April 1st - April Fool’s Day. But ThinkingShift has, through cunning sleuth work, found out that it’s also Dave Snowden’s birthday. So we wish him a very happy day. And no, this is not an April Fool’s Day joke - tiz really his birthday.
For those of you who don’t know Dave Snowden, shame! Check out his great blog. But this is a gift for Dave from LOLCats :)- Apparently, we scared him with all the ways the world could be kaput in our last post. And yep, a surveillance system is needed!!
This is a good bit of fun. And I’m very thankful for this mind map quite frankly because, when it comes to cooking, I’m better known for my cremation of dishes than for culinary expertise.
But with this idiot’s guide to how cook a chicken with beer I might have some success. It’s been doing the rounds of the internet and I think was originally posted on a Japanese site, but some dude has thankfully provided English translation.
I particularly like helpful instructions such as “Open lid OK” - yep you might need to do that every now and then to make sure said chook isn’t cremated. Or “Cook under small flame” - this instruction is helpful just in case you thought a blow torch on the chicken would lead to fast food 
Source: Virtual China
I’ve been a Mac user since way back when. The only time I’ve used PCs is in organisations I’ve worked in and that’s only been a recent thing as I spent the 1990s working in law firms that had Macs. I’m extremely fond of my MacBook and if they’d just make it in hot pink, I’d be even happier. What makes me choose a Mac over a PC?
My mother was an artist. She shipped me off to an art school when I was 7 years old until I was about 14 or 15 when I rebelled. Every Thursday after school and every Saturday morning, while my friends were out having fun, there I was with paint brush in hand wondering why on earth I couldn’t get that Monet look.
I’ve dabbled in photography since I was about 10 or 12. My dad was a keen photographer and we’d go out together snapping away having father/daughter quality time. I’ve recently taken up photography again. So I’ve always thought of myself as having an “artistic streak”. And have you ever noticed that Mac users tend to be architects, graphic designers, ad agencies (arty types) and people who you might classify as “different”? Of course, the ease with which Macs can handle graphics far outweighs a sluggish PC IMHO, but now there is proof that Mac users are…well, yes superior arty, hip, creative groovers. I knew it! There IS such a thing as a “Mac mindset”.
Mindset Media has just released a profile of Mac users. After surveying 7500 users, those who have a Mac were found to be “more liberal, less modest and more assured of their superiority than the population at large.” People who are highly open minded or, in Mindset Media language ‘Openness 5s’, are 60% more likely than the general population to have purchased a Mac. Openness 5s are people who “seek rich, varied and novel experiences, and who believe that imagination and intellectual curiosity contribute to a life well lived”. Mac aficionados are highly receptive to their own inner feelings too and shun dogmatism, which means they “disdain so-called moral authorities, especially the conservative kin”. And Mac users consider themselves exceptional people.
I’m usually against any form of profiling but in this case I have no problems with being profiled as arty and hip. And it’s certainly cooler to be different and not one of those PC sheep So if you’re a Mac user, now you know. It’s been confirmed for you. You are indeed arty, creative and curious. If not downright exceptional. So enjoy your day in confidence!
Sources: CIO Blog and PC World.
Regular ThinkingShift readers would know that I love a good doomsday prediction or two. Is the human race going to be kicking around still in another 1000 years or will we have been snuffed out by our own stupidity, a super volcano blowing its stack or the Mayans being right about December 21, 2012?
So today’s post brings you some of the latest apocalyptic End Times scenarios. Forget global warming, there are more serious things to contend with if any of these predictions turn out to be true.
