Archive for July 7th, 2009
A Way out of History
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 7, 2009
A Way out of History (May 7, 2009)
The citizens of the developed Nations, within their own boundaries, feel that they have no longer any need to learn history or their own history. History to the citizens of the developed nations is a drag, a waste of time, of no use, totally irrelevant. They are mostly correct in their feeling and appreciation of the uselessness of history relevant to their nation: first, they have reached as a society a level of social cohesion, awareness, appreciation of human dignity and human rights; and second, they are more concerned about their present state of affairs, maintaining their current level of comfort, consumerism choices, creating diverse opportunities, future availabilities for their desires and wishes. These modern citizens have institutions to continue the good work; institutions to analyze whatever history is appropriate for the nation, institutions for research, for legitimacy, for governance, for economy, for finance, for strategic studies, for learning, for art, for marketing, and for studying the under-developed States and minorities.
History for the citizens of the developed nation is plainly relegated to the under-developed States. The Third World and Fourth World “citizens”, (we should create another term for citizenship for the under-developed world because it is frankly too pompous and inappropriate any which way you define a citizen), have nothing left but “history” for amusement and to give them reference to an illusory identity. History for the “history citizens” has been written by the vanquishers and then translated and interpreted by the colonial powers. The archeological sites in the land of the “amused archaic citizens” were dug out and investigated by the colonial powers and the artifacts were dusted off, cleaned, and conserved in secured museums that the traveling tourists and immigrants never visit. The chasm between the developed and the “non-developed” States is huge and growing larger by the day. History is still being taught in the developed nations simply because more immigrants are flocking in and some sort of integration in commendable.
More likely, a citizen would visit an immigrant friend to fill him in on current news and occasionally get a good laugh on stories of their respective ancestors; yes, the immigrant might know more details on the citizen’s ancestors and the history of the citizen’s country. In fact, hard copy dailies are published to satisfy the voracious curiosities of the immigrants. Storytelling is a cultural trademark among immigrants and getting together is worthless and devoid of any interest if no bickering accompanies the assembly.
If there are rival “civilizations” it must be in the mind of the immigrants. They are attuned to any gesture, tone of voice, slang, or posturing that remind them of their “indignity”, their frequent humiliations, their total dependence on the host nation for understanding, leniency, forgiveness, compassion, and equal treatments under the laws. The immigrants are overachievers, hard working, on constant alert of changes in behavior and special laws, on foreign policies regarding their “homeland”, on unequal measures doled in foreign policies and moral values.
“Civilization clash” is in the mind of the immigrant: the citizen doesn’t care about the agony and tribulation of his immigrant friend. The immigrant is a sponge for all kinds of curiosities in art, theater, intellectual life, and any association that invites him to participate. The immigrant is most likely polyglot and can converse in many languages and he has to suffer being mocked for his accent in the local slang; he has to be corrected frequently because accent is the main avenue for integration and acceptance as a civilized individual.
Discrimination is in the mind of the immigrant. A citizen would immediately recognize an immigrant for miles if he cared to focus a second on the individual. The citizen in an administrative position has to call upon the cleric, the community leader, or the father of the immigrant before taking any decision for any kinds of permit application; the immigrant is supposed to be looked after as an immature kid no matter how old he is. Equal treatments are the domain of the citizens and interpretations of the law and customs are appropriate when dealing with an immigrant. The whole gamut of the UN laws for human rights were targeted for the under-developed States that are shaming human kinds in their state of affairs. Yet, many “non-citizens” would like to experience a new era when embargoes on military hardware, military trainers, and military experts are imposed on dictators, juntas, and oligarchies who are flaunting the UN human rights declarations in their under developed States.
Seriously learning the language of your immigrant friend is the first sign of real friendship. Blatantly observing the differences in culture and customs is an excellent sign of friendship. Vigorously and unabashedly critiquing divergence in opinions is sign of friendship. Make no mistake: any behavior that smack of covert apartheid is quickly sensed by your immigrant “friend”. Make no mistake: the next generation of your immigrant friend will be exactly you, when you were younger. If you are serious for integration of your immigrant friend then behave as if you are dealing with the next generation, on a par.
Mindlessly a Genius
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 7, 2009
Mindlessly a Genius
1. We hear a lot about self-made Billionaires; we read of them, sometimes.
There are not many of them. Some are in their early youth;
Most in their much delayed youth.
We hear a lot less about geniuses; we read of them, never.
There are so many of them. A few stay in the race.
Most show signs early on, a handful keep the luster by mid-age.
2. Millions of people are happy preaching,
To anyone who cares to listen,
The motto: “Think smart, work smart.”
He is happy talking, day-dreaming, the normal man.
3. If the living billionaires and geniuses
Would dare to tell the “How to Success”.
If the living could remember, what really happened,
In their journeys to success.
