This is the time of year to consider this, though it may be too late for some to take this piece of advice: "Take an extra day before heading back to work. I like to think of this spare day as the vacation from my vacation. It’s the day to get reacquainted with your routines."
If it is too late (and that's a life-tactic we discovered for ourselves a few years back -in fact we try to take a couple of days if possible), then at least this other piece of wise counsel may be helpful: "Give yourself a free day the following weekend. Playing catch-up with your life can be exhausting, so take a weekend day to sleep in, leisurely drink a cup of coffee, catch up on items around the house, or do nothing at all. If you have kids, this applies to them, too."
And how about this: "Arrive an hour early to work. You’ll want to get a solid footing on your day before you’re bombarded by co-workers asking about your trip and giving you more things to do."
Now I'm wondering whether anyone has any other useful advice to add?
Transitioning back to reality after vacation | Unclutterer
17 July 2011
Setting up Good Diagrams for slides
This has a lot of sensible advice to improve your visual communication. Definitely worth viewing if you do projector slides reasonably often.
There's a good sense of typographic nous shown in these which are not produced by a professional designer, just someone who has reflected on what they have seen and done.
How to make Awesome Diagrams for your slides
How to make Awesome Diagrams for your slides
View more presentations from otikik
There's a good sense of typographic nous shown in these which are not produced by a professional designer, just someone who has reflected on what they have seen and done.
How to make Awesome Diagrams for your slides
05 July 2011
Voting in elections is stressful
Followers of this blog (and incidentally, apologies for a long gap -I've been moving house) will know of my interest in Electoral Reform. And so it won't surprise you to learn that this piqued my curiosity.
Voting in elections is stressful -- emotionally and physiologically:
There are two things I want to say in response to this. And they're just initial thoughts; this is a 'watch this space' sort of thing. The first thing is that this was conducted in Israel. The question (perhaps naturally) is whether this would replicate in other societies, and under other electoral systems. My suspicion is that conditions in Israel might mean that the results are an unusually high stress response. And what's more is that this could be because of one or both of the fact of the kind of stakes involved in Israeli politics, and/or the very wide multi-party choice and the electoral system. Might it be less stressful to vote in France, or the USA or New Zealand, or the Czech republic or Bolivia?
So more studies in a variety of cultural settings supplemented, I think, by more qualitative studies in the perceptions of voters (and perhaps non-voters as a control?). Stress is at least partly due to the way that the stressed frame things, so examination of those frames would be important.
The other thing that could be interesting therefore, is whether there are voting systems that are less stressful for voters and whether that correlates with voter participation. I suspect that systems that involve less tactical voting may fare better, but I'm not sure whether the Israeli case tends to confirm or discount that.
Voting in elections is stressful -- emotionally and physiologically:
A new study, conducted by scholars from the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, has found that the level of cortisol -- a hormone released when a person is under pressure and helps the body cope with threats -- in individuals immediately prior to casting a vote was significantly higher than in the same individuals in similar non-voting conditions.
There are two things I want to say in response to this. And they're just initial thoughts; this is a 'watch this space' sort of thing. The first thing is that this was conducted in Israel. The question (perhaps naturally) is whether this would replicate in other societies, and under other electoral systems. My suspicion is that conditions in Israel might mean that the results are an unusually high stress response. And what's more is that this could be because of one or both of the fact of the kind of stakes involved in Israeli politics, and/or the very wide multi-party choice and the electoral system. Might it be less stressful to vote in France, or the USA or New Zealand, or the Czech republic or Bolivia?
So more studies in a variety of cultural settings supplemented, I think, by more qualitative studies in the perceptions of voters (and perhaps non-voters as a control?). Stress is at least partly due to the way that the stressed frame things, so examination of those frames would be important.
The other thing that could be interesting therefore, is whether there are voting systems that are less stressful for voters and whether that correlates with voter participation. I suspect that systems that involve less tactical voting may fare better, but I'm not sure whether the Israeli case tends to confirm or discount that.
25 June 2011
Freaky job interview questions
It's hard to see it getting asked in many places but how's this for an interview question.
Crazy job interview questions: "UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?"
It's hard to second guess what they'd look for: at face value exhibit your knowledge of statistics. But I think my answer might be, in the spirit of the response on the referenced site:
I think that I'd file the request as harassment and report it to HR. There's no way that such actions could pass health and safety and the macho culture that would generate such a scenario in the workplace is likely to be one which generates bullying. So I'd rather not do either of the alternatives: I'd rather reframe the situation altogether. And then, would I want to work for UBS if I'm likely to be shot?
Crazy job interview questions: "UBS: If we were playing Russian roulette and had one bullet, I randomly spun the chamber and fired but nothing was fired. Would you rather fire the gun again or respin the chamber and then fire on your turn?"
