December 2010
2 posts
“A little learning is a dangerous thing”
– Alexander Pope
3 tags
[5. The Book of The Void] Shinmen Musashi. The...
What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man’s knowledge.
People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.
In the Way of Strategy, also, those who study as warriors think that whatever they cannot understand in their craft is the void....
September 2010
1 post
10 tags
[IV. Epilogue. Part One] Leo Tolstoy. War and...
- A bee sitting on a flower stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and says that a bee’s purpose consists in stinging people.
- A poet admires a bee sucking from the cup of a flower and says that a bee’s purpose consists in sucking up the fragrance of flowers.
- A beekeeper, noting how a bee gathers flower pollen and brings it to the hive, says that a bee’s purpose...
August 2010
1 post
2 tags
British Designers with US Patents
There’s no doubt that Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial design at Apple Inc, is a highly successful designer. Leaving the shores of Jolly Old England was a great idea for him as it led to him being ranked as ranked by The Sunday Times as one of Britain’s most influential expatriates.
This said, it makes me curious about other Brits who’ve dabbled their hands in the American...
July 2010
1 post
6 tags
“The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for...”
– Lyman Bryson
June 2010
2 posts
2 tags
[The Art of Commercialization] Guy Kawasaki....
“The mission of Wendy’s is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation and partnerships.”
Mission statement of Wendy’s. A fast food chain.
3 tags
Patents in China. A Snapshot for June 2010. →
China’s patents rising
February 2010
1 post
1 tag
Dave Crenshaw. The Myth of Multitasking
“Our…research offers neurological evidence that the brain cannot effectively do two things at once.”
- Rene Marious. Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University.
January 2010
2 posts
2 tags
More lessons from literature →
The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom.
3 tags
Lessons on Delegation from Tom Sawyer →
Owing to some late night escapades on a Friday night, Tom Sawyer’s mother ensured that his Saturday would involve a day of hard laborious punishment for Tom Sawyer.
December 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking
“… those with the least power are often the most sadistic if given the power of life and death over people even lower on the pecking order”
“power kills and absolute power kills absolutely” [a play on “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” by Lord Acton Power]
1 tag
“There’s never really a great way to apologize, but there are plenty of terrible...”
– Jason Fried (37signals) In “What Matters Now” by Seth Godin Free eBook downloadable here
1 tag
Iris Chang. The Rape of Nanking
The chronicle of humankind’s cruelty to fellow humans is a long and sorry tale.
November 2009
5 posts
2 tags
Soren Kierkegaard. Fear & Trembling
Once when the spice market in Holland was a little slack, the merchants had some cargoes dumped in the sea to force up the price. That was a pardonable, perhaps necessary, stratagem.
Is it something we need in the world of spirit?
the world is litigation mad →
ralph lauren vs the US polo association (a national sports governing body)
3 tags
Masters of Tacit Knowledge (Ayrton Senna) →
I was already on pole, then by half a second and then one second and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else…
3 tags
Knowledge, Intelligence, Wisdom and ... Grok →
Excerpts from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’
2 tags
[Preamble from the heart] Soren Kierkegaard. Fear...
It takes a purely human courage to renounce the whole of temporality in order to win eternity.
September 2009
5 posts
“If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”
– Thomas J. Watson, IBM
1 tag
“Science is supposed to be cumulative, not almost endless duplication of the same...”
– R. W. Hamming
1 tag
On the park bench →
On an early morning jogging visit to the nearby park, you notice a pair of unkempt men. What do you see with your eyes? What don’t you see with your eyes?
Machine translation has a long way to go
So I just put the names of all twelve months into Google Translate and this is the translation I got. Notice the 5th month, May:
一月 二月 3月 4月 可能 6月 7月 8月 9月 10月 11 12月
It didn’t even bother with the ‘月’ for November.
1 tag
Differences between Asian and Western Children. A... →
Given four words: Monkey, Banana, Cow, Grass. How do you categorize them?
The Intelligent Crowd: Browser wars. Still no... →
The Intelligent Crowd: Browser wars. Still no paradigm
August 2009
10 posts
1 tag
When madmen go mad →
A man’s wife commits suicide and he then goes on to marry a young, attractive but incompatible woman who drives him into the ground both mentally and financially. Add to this the outcome of a failing World War I effort and you might get the beginnings of a man who’s losing his marbles. Which is great news for science…
1 tag
The Intelligent Crowd Blog. RSS Feed. →
Feedburner feed for my TheIntelligentCrowd blog.
[Their Worst Clothes] Tetsuko Kuroyanagi....
The headmaster was always asking parents to send their children to school at Tomoe in their worst clothes. He wanted them to wear their worst clothes so it wouldn’t matter if they got muddy or torn.
2 tags
“It is not to see something first, but to establish solid connections between the...”
– Hans Selye
1 tag
[XXIV. Why the Italian princes have lost their...
- A common failing of mankind is to never anticipate a storm when the sea is calm.
1 tag
[XX. Whether fortresses and many of the other...
- The prince who is afraid of this own people than of foreign interference should build fortresses; but the prince who fears foreign interference more than his own people should forget about them.
- The best fortress that exists is to avoid being hated by the people.