Mayan calendar: 2012 could be it, kaput. Another four years to go. The Mayans created their calendar 5,122 years ago and they set the expiry date after thirteen 394-year baktun cycles. Just in case you’re not fully up to speed with the Mayans, that expiry date is December 21, 2012. Great…just before Christmas! We’ll go up in smoke accompanied by volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and a comet or two smacking into us. But the author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck, thinks we shouldn’t panic because the concept of apocalypse means ‘uncovering’ or ‘revealing’ and so 2012 will be a catalyst for a transformation in human consciousness. Good to know: guess I don’t need to pack the cat just yet then. But there is a word of warning from New Age guru, José Arguelles, who says we should just accept the 2012 apocalypse, don’t fight it because those who do will be carried away on silver ships. To where, I’m not sure.
If we don’t get wiped out in a Mayan inferno, then we might need to duck lava and hot ash spewing out of a super volcano. I’ve finished rereading Simon Winchester’s fabulous book, Krakatoa, which left me wondering when that famous volcano’s child, Anak Krakatoa, might blow up. Perhaps I needn’t fret because there’s a super volcano hiding under Yellowstone National Park in the US that could be far more to concern ourselves over. 640,000 years ago this volcano had a mega hissy fit and Greg Breining, author of Super Volcano, says this volcano is due for “another shake up” (witty guy). Should it erupt, it will take a chunk of Earth far larger than Mt Everest with it. Mmmmm….wonder if that chunk will include Australia. Apparently, the way to survive this cataclysm is to head west of Wyoming since the jet stream blows East and will carry far less ash and debris going West.
Honey Holocaust. This one isn’t about super killer bees. Since 2006, honey bees have been vanishing. It’s said that Albert Einstein once muttered: “”If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live” - although Einstein most likely didn’t say this. Nevertheless, the disappearing bees is a serious matter. Bees pollinate more than a quarter of the world’s food supply, so no bees equals no honey, no fruit or veges and so on. The solution would seem to be to learn how to be a bee keeper super fast.
Then there’s the usual predictions of pandemics but global health experts expect a global pandemic that might make the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918 look like the common cold. H5N1, aka bird flu, is seen as the likely suspect for a pandemic. Although not easily transmitted to humans, 61% of people who have contracted bird flu have died. Virologists think that should H5N1 mutate, the death toll would be in the billions. I must say that I’ve always thought that a pandemic is the most likely doomsday scenario - how many more people can our Earth withstand before Nature turns on us?
Blue gold. We’ve heard this one repeatedly in recent years - a future scarcity of clean H2O - which may lead to conflict, famine and huge disruption of food supplies. More than a billion people lack access to safe water and 3.4 million people die each year from water-related diseases. An estimated two billion people are expected to have no access to clean water by 2050. China and India, superpowers-in-waiting, already face issues with the infrastructure necessary to distribute and clean water. The problem is really a fast-growing global population and its need for food rather than a lack of water.
Resistance is futile. Here’s one I hadn’t heard of before. Do you know what telomeres are? The DNA of nearly every life-form contains telomeres—protective coverings on the ends of chromosomes that aid in replication and linking. Over the course of generations, telomeres degenerate and erode and this has been linked to ageing, cancer and diabetes. So it’s a ticking time bomb - a countdown to extinction. Some scientists are linking the increase in cancer, for example, with telomere degeneration.
Gray-goo. The so-called gray-goo scenario was first suggested by nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation. This is all about robots going wild. If nanobots break free of their controls, they’ll run amok, reproduce at an exponential rate and ” reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days”.
Kick-ass chunk of rock. Didn’t think I’d leave this one out did you! The fatal impact of a comet or asteroid could wipe us out for sure. Maybe it will happen in 2029 when 99942 Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid passes very close to Earth. Most likely it will just be a close brush but this chunk of rock could set up a “gravitational keyhole” - a precise region in space no more than about 400 meters across, that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. Said chunk of rock will have a 1 in 45,000 chance of hitting the Pacific Ocean or Denver, Colorado on Easter Sunday. That will sure spoil any chocolate eating on that day! And I guess Bruce Willis won’t be around to save us.
