Blog2005


31 December. Wifi Fireworks.
Snow and ice and lots of fireworks going off. The official notice in the newspapers this week announced that residents must blow up fireworks between 10:00 today and 02:00 tomorrow morning. My kids asked me if I would get in trouble if I did _not_ set off fireworks too. They are a bit too literal.
As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed my wifi today.
I put on my Noisebuster FX headphones, plugged them into my computer, launched iTunes to listen to my own music and to music stored on my son's Powerbook. No fireworks sounds disturbed me, and the music brightened up my own workspace.

Sitting on the living room sofa, I did email, wrote a bit on the wiki, and enjoyed being away from my desk and all the reminders of things left undone this year.

I got the network printing to work from a Mac, but from the Wintel computer it still would not. I kept getting an error message saying that the printer name was too long. "\\network printer Kyocera FS-1010\" seemed ok as a printer name for the Macs, but it was too much for Windows XP.

The wireless connection seems slow compared to the ethernet connection. I will set up two Powerbooks with the "MacStumbler" wifi signal meter, put one on my bed and one on the sofa, along with a kid-watcher and then I'll move around the wifi router at the end of a very long ethernet cable until both computers show the best signal strength. Then I'll find a way to hand the router from a wall or ceiling.
This is what portable computer should be--wireless internet, email, music. All from a comfortable place, either alone sitting on my bed or in the middle of family events in the living room. I've even had about 3 hours on my battery so far.
30 December. John Maxwell.
Big snow today and the kids spent hours out playing in it. Not me. I stepped out a few times to nail my oldest son, and then retreated to a sofa with a mug of tea and a book. The book today was interesting: John Maxwell's Winning Attitude / Developing the Leaders Around You / Becoming a Person of Influence. The main point I took away was that my influence can extend far beyond my own ability to do work. For example, until recently, I have done all the maintenance for the family collection of computers and electronic things. I've begun taking advantage of maintenance needs to train one of the older kids to do the diagnostics and repair steps themselves. It takes a lot more time initially, but pretty quickly training in troubleshooting becomes my approach. Not always, but enough to make a difference. A few times the older ones also step up to train a younger one how to do something. As a learning familiy, this should be our norm. Already the kids do most of the normal household chores of keeping everyone fed and the house clean. The older train the younger.
29 December. Statistical Progression in Analysis.
This project is frustratingly slow. I printed out 130 pages of data correlations today to begin the deeper look at my Basra project. I selected the 70 most important questions and ran correlations, comparing all possible answers among those 70 questions. For example, I compared answers to the question of "age" against all other questions. There were quite a few questions where the answers showed patterns related to the age of the respondent. Unfortunately, SPSS would only allow me to run these queries in small numbers at a time. So, I had to set up sets of questions to compare against each other. There is a way to change the SPSS settings for amount of memory available and the number of cells that can be treated at a single time. I tried a few changes, but it did not seem to make a difference to the program. It kept telling me I had insufficient memory (my 1.5 gigabytes is insufficient?) and that I was exceeding the maximum number of cells for simultaneous operation.
I am writing my notes on how to step through the analysis onto a page at Statistical Steps. This is not very practical yet, but I hope to make it more of a handbook, and to help me remember what I've done.
28 December. Wireless Family Life.
Today was the first time I actually moved my Powerbook off the desk in a long time. I wanted to be in the family room, acting a bit more sociable. Several points I noticed immediately: 1. 6 cables to undo before I was truly "wireless." 2. I had forgotten the contrast between using a small notebook keyboard and built-in trackpad compared with my giant desktop keyboard and separate giant trackball with three buttons. 3. There really is a huge difference between my 100k ethernet port and my much slower wifi connection, especially when I am relaxed on a pillow and not in "the optimal" orientation to the wifi router. 4. I really like being away from my desk, with all the other distractions. 5. I really, really like being with my family more than just snuggled up to my computers and techtools. People are life, and everything else is supplementary. 6. I like the quiet of being away from a printer, a phone, a buzzy power supply. Battery alone is quiet.
27 December 2005. Tags in blogging.
Snow, ice, wind, sun, rain. I guess we hit all weather types today. Except warm. Friends visited for several hours as we watched their very cute 13 month old wobble around our living room.
If I get it just right, I can lie on the very edge of my bed with my head at the foot, and can catch sunrays if there are any, on my face from about 12:40 until about 13:00. Just that little bit of sun seems to help my day feel happier. Today it was delicious.
Several new sources of help in my computer use:
Using "tags" to mark online text in blogs or webpages for finding again. I should make this learning how to tag a priority, I guess, but writing and formatting the wiki pages is now a lower priority than getting finished with my Iraq data, along with research projects for other clients. I enjoy writing, and will get better only as I write more. I've found that I enjoy most and am better at finding answers to specific questions from contacts. Running a longterm project is not as much fun for me if it does not meet needs of users.
Tips on blogging have great ideas on making blogs more useable and readable. Recommended.
Future of Web 2.0 gives insight as to where web content and control is leading. Recommended.

There is a lot I should do to make these wiki pages more friendly to me and to others. I used to feel good about my ability to keep up in many aspects of computer applications and hardware. Now, it seems that there are more questions than answers coming my way each day, with fewer experts in my network to ask questions of. Even finding experts who really know their stuff seems to be more difficult. I've hired several experts to do network wiring for me, or to work on computers for me, or to even fix my mobile phones. After paying them, I often end up doing the work again myself to get it right.
After paying 20.00 Euros to have my mobile phone repaired last week, it failed again yesterday. Based on previous experience, the dealer will send it off again for another week or two to the repair depot and they will send it back saying that they could not find anything wrong with it. I know what is wrong--it locks up if it has not been used for a few hours and it has to be shut off and started up again before it can be used to either send or receive calls. The expert claimed, the time before last, that I was not using it correctly and that was the source of the problem. I've used phones enough to believe that I should expect a phone to be always ready to either send or receive call, and not to have to shut it off and switch it on again if I should want to use it.

24 December. Jan Karon.
Cooking was the main event of the day for other family folks. My job was eating. I also tried (again) to get network printing to work. Not. I tried (again) to get my computer calendar synchronized among the home computers. Not.
The new project for the day was considering how to think different about speeding up my data analysis and writing projects. Several projects.
During our family advent sing-along time, we telelphoned to other family members to let them sing with us. This is fun, sharing our family memories. We also had fresh onion soup and Lane Cake icing on crepes. Several times during each day of the past week we continued our read-aloud of _Shepherds Abiding_ by Jan Karon, a story set in Miford, North Carolina, and the latest family acquisition in the series of the Mitford books. Highly recommended.
23 Dec. Apeldoorn Party.
Tonight I had a fun evening at a party of immigrants and their friends. About fifty people, lots of food, singing, dancing, and a lot of happy talk. Long drive for me and I only made about six wrong turns.
Earlier today I worked (again) on getting the wiki menu customized, catching up on email, and making a lot of phone calls.
New food in the house included several more types of homemade cookies and two pies.
22 Dec. GSM Remote.
My SonyEricsson mobile phone just came back after an extended trip to the service center. All data was erased, of course. I started up the "GSM Remote" utility and reloaded my old addresses into the phone and simcard. That was fast.

After working through the settings I took a long look at the phone's Bluetooth wireless capabilities. Then I looked at my Macintosh computer's Bluetooth capabilities. Hmmm.
My Eudora email program is synchronized with my Apple Address Book. I imported all the old phone's addresses into My Apple Address Book, which has an auto-synchronization feature. I looked at my iCal schedule program on the computer which has a syncronization ability. Hmmm. Eudora can read the Apple Address Book, but any changes I make while using Eudora will not be saved into the Apple Address Book.

I turned on the phone's bluetooth. I turned on the computer's bluetooth. I clicked on iSync. Flashing lights, whirling dials, and it said "Syncronizing with T68." After about five minutes it was done and I went to the phone's address book. All the names and phone numbers from my computer address book were there. I went to the phone's calendar function. All the dates and events for the next month were there.
I used to love having a Palm Pilot to carry my contacts and calendar items with me, but I never could keep it easily synchronized with my computer, especially the calendar function. For about a year I've used a weekly printout of my calendar on paper to carry with me at all times.
I still plan to get a "Smartphone" with a larger screen, larger keys, and ability to handle phone + text messaging + calendaring. Now I know that it can work, and that this Bluetooth wireless synchronization is fast. It just works.
The next challenge is to get my printer at home able to print from any of the home computers without wires. This is a frustration. Why can't a printer be more like a phone?
I look at my notebook computer with six wires I have to disconnect any time I want to work somewhere other than my desk. The plugging and unplugging makes me leave the computer on the desktop and just use paper when I want to do something sitting downstairs or on the bed or on a trip. I've got to figure out how to free up this notebook to travel.

