Kaizen Media Blog

Toronto, Ontario Mayor David Miller is leading the leaders of today’s world by example. He is keeping in touch through Twitter.

mayormiller tweets often and has a following list (as of today) 1,795 which will continue to grow as more people join Twitter and start to follow him.

Check out this National Post article.

Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars

Recorded just before sunrise, this serene skyview looks east toward a glowing horizon across Tuggerah Lake on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. Along with the waning crescent Moon, the picture captures (top to bottom) bright Mercury, Jupiter, and Mars.

The World Health Organization (the who?) collaborated with the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make guidelines for health centres in Africa. The resources are limited, and diseases like Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (HV) need to be recognized, quarantined, and carefully handled. Fast.

Here’s a link to the “Infection Control for Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers in the African Health Care Setting”

It’s a pretty cool manual. You can learn how to cut and sew your very own Ebola gown, cap and face mask! Make an Ebola worthy quarantine zone! Also learn how to create a puncture proof container to dispose of used hypodermic needles, and an incinerator to burn that when it’s full! There’s tons of other useful information too about sanitizing areas and surfaces where victims have succumbed to Ebola and more!

I read on BBC News that Microsoft is planning a “privacy mode” for the next release of its Internet Explorer (IE) web browser (Internet Explorer 8). Read the entire article here.

By JANET RAE-DUPREE
Published: May 4, 2008 New York Times

HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd, William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word habit carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try the more we step outside our comfort zone the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the hippocampus, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately ingrain into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder, says Dawna Markova, author of The Open Mind and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. But we are taught instead to decide, just as our president calls himself the Decider. She adds, however, that to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.

All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At puberty, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. This breaks the major rule in the American belief system that anyone can do anything, explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will… and Ms. Markova’s business partner. That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters mediocrity. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.

This is where developing new habits comes in. If you’re an analytical or procedural thinker, you learn in different ways than someone who is inherently innovative or collaborative. Figure out what has worked for you when you’ve learned in the past, and you can draw your own map for developing additional skills and behaviors for the future.

I apprentice myself to someone when I want to learn something new or develop a new habit, Ms. Ryan says. Other people read a book about it or take a course. If you have a pathway to learning, use it because that’s going to be easier than creating an entirely new pathway in your brain.

Ms. Ryan and Ms. Markova have found what they call three zones of existence: comfort, stretch and stress. Comfort is the realm of existing habit. Stress occurs when a challenge is so far beyond current experience as to be overwhelming. It’s that stretch zone in the middle activities that feel a bit awkward and unfamiliar where true change occurs.

Getting into the stretch zone is good for you, Ms. Ryan says in This Year I Will… .It helps keep your brain healthy. It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. Continuously stretching ourselves will even help us lose weight, according to one study. Researchers who asked folks to do something different every day listen to a new radio station, for instance found that they lost and kept off weight. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general.

She recommends practicing a Japanese technique called kaizen, which calls for tiny, continuous improvements.

Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in our emotional brain, Ms. Ryan notes in her book. If the fear is big enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have access to our creativity and playfulness.

Simultaneously, take a look at how colleagues approach challenges, Ms. Markova suggests. We tend to believe that those who think the way we do are smarter than those who don’t. That can be fatal in business, particularly for executives who surround themselves with like-thinkers. If seniority and promotion are based on similarity to those at the top, chances are strong that the company lacks intellectual diversity.

Try lacing your hands together, Ms. Markova says. You habitually do it one way. Now try doing it with the other thumb on top. Feels awkward, doesn’t it? That’s the valuable moment we call confusion, when we fuse the old with the new.

AFTER the churn of confusion, she says, the brain begins organizing the new input, ultimately creating new synaptic connections if the process is repeated enough.

But if, during creation of that new habit, the Great Decider steps in to protest against taking the unfamiliar path, you get convergence and we keep doing the same thing over and over again, she says.

You cannot have innovation, she adds, unless you are willing and able to move through the unknown and go from curiosity to wonder.

Janet Rae-Dupree writes about science and emerging technology in Silicon Valley.

New York Governor, Elliot Spitzer, long-time politician, and, until today, well-known and well-respected man of the community, went considerably beyond his own, until now, self-imposed boundaries. He admitted to being involved in a “prostitution ring”, in which the “call-girls” charged up to FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS for an appointment, and the anguish of hearing his confessions was clearly revealed on the face of his wife, who was standing at his side, and, of course, it is as yet not known as to whether or not their marriage will survive. Why he felt the need to pay FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS for an appointment with a prostitute is also virtually incomprehensible, with such a beautiful woman, to whom he has been married for a considerable period of time leads, obviously, to speculations about his own perverted desires.