It's hard to second guess what they'd look for: at face value exhibit your knowledge of statistics. But I think my answer might be, in the spirit of the response on the referenced site:
I think that I'd file the request as harassment and report it to HR. There's no way that such actions could pass health and safety and the macho culture that would generate such a scenario in the workplace is likely to be one which generates bullying. So I'd rather not do either of the alternatives: I'd rather reframe the situation altogether. And then, would I want to work for UBS if I'm likely to be shot?
24 June 2011
The hell of aural leakage and imposition
A thought provoking piece from Kester, here: Kester Brewin � Tsskk Tsskk… Why Do Kids Play Music on Buses?
As a teacher Kester is rightly concerned in this article to understand the thing from the participant-actor's point of view. First of all on 'aural imposition' (my term): "Some students who were interviewed for the piece didn’t think that playing music was antisocial, just that the bus was too quiet and they wanted something to listen to. However, a sociologist sees it being more about marking out ownership of space. This can be done physically – by lolling out and taking up a number of seats. It could also be done graphically by ‘tagging’ around various places. But the most immediate and obvious way of stating that you have control over a space is aurally because it flows so widely."
Now this is relatively rare in my experience (mercifully). And I think that I disagree with the sociologist's interpretation. Drawing on my own youth when, I confess, I went through a phase of doing rather similar things (only the technology was different -remember cassettes?) what I was doing was not claiming space. In the exuberance of youth I wanted to share what I enjoyed musically. I just didn't really have any idea that -as I now realise- if others didn't really like Wishbone Ash or Pink Floyd that I'd be vexing them greatly. So that's what I've assumed is going on. However, it hasn't helped me devise an intervention that I could feel would work without getting awkward or nasty. Sometimes bus drivers intervene to enforce no-music, often not.
Aural leakage, on the other hand is when someone has the ear-buds in but they are in the process of going deaf (and there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum in that) because the thin, tinny, escaped sound is irritating fellow passengers. Sometimes I've seen this challenged, particularly in the quiet carriage on a train. It seems easier to challenge: after all the user by having ear-buds in signals that they are trying to be considerate of others, so there is a basis on which to approach them to ask for the volume to be turned down.
So maybe the leakage scenario helps us to understand the imposition scenario. In the latter there is clearly no attempt to use means to minimise intrusion on others: it is desired that we should hear. Well, perhaps not always; quite often what is happening is that a handful of teens (in my experience) are sharing snippets of stuff they like with one another; perhaps they aren't really considering the wider impact at all, or if they do they may consider that they are educating the rest of us in what real music is.
I'm considering carrying around a set of those cheap £1 earbud sets and offering them to the polluters so they can share in private.
As a teacher Kester is rightly concerned in this article to understand the thing from the participant-actor's point of view. First of all on 'aural imposition' (my term): "Some students who were interviewed for the piece didn’t think that playing music was antisocial, just that the bus was too quiet and they wanted something to listen to. However, a sociologist sees it being more about marking out ownership of space. This can be done physically – by lolling out and taking up a number of seats. It could also be done graphically by ‘tagging’ around various places. But the most immediate and obvious way of stating that you have control over a space is aurally because it flows so widely."
Now this is relatively rare in my experience (mercifully). And I think that I disagree with the sociologist's interpretation. Drawing on my own youth when, I confess, I went through a phase of doing rather similar things (only the technology was different -remember cassettes?) what I was doing was not claiming space. In the exuberance of youth I wanted to share what I enjoyed musically. I just didn't really have any idea that -as I now realise- if others didn't really like Wishbone Ash or Pink Floyd that I'd be vexing them greatly. So that's what I've assumed is going on. However, it hasn't helped me devise an intervention that I could feel would work without getting awkward or nasty. Sometimes bus drivers intervene to enforce no-music, often not.
Aural leakage, on the other hand is when someone has the ear-buds in but they are in the process of going deaf (and there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum in that) because the thin, tinny, escaped sound is irritating fellow passengers. Sometimes I've seen this challenged, particularly in the quiet carriage on a train. It seems easier to challenge: after all the user by having ear-buds in signals that they are trying to be considerate of others, so there is a basis on which to approach them to ask for the volume to be turned down.
So maybe the leakage scenario helps us to understand the imposition scenario. In the latter there is clearly no attempt to use means to minimise intrusion on others: it is desired that we should hear. Well, perhaps not always; quite often what is happening is that a handful of teens (in my experience) are sharing snippets of stuff they like with one another; perhaps they aren't really considering the wider impact at all, or if they do they may consider that they are educating the rest of us in what real music is.