21 December. Kid Shopping.
I took the children shopping this evening. I bought chocolates and gave them as presents to the owners of the mobile phone repair shop where I go by to visit once in a while and to get phones repaired. Then we split up and I took one child to buy normal food (lentils and rice) and to chat with a shopkeeper, while the other kids wandered through the shopping area. Their backpacks were bulging when we joined back up together. My little shopping buddy got candy and chocolates where we were. There are advantages to doing errands with Papa!
20 December. Back to the Dragons.
Dragon's Den on tv again. What a great show on the BBC. Each show presents the five venture capitalists who want to find good entrepreneurs to invest in. Each show usually has 4-5 sub-standard "pitches" and then the last pitch gets money from the dragons. One pitch tonight almost got a lot of money, but did not have a patent yet on his project for a wireless camera mounted on a helmet for cyclists or skydivers. Great project, but without patent protection, they all would have lost money. The final pitch was for a simple, high-end flatscreen tv trolley and mounting system. The entrepreneur had patents, was selling increasing amounts of products each year, and wanted money for expansion. He got the money because:
1. He knew immediately all numbers on sales (past and present), profit, costs, reasonable projected growth in the future, and all competition in the marketplace;
2. He knew his stuff, was not intimidated, AND he tended to understate his profitability and successes. The dragons seemed attracted because they could add the numbers and see the profit potential without him having to boast. They could easily see how they could make money by investing their money and their marketing expertise into his project and they were eager to join him. He was professional in his approach, and was prepared to answer any questions they might have, and he sold them on their benefit that would come by joining them.
19 December. Why is Iraq so Normal?
Reading and re-reading the August 2005 data from Basra, Iraq, and wondering why the respondents seem so "normal." There seem no really surprising trends or correlations among the selection of 100 business owners and managers. They are regular small business guys, well-connected within their own spheres of work and to neighbors who live close to them. This is actually so delightful to see that they are just men doing their best to run a business and make the world a better place for their children. I add a few data points occasionally to the Iraq research page. The main projects are to get this raw data to tell a unique story, in a reputable format that academics and others will appreciate.
18 December.
Wonderful fun visit today with Marc van der Woude and family. They joined us for lasagne, coffee and sweets. Marc writes the Joel News newsletters as well as one of my favorite blogs. Good talks about the Netherlands, church in the Netherlands and Europe, and childrens' learning styles. Marc writes very well about the concerns of church and state in Europe, and includes massive numbers of links to other sources of fresh information.
17 December. Me, a scorekeeper?
Kids had volleyball today and there was a panic when one of the simultaneous men's games had no scorekeeper. They asked me if I would do it. I have watched a lot of volleyball, but have never though much about the scorekeeping. I said, "I don't know how, but I will find someone." The spectator stands were empty, strangely, so I ran down the street and found my oldest son. He was willing. And he knew how. I sat next to him and said, "Will you show me how to keep score? I need to learn and this is a good time to do it." So, my son was the trainer, and I was a very attentive pupil. I got it.
But, I realized that this is not a good activity for me. All the noise, the balls bouncing around, the players yelling and pushing so close to me. And, I was supposed to keep an eagle eye fixed on the referee at all times because she only gave the pronouncement on point, cause of the point, time outs, and rotations in short motions and only once. If I was distracted by something, I missed her call and that was bad. There should be a sign on the scorekeepers' table saying, "THIS IS NOT A TASK FOR A BORDERLINE ADD OR ADHD PERSON."
15 December. Iraq Elections.
It was exciting to follow the blogs and news reports on these elections. There seemed to be much more intensity of participation, and the candidates seemed to be better known than those of last winter. With each election event, there seems to be more local ownership and global discussion of content. Not just "can we vote without getting killed," but instead, "How shall we vote to make a difference." The number of Iraq blogs is growing so fast that it is thrilling to see the alternate sources of news other than the standard mass media channels.
14 December.
Meetings today with friends from Amsterdam, Germany, and France. Learned more about immigrant integration in those areas, and how to access the immigrants to measure integration and assimilation and relations between indigenous and immigrant people. There is much more movement, like brownian motion, of all people, and so it becomes more challenging to isolate and measure change and assimilation on personal and group levels. I did several pilot assessments of acculturalization over the past few years, among Iranian and Ethiopian communities. It will be interesting to go back and compare that data with current assessments of those same people to see how they have changed. Maybe. After the current Iraq and Kurdish projects are done.
13 December. NL Demographics.
The Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics has available excellent data. For very detailed analyses of who lives where in the Netherlands, I went to Statline Databank, then Selecteren via Themaboom. In the pop-up window, I chose "Mens en Maatschapij. I chose Allochtonen (foreigners) by region of the country, and then could look at individual ethnic groups in the country, sorted by age, gender, and city or community of the community. Great data to understand the tremendous assets that some communities have when they have large immigrant communities bringing new ways of thinking and problem-solving, and building trade relationships back to other homelands of the immigrants. There is considerably more data available in the Dutch language version of the website compared with the English version.

12 December. Basra.
I continue to add details on the Basra findings. With the excitement of the upcoming Iraq elections, it would be great to have census data or even exit poll surveys to link with my social networks data, and have contacted repeatedly Iraq's Ministry of Planning, US Census Department, and UN Offices. Strange that public information is withheld from the public.
An appointment today kept me away from my favorite monthly event, the ERCOMER business meeting and seminar.
8 December. Honor-Shame.
People generally hate to be ashamed or embarrassed, and they like to be honored. Traditionally outsiders working into a new culture are warned about local sensitivities that might interfere with getting results quickly. In many places, outsiders may be tolerated, but they are not respected and are not admired. In the books by Bill Musk (in the Reference Library ), he describes the deep-rooted fears that drive Muslim cultures, especially Honor and Shame. Roland Muller expands the list to include: guilt-innocence, shame-honor, and fear-power. Mr. Muller gives in his short paper one of the best introductions to Muslim Arab culture that I have ever seen. This is highly recommended reading.
Introducing change into a culture with strong forces of these fears can seem to attack each of these balances, provoking hostility and resentment, even in "progressive" cultures. Or, at least, passivity. I
will describe these in a fuller paper later, as I attempt to unravel some strange twists in the Basra research on business owners and managers. Meanwhile, Mr. Muller's paper is well worth reading, especially the last third describing how such fears and inertias interact with western observers and outside forces.
7 December. Computer migration.
Today I migrated from my older (5 year old) Powerbook to a new Powerbook 17 inch. I delayed doing the transfer until I knew I had several hours to get it done. In summary it worked, and in less than the eight hours I planned. Using Apple's Migration Assistant helped get all the files, documents and applications, and settings moved. The rest of the time was setting preferences to a new way of operating that I want to test. And the aliases/shortcuts that I use to keep my systems organized. A big mistake was to not trust the computer and attempt to recopy all data after the computer indicated it was done. I ended up with double copies and because of my interference, the subdirectories were renamed in appropriately.
But, it worked and I am now successfully fully operating on the new system.
Next is to get my mobile phone back to the dealer to see if they can fix it; it stopped working a month ago and I had to borrow my son's. Now that I've seen friends using pda-phone/smartphone units, it make more sense to have a phone with enough space to handle all contacts and also a calender that stays in sync with a computer calender. The Sony Ericsson P910 seems to be ideal, except that it doesn't handle audio mp3 storage and playback. I have dozens of audio cds that I would like to listen to, on business, research, and training, but I dislike sitting somewhere to just listen while carrying around a dedicated mp3 or cd player.
One smartphone could replace my current set of mobile phone + pda + cd player + extra batteries for everything!
6 December. Dragons and style.
Tonight was the tv show, Dragon's Den. One guest tried to sell his vision for advertising on Smartcars, Taxis, and by stenciling ads on streets by cleaning away the dirt in letters and graphics. Nice idea, but he did not get much appreciation from the venture capitalists. One comment was from Doug, an American funder. Doug always wears a nice suit. The supplicant did not, and in fact was rather contentious against those he was trying to get money from. In the end Doug attempted to tell him that if he was serious about getting money from successful people, he should dress in a way that those with money wanted him to dress--respectfully. I looked at the other funders sitting with Doug; several other men did not wear suits.
In Iran, I was told that wearing a tie represented imperialism of the British.
It does seem strange to me that such a small item as a piece of cloth hung around the neck is seen to enhance one's appearance.
In Dutch, the word for necktie and badger are the same--Das.
5 December, 2005. Development Gateway.
One of my favorite sources of news and e-newsletters is that of Development Gateway, a portal to a very diverse collection of news, articles, research, and commentary on relief and development. I personally benefit from their "Iraq Relief and Recovery" section. A lot. Today's favorite link was to Terry Maguire's pages on Iraq and the Internet. Mr. Maguire's page asks many significant questions about the past and future of Iraq's role in the world wide web, relevant to his roles at the Monaco Media Forum and the Mediterranean Media Center, Nice, France.
As the numbers of Iraqis online grow, the next great step forward should be in online surveys and research. Online surveys offer the benefits of privacy, security, and anonymity. And, the speed of processing and publishing of results means that survey results can be live and updated instantly. I have experimented quite a bit with online surveys in these wikis, but the handling of several language systems, merging into and out of databases, and skillfully screening out bogus surveys requires some expertise that I do not yet have accessible in my networks.
2 December. Advent.
This time of year is my most favorite time for family events. The big deal is our family advent celebration. Every evening after supper, we put candles on the table for each person present, and each person gets to choose Christmas songs for all of us to sing. Sometimes one will play piano or guitar, but we usually enjoy just singing together. Then we have homemade cookies or cake or ice cream or something else very special. Having guests join us is also part of the tradition, and they can suggest new or different songs too. Advent is from 1 December until 24 December, and is fun for us as we celebrate together in anticipation. Want to join us?
1 December 2005. Pay Forward.
My daughter came in excited this afternoon after a neighbor paid her for "playing and watching" their young child. My daughter thoroughly loves small children and has spent many happy hours this summer and fall entertaining babies and small children so that parents could do yardwork or housecleaning or other projects that did not need the "assistance" of a small person. The more interesting point is that she has not asked for money or a paying job, but yet today saw that giving to help others, while learning how to do a job properly and responsibly, can give a benefit. A son learned this as well, when he kept on faithfully with his newspaper deliveries even when the payment system failed and he was not getting his due money for quite a long time. Because of his reliable work and good attitude, he gets asked if he wants other routes to do that are better paying with less travel time between houses.
As a family, we stress doing good for our community, and have met so many wonderful friends as a result. And, by volunteering to do scorekeeping at volleyball games, when a big game comes up, the scorekeeping family member gets a great viewpoint.
28-30 November. Barcelona and Vueling.
My wife and I went a few days to visit friends in Barcelona, Spain. This was my first time there since 1973 and this was one of the best trips we have had together. The sun was out every day, the people were friendly, the food was good, and we had many happy hours being together, walking. Except for the first day when I twisted my ankle and had to limp back to the apartment and keep it elevated with ice on it. I was intrigued by the prospect of learning about the supposedly large immigrant communities.

Several things I did to discern what was going on beneath the detailed statistics published by the city of Barcelona:
1. Watch and listen to how people on the street relate when they are of obvious different ethnic backgrounds;
2. Walk the streets in the lowest-income parts of the city and study how well maintained and clean and attractive the buildings and streets are;
3. Look for clusters of satellite dishes;
4. Look for large groups of unemployed young men hanging around on street corners;
5. Look at elderly women on the streets to see if they act afraid of being attacked.

In these terms, what did I see?
1. White europeans acted politely to those of other ethnic backgrounds, even those from sub-saharan Africa or northern Africa, and I saw little disrespect shown by foreigners against the Spanish nationals;
2. The streets were clean and neat and there was a lot of repainting and upscaling of many older apartment complexes, and the street sweepers did not look ashamed of their employment;
3. There were few buildings with very high concentrations of satellite dishes, and there were not too many dishes that I could see from street level, but were mostly sitting on top of the buildings, and this means that those seeking news and entertainment from other countries were not densely packed into a few parts of town;
4. Even very late at night, there were no crowds of young men hanging around, although I heard stories of pickpockets and petty theft from many people;
5. The elderly were not afraid to walk up to strangers to ask directions, and seemed not to be afraid to ride alone in busses or the metro.

I also did not see many ethnic hangouts, like teashops, where young men would tend to congregate. There were a few, but the glances I received from the patrons were not antagonistic. There were quite a few mosques and temples listed on the city website, and I walked by some of them, and found that they were very discreet, or hidden, and they did not have graffiti and were not guarded outside.

I'm sure that I will return to Barcelona, for another vacation or for work. This ranks as one of my most favorite places in Europe.
Favorite restaurant: Prince de Barcelona, Carrer de la Marina 66 (between Ramon Turro and Llull). Owner: Abdul. Excellent food at an excellent price-- 16.00 Euros for two at dinner!

Another comment:
I flew for the first time on the new airline, Vueling, and was very impressed. By leaving out the "free" food and drinks, and by using an internet-mostly e-ticketing service, their prices were half of what the traditional airlines could offer. The seats were still too close together, but they were almost comfortable, and the staff were very competent and helpful.

