’s a report from Pew Internet and American Life Project. A bit of a worry from my POV is this finding:
  • “most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information. Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online”.

• The Information Commissioner’s Office (UK) has released a qualitative research report into the Surveillance Society, which you can read here. Conducted via focus groups, the report found that whilst some people aren’t concerned about things like CCTV because “only the guilty are being watched” or because “someone, somewhere will be looking after our best interests”, others were concerned about surveillance and data gathering for the following reasons:
  • “that it runs counter to our tradition and to the principles of a democratic society that citizens should be monitored to such a degree..”
  • “that it does not reflect well on us as a society that we feel a need to resort to CCTV and other forms of surveillance in order to feel ’safe’”
  • “that many of the forms of state data gathering and surveillance.. work on the principle that you are guilty until you provide the personal information (for example fingerprints) to prove your innocence”.

• And finally, if you’re at all worried about what information Google is gathering about you, there are two good things I have for you. Firstly, Scroogle, the anti-Google. Scroogle is a search engine that carries no advertisements and does not keep a record of who is using the site or what they are looking for. So you don’t have to use Google. And the second good thing? A blog, The Googlization of Everything, or how “one company is disrupting commerce, culture and community”.

Some good Christmas reading. Enjoy.

You know, I sometimes wonder if it’s just me worrying about ongoing attacks on our privacy and CCTV cameras glaring down on us. One of my friends turns glassy-eyed whenever I begin a rant on CCTV cameras and tells me to “move on” (to where I’m never sure). And Dave Snowden recently commented that he thought I was overly-worried. I respect Dave tremendously - I think the KM world would have been much duller without his intellect and passion. And the comments he received on his blog raised some extremely interesting issues for me. So I’m going to spend Xmas pondering and a future post will have a hopefully measured response. I’m particularly interested to explore Dave’s comment on CCTV being necessary “to preserve democracy”. And also to expand on my thoughts about how CCTV for me is a surface manifestation of something else going on in our society that is much deeper, more subterranean. But in the meantime…

I’ve noticed over the past few months that more and more reports and articles are appearing on the surveillance society and I’m hoping people are beginning to wake up and think “hey, enough”. So I was very pleased to come across an article entitled Uniqueness lost in Surveillance Society. Because that’s what it’s all about to me. Freedom means being able to be who you are and express who you are but freedom also implies that anonymity will be respected. With anonymity you get an open society in which citizens can move about freely in public spaces. But when a society is surveillance-saturated then you get conformity and oppression. If you look different, you get singled out for a frisk down at an airport. Clearly, I must look a bit suspicious or different because the last 4 times I’ve gone through x-ray machines at various airports, although I haven’t set them off, I’ve then been asked to step aside to have a test that would show residue on my clothes (from chemicals used to make bombs).

So this journal article makes some sensible observations. Surveillance, monitoring and eavesdropping is changing our culture, affecting people’s behaviour and altering our sense of freedom and anonymity. And the pressure to conform is becoming the norm. Why don’t we rise up and refuse to be surveilled I ask?

A few days ago, I bought something from eBay. I needed to contact the seller who hadn’t responded to my emails, so I rang the contact number given. I asked if they were Joe Blogs who was selling a camera on eBay. Instead of “no, not me”. I was met with a barrage of suspicious questions like “why are you asking?”; “who are you?”. I apologised as clearly I’d dialed the wrong number but get this: the person rings me back 15 minutes later to say they’re ringing the police because they thought my call was suspicious and I was met with a torrent of abuse. Leaving aside the very distinct possibility that this person was a whacko, I almost had to laugh at the absurdity if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re in the grip of a fear based, anxious society that makes our fellow citizens skittish.

Jeffrey Rosen is a law professor and he is quoted in the article as saying: “While there are benefits to surveillance – the sense of security, the ability to view crime scenes – the loss of autonomy represents the downside of our surveillance-heavy culture. You need a sphere of immunity from surveillance to be yourself and do things that people in a free society take for granted. Things like going to the park or to the market. The loss of such autonomy is one of the “amorphous costs of having a world where there’s no immunity from surveillance. This will transform the nature of public spaces in ways we could hardly imagine. People obviously behave differently when they’re unsure about whether they’re being observed“. Clever dude.