I'm considering carrying around a set of those cheap £1 earbud sets and offering them to the polluters so they can share in private.
12 June 2011
A misuse of linguistics in theo-cultural comment
There are some good points made in this article and I think that the point -as I understand it- of transcending a blame-victim mentality, is a good one (after all I have recently made similar arguments):
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � The End of Blame (by Brittian Bullock).
But I would advise the reader to start at paragraph four to avoid an off-putting misapplication of linguistics. I'm really sorry to do a bit of a cutting things out job on this, but it really is hard to read some of these things with a linguistics background in place. I'd encourage Brittian to develop the basic insight (best put in the last couple of paragraphs) which I really think are helpful, but to ditch the linguistics, and the reason for that is what I'll note down below.
Here's the first faux pas: "The English language is structured very aggressively. It’s officially a S-V-O type. Which means that full and proper sentences contain a subject, a verb, and an object (and in that order)"
Yes, English is S-V-O. How is that 'aggressive'? That value judgement has no real genesis within the simple fact of syntactic system; it's hard to know where it's come from. Or why a VSO language such as Hebrew or Japanese isn't 'agressive'. It's the choice of verbs and nouns that achieves 'aggressive' language not the syntax per se. Because the syntax has to be used for both pacific and aggressive -and other- moods and descriptions, it is relatively 'neutral'.
Similarly, "In SVO language there is [sic] always three things present. First there is definitely an action–something’s happening. Second there is a clear object or person it is happening to. And thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening." Yes that's true enough (I'll not quibble for the moment, it's broadly okay). However, that is a description of the roles that are necessarily implied by a transitive verb. Case grammar, for example, is an attempt to construct an approach to grammar that starts with such basic semantic relationships rather than rules for relative ordering of elements (again simplifying). Those relationships are logical and universal and not inherent in SVO languages; VSO have the same things to try to express, they just do it slightly differently.
So, the next move: "thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening. There is always a victim. There is always someone to blame. “Johnny kicked the dog.” is an example of this. The poor dog is being victimized and little Johnny is at fault. ... our brain is constantly throwing around systems of blame." The 'victim' is only properly a victim in sentences where something violent or oppressive is being described or implied. Otherwise we are simply talking about the grammatical object who might in other circumstances be the recipient of a gift ("Johnny stroked the dog" or "Johnny fed the dog") or perhaps the something more neutral ("Johnny saw the dog" or "Johnny called the dog").
And so this is a valid point: "But what if there was an additional sentence I tagged on to the beginning of the earlier phrase about Johnny and his dog? “the dog bit Johnny. Johnny kicked the dog.” well it changes things doesn’t it? Suddenly Johnny doesn’t look so bad."
It just doesn't need the mistaken linguistic analysis that preceded it. The valid point about that is simply about what information is communicated and could be summed up with the old adage 'circumstances alter cases'.
"In fact the Garden/Fall narrative in genesis holds similarities"; yes, and it's told originally in a VSO language; blaming can be done through either syntactic system, clearly. I'm all for a good chunk of what is written about blaming in this article, I'm (as someone with linguistic training) not at all helped by the misleading language analogies.
Then we have another not uncommon but still unhelpful language strategy that a number of preachers and writers engage in. In this article we find it here: "Glory literally means fullness or wholeness". This is a form of the etymological fallacy; the idea that a word (typically, but not exclusively) means "properly" (or "literally" or "correctly" even) what its etymological origins did. This simply isn't so; we need to pay attention to how it is being used in its context (linguistic, social etc). It's etymology may even be misleading as a guide to what a writer or speaker may mean in the present context.
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � The End of Blame (by Brittian Bullock).
But I would advise the reader to start at paragraph four to avoid an off-putting misapplication of linguistics. I'm really sorry to do a bit of a cutting things out job on this, but it really is hard to read some of these things with a linguistics background in place. I'd encourage Brittian to develop the basic insight (best put in the last couple of paragraphs) which I really think are helpful, but to ditch the linguistics, and the reason for that is what I'll note down below.
Here's the first faux pas: "The English language is structured very aggressively. It’s officially a S-V-O type. Which means that full and proper sentences contain a subject, a verb, and an object (and in that order)"
Yes, English is S-V-O. How is that 'aggressive'? That value judgement has no real genesis within the simple fact of syntactic system; it's hard to know where it's come from. Or why a VSO language such as Hebrew or Japanese isn't 'agressive'. It's the choice of verbs and nouns that achieves 'aggressive' language not the syntax per se. Because the syntax has to be used for both pacific and aggressive -and other- moods and descriptions, it is relatively 'neutral'.