I missed celebrating the anniversary of Winston Churchill's birth in 1874. He did see clearly his present and future, and should be studied more intensely by those seeking to understand modern Europe.

27 November, Sunday.
I drove a son to a volleyball tournament in Aalsmeer, home to Dutch flower auctions. Giant glasshouses seemed full of trays where workers sort and clean and package flower bulbs. Not just tulips, but also lots of other bulb-type flowers. Almost every home on the streets backed up to glasshouses or fields where flowers are grown. I have noticed from an airplane these large glasshouses that are so brightly lit all day every day. Now I have seen them up close and they are nice works of art.

23 November, Wednesday.
Studied more on migration, especially North African immigrants into Spain, and their trail to the northlands of Europe. A new source of information is the World Christian Database. This is a very comprehensive source of information on nations and ethnic and religious groups. Being a large database, a user can study culture and religion in many combinations.
For example, I first looked at nations and Netherlands and found 400 (I think) data fields on aspects of life. Then I looked by "peoples" and compared populations of people groups inside Netherlands with those living in other places. The predictions as to changes in demographics over the next 45 years gave interesting insights into how some people think that the world will change. Full access to the database can be had for US$10 per day, or by month or year.
22 November, Tuesday.
Concentrated today on thinking about migration flows in Europe. And what is a "big picture" image of multiculturalism. It seems to me that ethnic minority people under the age of 25 are determined to become just like the ethnic majorities. Their worldview and culture is much more integrated into multiple parallel streams of identity. For example, an Iraqi 17 year old is the child of a friend. All day she is in school being just like the Dutch youth her own age. Afternoons find her with Dutch friends working in a small shop. Evenings find her going out with her Dutch friends. Her lifestyle is the same as theirs. Until she gets home late at night. Then she switches to speaking Arabic, she uses cultural behaviors that would be approved by her grandparents back in Iraq. Then she goes into her bedroom, starts studying in Dutch mode, and her learning now is in the Dutch manner, not in the rote memorization way of her parents. She switches personalities according to who she is with, and she told me that it is natural for her to switch back and forth between ways of behaving, since her behavior is according to her environment. When she changes her environment, or whom she is in conversation with, her behavior and personality automatically change. She tells her parents the version of truth that they expect, and she tells her friends and teachers the versions of truth that they expect from her. This is multiculturalism at the second generation level.
The conflict comes when her vision and understanding of the future (identical to that of her Dutch friends) comes against the expectations of her parents. The violent reactions will come when she has to choose between those two expectations. As a woman, that should be somewhat easier than for young men, who nurture peer approval differently than do young women.

21 November, Monday.
This was an exciting deeper look at results of the surveys from Iraq. Results.
I also wrote a lot of emails. A pleasure was writing a letter of endorsement to a young woman who helped with translation and data collection in Holland. Her school program can allow her some credit for professional work done in her field of study (sociology). We did spend a LOT of time discussing research strategy, data collection, analysis and reporting, so I have no hesitation recommending that she receive a considerable amount of school credit for the on-the-job training and experience that she received.

I listened yesterday to a lecture on mentoring. The talk was actually on retirement, but the basic principle was that retirement is no fun unless:
1. you can be involved in what you really love doing that is important to you and getting results;
2. you can build ever-increasing streams of income (security) while you are doing what you love.
The speaker, Michel Masterson, found his own satisfaction and security from helping younger contacts to become successful. He would seek out candidates with intelligence, passion, drive to succeed, and with whom he could sense a fun relationship. He would coach them along, building a new business that they were successful at, while his share of the profits of the business decreased from 100% to 75% to 50% to 25%, as he gave them increasing control and responsibility for the enterprise. He adds a number of new candidates to his pool of students each year, and by helping them to succeed, he feels satisfaction of passing on his wisdom to the next generation. And, by starting new businesses each year, he adds to his own financial security. He also makes money from writing newsletters (such as the "Early to Rise" e-letter mentioned via the link here by his name).
I like it when people make money honestly, and when they take the time to write what they've learned along the way that might help me and others do a better job of training our own children. And like he has learned, the most satisfaction comes from passing on wisdom to the next generation. You cannot do that if you do not write and do not mentor others. Instead, your wisdom dies with you.

20 November, Sunday.
The big news today was the family of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have disowned him in Jordanian newspapers. al-Zarqawi is actually Ahmed Fadheel Nazzal al-Khalayleh, of the Beni Hasan tribe, and his family paid for large advertisements to distance the clan from his connection to the bombing of hotels on 9 November. The significance of this public act is understated in the western press, but for those living in a world of "family first," this means that his family, clan and tribe will no longer accept responsibility for his actions, and neither can he easily travel and live under their protection. Neither will he have access to their money. This is how families settle problems with rogue members, and it often works. They did not take the final step of regaining honor by killing him. That, too, makes a statement for those reading deeper.
The question then remains, why do other families allow or encourage their members to kill Iraqis, Egyptians, Saudis, Persians, or others? What was the trigger point for this family at this time to move them to action? What happened in the weeks since the bombing that made them weigh the honor/shame balance and find that supporting him was costing them more than they gained? Tribal pressure from the King? Economic pressure from the business community?
The al-Khalayleh family was in Kassarat neighbourhood of Zarqa, outside of Amman. It is an industrial area, with many Palestinians and Iraqis. Other news sources tell of Abu Musab being known as a thug. Details on how Abu Musab's networks grew and prospered, see Cicero Article.

For a humane and considered explanation of the differences to ordinary Muslims between resistance and terrorism, see NoTerrorismInIslam.com. The authors call for longterm vision of war against illiteracy and poverty, not innocent people.

For a perspective on the Muslim intellectuals on their own fear of attack from radicals, see the article, Arab Intellectuals: Under Threat by Islamists.  This article is another source for the quote about not all muslims being terrorists.
18 November, Friday.
 I've had a lot of late-night events this week, with full days of finishing reports on older ethnic relations research before jumping into my new data for deeper analysis. Too much time sitting at the computer or sitting in the car or sitting in the train, or sitting in meetings. Sitting long and good health feelings are incompatible in my current body.

The european ethnic riots and conflicts are not over, even though the western press has moved on. Several emails have come in this week from contacts wanting my opinion on the causes and solutions. A local commentator said that over all the world people have been made to feel that they have a right to be at least equal in power and money to everyone else, and that in their worldview, if they are not given easily what they want, then they have the right to follow the example of the "famous" terrorist organizations to make trouble for other people to show their dissatisfaction and anger.

This ultimate self-centeredness of killing others who do not give you what you want is the purest evidence of the depravity of humankind.

Humanity is not increasing worldwide, despite the billions of dollars being spent on social programs and poverty programs and human rights programs. There is something going on that money and good intentions cannot solve. Better administration does not stop personal moral failure. More wealth does not stop self-centeredness. Military power cannot force ethnic harmony. These are all different spheres of life, different planes of interaction. It is like fixing a flat tire by putting more fuel in the tank.

A new article caught my eye today, "Not all Muslims want to integrate" by Bruce Bawer in Norway. Few mainline newspapers are willing to point out facts the way that this article has. "The recent rioting in Paris suburbs and elsewhere in Europe should not have surprised anyone. Europe's Muslim communities are powder kegs, brimming with an alienation born of both an assiduously inculcated antagonism toward infidel society and an infidel society whose integration policies - which should actually be called segregation policies - have perversely encouraged this ire." In spite of several big words, this writer speaks what many of us think.

16 November, Wednesday.
 I do not often sell things via the internet. I buy many, but seldom sell. Today was different.
A friend moved away and left me with some of his unneeded household items to dispose of. I decided to post a few adverts on the local sale page, Martktplaats. Within 9 minutes I had my first email asking about a certain item. Within 18 hours I had four phone calls, 2 emails, and 2 bids posted. I was amazed, truly amazed.

While I was posting the ads, we were watching a tv show called "Dragon's Den," where entrepreneurs pitch their products to a team of five venture capitalists. The basic idea is that if the promotion and sales potentials are well grounded, then any one of the VCs can hand over cash, or several of them can go together to provide funding in exchange for about 40% ownership of the venture. Most of the entrepreneurs were not adequately prepared with financial details, market studies, or how to sell their ideas. This is a fascinating show because the VCs explain why they do or do not choose to invest, and what the entrepreneurs could do to improve their own chance of success.
There is a "bottom line" to every type of business. That is the main point--how do I get to my own bottom line? Will others buy my explanation?

I look forward to the day when our family can work together to provide funds like this to small business startups and to charities working in the Middle East. It would be a lot of fun for me to work through financial statements and choose several projects each month to support.
15 November, Tuesday.
Useful links came in today.
1. what is a blog?
- What is a Blog?
- "Blog" Entry in Wikipedia

2. what is rss?
- Getting Started with RSS

3. What is the best way to stay updated on issues and documents in "forced migration?"
Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog

4. The Art of Chaordic Leadership? by Dee Hock.
This is a very interesting article on an alternate and more humane view of leadership. Instead of treating people like things, work with people as partners.

11 November, Friday.
Henk Dekker, director of the Ethnic Relations research group I am part of was quoted by the Boston Globe on the ethnic conflicts in Europe:
"Not all analysts agree that Europe is drifting toward an ethnic cataclysm. But most agree that alienation among Muslim youth is mounting, and that European societies are belatedly recognizing the danger. 'The young people raised by parents of one culture are trying to figure out their place in another culture -- and many are suffering a huge identity crisis," said Hank Dekker, director of the European Research Center on Migration and Ethnic Relations at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. 'If people believe they are deprived of their rights or the opportunities held out to others, they will respond with aggression -- that is as true for a quiet place like the Netherlands as for countries with even wider gaps," he said."

For years, our institute has provided leading analyses and commentary on migration and ethnic relations, with a constant stream of scholars working with us to understand better these topics. ERCOMER links include a virtual library of publications, and individual papers are available on the web site as well. This is a valuable website for those seeking to know a deeper perspective on the current problems between ethnic groups in Europe and beyond.
9 November, Wednesday.
 Reading today To Give Their Gifts: Health, Community, and Democracy - by Richard Couto. An introduction paragraph stated that differences of health status among nations were most related to differences in social conditions within nations. That is, average levels of income or social status or healthcare of nations were not appropriate for comparing well-being among different nations. The most important way to compare wellbeing among different nations was by comparing the differences between social groups inside of individual nations. Countries with greater extremes of wellbeing appear to have deep-rooted problems that go beyond wealth of the national as a whole. I plan to study his source on this myself: "Is Inequality Bad for Our Health?" by Norman Daniels, Bruce Kennedy, and Ichiro Kawachi, 2000, published in Boston by Beacon.
8 November, Tuesday.
 I did _NOT_ go to another seminar today, in spite of it being on a favorite and useful topic--social network analysis. I chose to use the large block of time to do my own statistical work. Hard going today as I attempted to finish the rewriting of an article on the Basra study of 2003. Some days I find statistical anaysis with SPSS so clear and logical. Today was not one of those days. I found myself unable to get the big picture of why some procedures with some data worked and other combinations did not. I guess I need another statistical book, since I could not find detailed references on the internet to help me work through my methodology. The newest book by Andy Field, Discovering Statistics seems to be the best solution for me. Unless I get a breakthrough fast, or can get a lunch meeting with one of my expert colleagues at the university.