1 tag
[XVI. Generosity and Parsimony] Niccolo...
- Good and sincere generosity will go unnoticed. It will not save you for being reproached for its opposite.
- To be generous, one must be lavish. This will put extra tax burdens on the people. These people will grow to hate you. Generosity will reward few and injure many.
- Parsimony will stand the test of time. When in crisis, the crisis can be averted without burdening the taxpayer. So he...
[XVIII. How Princes Should Honour Their Ward]...
- A lion is defenceless against traps and a fox is defenceless against wolves.
- One must be a fox in order to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.
[XVII. Cruelty and Compassion] Niccolo...
- Vergil, via mouth of Dido says: ‘Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt Moliri, et late fines custode tueri.’ or ‘Harsh necessity, and the newness of my kingdom, force me to do such things and to guard my frontiers everywhere’
- To be feared or loved is irrelevant. What is relevant is that one must not be hated.
[XIII. Auxiliary, composite and native troops]...
- Wise princes have always shunned auxiliaries and made use of their own forces. They preferred to lose battles with their own forces, than to win them with others, in the belief that no true victory is possible with alien arms.
- Armour belonging to someone else either drops off you, weighs you down or is too tight.
- Wise men have always believed: ‘quod nihil sit tam infirmum aut...
July 2009
1 post
“The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind”
– Seng Ts’an
June 2009
2 posts
[V. How cities or principalities which lived under...
[V. How cities or principalities which lived under their own laws must be administrated after being conquered] Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince.
Three ways to hold them securely:
1. By devastating them. (to ensure no possibility of revenge)
2. By going there and living there in person. (to oversee things personally, prevent your own administrators from looting the place, and thirdly fix any...
[III. Composite Principalities] Niccolo...
[III. Composite Principalities] Niccolo Machiavelli. The Prince.
- No matter how strong one’s armies are, in order to enter a country one needs the goodwill of the inhabitants.
- When invading a country: Get support from the weaker powers and destroy the stronger power entirely so that there is never a possibility of revenge. Take measures to keep the weaker powers weak, but comfortable,...
May 2009
3 posts
1 tag
“‘My aunt never lunches,’ said Clovis; ‘she belongs to the...”
– The Talking Out of Tarrington, The Chronicles of Clovis. Saki - The Complete Short Stories
4 tags
Elderly Crime Wave Shocks Japan (From 2006)
From ‘Tabloid Tokyo 2. 101 Tales of Sex, Crime and the Bizarre from Japan’s Wild Weeklies:
- A 68 year old man is arrested in Osaka for mugging high school students
- A 65 year old man strangles his wife to death for calling him “not a man”
- A 70 year old man reacts with a chainsaw from the boot of his car when scolded in a convenience store for spending too much time...
The Real Reason Text Messages are 160 Characters →
April 2009
18 posts
3 tags
Where Shall We Live and Work?
This was written in 1997 by Leif Edvinsson and Michael Malone. Nice musings on how our 21st century would be, but how much of it is actually true? Has everyone rushed to the cool places? “… the twenty-first century will see radical changes in where and how people live. In particular, the combination of powerful information technologies will make it possible for people to live and work anywhere...
1 tag
[Part 5. House on the Hill (1900-1910). 1] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- At the Bois de Vincennes, American companies are given very little space to display their wares. Could this have been that the French were scared of American engineering?
- American companies responded by making a separate building to display their machinery.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 9] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Pig iron shovelling experiments continue.
- Enter Carl Barth, a Norweigian that was employed under Taylor purely for calculations.
- Barth & Taylor experiment with different shovel sizes for shovelling iron and different speeds and methods for cutting steel.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 10] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Taylor’s work really starts to pay off.
- Hundreds of people travel from far and wide to see the work that is happening at Bethlehem Steel.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 7] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Taylor starts to consider co-authoring books on other fields such as the building trade.
- Taylor’s services start to be required by other companies.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 8] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Enter ‘Henry Knoll’ into Taylor’s life. Taylor uses Knoll to prove how much pig iron can humanly be shovelled in one day.
- Knoll is a large framed and strong man who wished to work hard and afford to build his own house.
- Other workers cannot match the speed of Knoll. Yet Taylor insists that...
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 6] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Taylor led espionage against at least 6 different companies. Using no fewer than 5 spies.
- Taylor takes up Golf. The new plaything of the upper crust.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 5] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Taylor writes his “A Piece Rate System” paper.
- Taylor’s writing is rather plain and uninspiring, often repeating the same things over and over again.
- Taylor prefers to use Anglo-Saxon based English words rather than Latin rooted English words to avoid ‘puffed-up’ language.
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 4] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- As much as he appeared to have achieved, the period 1893 to 1898 was actually a series of failures for Frederick Taylor.
- Even though he was extremely productive, he wrote papers, took part in patent suits, toured factories, sketched designs, etc and even ran a lathe machine.
- Taylor was often thrown into the thick of...
1 tag
[Part 4. A Widening World (1886-1900). 3] The One...
The one best way. Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency
- Taylor moves to Madison under the promise of riches and a chance to run a mill under ‘Captain Goodrich’
- The new mill almost fails.
- Taylor meets the most difficult labourers he’s ever had to deal with, but vows to move them to piecework.