Don’t mess with nature or space. Messing around with human DNA strikes me as not a good thing. And this scenario suggests that some dude in a lab coat could turn things horribly wrong and you might find a human embryo growing inside a rodent. Alternatively, you have the artificial worm-hole scenario. Scientists are suggesting that a short-cut or worm-hole in the space-time continuum could be artificially created. But those of us who spend our time watching Star Trek or Alien movies might wonder what sort of unspeakable horrors lie beyond our known universe just itching to slide down a worm-hole heading to Earth.
Well, better mark my calendar for December 21, 2012 and April 13, 2036 - seem like possible glitches for mankind in the 21st Century, that is if water wars, pandemics, crazy nanobots and eroding DNA don’t get us first.
Sources: Radar Online and Cracked.
In Australia, we have a saying - “only in America” - meaning it could only happen in America, the land of the free, the bizarre, the (insert whatever word you like). But I have to admit Australia is giving the US a run for its money with our first How Curious story.
Pick up a new skill! If you’re thinking of expanding your skill base, you might consider taking up an Australian company’s offer - be a real life tester for condoms. Reuters tells us that Durex Australia is advertising for condom testers with the snappy advertising line of “Got what it takes to be an official condom tester?” (Mmmm…what’s an unofficial condom tester?). No doubt with a smirk on his face, the company’s Marketing Manager says: “With this job on your CV, it really will be a chance to brag to your mates about the special skills you possess, not to mention that your new role will work wonders with the opposite sex”.
Should you be interested in this “bed-testing position”, you stand the chance to win $AU1,000. Are you up for it?
Fancy a trip to Mars? If you’re in the mood to follow up condom testing with a bit of simulation, then the European Space Agency is looking for you. You’ll need 520 spare days to take part in a simulated mission to the Red Planet. You’ll be able to munch on “astronaut food”, experience the 40 minute delays in transmissions back to Earth; and hunker down in very, very isolated conditions. Once you reach Mars, you’ll be able to check out a faux landscape and it might be handy to speak Russian as the simulation will be carried out in a facility in Moscow. No word yet on whether volunteers will also be able to try out NASA’s new Russian-built US$19 million toilet! Photo credit: NASA images. Source: Space.com.
Check what’s in your freezer before you invite guests! A story from Reuters out of Brussels is extremely curious. A Belgian man threw a dinner party but forgot to tell his guests not to look in the freezer. One guest went to put leftovers in the freezer and found….the bodies of the man’s wife and son. Apparently, the couple argued a lot.
Look carefully at your cat. I have a vicarious cat - the moggy belongs to my next door neighbour. Said cat has 18 toes; I checked it out myself at the risk of being clawed. But UK cat, Des, is very special - he has 26 toes - 7 on his front paws and 6 on the back paws. Apparently, cats with extra digits were once very common in the area around the old county of Cardiganshire and were known as “Cardi-cats”. (Did they ever think to check what was in the cats’ milk in Cardiganshire?!) Des is a bit temperamental - I would be too if I had 26 toes and rather odd-looking, glowing eyes. But maybe it’s not Des’ best photo angle.
Source: BBC News. Photo credit: BBC News.
Is Mickey Mouse a lot older than we thought? Mickey was created in 1928…but maybe not. The Discovery Channel had a wonderful piece that I couldn’t resist sharing with you. In 900AD, a French artist created a bronze brooch that looks like…well, Mickey Mouse. This amazing find was unearthed at Uppåkra in southern Sweden. Although it might remind us of the iconic mouse, archaeologists say it represents a lion. Source: Discovery Channel. Photo credit: Discovery Channel.
I guess like any other person obsessed with blogging (yep, sad I know), occasionally you have a look at the statistics and suss out what people are reading. Recently, two posts attracted good traffic: the Top 10 Endangered Species post had over 3,000 visitors in one day; and my latest rant on privacy issues and the surveillance society attracted over 1,500 readers in one day.