I was up real early this morning to do my search thing of seeking census data on Iraq. I turned over a substantial portion of my Middle East books and resources to a university library a few years ago, including a copy of the 1987 census of Iraq. Unfortunately, it has disappeared from their holdings and I cannot find any Iraq census or demographic data at all. Gallup Organization collected some census-type data in 2003-2004, but they are unable to share that with others. Ministry of Planning collected some as well, but are also unable to share. The UN-HIC center in Baghdad had published initial reprints of the 1987 data, but it was very incomplete compared to the full census data set that I had before.
So, I will keep asking around until I find something. This is important. Collecting surveys of what individuals thing is best used in combination with general data about communities where the surveyed respondents live or work.
7 November, Monday.
 Seminar today on ethnic differences in the labor market of Belgium by Marcel Lubbers. This was the most lively and passionate discussion I have seen at our seminars. Marcel communicated very clearly and enthusiastically about the employment differences between ethnic Belgians, Turks, Moroccans, and Italians on the community, province, region, and national level. Most of our seminars are in a traditional format: introduction by the moderator, 45 minute presentation by the speaker, 15 minute challenge to assumptions and methodology and conclusions by the "discussant", 15 minute break, 30 minute open floor for anyone to ask questions. Then we adjourn to a nearby pub for an hour or so to talk about ongoing research and teaching projects. Today was different. The discussant jumped in almost as soon as the presentation began, questioning Dr. Lubbers about a methodological point. That was the last of the calm. Since the floor appeared to be open, the questions and discussions almost prevented Dr. Lubbers from completing his overview, much less his well-planned explanation of his work. I enjoyed this seminar very much and eagerly look forward to reading Dr. Lubbers' book on right-wing voting patterns in Europe, where he also attempts to deal with how less-educated people are more inclined to vote for strong authoritarian powers.

5 November, Saturday.
 While at a child's volleyball game, I reviewed notes on a special study I did in Basra two years ago. I collected three surveys in a row from the same participants. The surveys used specially constructed word choices to test for hidden biases or prejudices in ethnic or religious identity. This is known as "repeated measures with multilevel analysis." The fascinating result was that there was almost no significant difference between answers to the different types of surveys. Most academic journals only want to print articles showing significant positive outcomes.

However, the Journal of Spurious Correlationsis interested in this because they specialize in presenting research findings to show non-significant results as significant. Why is this important? To allow focus on research questions that may have significant differences and not invest more resources on questions that are not significant. I like the idea. Their journal description file is in the "Page Files" link in the right menu column.
4 November, Friday.
 Today was m first deep look at the numbers coming from the Basra, Iraq new research.
The focus is on business owners and managers, and so it gives a different slice of Basra culture than most surveys which are focused on massive numbers of surveys with breadth of age and status of life. Basra middle class business owners and managers are older men, living and working in the same place for many years, are conservative, and represent some of the best stabilizing entities in Basra. They are above average in reading, following international news, and are well connected to government, religious and community organizations. This is a study on social systems, social networks, social capital, and how money and information actually moves in a community. The survey section on financial intelligence may yield surprising answers when I compare it to business counterparts in the European context. Hmmmm...I do not have data on European businessmen to compare with. That is another research topic for next week.
3 November, Thursday.
 Early morning dentist visit. I've had several broken and chipped fillings the past few years. A repeat problem on one filling, with a lot of spreading pain caused me to do my best thing: do a search for information, skim a large body of information and distill it down to a few succinct points. My summary caused me to ask the dentist about the probability of a connection between recurring problems with a few fillings to the overall sinus and nervous system irritations. Without the speciaized instrumentation needed to measure chronic filling pain possibilities, he looked the x-rays. We discussed the overall health issues that might be related to my fillings, which are Amalgams containing 50% mercury, 35% silver, 9% tin, 6% copper and a trace of zinc.
Since the 1800s there have been increasing demands worldwide to stop using mercury in fillings, and Germany was one of the first countries (1992) to limit its use. A single dental amalgam filling with a surface area of only 0.4 sq. cm is estimated to release as much as 15 micrograms of mercury per day primarily through mechanical wear and evaporation. The average individual has eight amalgam fillings which release as much as 125 micrograms mercury vapor (0.125 mg/cubic meters) of mercury per day from their amalgams. OSHA exposure limits are 0.03 mg/cubic meters. (Interestingly, OSHA requires the use of breathing masks and supplemental air to be used in environments where there is the same amount of mercury found in the air inside of a person's mouth with 6 fillings!)

I think I am a strong candidate for removing my mercury amalgam tooth filling and replacing the mercury-silver with a composite material. I will be doing more reading, comparing traditional dental opinions with recent scientific studies. If there is any possibility of improving my health through reduced mercury poisoning, I will risk it.
2 November, Wednesday.
 Conversations today with Richard Couto, a social scientist and leadership mentor attending a conference of the International Leadership Association. An interesting conference session is on leadership emergence in a post-totalitarian society.
Dr. Couto and I seem to have coinciding spheres of interest: mentoring, cross-cultural research, participatory research, social capital and participatory community development. Thank you, Richard, for the encouragement, and for laughing with my childrens.

Some of my favorite books.
1 November, Tuesday.
 Even though I have been using this wiki system for over two years, I still don't understand how to use RSS and search engine optimization tools to allow more people to find these pages.
More information came now from the wiki, "Educational Uses of Weblogs, RSS, Wikis, and Podcasting."

I need to learn more, but this is similar to my ongoing frustration with maintaining my home computer network. The network works, but some parts are not stable and I hesitate to either invest a lot of time in researching tcp/ip protocol or in just plugging and moving around cables to see what happens. Time is valuable, but I don't plan at all on hiring (another) "expert" from the local business community only to find that they know how to string cable, but cannot be trusted to know much theory or even to correctly wire correctly my connectors. So many times I have bought even electrical extension leads and transformers and found that the polarity was reversed. If I use them for 2-conductor lamps they work fine, but when I use them to power sensitive computers or high-voltage devices it becomes dangerous.

31 October, Monday.
 I have friends at the "Creating Abundance Foundation" that provides financial intelligence training. Two main categories of clients are children (training them how to manage money and how to stay of our consumer debt) and immigrants (training them how to get out of debt and how to make plans to improve their quality of life, both here and if they return to their homelands). Ideas for some of the youth activities come from "The Money Camp." Others come from Incredible Potential.
One of the most useful and small booklets I have read is "Raising Your Child's Financial IQ", included only in the children's finance game "Cashflow for Kids" by Robert Kiyosaki. This is a great package for adults as well as children. The game is a simple sort of "Monopoly" with the goal to save money from your work to invest in real estate or stocks or businesses so that your investment income is more than enough to cover all your debts. Simple, and brilliant. I play this children's game frequently with adults because it is simple and fast to play, and yet gives enough challenge to help players understand the difference between debt and consumer debt, and income and passive income.

Why am I involved in this? Because the single greatest problem that most immigrants and refugees in the Netherlands face is "How can I get more free time and extra money to enjoy life?" In most cases, the problem is not too little income, the problem is too many debts and expenses on non-essentials. With credit so easy to get, so many people buy items on credit, paying "only a little bit each month" but in the end having only more debt and less money. A large burden of debt is a dense barrier that keeps most people I know from truly being free to make changes in what they believe and how they live. They live to survive instead of making a better future.

I like helping others learn to solve their own problems, and playing "how to get out of debt" games is a great way to open discussions that are really important.
28 October, Friday.
 Project last night was comparing diesel and gas/petrol/benzine versions of cars on the total cost.
Bottom line: there is no significant difference after two years of ownership, based on my needs.
Full details on comparison of diesel-benzine
27 October, Thursday.
Meeting today with an immigrant seeking to go to Canada. His wife and son left him a few years ago and he wants to go see his son. But, he cannot get a tourist visa without jeapardizing his residence process here. We talked through the options, including seeking help from IOM to get him to Canada on an asylum status. The real question: does he risk losing his residence here in order to apply for a chance to get a tourist visa to Canada? If he applies to Canada, and loses his Dutch chances, and then does not get the Canadian visa, he will have to return to his own country, and then have to deal with government harrassment or worse. I said that I would ask around my contacts to get some other ideas.
In some parts of the world, mothers have few rights over their children; in the European setting, fathers have few rights.
26 October, Wednesday.
 Seminar today on Trust in social networks. Davide Barrera presented results of studies on how buying and selling activities, for example, are affected by perceptions of the trustworthiness of a transaction partner. Findings:
1. A person's own experience with relationships is more important to future trust transactions that the reported experiences of others.
2. The reported experiences of other peers is more important than the reported experiences of trading oppononents. For example, a buyer will trust more the reports and rumours about other buyers than the reports and rumours about sellers.
3. Uncertainties in the immediate environment have little effect on the actual trading activities.
4. Economists (vocationally) trust less than other types of participants.

See descriptions of a similar study also done at University of Utrecht by Vincent Buskins
25 October, Tuesday.
Iraq referendum results. Al-Jazeera news, along with most of the other main news sources affirm that the Iraq Referendum was approved. Some sources report 79% approval. That is a high approval rating. Compared with the European Constitution vote! Yes, the referendum was not perfect; yes, the constitution is not perfect; yes, I am sure that there was some fraudulent voting; yes, there is a lot of argument. But, votes are a sign that bullets are not the only way to solve problems.
Healthy Living. 24 October, Monday.
 I have helped many friends move house, locally and internationally, and it always encourages me to change my own lifestyle, as described in these links:
1. Increase my own strength, endurance, and capacity for pain-free hard work. My body my life.

2. Live simpler, getting rid of non-essential stuff continuously, and judging any potential purchase in view of the future decision about keeping it, packing it, shipping it, or disposing of it. Extra stuff is limiting, not freeing. Basic rule that helped me in the last move: shipping goods by seafreight cost about US$15.00 per cubic foot (42eurocents per litre). This helped me to quickly assess value on an item to move.

3. Keep the house and car clean and attractive to reduce stress of repairs at the last minute before a move.

I have no plans to move, but helped this week a family relocate, and their stress is all too familiar.
22 October, Saturday.
 EARLY, early morning trip to southwest Holland to attend a KnowledgeWorkx seminar, and for an extended talk about their projects in the Gulf.
They serve a very specialized niche market of international firms that need to improve effectiveness of multicultural staff. Scientifically-based, they are strong on psychometric analyses that carefully define the strengths and capabilities of both the individuals and team, and then coach teammembers how to work synergistically to give more tangible benefits to clients (airlines, hotel chains, and other multinationals).
I'm not sure how my own interests and capabilities will coincide with theirs, but our networks of contacts certainly overlap.