Similarly, "In SVO language there is [sic] always three things present. First there is definitely an action–something’s happening. Second there is a clear object or person it is happening to. And thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening." Yes that's true enough (I'll not quibble for the moment, it's broadly okay). However, that is a description of the roles that are necessarily implied by a transitive verb. Case grammar, for example, is an attempt to construct an approach to grammar that starts with such basic semantic relationships rather than rules for relative ordering of elements (again simplifying). Those relationships are logical and universal and not inherent in SVO languages; VSO have the same things to try to express, they just do it slightly differently.
So, the next move: "thirdly there is absolutely a subject inacting what’s happening. There is always a victim. There is always someone to blame. “Johnny kicked the dog.” is an example of this. The poor dog is being victimized and little Johnny is at fault. ... our brain is constantly throwing around systems of blame." The 'victim' is only properly a victim in sentences where something violent or oppressive is being described or implied. Otherwise we are simply talking about the grammatical object who might in other circumstances be the recipient of a gift ("Johnny stroked the dog" or "Johnny fed the dog") or perhaps the something more neutral ("Johnny saw the dog" or "Johnny called the dog").
And so this is a valid point: "But what if there was an additional sentence I tagged on to the beginning of the earlier phrase about Johnny and his dog? “the dog bit Johnny. Johnny kicked the dog.” well it changes things doesn’t it? Suddenly Johnny doesn’t look so bad."
It just doesn't need the mistaken linguistic analysis that preceded it. The valid point about that is simply about what information is communicated and could be summed up with the old adage 'circumstances alter cases'.
"In fact the Garden/Fall narrative in genesis holds similarities"; yes, and it's told originally in a VSO language; blaming can be done through either syntactic system, clearly. I'm all for a good chunk of what is written about blaming in this article, I'm (as someone with linguistic training) not at all helped by the misleading language analogies.
Then we have another not uncommon but still unhelpful language strategy that a number of preachers and writers engage in. In this article we find it here: "Glory literally means fullness or wholeness". This is a form of the etymological fallacy; the idea that a word (typically, but not exclusively) means "properly" (or "literally" or "correctly" even) what its etymological origins did. This simply isn't so; we need to pay attention to how it is being used in its context (linguistic, social etc). It's etymology may even be misleading as a guide to what a writer or speaker may mean in the present context.
No Hell = No Jesus?
This is a good quick way into why many evangelicals are skeptical about universalism: "Without Hell, can Jesus have any value, any meaning, as our savior?". I think Christian Beyer is right in picking up this characterisation; it fits with the way that I have heard a lot of 'everyday evos' characterise their position. However, he doesn't then really wrestle with the force of the position in articulating his own universalism, which is a shame because there is a more christological way to respond which holds strongly to the idea that the Cross really did accomplish something.
You see, the force of the position he characterises in the quote above, I believe, is that there has to be some purpose to the cross, and if it isn't salvation (by implication from hell) then what is it? It is hard to see it as other than a martyrdom which achieves something by its witness and ability to evoke sympathy or commitment. This seems to me to be a fair, even strong, position which has roots in scripture and subsequent Christian thinking.
An evangelical universalism, if there is to be such a thing, must surely be based on something that the Cross (and by that I mean the whole salvific action of Incarnation, Passion, death and Resurrection, in actual fact) has indeed created a salvation. The salvific universalist in an Evangelical mold would surely be saying that the salvation that the Cross has achieved is ultimately one which ultimately destroys hell by emptying it of occupants: no-one could find release from hell were it not for what Christ did. The main difference between that position and the more usual Evangelical positions is in the numbers -and perhaps the estimation of how efficacious the salvific events may be in relation to the problem of sin.
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � No Hell = No Jesus (by Christian Beyer):
You see, the force of the position he characterises in the quote above, I believe, is that there has to be some purpose to the cross, and if it isn't salvation (by implication from hell) then what is it? It is hard to see it as other than a martyrdom which achieves something by its witness and ability to evoke sympathy or commitment. This seems to me to be a fair, even strong, position which has roots in scripture and subsequent Christian thinking.
An evangelical universalism, if there is to be such a thing, must surely be based on something that the Cross (and by that I mean the whole salvific action of Incarnation, Passion, death and Resurrection, in actual fact) has indeed created a salvation. The salvific universalist in an Evangelical mold would surely be saying that the salvation that the Cross has achieved is ultimately one which ultimately destroys hell by emptying it of occupants: no-one could find release from hell were it not for what Christ did. The main difference between that position and the more usual Evangelical positions is in the numbers -and perhaps the estimation of how efficacious the salvific events may be in relation to the problem of sin.
TheOOZE beta | evolving spirituality. � No Hell = No Jesus (by Christian Beyer):
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