Now, I fully admit that the ThinkingShift blog has yet to settle into a theme and maybe it never will. My interests are diverse, ranging from quantum mechanics to the environment to information and knowledge management. A quick scan of the topics I’ve covered so far since flinging myself into the blogosphere shows the range. But I thought - great, people are interested in endangered species and the surveillance society. That is, until I caught sight of the search terms that people are seeking information on and somehow stumble onto the ThinkingShift blog. I imagined people would search for stuff on KM or information management given that these disciplines are my main areas of expertise; or people might search for stuff on libraries or leadership. In my wildest dreams, I hoped people would start to find me by searching for climate change, endangered species, history or archaeology stuff. But never did I imagine the search terms I encountered when I perused the stats!
I’ll try and cluster the oft bizarre search terms that led people to the ThinkingShift blog in some sort of sensible arrangement. Here’s a run-down of the highlights:
* Dino the dinosaur sound bytes
* asians that are not naked
* beehive concept map
* camel meat cost and recipes
* natural medicines of civil war
* dangdut belly dancer (alarmed, I tried this search on Google and there was my blog sitting at No 10 on the retrieval list. About to shoot off an angry tirade to Google, I clicked on the result and lo and behold up came my post on Eurovision. The “dangdut” came courtesy of a comment from Matt Moore and the belly dancer was a remark I made about the Turkish entry!).
* David Jones department store vision
* how to buy a house under a trust (okay, I can help you, I’m a lawyer!)
* heaving (sad to think this term led to ThinkingShift)
* sexy historic account (of what I ask??)
* quizz funny personal questions
* “temple university” “library fines”
* Salford University rant
* asian men
* french car sex (do the French know something we don’t??)
* without a donkey (what the?!)
* Sarawak plastic surgeon (okay I admit I’ve thought about botox, but I’m not ready for the slice and dice just yet)
* a list of symbols found on the round zod (que?)
* YUM (in capitals and appears everyday in the stats - does anyone know what on earth this means??)
I’ve read about someone visiting the Google headquarters and being shown a large screen or screens that showed what people were searching for around the world in real time. Looking at how people have found my blog is my own mini-Google experience, but I’m not about to do posts on “horse penis” or “asian men” - so those people, please go elsewhere!
And welcome home Atlantis.
Time for a change of pace. I’ve been researching more into my pet topic - the surveillance society - and have thoroughly depressed myself (watch out for a post soon on my findings). So I needed some light relief. I’ve been reading a great book - Andrew Chaikin’s A Man on the Moon, and have just polished off the first authorised biography of Neil Armstrong, so I’m obviously in some sort of space travel frame of mind. Beam me up Scotty!
I started thinking about whether astronauts have seen UFOs on their space voyages and this led me to thinking about the history of UFO sightings, and the ultimate question: whatever happened to Kenneth Arnold, the salesman and pilot who reported way back in 1947 that he’d spotted nine objects flying in a V formation that tipped their wings like “a saucer if you skip it across water”. And so the term ‘flying saucer’ entered the lexicon.
I am a sucker for a good conspiracy theory and as I was growing up, I was convinced that aliens were amongst us (well, I still think that in some organisations I’ve worked in, aliens have been present!). I was obsessed with UFOs; I watched Star Trek episodes repeatedly to the frustration of my parents; I could name the planets in order by the time I hit kindergarten (easier to recite now that poor old Pluto has been vanquished); I was precocious enough to blurt out to my teachers that the two moons of Mars are Deimos and Phobos, doesn’t everyone know this?; I dreamed of being an astronaut (I wasn’t astute enough at such a young age to figure out that only men reached the moon until the Shuttle programme gave women a ticket to ride). By the time I reached high school, I could recite any fact you needed to know about Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the Moon. I still marvel at the feat of the Powered Descent in Eagle, using primitive 1960s computers.
When I was about 14 years, I was waiting outside the house for my parents - we were off to dinner - I was gazing at the night sky and saw two UFOs. They were probably satellites, but I was convinced. Surely my father would understand - he’d been an air force fighter pilot and must have seen white lights dancing around the sky or UFOs tracking him - but he just looked at me with a perplexed expression. He stared skyward but could see no UFOs.