Topics to learn more about:
Total Organizational Renewal, one of the key successes of OTI Consulting.
Transformational Business Network, training businesses to invest in and improve quality of life in communities where they work.
Tear Fund, UK agency offering sponsoring and training in small business development

Emotional Intelligence, expansion of theories by Daniel Goleman on how reading other peoples' and your own emotions is essential to interpersonal relationship building.
Distance Learning Success. 21 October, Friday.
 Early morning trip to the airport to welcome home our daughter who just finished all her university work. Total cost for her first university degree: 22 months and US$8425.
Distance learning works for those who are self-disciplined and motivated, and can be used in many contexts: lower education, higher education, continuing education, vocational training, and strategic planning through developing alternate scenarios of the future.
First look at the Iraq data: the first 25 surveys I went through were all from Basrah, all Shi'a, all Arab, almost all professional men who were business owners or managers.
I will be thinking through how to keep my findings updated on these wiki pages, and better than in 2003-4 research. Good news was that one of my research papers on using these wikis for scientific communication passed the formal review and is accepted for publication. One other (longer and more detailed) paper is still in process, and another short paper is not completed. With so much new data to look at and discover new mysteries, looking again at old, familiar work is not as exciting!
20 October, Thursday. Llstening precedes policy.
 A long phone call with a friend from the Middle East reminded me that I do need to spend a lot of time listening to hear the issues and needs and crises in others' lives before I understand how I am to contribute to helping them work out their own success story. In this case, it was the familiar issue of returning to the birthland. If this friend wants the considerable amounts of money and support from international organizations who can make his return easier and more of a financial advantage, he must give up his autonomy and anonymity. And his European residence papers. As I asked questions in my normal way of helping others make decisions for themselves. My only advice was "Do not sell yourself to them only for the money. If there are other benefits that are important to you, then base your significant change of life on all aspects of your life, not just getting money without working for it."
As much as the European governments try to get immigrants to leave, and as much as they keep offering more money and other incentives, the overall benefits do not outweigh the costs and risks of leaving. The West offers a high standard of comfortable living, unemployment insurance, health insurance, a stable political and religious environment, and even simple freedom to make personal choices. The full package is why people come here, and why they are reluctant to go back. My friend has health problems that may not be easy to cope with in the other land; he has little vocational experience that would translate into a middle class job in the other land; he has no cash reserves to allow him to rent an apartment and buy furniture and find a good job environment; and he has legal protection here that he gives up if he returns to where he fled seeking refuge here.
Work options are the real issue. If he thought he could get a reasonable job it would make his return decision easier. Long-term, he needs to have ownership in a business that others run; own rental property for housing or commercial space that he could rent out. He cannot work physical labor and is to generous and kind-hearted to be a successful salesman. He could fit with a job requiring extreme extrovert skills in meeting new people and making them feel appreciated and cared for, but we were unable to come up with any ideas as to how to develop that kind of work opportunity.
So, why does he want to leave? To be with family. To return to his familiar and known culture. And to escape the "golden handcuffs" of a welfare state that gives a lot of benefits to its "refugee" clients, at a cost.
Useful information on Refugees and assistance to them.
19 October, Wednesday.
 Favorite company of the day: Knowledgeworkx. Based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, they offer training, consulting and mentoring to multicultural companies, or to companies with demand for selling and workign across cultures. Their premier product is in "Cultural Mapping and Bridging," which maps cultural values and needs of individuals in an organization and then of the organization itself. Fascinating and very strategic contribution to business development.
I have a meeting with the director on Saturday to see what we might cooperate on doing in training.

Favorite company of the week: Apple Computer. Financial results for its fourth fiscal quarter of 2005 report earnings of $430 million on $3.68 billion in revenue. Today they announced two new supercomputers, one a desktop and the other a new Powerbook. I bought last month their previous top-of-the-line Powerbook, and do not regret buying it at all. Except that my daughter keeps talking about "her computer" while carrying "mine" around with her. It did help her finish her last year of university in three months (as of last week), but I do not intend to give her the computer.

New Powerbooks: Higher monitor resolution, brighter, longer battery life.
Desktop: Power Mac G5 Quad—four operating cores with a total of 76.6 gigaflops.
iMac: Announced last week with a built-in webcam and wireless mouse.
IPod: Video iPod with a 2.5-inch LCD screen; the 60 GB model can hold up to 150 hours of video.
Apple shipped 6.45 million iPods during the last three months.
18 October, Tuesday. Monopoly Corrupts: Commerce, Religion, Government.
Study today on Sunni versus Shi'a Islam, in the Iraq context. Main point: Religious Sunnis seem to base faith and life on keeping their legal interpretations of what their religious law says (Sunni means "path" and implies keeping the traditions is the way to live rightly). Religious Shi'a seem to base faith and life on experience and mystical relationships to people of power. Other links and notes are at the CivilSocietyIraq Religion page.


Similarly, conflict over the governmental handling of Hurricane Katrina pulled me to a very interesting perspective from the Mises Institute. The main point is that under a monopoly system, whether commercial or religious or governmental, "there is no automatic feedback mechanism that penalizes failure, and rewards success, the essence of the market system of private enterprise."
17 October, Monday. Iraq Charter under the vote.
 Yesterday Iraqis voted on the new charter (a .pdf copy of the draft is in the "files" link in the right menubar). Results should be available within a few weeks.
The significant point of this process, like that of the elections this past January, is that the people who choose to vote are giving direction to the future of their own government. yes, the candidate selection process is a bit rough, and not all 24 million Iraqis feel like their opinions matter in either the drafting of the items to be voted on, or that their own vote is important. But, I'm not sure if there has every been any sort of democractic or republican process in Iraq in all its history. So, this is a very important move forward, in spite of the violence and the critics. The new constitution (charter) is a remarkable piece of work and does a good, a very good job in setting out that the future of Iraq should be settled by law, and not by violence. The people are to direct the government, and not the other way around. Compared with the other constitutions in the Middle East, this one is simple and powerful in giving rule by law a chance to work. The next hurdle is to get the levels of power, from family level to those with more responsibility to agree to live by national law and to settle disputes in courts of law, not with violence.
This really is a great event and the whole world should celebrate.
14 October, Friday. TV Production
After my son and daughter's week of helping at a television studio, we had a coffee and debrief session with the producer. Television production is a factory--put out as many shows as possible on the smallest budget possible in order to get the largest audience possible. Work hard, work fast, work smart and keep moving ahead. This is not the realm for a lot of artistic creativity, but rather very much a factory to produce as many products for the least amount of money.
"I think anybody who has been in the theater, prefers it. Television is a... factory. You turn out things on a revolving assembly line. You don't have time to perfect anything in television." --Gale Gordon

"TV is a factory and to create a product of quality with the time constraints and budget restrictions is very tricky and not always possible." --Bruce Greenwood.

How is television judged a business?
"...television as a business makes money by selling audiences to advertisers, the Nielsen Television Ratings are the single most important element in determining advertising rates, schedules, and program content."
In other words, television as a business is largely defined by what advertisers and sponsors are willing to buy.
13 October, Thursday. Project Backpack--Katrina.
For a really great story on how a few people with a vision and passion can change the world, see Project Backpack. Beginning with a few backbacks for schoolchildren displaced Hurricane Katrina, it grew to thousands of donated backpacks--with a few volunteers in each location, no budget, and no large fundraising appeal. Reminds me of "Small is Beautiful" by E.f. Schumacher.
Grassroots civil society!

 I just had a long talk by Skype with Kenneth Tyler, founder of Seedwiki.com.
p2p internet telephony that works! Get Skype

New projects that I want to try:
1. Online calendar that would sync my different computers and cell phone. Something like the SyncML open standard, where iSync is a general-purpose application for synchronizing data, in 2003, Steve Jobs synchronized calendar events from iCal and contacts from the Mac OS X Address Book to an iPod via FireWire, to a Palm handheld via USB, and to a Sony Ericsson cell phone via Bluetooth. This is what I want! Why can I not even get my three Macs and my Windows computer to sync their calendars without subscribing to a fee-based calendar server?

2. Wiki for a real estate investment group that is building a carwash-convenience store-restaurant-gas station. What if they offered to patrons wikispace to host forums on Jackson clubs, such as real estate and small business development clubs, and a hotspot in their facility at no cost to patrons?

3. Wiki client to host on my home & office networks that would put shared folders always online between our computers with automatic updating of files and current versions of documents.

4. A directory that is automatically updated of all my wiki pages. My pages are scattered across sub-wikis and need to be searchable in a directory tree or by topic or by keyword or by tags.

5. A wiki of my own list of websites, documents, helpfiles, and techniques to keep my own computers running.
12 October, Wednesday. Culture and Poverty.
 A sociologist is planning a new project to study how or if culture affects poverty and debt. The main question is if ethnic minorities have different types of debt than the ethnic majority. This is complicated because different families see debt and poverty differently. And, poverty itself is hard to define. Some international organizations pledge to eliminate poverty by a certain year. Their first task is to define poverty for each local situation, but that may mean a different level for each family! The basics of clean water, adequate access to food and medical care and education are part of the definition, but may be more social than economic. If economic definitions are used, then total income for the family must be measured against things that they want to buy or do with that income. Debt also has to be carefully defined, such as debt for survival (food, medical care), debt for possessions that hold or improve in value (land, houses, previous metals or jewels), or debt for possessions that decrease in value (cars, computers, furniture). Debt is also relative to the types of resources available to pay it off. Great book on the very basics of how money and debt can be used to improve quality of life at all income levels is Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? Highly recommended, and easy to read and understand.
11 October, Tuesday.
 Two streams coincided today in my thoughts. First was a request from a friend to talk him through some of the peculiarities of working in the Levant and Middle East. Second was a report on the cultural influences on impact of earthquakes in Pakistan. The First led me to consider the challenges of supporting agricultural development projects, especially the hindrances due to self-serving traditions. I will rewrite these later and add to this page. The Second was "Pakistan's mountain tsunami" report by Maruf Khwaja.
Travelers to the USA report back on the hugeness of the country and the large distances one must travel between homes and cities, and the large personal space maintained even in private conversations. They report on the giant portion sizes of food consumed by fat people. They report on how easy it is to become a friend to Americans, but how difficult to become part of their personal lives. American travelers to the Muslim world report back on the confusing babble of languages and lack of "personal space." They report on how everything is chaotic and not predictable. They report on how people are hard to get to know, but once they become a friend they will share many private parts of life with even outsiders.
Comparing across cultures is dificult because all you can truthfully say is that some things are very different. Attempting to label things as better or good or bad, while convenient, is not honest in most cases. One of the best books and film series is Going International by Lennie Copeland and Lewis Griggs. They attempt to broaden our understanding of differences that should make a difference to us, and those that should not.