And what are all these surveillance cameras and security measures looking for? Anyone who is different or unique in some way. (I’m not suggesting that real terrorists aren’t caught in the net occasionally). There’s a code of conduct that is enforced on us. We don’t joke at airports about bombs. We’re being urged to be surveillants and report anything suspicious.

Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard social psychologist, refers to “anticipatory conformity” - we anticipate what we shouldn’t do and so avoid getting singled out in public like I was hauled aside at an airport recently. And the problem with this? If anticipatory conformity becomes second nature to us and we accept long security lines at airports, it makes it easier for our privacy and freedom to be impinged on. Because anticipatory conformity becomes a habit.

And if you want to understand just what little price the Australian Government places on privacy then consider the sorry case of a woman who was buying baby clothes at a Target store in Burwood NSW. She was accused of stealing a packet of razors and dragged back into the store (literally), punched and…..strip-searched…before being allowed to leave. She was never arrested or charged. The poor woman, being yelled at by a security guard who failed to identify himself, emptied her bag to show she had no packet of razors but she was still dragged off. Needless to say, she was publicly humiliated and embarrassed in front of customers and staff. This is unlawful detention at its worst in a so-called democratic society. Where were the CCTV cameras watching over this incident I ask (apparently there was a denial that surveillance equipment existed in the store). And the damages awarded to the poor woman? $85,000 including $25,000 in punitive damages.

Just another court case resolved but shouldn’t we be asking some very serious questions about a society, which allows this shocking incident to happen in the first place?

Dave Snowden has tagged me to reveal eight things that you don’t know about me. I think he’s done this to distract me from my ravings about the surveillance society not because he really wants to know anything about me! I’ve done this sort of thing before here and here. So if you’re interested, knock yourself out and have a read. I find this sort of thing really difficult firstly because I dislike talking about myself and secondly because I’ve sort of said it all in other posts. But here goes.

1. I was once the lead singer for a heavy-metal rock band (alas, not a famous rock band just a high-school band). I can still belt out a pretty good version of Stairway to Heaven or Black Dog. And given my Welsh ancestry, I should be able to because the Welsh are darn good singers.
2. I’m a bit of a twitcher. I like nothing better than sitting on my balcony waiting for poor unsuspecting birds (of the feathered variety) to come along so I can whip out my Nikon D40 and snap them. Usually, they are smarter than me and fly off before I can snap them.
3. I’m a very amateur photographer - most of the photos accompanying posts on the ThinkingShift blog are taken by me. Mainly I snap flowers because I love their colours and elegance.
4. I’m an only child and according to people who know me well, generally speaking I don’t display marked “only child” tendencies, although I do tend to be a bit of a loner. One great friend would tell you the opposite - that I’m “such an only child”. An only child’s dilemma is to be raised in a unique social setting and according to Jung, Skinner et al due to this social setting you either become an introvert or extrovert. Because you have no siblings, if you want to make friends, you gotta be a bit of an extrovert, otherwise, you end up introverted and focusing on your own thoughts. How did I turn out? Well, although by nature I’m quiet and keep my thoughts generally to myself, when I need to be I can be extroverted, flamboyant, demanding, pushy, haughty and OTT (or so friends and previous work colleagues have told me).
5. I have a number of skeletons in the family closet - nothing sordid though. My uncle was once the Prime Minister of New Zealand. My great-grandmother founded the Lyons Cafes in London during the 1800s - not quite sure about the name as I’ve heard them referred to as Lyons Tea Shop or Lyons Corner Houses. I’m apparently distantly related to the Welsh actor, Richard Burton. A number of relatives in the 1800s and early 1900s were thespians, which probably explains why I have a tendency towards the dramatic :)-
6. I have a Masters in Chaos and Complexity.
7. I collect costume jewellery mainly from the 1940s and 1950s, but also collect bakelite from the 1930s.
8. And finally…shock, gasp, horror….I was this close to being expelled from school because of my tendency to “wag school” on a regular basis. I can reveal this now only because my parents have passed on, otherwise they’d kill me even now if they knew the extent to which I was always in trouble in high school.