Somewhere in my 20s, I lost interest. Studying law tends to do that to you - there’s no “Alien Rights Bill” or Alien Discrimination Act to learn about :)- But recently, I’ve been drawn to the space travel section of my favourite bookstore and bought 5 books on the Apollo programme…and then…in came an article from Wired on 60 years of UFO sightings that really piqued my interest.
But first, whatever happened to Kenneth Arnold, the man who sparked off the whole Roswell conspiracy theory? A quick dive into Wikipedia tells us he died in 1984 and, following his 1947 UFO sighting, he seems to have spent the rest of his life interviewing UFO witnesses and even wrote a book (mmm…missed that one).
Now, I’ve always wondered why contactees of aliens seem to come across them as the aliens wander through the desert. The most famous contactee was George Adamski, who allegedly met an alien called Orthon in the California desert on November 20, 1952. These “friendly” space people warned of the dangers of scientific progress and gave spiritual messages for humanity. Did Orthon lose his GPS and couldn’t find the bright lights of LA? And what’s with the strange monikers aliens seem to be labelled with: Orthon and Eloha.
Eloha is an interesting alien sighting. I didn’t know about the International Raelian Movement, founded in 1974 by Rael, aka Claude Vorilhon, a former French motor-racing writer. Apparently, Rael encountered Eloha (probably in the desert) and Eloha told him that humans are the product of a cunning DNA experiment and that the Bible and other religious texts refer to encounters with aliens, not God or His angels.
This Rael dude thinks he is related to Jesus and Mohammad and has managed to attract several thousand followers who are planning to make their headquarters in Las Vegas. Las Vegas?? How perfect if you ask me. Las Vegas: the venue for the 2007 UFO Conference and the place where Prophet Yahweh, Seer of Yahweh, called down UFOs and spaceships for the media to photograph. Seems the aliens and their spaceships missed the glossy photo shoot as they never appeared.
I ended up thinking that the hysteria over UFOs, alien abductions, aliens with dire prophecies for mankind and so on, was the result of too many people in the 1960s taking magic mushroom trips or perhaps was a result of the jet and space age following WWII. With jet planes, military and weather balloons, satellites and meteor showers whizzing through the atmosphere, our imaginations were bound to leap to the extraordinary.
But maybe not: approximately half the US population currently believe the media is conditioning them for an alien encounter. As recently as 2002, a Roper Poll found that one in seven people in the US claim to have spotted a UFO or have been a contactee (no word on whether all alien encounters occurred in the desert). I haven’t looked into whether Australians believe the same but we do of course have our very own UFO capital - Wycliffe Well, near Tennant Creek in Central Australia (the Outback, the desert - is there a pattern here?)
I remember being caught up in the Roswell thing - that some poor aliens crashed their spacecraft in Roswell, US and the US Government recovered the technology and conducted autopsies on the alien bodies. I think somewhere I even read the suggestion that what the US Government recovered allowed the Americans to build the lunar landing vehicles or Apollo spacecraft. And then of course we had Alien Autopsy in 1995 - supposedly genuine footage of an autopsy of one of the Roswell aliens, obtained from an old US cameraman. This was around the time of the X-Files, a TV series said to have been inspired by Roswell (and great TV viewing if you ask me). Why the old footage made its surprise appearance in 1995 and not years earlier I don’t know.
Actually, the 1990s was gripped by refueled interest in UFOs and aliens - Hollywood films like Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997) - but things really started heating up in 2005 when a document said to have been written in the 1970s came to light. One of the Roswell aliens survived the crash in the 1940s (he was called EBE1, not Joe or Bob or Bill). EBE1 rounded up some military types and specially trained them and then they all took off for EBE1’s home planet, Serpo. Twelve humans stayed on Serpo from 1965 to 1978 - two remained on Serpo whilst the others died on the planet or when they returned to Earth. Say what??? You can read about it here. Mind you, this story does explain what has happened to some of the relatives I lost touch with - phone home please :)- Apparently, Serpo is a planet of Zeta Reticuli (where?). I had to fight hard not to succumb to the temptation of reading the report and getting caught up in this stuff.