10 October, Monday.
 I seldom drive my car to appointments or meetings if I might efficiently use public transport. A car is to carry other people, not me. But, today I had two large backpacks full of paper surveys and it would have been uncomfortable to carry them by bicycle, then train, then tram, then walk to the meeting. So, I drove. Then put diesel fuel in the tank at Euro 1.06 per litre.
I met with the sociologist doing the data entry on the Iraq surveys. After tea, coffee, talking, chatting, and catching up on all the news, we opened up the SPSS statistical package and began working through the first of the surveys. Even after so many hours we had spent before discussing and revising the survey and the data and the analysis, there were still items to change on the data entry form. With 140+ questions, it took us a while to even go through one survey, making notes as we went. But, it was very pleasant to be together, and I am hopeful, very hopeful that there will be significant and useful material in the surveys to understand better how some Iraqis relate to each other, how they perceive threats from each other, and how they relate to sources of money and information.
We also discussed this friend's own research on how culture may affect debt accumulation and feelings of entrapment in poverty. Debt, like poverty, is not a fixed amount. The seriousness of debt is only accurate when measured in relation to level of income, level of assets, and level of equity. Playing the game, "Cashflow" by Robert Kyosaki helped me to see that lower income with lower ratio of debt to assets can become self-sufficient much more quickly than someone with very high income, but with a higher ratio of debt to assets. Making more money does not relieve debt pressure unless the ratio of debt to income also falls. Unfortunately, as income rises, debt usually rises even faster.
8 October, Saturday.
 Son and I helped a friend put together stage backdrops for a television show. Paper, staples, gaf tape, a ladder--that's all you need to change the look of a tv show. And I used to think that backdrops were real!
There are a few important facts designing backdrops for television that also apply to home movies and even still photos: TV Backdrops. Basics: the background, the props, the costumes, the makeup and everything else should not distract from the main purpose and content of the event.
How to set up your own studio for video and tv work (even for home productions): Television Studio.

After reading comparisons of western and Middle Eastern reporting on the Middle East, I found very interesting the book, Al Jazeera : How Arab TV News Challenges America by Hugh Miles. All of us are dependent on highly-controlled news distributed by mass media, and all media sources have agendas other than "only report the absolute truth and do not include any bias." An Iraqi told me, "If it is mass media, it comes with approval of the government, and I do not trust any government to tell me the truth." Mr. Miles presents some biases of Al Jazeera, and in so doing, reveals motives of international news agencies in general.
7 October, Friday.
 Dry and sunny day meant taking a few hours off to clean all carpets in the house. Clean is good. Sunny and dry with clean carpets is better.
I also learned a bit about the new international word processing system--Global Writer. Because it is truly unicode-based, with thousands of individual characters (glyphs) it can create documents in almost any written language of the world, and mix and match languages within a single document. A beautiful product. I learned that their technical support staff answer the phones FAST and they help a lot to make sure that users are happy with the product. I had a Kurdish document written in Global Writer and needed to use it with documents already in Word/Excel. Since Global Writer exports to standard unicode format, I took the unicode version of the Kurdish document and it opened straight into Excel, after I added another Middle Eastern unicode font. Perfect!
6 October, Thursday. Netherlands Demography Day
 1st Netherlands national demography day. Big conference and a lot of excitement. Mostly centered around population change and predictions of the future of Netherlands population. More retirees will need more tax monies to support them since the pension funds may be be adequate. Fewer projected workers and declining population numbers and workforce means probable continued economic decline. Growing population with new technology and innovation leads and higher unemployment to increased quality of life and standards of living and more innovation. Low unemployment leads to lack of innovation and entrepreneurship vital to promote growth. Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute was the sponsor, along with the Netherlands Association for Demography and the Population Research Centre. I attended sessions on migration and gained some new contacts and a lot of useful ways to find and present research. Of interest to me were the population dynamics in the four largest cities of the Netherlands. Example: westerners are moving out of the old city centres, non-westerners (especially younger people) are moving into those centres, but as newcomers prosper, they also move out towards the surburbs because (apparently) they can afford better housing, lower crime, and better neighbors. A useful description of the multilevel statistical process: compare characteristics of the neighborhoods (from census and other community datasets) with the personal characteristics of the individuals and their inclination to move (from individual surveys). Ethnic factors: Antillians and Moroccans in the neighborhood increase likelihood that westerners will move out, but the presence of Surinamese and Turks do not have the same effect.
5 October, Wednesday.
 Sociology colloquium. Rene Veenstra of Groningen spoke on the relationships between school bullies and their victims. 3,000 elementary school students interviewed, along with teachers and parents and peers. Bulliles seek improved status by finding those who are emotionally weaker and are easy targets. Both bullies and victims feel rejected. Victims feel isolated, but bullies see themselves as having approving onlookers. The bigger need is addressing problems with the bullies themselves, not consoling the victims. Bullies can increase problems, leading to delinquency and criminal behavior.

Met with Kurdish data collector. She spoke Dutch, I spoke English, we looked at Kurdish survey forms and discussed Iraq social systems and Arabic resources. The new surveys total 43 Kurdish and 160 Arabic. 20 England, 100 Basrah, 83 Netherlands. Data entry I hope to finish this month and then the fun of analysis begins.
3 October, Monday.
 The first ERCOMER seminar of the new school year. Presentation was "Individualism-Collectivism and Social Capital" by Anu Realo of University of Tartu, Estonia. Very interesting work comparing trust, political involvement, and social interactions based on degrees of individualism and collectivism.
Books for follow-up on social capital and cultures:
Inglehart, R. Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook, with CD of data
Compares worldviews and beliefs across geographic and cultural distances

Inglehart, R. Islam, Gender, Culture, and Democracy: Findings from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey
Compares worldviews of Islamic nations with those of other nations, and is a valuable source of data and theories seeking to explain differences between views of "normal" Muslim citizens compared with those of non-Islamic nations. His 2005 book seems to have even more in-depth analyses of cultures.
2 October, Sunday.
 A son had a volleyball event in Haarlem, so we all went to Haarlem. But, I took a few of my kids and we went to Zandvoort. I thought we would play on the beach for a few hours while the volleyball things went on. Instead, when I parked the auto, I saw people walking into the Zandvoort race track (Circuit Park Zandvoort) where European Formula 3 events are held. The gates were open so we went in, walked through into the Paddock area and saw crowds around big cars and little cars and scooters and piles of tires and a lot of clouds of exhaust smoke. We made our way through the racesuited and jumpsuited people who looked so very important and up onto the observation deck above the pits and garages.
One race finished just as we got on top, and we saw drivers climbing out of the cars, mechanics busy with the engines and fuel and tires. Then a great commotion began behind us and several dozen "superkart 250cc" vehicles were being pushed up into line in the Paddock corral. The engines began screaming their warmup cycles and tires were changed and drivers getting instructions from the marshall. What fun! The race lasted only 15 minutes or so, but it was a great thing to see for all of us.
Interesting note: The big cars with roll cages, immaculate paint, big sponsor names, etc, were driven by young "macho men". The tiny superkarts, riding only inches above the ground, and traveling about the same speed as the big cars, were driven by old, grey-haired, and often fat men. I'm not understanding that difference.
But, we all had a great time.
1 October, Saturday.
 Today was the yearly celebration event of many organisations connected to the GAVE organisation serving refugee and asylum-seeker needs in the Netherlands. 24 workshops on many aspects of refugee work. And, a large buffet of tasty foods from many countries represented.
As I watched the speeches and listened to workshop leaders, I was impressed that so many volunteers from around the Netherlands will give so much time to help, serve and support refugees. There were doctors, advocates, government workers, media producers, counselors, pastors and church leaders, but, mostly, these were ordinary people who met newcomers and had feelings of compassion and concern that forced them to get involved.
As a "civil society" gathering, I was very impressed that there was no clamour for RIGHTS and demands for someone to do something. The focus was on how ordinary people can make the lives of these refugees better, and show kindness and compassion to them.
30 September, Friday.
 Expectations. I talked by phone with a friend attempting to get a new company going, but who is having difficulty getting adequate legal and fiscal support to meet reporting requirements from the government. Working crossculturally in other countries can be a great challenge. I am very motivated to solve problems and move ahead with my own priorities. My stress level goes up when I notified that I must put my life into little boxes on another application or certification form. I found this morning a quote that defines what is my real problem in this.

"Frustration in life comes as a result of unmet expectations" --Stephen Covey
I expect certain events to sequence themselves out in my plans, and experience frustration when the sequence does not happen in the way I want it to.

Rethinking some of the frustrations I seen over the years with cross-cultural workers, I thought of expectations that lead to frustration. The list is long--Unmet Expectations?. From what I have seen, the majority of personnel failures and workgroup conflicts come from unmet expections that lead to frustrations. And those lead to a demand "for my rights." For now, I'm working on current frustrations and looking for the unmet expectations that made me feel frustrated. This is an interesting exercise that should help me achieve more and offend others less.
29 September, Thursday.
 My son lost his identification card and I telephoned to the responsible government office to ask about getting a replacement. Again, I was very surprised when the lady answered with a very cheerful voice and asked how she might be of service to me. Someone is investing a lot of energy into helping public servants to be seen as public servants. This was nice to experience. In the end, I was pointed to a website where I should download a form to submit by post. At the end of our conversation she wished me a pleasant day. I like this new and friendly face to the government.
Customer Service Group offers newsletters for managers and staff on how to develop more effective customer services. Tradition has it that one bad customer experience will be retold to nine others, but a good customer experience will only be told to three others--so, it is very important to keep bad reports from circulating.
28 Septemer, Wednesday.
Back home, and I was pleasantly surprised that while the bicycle storage facility at the train station charges 1.10Euro for a day of storage, it only charges 0.30 per day after the first day. I expected to pay 2.20 Euro for my two days, but only paid 1.40Euro. That is called, "under promise, over deliver." We all should do the same in our service to others--under promise and over deliver.
Another example: last week I left my auto at a service garage for a change of oil and filters. When I arrived to collect the auto (and pay the bill!), I noticed that they washed the outside and vacuumed out the inside. It looked great. That type of service makes me pleased to go back over and over again--they do very good work, treat me politely, and keep a bowl of lovely candies on the counter for customers.
27 September, Tuesday.
I met today with the administrator of a non-profit agency with refugee and immigrant services. Much of our conversation focused on how to train and resource workers. Many new employees of charitable organisations do not have higher education or extensive training in running humanitarian projects. From what I have seen, managers of organisations spend much of their time going to meetings, not in training or mentoring their people. And the chronic shortage of money means that many employees are very frustrated and do not last very long in their jobs. Stephen Covey says,
"Frustration in life comes as a result of unmet expectations." I believe that when an organisation hires people, they should make a clear definition of expectations from both sides.
26 September, Monday.
Meeting at the airport to discuss agricultural and relief projects in Afghanistan. As the friend and I talked, many happy memories of previous agricultural consultancies came to mind. Many years ago I did quite a bit of work with poultry farmers in the Middle East, and used to think that I knew a lot about tree crops and large animal production. Today, I mainly know how to ask questions and how to find people who are the real experts. I have very high regard for the technical capabilities of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and their network of consultants. On their homepage they have a link to Virtual Library, where there are many significant resources on food production.
24 September, Saturday.
The lady of yesterday decided by her own decision that returning to her homeland was best for herself and her child. We spent out time focused on on which contacts were most able to help her move along the process. I was satisfied that she made her own decision and that all seemed at peace in that decision.
My time today went to cheer for kids' volleyball games and getting a failing computer back working again for a daughter to finish typing book notes for me.
INTERESTING NOTE: to upgrade a harddrive in an Apple Powerbook I had to remove five screws. To do the same procedure in a Compaq notebook computer it took 38! The Apple took about five minutes and the Compaq took about 90 minutes. When I compare these costs, the initial "cheapness" of the Compaq is seen in a different light.
23 September, Friday.
 I just was contacted by a friend who is sheltering an asylum-seeker from 1ran. The lady left her country when she ran afoul of the secret police and she felt her life was threatened.
She entered the asylum process in the Netherlands, and for a number of years sat in a detention center waiting for her case to be heard. A local man met her and offered to marry her to give her legal protection under the law. She moved in with him but somehow the right papers did not seem to be arranged by him. She became pregnant and was put out of his life. She returned to the state system, gave birth to a child, and then the state ruled that they could not find adequate proof that she was in danger of persecution. She was put out of her housing and access to all housing, medical care, and all other forms of protection.
My friend and his family took the woman and child into their home. He now wants me to help him find a good solution.
What are the options?
1. Hire a lawyer to appeal for her case to be reviewed. This is expensive and generally has little chance of succeeding.