Elliott Laurence Spitzer was born on June 10, 1956, and raised in The Bronx, a borough of New York City that does not, by and large, with the exception of one or two “safe” districts, have any kind of reputation for the safety and security of anybody, including women and children. There are daily stories of robberies, rape and murder in The Bronx, whose reputation is very similar to that of Harlem, also part of New York City. Spitzer’s parents were Austrian/Jewish, and they lived in the affluent Riverdale section of The Bronx Spitzer’s parents were not particularly religious, and he did not have a “bar-mitzvah.”

He is a graduate of Horace Mann School, with a score of 1590 on the SAT exam. Spitzer attended Princeton University, and majored in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International affairs. He was elected Chairman of the Undergraduate Student Government, and graduated in 1981. It was there that he met his wife, Gilda Wall Spitzer, who later founded “Children for Children” – a non-profit organization.

Spitzer achieved a perfect score on the LSAT, and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School,after which he married Gilda Wall, on October 17, 1987, and they have three daughters: Elyssa (b. Dec. 12th, 1989), Sarabeth (b. July 27th, 1992) and Jenna (b. May 23rd, 1994.)

Elliott Spitzer was an editor of The Harvard Law Review. One of his classmates at Harvard Law School was Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s “Mad Money”, on which Spitzer has appeared or called in, on three occasions.

Upon receiving his Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree, Spitzer clerked for Judge Robert W. Sweet, in Manhattan, after which he joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison. He stayed there for less than two years, before leaving to join the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Later, Spitzer joined the staff of Manhattan’s District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, where he became clerk of the labor-racketeering unit, spending six years pursing organized crime. His biggest case came in 1992, when Spitzer led the investigation that ended the Gambino’s organised crime family’s control of Manhattan’s trucking and garment industries.

Spitzer’s work as a lawyer also included pursuing cases against companies in computer chip price fixing, investment bank stock-price inflation, and the 2003 mutual fund scandal.

Spitzer devised a plan to set up his own sweatshop in the city’s garment district, turning out shirts, pants, and sweaters, for which work, he hired 30 laborers. The shop manager eventually got close to the Gambino family, and officials were able to plant a “bug” in their office. The Gambinos, rather than being charged with extortion, which was hard to prove, were charged with anti-trust violations. Thomas and Joseph Gambino and two other defendents accepted the deal, and avoided jail by pleading guilty, and paying TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS in fines, and agreeing to stay out of the business.

Prior to being elected Governor, Spitzer served as New York State Attorney General.
Elliott Spitzer took the office of Governor of New York City on January 1, 2001, and remained in this same very respectable position until March 12, 2008. He was served by his lieutenant David Paterson, and Spitzer succeeded to this position following the resignation of the former Governor of New York, George Pataki.

Spitzer is an American lawyer and politician – a member of the Democratic Party. He has served as Governor of New York City since January, 2007, until he announced, on March 12, 2008. that he plans to resign.

In 1992, he launched a successful investigation that brought down the Gambino family’s, an infamous member of New York City’s Mafia, control over Manhattan’s garment and trucking industry. In the next six years, Spitzer worked at the law firms of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & Flom, and also for Constantine & Partners.

In 1998, Spitzer defeated incumbent Republican Dennis Vacco, by a slim margin, to become elected as New York State’s Attorney General. His campaign was financed, in part, by a controversial multi-million dollar loan from his father.

In 2006, Elliott Spitzer was elected Governor of New York, after defeating Republican John Faso in the November election. During his time in office, he has proposed a bill that would legalise same-sex marriage in New York, and issued an executive order allowing illegal aliens to be issued driver’s licenses, which both attracted controversy.

In July, 2007, Spitzer was admonished for his administration and involvement in ordering the State Police to record the whereabouts of State Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno.

It is hard to believe that such a man – intelligent, well-educated, well-respected, and well-off financially should have felt it necessary to break his own barriers, and feel the necessity to commit somewhat minor crimes, thereby tarnishing forever his former good name.

Cancer (June 22 – July 22)
Your desire for something is becoming very intense and, as it does so, you are starting to worry. You fear it may be unwise to raise your hopes so high. If you avoid complications and focus on priorities, you’ll clearly see you won’t be disappointed.

Pisces (Feb. 20 -March 20)
There is a sense now in which you are rather unhappy concerning something that once seemed full of sweet promise. Your doubts are based on spurious information. Hope is still alive and kicking as you will see later this week.

Taken from the TorontoStar.com March 9, 2008

Holy shit!

I can’t even believe it.

Maybe it was the $1.4B lawsuit for anti-competitive practices that finally opened their eyes, but IE8 is actually going to “interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can” reversing their previous position of ‘Fuck everyone else and the horse they rode in on, we’re Microsoft’. Click here to read the article at IEBlog.

The update log of IE reads more like a comedy act than a globally used software designed and updated by paid professionals. One of these days I’ll get around to posting more specifics as to why IE sucks so much, but for now just trust me, it’s a pathetic state of affairs.

It’s good that they are finally starting to think forward at Microsoft, but they really should have thought of that years ago.