Getting back to us being groomed to the idea of meeting aliens, some Ufologists considered the film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), a U.S.-government-backed project to get the public used to the idea of friendly aliens. The film had such an impact on the British House of Lords, it held a three-hour debate on alien abductions in 1979. Her Majesty’s government, however, decided UFOs were not alien spacecraft and were not a threat to the nation. Thank goodness, can you just imagine Her Majesty meeting someone called Eloha or Orthon.
NASA is now talking about a manned mission to Mars and “terraforming” is the new buzz word with news that Lowell Wood, a noted physicist, has outlined a plan to transform the Red Planet into a habitable world by the end of the 21st Century. Will we now see a spate of Martians whizzing around our planet in UFOs or walking aimlessly in some desert somewhere? As we get closer to a possible Mars mission, will UFO hysteria crop up again I wonder.
What’s always intriguing to me is that aliens seem to all be doctors. Barney and Betty Hill were driving peacefully in their car in 1961 when they noticed a UFO following them (as you do). When they reached home, they could not remember a large chunk of the journey and hypnosis revealed the couple recalled being abducted by aliens who subjected them to intimate and gruelling medical examinations. I can’t remember large chunks of my life, so a spot of hypnosis might just reveal that I haven’t really been working in law or KM - that I was abducted by aliens who conducted their nasty experiments (send the medical reports to my doctor please).
Joking aside, there are some people out there who are very serious about UFOs and aliens - take Stanton Friedman, a leading Ufologist who says: “The evidence is overwhelming that some UFOs are intelligently controlled ET spacecraft...” and he argues further “that the subject represents a cosmic Watergate, that there are no good arguments against these conclusions and that flying saucers and the worldwide government cover-up are the biggest story of the millennium“. You can check out Friedman’s site here.
And then there’s the Disclosure Project: ex-CIA and military officers describing their experiences covering up UFO and extraterrastrial encounters. I haven’t checked this site out thoroughly yet, but I plan to. Just in case you come across an alien, here’s a Layman’s Guide to Alien Contact.
I’ve spent so many years in law, teaching, information and knowledge management, that I’ve lost touch with the latest in alien encounters and UFO theories. But I often think that this vast universe can’t just be ours alone. What are your thoughts: why do humans seem to be so keen to believe that we are not alone in the Universe? Ever encountered an alien or seen a UFO?
This is the second post in my regular feature How Curious! Many stories, articles and news items I come across cause me to mutter “what the?!!” and there are some choice ones for this How Curious! post.
Let’s start off by learning how to survive in a black hole. This may come in handy one day, you just never know. I would think that falling into a black hole (and I’m not talking about working in a KM programme here!) would be some wild trip. Your body would be ripped and pulled this way and that in free fall. Gravitational forces would ensure you didn’t pop out at the other end. You’d be kaput. But two researchers have contemplated whether you could in fact delay death before the inevitable happens (now, this is something to think about when you’re bored). They’ve come up with the idea of a black hole life preserver. You’d need to think ahead and take the preserver with you, but this state-of-the-art life preserver will counteract the stormy forces of the black hole and delay death by about 0.9 second.
Now, the real problem I can see here is that the life preserver ring would apparently need to be as heavy as a large asteroid and could be as large as one of the rings of Saturn. I’d also like to know if it comes in hot pink:)-
I’ve been reading a couple of books on NASA’s space programme and did a post recently on The Magnificent Seven. So I’ve been on the look-out for news on NASA’s Mars exploration programme. Sending a human mission to Mars could involve a flight time of 6 months or more just to reach the red planet. Like me, you might just wonder how the astronauts will take care of certain business. I found the answer about toilets but the answer to the other question - can you have sex in zero gravity? - has eluded me till now. Perhaps when you think of heroic space missions, you don’t think of things like “how do you get rid of a dead astronaut in space?”, nor do you think about “special considerations” on an interplanetary journey.