So that’s it. Dull and boring but it does prove that I read Dave’s blog on a regular basis. I’m now supposed to tag some other unsuspecting bloggers but frankly the ones I’d nominate have all been tagged. Except maybe for David Rymer - are you there David? And the anonymous blogger behind newish blog, Corporate Lunacy, which follows the real-life transformation of a team. Over to you guys!

Following yesterday’s post about the White House Press Secretary’s ignorance of basic US history, comes the news (shock, horror: I can hardly believe it!) that the White House may be guilty of manipulating information about climate change. A report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is the result of a 16 month investigation into the Bush administration amidst allegations that the White House attempted to control which climate change experts could speak to reporters.

The report concludes that: “The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming. (It has) exerted unusual control over the public statements of federal scientists on climate change issues“. The most shameful activity occured in 2003 when presidential environmental adviser, James Connaughton, helped edit a draft legal opinion from the Environmental Protection Agency that denied the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The report goes on to say that the White House:

• was “particularly active in stifling [scientists'] discussions of the link between increased hurricane intensity and global warming.”

• sought “to minimize the significance and certainty of climate change by extensively editing government climate change reports”.

Thankfully, the report has been written by a Democratic majority who are intent on surfacing what reporters and journalists have apparently known for years. Shameful. Thank goodness there is less than a year before Bush goes but what will be the cost of his legacy?

Source: CS Monitor 

At first I felt sorry for White House press secretary, Dana Perino, a 35-year old who seems to have no idea that once the USA and the Soviet Union eyeballed each other across 90 miles or so during October 1962. And for 13 days, the world held its collective breath and hoped that the planet didn’t go up in nuclear smoke. Suppose if we had, we wouldn’t need to worry about heating up in a climate change fry up!

Apparently, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis and Ms Perino:

“….panicked a bit because I really don’t know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis… It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.“

Admittedly, she had the good humour to retell the story on US radio but I began to wonder. How did she miss out on learning about the Cuban Missile Crisis? According to my cunning maths ability, she was born around 1972 and went to primary school in the early 1980s and high school in the mid-1980s. That would make it about 20-25 years since the missile crisis took place - hardly ancient history. And surely a landmark crisis in US history - handsome JFK staring down a gnarly looking Khrushchev, with a bearded Castro in the middle of it all muttering away about challenging US hegemony in the Western hemisphere. Heck, even I learnt about the missile crisis in an Australian high school.

Obviously, Dana is no CJ Cregg. At a time when Cuba is gaining more relevance to US foreign policy, I would have thought a White House press secretary would need to know her US history and post WWII domestic foreign policy. Perhaps she skipped the US history classes in high school. So the Wall Street Journal suggests a last minute Christmas gift for Dana - a book voucher for the book I’m eagerly awaiting: the 2008 publication of Michael Dobbs’ One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev an Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Or she could watch the absolutely fab film Thirteen Days if a weighty tome is too much reading.

In the meantime, she could brush up on her history knowledge by using the handy American History curriculum resources here - note to Dana, see heading Post War Foreign Policy.

I was thinking: US Presidents during WWI and II were usually seasoned war veterans. Kennedy of course was a decorated WWII hero. So there’s an argument to say they approached crises with cautious assessment. Kennedy rejected the recommendation of his Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a pre-emptive strike against Cuba. Can you imagine if the Cuban Missile crisis had happened during the current Bush administration? Cheney would have said: “Where’s the button? I’ll see if I can hit Cuba, but I’m not a great shot. Remember I recently shot a fellow hunter accidentally”. Bush would mutter something about weapons of mass destruction and terrorists - and the world would be kaput.

Arthur Schlesinger Jr, New Deal historian and intellectual-in-residence during the Camelot era (and who died in 2007) wrote a measured piece on Bush’s Thousand Days for The Washington Post in 2006 and said: “The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history“. He further said:

“….(US) Cold War presidents kept to the Kennan formula of containment plus deterrence, and we won the Cold War without escalating it into a nuclear war. Enter George W. Bush as the great exponent of preventive war. In 2003, owing to the collapse of the Democratic opposition, Bush shifted the base of American foreign policy from containment-deterrence to presidential preventive war: Be silent; I see it, if you don’t. Observers describe Bush as “messianic” in his conviction that he is fulfilling the divine purpose”.

Think about it: Cuban Missile Crisis under Bush - too awful to imagine.