Posts Tagged ‘Point of View’
Power: Not a Point of View. Power is the level and quality of education, an education targeting the needs of the population and neighboring markets.
Posted on March 10, 2009
Iran is planning to build 20 atomic power sites to generate electricity. Russia has aided finish the first power station for a cost exceeding one $ billion dollars.
Iran is not only the fourth exporter of oil but has also huge reserves in oil and gas. And yet, Iran spends enormous amount of hard cash money to import oil products and gasoline from overseas refineries.
The Iranians are building a second atomic power generator, almost alone and strong with the expertise they acquired. The Iranian officials said that oil is a precious commodity that should not be wasted to generate dirty power.
The developed nations have oil reserves but prefer to purchase oil at a reduced price in order to save their oil resources for their chemical and pharmaceutical industries for later generations. (Actually, chemical industries, the most dirty for earth and the climate, rely almost exclusively on oil products.)
The Emirate Gulf States have established “sovereign funds” for the next generations, but they all have vanished during the latest economic and financial recession. What is left are highways and built stones.
I am exaggerating on purpose.
This piece is meant to be a wake-up call. It is time to invest on the human potentials, social institutions, and political reforms.
Lebanon used to export electricity to Syria and Jordan in the 30’s during the French mandate. Presently, and 80 years later, and 65 years after its “independence”, Lebanon import electricity from Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.
The populations of all these States have quadrupled in 80 years while Lebanon barely doubled, due to massive immigration, and we could not even double our power production.
Our neighboring States have reached sort of power sufficiency and exporting surplus electricity to Lebanon. Lebanon has plenty of water and rivers but we failed to invest properly on our natural resources and hydraulic potentials.
Not only we have not enough electricity, and none of it is hydraulically generated, but we have no running water. We receive water twice a week for a few hours and we have to filtrate and purify what we receive.
The Lebanese family has to pay twice for electrical power and for water by supplementing their needs from the scalpers of private providers.
The main culprits are those “Christian” Maronite political parties who claimed that the power of Lebanon resides in its military weakness. Implicitly, those sectarian political parties meant that Lebanon should not challenge the dicta of Israel regarding our planning of our water resources.
Mind you that Israel purpose is to divert all our rivers toward its own Zionist State.
Electricity is a kind of power and oil and gas are essentials for locomotion and mechanization and industries. Nevertheless, nations are judged developed according to the level of their research institutions.
You might start the “egg or chicken” priority of security and stability first, but this is not the case. When States invest on almost everything except knowledge base and research institutions, then you should not hope for stability and security.
Developed nations respect States that focus their energies and resources on knowledge, literacy, and technologies and are willing to protect them from neighboring bullies.
Developed nations respect States that generate highly educated and well trained citizens regardless of size, origin, and natural resources.
Power is the level and quality of education, an education targeting the needs of the population and neighboring markets.
Power is no longer a point of view.
Reducing stress at work: 7 Tips
Posted by: adonis49 on: November 26, 2012
Tips on: Reducing stress at work
Do you think that High workloads, physically and emotionally demanding work, uncertainty about the future, the temporary nature of jobs, lack of talents, growing older, competition with new graduate students with versatile abilities and technical expertise…. can lead to stress and therefore to poor mental wellbeing?
Joanna and Toby’s of uscreates posted their Point of View on Nov.22, 2012 under “Reducing stress at work: A few simple tips”
We’re all likely to experience job-related stress at some point in our lives.
But wellbeing is fundamental to everything: how we think, feel and function through the courses of our lives.
It is a precious individual and collective resource that needs to be protected and enhanced.
Around the world, a growing body of evidence is showing that people with lower levels of stress and higher levels of mental wellbeing are more creative, more productive and take less time off work.
They have better resistance to colds, feel pain less acutely and even live longer.
Additionally, there’s a compelling organisational case for better mental health: Annual costs of mental ill-health to a UK organisation with 1,000 employees are £835,355 (NICE, 2009).
However, the Department of Health’s mental health strategy highlights that each pound spent on mental health promotion at work generates net savings of £10 within one year.
Each single pound spent on early intervention for depression at work generates net savings of £5.
The 7th of November was the National Stress Awareness Day.
This inspired us to think about and share a little bit of what we learned on a project we carried out in London, where we shadowed nurses and admin staff to examine the issues that impact on their stress levels and ultimately, their mental wellbeing.
We found out that there are some practical, low-cost measures that managers can take that could have a significant impact on the team’s wellbeing. Here are a few:
1. Acknowledge that sadness is not a weakness: those we spoke to tended to suppress their emotions. However, allowing yourself the release of crying or talking about stressful moments increases your ability to deal with them
2. Recognize your team’s achievements: many felt that they rarely received praise or thanks for work done well or delivered in the face of difficult circumstances
3. Link rewards to emotional needs rather than organisational targets: for example, you could encourage your team to monthly nominate a colleague who has been particularly supportive or has dealt well with a difficult incident – let them decide the metrics. The person with the most votes could win a reward linked to wellbeing, such as a fitness class
4. Facilitate informal peer-to-peer support: opportunities to get together and chat with colleagues following a stressful or difficult event or day were valued more than compulsory supervision
5. Protect time for training and development and share opportunities with your team: most of those we spoke to wanted to develop their skills and progress their careers, but felt that opportunities were not communicated and continuing personal development time often slipped
6. Create opportunities for your team to get to know colleagues from other teams, specialisms and bands: ‘meet and greets’ were felt to be good for morale, making staff, particularly in frontline and junior positions, more likely to be treated as human beings, rather than just functionaries
7. Assess the physical ability of each member of staff individually: physical resilience varies, with some members of staff able to withstand long periods on their feet or physically demanding work better than others; but injuries and fatigue are detrimental to wellbeing (end of article)
So far so good. The wellness attributes in workplaces are what Human Factors in Engineering are concerned with: The safety and health of workers, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Adonis Diaries 