But science journalist Laura Woodmansee has been probing these intriguing questions for her book Sex in Space and has encountered resistance from retired astronauts and NASA - they just don’t seem to be comfortable talking about this topic. I’ve been wondering about all the tangled relationships that could occur between members of a male/female crew. If you fall in love in space with a fellow astronaut, do you send an sms back to Earth to tell your partner “sorry, met someone else”! One question I hadn’t considered was this one I found in a review of Woodmansee’s book: “Have astronauts and cosmonauts practised “docking maneuvers” while in orbit? Mmm…better ditch my book on Neil Armstrong’s life and read Sex in Space instead (for research purposes of course).
Should you come across a pothole in the ground, you might consider casting your eye around for some ants. Scientists observed that when ants were foraging over rough terrain, some of them used their own bodies to plug potholes. The ants even considered which fellow ant would be the best fit to lie across the hole. This pretty spesh technique provided the fastest route between prey and nest. An ant may remain in place for hours, but once the traffic of ants has crossed, the ant will pop out of the hole and bolt home.
And the following advice will help us through any encounter with a leopard. Should an ageing leopard jump into your bed, as happened to an Israeli man recently, simply lunge at the cat (preferably clad only in your night clothes), grab it by the neck, pin it down and wait for help. To avoid being woken up by a leopard in the first place, consider not taking your domestic tabby to bed with you.
And should the night-time leopard wrestling fail to subdue the big cat, quickly find your mobile phone (but first make sure you have a ring tone that moos, bleats or clucks). Animal ring tones have a soothing effect on leopards. Villagers in India are using mobile phones with great success, recently capturing five leopards and releasing them back into the forest. Sure beats the heck out of using a poor goat as live bait - pretty unpleasant for the goat!
Now, here’s a challenge for the very brave knowledge management practitioner. We all know that corporations (and society in general) is facing generational change. Heaps of Baby Boomers are teetering on the edge of retirement and a major KM challenge is to benefit from their rich experience before they bolt out the corporate doors. But seems there’s a generational change happening in another unexpected quarter.
Nudists in the US are finding it hard to attract a younger crowd and have embarked on a young ambassador programme encouraging college and graduate students with stories of “fun in the buff”. Apparently, the median age for a nudist in the US is 55 years and one nudist club estimates that 90% of its 50,000 members are older than 35 (well, 35 is getting into the gray haired set these days!).
Now, I’ve always suspected nudists of being left-over hippies or strangely suspect people. I for one prefer to see people with their clothes on but as one nudist quipped: “Unlike any other place in life, people actually look at you when they talk to you“. No doubt!
But I did find this an interesting KM challenge: what special knowledge do graying nudists have that can be passed down to younger nudists, who don’t seem to want to embrace the fresh air? if you could do a knowledge audit on nudists: what to ask? so in the interests of KM, I did a spot of research and prepared some sample knowledge audit questions:
Apparently, the Federation of Canadian Nudists is ahead of me and has prepared a list of 15 reasons to be a nudist. I’m intrigued by Reason #11: Popularity and Confidentiality:
“You’ll be part of a group! Already, thousands of Canadians are nudists. But nudism is totally confidential, so nobody knows. Naturist parks are in discreet, strictly private areas, well back from roads. Those who go accept newcomers’ anonymity. All naturists respect confidentiality. The only people who know you enjoy nudism are those you tell”.
From a KM perspective, I could immediately sense prospects for a community of practice! And Reason #15 is clearly a classic piece of wisdom we can’t ignore: “If people were meant to go naked, they would have been born that way“. Possibly there’s something in that Canadian Rocky Mountains air :)-
Made in Australia