2. Take her to another country to try to get her into an asylum process there.
This is not legal but for some people it gives them another chance.

3. Find a way for her to live without papers and without legal permission to stay in the country. Eventually, she will be found out and the police will deport her back to her own country where she will be imprisoned and the child given to extended family or to others who will accept it.

4. Get help from an international organization that can arrange travel papers back to her country, and will pay for the travel. This will be a high-profile return and when she arrives at the airport, she probably will be held by the police while her full background is investigated. Maybe there would be no problem since it has been several years since she left. Maybe.
At least she would be legal in this country while the return trip is arranged.

My friend wants to meet in the next few hours to make a decision about what she should do.

How would you approach this question?

To what degree should my friend and I try to make the decision easy for her?
To what degree should we give help?
Is she a victim who deserves charity?
She made a series of wrong choices and is trying to get out of the consequences,
what is the correct balance of helping and letting consequences happen?

If this was a single, isolated case, my friend and I could take our time and pool our money and hire a lawyer and visit other refugee-helping organizations to see what resources they could offer. But, this type event happens to dozens of people each week.
How does that affect our capacity to do good?

How much can we interrupt our own family priorities and our own childrens' needs, over and over again because of the crises that others create for themselves?

Is this different from "victims" of hurricanes who do not leave their homes early enough and barely escape with their lives? I'm not criticizing, I just looking for comparisons to look for higher ways of looking at victims and the combinations of charity and self-help, of relief and development.

I am not looking forward to my meeting, where I know I will be pushed to find another solution to make life easier for this lady and child. I like this lady, and I really like my friend, and I want to help all of them to be happy.
Sometimes, all I can do is give them a hug and say that I love them and pray with them that God will give peace. That is what I will do in a few minutes, along with offering a list of contact numbers for other organizations that might have new ideas or resources.
But, I will not treat the lady as a victim; but rather as a person who has made choices and now needs hope that God does love her and that he has an honorable plan for her life. I will ask her to ask God to reveal in her conscience what she should do, and for God to give her strength to make right decisions.

22 September, Thursday.
 After leaving our car at the local garage for servicing, I biked to the train station and rode about one hour to Ede-Wageningen, home of the famous agricultural and life sciences university. I had the pleasure to meet faculty and staff and students, including students from Iran and Korea. We had a very stimulating three hours together, discussing educational methodologies, competency standards for education and for agricultural development, agri-business entrepreneurship, and Egyptian monasteries. These are competent, and comfortable people for me to enjoy. I hope to see them again and see how our convergent paths might synergise something new.
One quickly emailed to me papers he has written on training for entrepreneurship in small and middle-sized businesses in agriculture-related work. This is very interesting to me as I look for better ways to help immigrants from the Middle East return home, and help them think through how to become more than dull employees. Giving hope that they can be in more control of their lives is what I most need to do. There is a lot to learn. With enough time, walking with them in their own village and world, I believe that I could help many of them to succeed. I want so badly to do that. For now, my task is both personal and academic, application and analysis, friend and family. But I am learning. Faster and faster, it seems.

21 September, Wednesday.
 A son lost his local identity card. We went to the village police. They told us to go to the regional administration office. They told us to go to the regional police headquarters. They told us to go to the national immigration ministry. We went home. I will deal with this another day, because I have the feeling it will be another long day.
The fun part of the day, besides having a lot of time with my son, was a friend who dropped by for a few hours of talking about the housing system. There is a free market system for houses for sale, almost. But in the rental market, there are strict controls over some sectors that are considered housing projects for the common good. For example, 172 apartments across the street from our house are restricted to young renters, between the ages of 18-24, and with income less than about Euro 3200 per month. Since there is a great housing shortage, at least for young people who do not want to live with their parents, or to share housing with several others.
20 September, Tuesday.
Rule by law. It is a difficult concept. "Do officials serve the law, or do laws serve the officials?" This quote is from a New York Times article on China's attempt to preserve stability of government while appearing to recognize external standards of due process.
For me, the same quote appears relevant in my own process to renew my "permission to reside in the Netherlands."

19 September, Monday.
 Europe is moving towards standardised rules and regulations among EC member states. With the failure of the Europe-wide referendum on a common constitution, there is even more pressure now on member states to nurture bilateral and multi-lateral agreements. For the official background on how this is described, see EU Governance. The basic rule is that relations are established and developed by dialogue, not dispute or conflict. This point of view certainly makes sense to me, but the breakdown is in the lack of trust with respect to national right to rule within individual state borders. This concept itself comes out of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, ending the "Thirty Years War." This treaty established that within fixed geographic locations, a nation-state would sole jurisdiction over its internal affairs. Before this time, there were city-states, provinces under the control of those city-states, unions of provinces for economic or defense purposes, and large empires whose boundaries changed as city-states rebelled and were subdued.
The recognition of geography as being "owned" by one government set precedents that today still define local, national, regional and transnational citizenship, and with it, barriers to international agreements. Fortunately, these barriers also give increased advantage to individuals and their networks to move faster than governments to create alliances and partnerships that serve the common interests. The post-Westphalian world is becoming dominated by international market forces, much to the discomfort and opposition of the far left and the far right, whatever those extremes really stand for! Five Pillars of the WW (Westhpalian World) can be seen as disintegrating, with some hope of global increases in quality of life for everyone. ("If it is anachronistic to elect presidents in 2001 using a system designed in the 1790s it is even more anachronistic to try and govern the world with a system conceived in 1648."--Kimon Valaskakis, Pari Center).
This is the dream of civil society activists, and of those not dependent on state tax revenues for their support. Interestingly, those most critical of western governments in their human rights and other abuses sometimes are heavily dependent on those governments for financial support. The Governance and Development Working Group is building new concepts on "multi-level governance." They say, "Global, regional and local levels of decision-making have gained importance alongside the national one, with networks and agencies other than the sovereign state playing an increasingly significant role." EADI - European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes - is an independent and non-profit making international non-governmental organisation. It is an active network of 150 organisations with 14 working groups addressing key issues in Development Research, Training and Information.

What about "Transnational Islam?" Two significant lines of thinking are dicussed in this article by Fred Halliday. His article is insightful and reminds me of a quote by Edward Said (paraphrased) "Westerners cannot understand the Middle East because they did not grow up here; Middle Easterners cannot understand the Middle East because they grew up here."
18 September, Sunday.
 We began this beautiful day with collecting the bulk newspapers, separating them, folding them, and distributing them to the subscribers. Then we ate and had a family meeting. This was very significant, as one child had to apologize to others for taking chocolates that did not belong to them. The act of public confession is a healthy thing to learn when young because it can help keep honesty at the core of a family identity.
The skimming of a few blogs on the internet gave the usual laughter, and then somber points of reflection on news items. The disappointing part was seeing a writer with a good reputation repeating untrue stories about "thousands found dead in New Orleans". Quoting mainline media sources does not make events true, especially when the original news reports were later proved false. Writers in the blogosphere have the same responsibility to check their sources before re-broadcasting more errors.

See a Washington Times article on accuracy in reporting. " How do you put toothpaste back into the tube? If anyone has the answer, please contact Newsweek magazine immediately. Correcting the damage done by sloppy journalism is just about as hard as getting the sticky stuff back into its container. And a correction, even a retraction, almost never has the same impact as the original news reporting. All of which should make those of us in the news business intensely aware of the importance of accuracy. It's not good enough to get the news first; you have to get it right."

New York Times (17 Sept) claims a total of 579 bodies have been found in all of Louisanna. That is a long way from "thousands were killed in New Orleans." But, YES, that is 579 too many.

17 September, Saturday.
Every three months there is a large secondhand market held in the community centre. About 120 sellers set up tables with books, housewares, toys, artwork, music, and junk. My kids love to go, and this time two of them found special Lego sets that they found worth the asking price.
What is the real attraction of these sales? I think it is the hope that a really good deal can be found. It is not the absolute price paid, I think, but rather the hope of buying something at much less than what it seems to be worth. For example, I watched a seller try to get rid of a 10-year old Compaq computer. When I asked the price, he answered "I paid ten thousand guilders for this computer and it still works so well, but I have a new computer now and do not need this one anymore." There was not electrical outlet nearby, and it was not running. I asked for specifications on it, and it was obvious that it would not serve any useful purpose in my family, so I thanked him and stood back to watch. It was the only notebook computer in the saleroom, and was in a prime location. It sold a few minutes later for much more than I thought it should have been worth. He bought it without seeing it operate, based on the word of the seller. Maybe the buyer needed it for parts.

The other point of reflection today was on social behaviour, and the perception that everyone is suspect of trying to sell something when they offer a solution without spending enough time understanding the problem the solution is to address. The friend on Friday talked about refugees he has tried to help who were suspicious of his good intentions. I explained that when there is no trusting relationship, any help offered is seen as if he was selling them something. Why is it that marketing agencies and top-performing sales people understand this very well, but that charitable organisations do not? I looked at some of the brochures and advertising pieces he used. They certainly looked to me like they were selling a service that had a hidden cost, and that if someone did, for some reason, agree to read the information, the reader would not understand exactly what they would benefit from continuing contact with any of the "sales representatives."
Buying and selling is not bad, in itself. Deception on either part, or intent to violate another person, is bad. In many cultures and local traditions, deception is tolerated or appreciated as long as it is done to someone else and is not received. This goes back to the thoughts on lying I wrote recently--it is impossible to keep a relationship intact and mutually-beneficial if there is not trust. And trust cannot exist where there is ongoing intentional deception. This is where charitable organisations lose out over and over again--they are staffed often by well-meaning good people who are not trained to walk away from people and organisations who do not demonstrate trustworthiness.