4. You read biographies of the famous and glamorous.
Too much hooplas, too much redundancies.
Humbug. They work hard, mindlessly hard.
Hard working for many years, consistently. Constancy.
They did not work to survive. They worked with excitement.
They worked with zeal.
The more they worked, the smarter they were.
They never dwelled on how far smarter
They came to be.
5. Friend, you may hate me for what I’m saying.
My conscience is clear: I never abused of your time,
Never robbed you of money
Pleasing your day dreaming wishes
Of quick success on little work in a short time.
6. Stop thinking how to work smart: Just get on it.
Mindlessly loving your work, serving man’s dreams.
A seminar on a multidisciplinary view of design
Posted by: adonis49 on: July 7, 2009
Article 31, December 18, 2005
“A seminar on a multidisciplinary view of design”
The term “designing” is so commonly used that its al encompassing scope has lamentably shrunken in the mind of graduating engineers. This talk attempts to restore the true meaning of design as a multidisciplinary concept that draw its value from the cooperation and inputs of many practitioners in a team. This is a scenario of a seminar targeting freshmen engineers who will ultimately be involved in submitting design projects; it is meant to orient engineers for a procedure that might provide their design projects the necessary substance for becoming marketable and effective in reducing the pitfalls in having to redesign. The ultimate purpose is to providing the correct designing behavior from the first year.
Answering the following questions might be the basis of acquiring a proper behavior in design projects which should be carried over in their engineering careers; many of these questions are never formally asked in the engineering curriculum.
Q1. What is the primary job of an engineer? What does design means? How do you perceive designing to look like?
A1. The discussion should be reopened after setting the tone for the talk and warming up the audience to alternative requirements of good design.
Q2. To whom are you designing? What category of people? Who are your target users? Engineer, consumers, support personnel, operators?
A2. Generate from audience potential design projects as explicit examples to develop on that idea.
Q3. What are your primary criteria in designing? Error free application product? Who commit errors? Can a machine do errors?
A3. Need to explicitly emphasize that error in the design and usage is the primary criterion and which encompass the other more familiar engineering and business criteria
Q4. How can we categorize errors? Had any exposure to error taxonomy? Who is at fault when an error is committed or an accident occurs?
A4. Provide a short summary of different error taxonomies; the whole administrative and managerial procedures and hierarchy of the enterprise need to be investigated.
Q5. Can you foresee errors, near accidents, accidents in your design?
A5. Take a range oven for example, expose the foreseeable errors and accidents in the design, babies misuse and the display and control idiosyncrasy.
Q6. Can we practically account for errors without specific task taxonomy?
A6. Generate a discussion on tasks and be specific on a selected job.
Q7. Do you view yourself as responsible for designing interfaces to your design projects depending on the target users? Would you relinquish your responsibilities for being in the team assigned to designing an interface for your design project? What kinds of interfaces are needed for your design to be used efficiently?
A7. Discuss the various interfaces attached to any design and as prolongement to marketable designs.
Q8. How engineers solve problems? Searching for the applicable formulas? Can you figure out the magnitude of the answer? Have you memorized the allowable range for your answers from the given data and restriction imposed in the problem after solving so many exercises? Have you memorize the dimensions of your design problem?
A8. Figure out the magnitude and the range of the answers before attempting to solve a question; solve algebraically your equations before inputting data; have a good grasp of all the relevant independent variables.
Q9. What are the factors or independent variables that may affect your design project? How can we account for the interactions among the factors?
A9. Offer an exposition to design of experiments
Q10. Have you been exposed to reading research papers? Can you understand, analyze and interpret the research paper data? Can you have an opinion as to the validity of an experiment? Would you accept the results of any peer reviewed article as facts that may be readily applied to your design projects?
A10. Explain the need to be familiar with the procedures and ways of understanding research articles as a continuing education requirement.
Q11. Do you expect to be in charged of designing any new product or program or procedures in your career? Do you view most of your job career as a series of supporting responsibilities; like just applying already designed programs and procedures?
Q12. Are you ready to take elective courses in psychology, sociology, marketing, business targeted to learning how to design experiments and know more about the capabilities, limitations and behavioral trends of target users? Are you planning to go for graduate studies and do you know what elective courses might suit you better in your career?
A12. Taking multidisciplinary courses enhances communication among design team members and more importantly encourages reading research papers in other disciplines related to improving a design project. Designing is a vast and complex concept that requires years of practice and patience to encompass several social science disciplines.
Q13. Can you guess what should have been my profession?
A13. My discipline is Industrial engineering with a major in Human Factors oriented toward designing interfaces for products and systems. Consequently, my major required taking multidisciplinary courses in marketing, psychology and econometrics and mostly targeting various methodologies for designing experiments, collecting data and statistically analyzing gathered data in order to predict system’s behavior.
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