Richard Maybury, in Whatever Happened to Justice?, said, " The two fundamental laws on which most major religions and philosphies agree are:
1. Do all you have agreed to do, and
2. Do not encroach on other persons or their property.
These laws were the basis of the old common law. But only these two. Except for them we have little or no agreement about right and wrong."

As I continue to read and reflect on conversations at my conference on global civil society, the simplicity of Maybury's comment makes more and more sense. Especially when compared with the complicated and/or romantic notions of what better society would be like. Humanitarian and voluntary organisations, the core of civil society supporters around the world, must clearly define themselves in terms of absolute standards of keeping their promises and not participating in violating others' persons or property. And they must learn to discern honorable and trustworthy personnel and organisations. If they want to do good.

"There is no civility, only politics" --Senator Valoran, "Star Wars Phantom Menace"
16 September, Friday.
I spent much of the day in Amsterdam with a friend who had been leading refugee assistance projects before refugee centres were closed and all asylum-seekers were either resettled somewhere else or a decision was made on their case. I went by to hear of how he transitions relationships with people who are relocating, and we ended up working through some of his ideas on building personal relationships to impact whole families for good. As we talked, I realized that I have several advantages over many people I know who work with refugees from the Muslim world.
1. I read a lot, really a lot, and have been doing so my whole life. That gives me concepts and insights which most people who do not read massive amounts of non-fiction cannot easily acquire efficiently.
2. I have invested years living among people much different from me, asking questions and listening to their stories, and watching how they interact with life.
3. I have a wife and partner who also reads and has lived in many places among many different types of people. And we discuss what we read and what we learn from others. We continuous attempt to discern principles of effective living from all those we meet. We have never watched much television, but have always preferred reading and discussing.
4. I have frequently "re-invented" myself, changing career paths and vocations to learn new skills and to impact others in new ways.

What does this mean for the next year? It means that I want to rework my writing, on these wiki pages and in other publications, to focus on one main issue:
"What are the main topics that need to be analysed in becoming an effective cross-cultural worker among Middle Eastern peoples?"

"We are placed in a specific context to count in ways that no one else does. That is our destiny."
(Dallas Williard, p.14, Divine Conspiracy).

15 September, Thursday. My sister's birthday!
 Our family enjoys communicating frequently by email and chat and telephone. On special days we try to find funny online shows to share with each other. For my sister, we sent two: numa and Singing horses. I like the singing horses, but I'm afraid I don't get the point of numa, even after the kids explained it to me--twice.
I got up early to take anitbiotics and then stayed up , and got everything ready for data entry on the new project. I will put some of the details of how I approach research and the processing of data on the research pages at how do I....
At my conference last week I heard several well-meaning but uninformed people giving opinions on how to resolve the problems in Iraq. Most of the opinions seemed focused on how the US caused all the problems and the US should fix them ---immediately. When asked for my opinion, I said that family-clan-tribe-alliance conflicts have been going on there for a long, long time. And, that if the western troops, businesses, and voluntary organisations all left, then the overt and newsworthy conflicts would stop--after significant amounts of killing in the battles for power. The announcements by Mr. Zarqawi to destroy all Shi'a fit within this spectre. Without a strong outside power at the top to moderate the levels of warfare, there will surely be even more pain and suffering for everyone.

JihadWatch charges that CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), doctored press photos on its website to headcover all women. CAIR claims to "enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties..." Similar to other civil liberties organisations, CAIR defends its own adherents against anyone opposing them, but encourages its people to actively promote its own belief and practices. Is this not the basis of civil society? Self-organising by volunteers to promote their own agenda? How does supposed photo-retouching fit?

14 September, Wednesday.
 Better today---not as much sleeping or nausea. I did choose to rest and sleep instead of attending a meeting on social inequality and mobility.
Phone calls and emails and statistics set up and software ordering for an Iraqi friend and reformatting a Farsi "history of the Persian Gulf" document.
Bombs in Iraq put a close friend in police custody there and a dangerous situation. There is a lot of pain in my relationships today. My principle for the day, with kids and with friends:
"Do not let any unhelpful word come out of my mouth except what is useful for building up those that hear according to the need of the moment."
I told a friend who dropped in today to share his own pains in friendships, "Be very careful of your words, because where there are many words, there is opportunity for sin." He didn't understand.
Frustrations with Word Windows that kept locking up with Arabic text in a spreadsheet, and the Windows would not see my printer on the network, so I could not print. The Macintosh Word would not open a Farsi document until I first opened the file in a text editor, and then copied and pasted the contents into Word. After saving, it works fine, and will still open under Windows as well. I pity people who have to work everyday with Arabic or Farsi under an English operating system. Nisus does work well on Macintosh, and I first used it in 1996. Maybe I need to update my version so that I can work on content and not keep wasting time with Word.
A few moments today I reread reports on the aftermath of hurricanes in the USA. The detailed descriptions of barrier island functions, levees, and flood control systems gave me a greater appreciation for how well the systems usually work. The rebuilding of New Orleans will be interesting to watch, especially to see if the thousands of people who are making new lives on higher ground will return to New Orleans next year.
13 September, Tuesday.
Antibiotics make me feel sicker than disease. Tea, sleep, food, sleep, walk around, sleep, short bicycle ride to buy more grass seed, rest, email, sleep. Nothing too exciting or rewarding until I talked with our 19 year old daughter who just passed her exams for 2 years of Spanish and one course in history. She only has two more exams to take and she will be finished with her first university degree. I need to add up the time and costs, because this has been amazing to see how much she could do for so little time and money.
I'm thinking about an invitation to present reports on my social network studies at a conference next March. The conference theme is "International Nonlinear Science Conference on Research and Application in Behavioural, Social & Life Sciences." I've also been asked contribute papers on a series of lectures on Education for Global Justice. I like to feel that my work is of value to others, and maybe this phase of life is time to start writing more for different audiences.
Time for sleep now.
12 September, Monday.
 Doctor visit. Yes, sinus infection; giant amoxicyllin antibiotic pills to take.
Trip to the city hall (16 kilometers by bike) to get help with renewing my residence permit. I had incorrect forms, so I had to telephone to the head office to request new forms and to request an extension on submission. Signatures required from employer; bank statements to submit, new photo, etc. This is a yearly event, made worse this year because I confused renewal deadlines on work permit versus residence permit and was late filing my residence renewal.
I also corresponded with conference contacts, and worked on the "Uniquely Ability" profile. This was helpful--clarifying why some of my projects are more fulfilling than others. The main difference seems to be that projects and relationships which are personal give me a sense of contributing useful work; I can be pretty good at technical problem solving, but this is not as fulfilling if I do it alone. Maybe I learned this from my very-sociable children!
The next step is to think through my many different activities and move towards minimizing activities that cause more stress than they produce useful results.
To test this, I began work on cleaning and smoothing the front garden. I felt frustrated that it was not going fast enough. Then the children came out to help. All of a sudden, it became very important because they were learning how to work with soil and seeds and water.
Technical alone--frustrating; Technical but social with training component--fulfilling. Very interesting.
I know other people who are similar--I give them a data entry project or other work to do and it takes a long time and they do not seem to enjoy it; but, when we sit together to work on it, it becomes a community learning and working event and they are much more happy in the work.

Other good news today. Money arrived to support some of my Iraq social network project. There is no room for luxuries, but, it it allows me to be reimbursed for the last two month's direct expenses on the project. Maybe I can even attend another conference to share reports and meet other Iraq social scientists.
11 September, Sunday.
7th birthday for our son. What a fun day of special cookie baking, gift-giving, friends visiting. I'm sick with a cold and apparently a sinus infection. This happens every time I travel, it seems. Most of the day I rested, but played a bit with the kids and enjoyed being together.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city and I look forward to returning someday. One day, as I was off to an appointment, I saw a small sign "Scottish Geneological Society." I have ancestors who are Mclellands, from Scotland, but did not have much information on how to track back the family tree, so I stopped in. What helpful people! They showed me a book on the McLellands, and showed me how to work out the different lineages and how to find missing chains in the family. A cousin sent to me a few names from the US side of the McLellands, and now the researcher who wrote the Scottish book is trying to match his records with the US records. I'm not sure that this is really important, but it is interesting. Another kinsman sent me a family tree from another branch, connecting all the way back to the 1300s in England.
10 September, Saturday.
 Several happy notes came my way today. One was that an Iraqi friend is willing to help with data entry for my Iraq research. This is significant because my Arabic reading and writing is too slow for me to be efficient in getting the latest research moving ahead. Even with paying for his work from my own pocket, I will come out ahead because I can focus on doing work that I am better at.
I am still seeking a co-author who can help me with studies of academic literature to write up as part of the formal reports on my next phase of research on social networks.

The second joy was that the demonstration website I set up for the global civil society conference is growing in visitors, and someone added a new section with a maillist for discussions of major topics of the conference. This is very rewarding as others contribute and innovate and give expansion to the original vision for the conference itself, and for the initial contribution that I thought I might make. Helping others find answers and new networks of connections seems to be what I enjoy best.

Other good news was that my sister-in-law had hip replacement surgery on Wednesday and went home Friday. Within a few hours after the full replacement, she was up and walking around. The newer techniques have minimal cutting of muscle and allow much quicker recovery.
9 September, Friday.
I'm reading a book, Unique Ability by Catherine Nomura and Julia Waller. Main point is that each of us are equipped with a set of skills, and when we work within our highest performing combination of skills, we can be more productive and enjoy work and life more. I emailed a few people to give feedback on what they saw that I do best, what is my unique ability. The answers were very helpful to make another step towards getting more significant work done, and enjoying the work and the people in my life more. As I process on the replies, and my own thinking, it will be very helpful to see how to let go some of my projects that may not need to be done, and which cause more stress than they are worth. This approach will also be useful in helping each of the children to work out their own learning and working style to optimize their own schoolwork and career development. Such introspection, for me, is really tedious, but I think it should be worth the time.

At the conference, I met several sharp scholars who are dealing with their forced retirement. This is becoming more common in my circle of contacts. Specialists in marketing, drafting, engineering, philosophy, research, and journalism who are seen as redundant to their employers. The hardest part of it is to see the pain caused by people who believe that they are no longer valued or important. Scrambling to find work of any type, and being frustrated by being told that they were too old, or their skills were out of data. This is difficult. They are used to being well-cared-for employees, and have little skill in entrepreneurship or self-supporting skills. I have the benefit of having lost work several times and know that I can survive in a network of friends and family while I re-orient myself and move into a new direction. It does hurt and it causes panic. Thinking as a business owner and entrepreneur and investor has to be the most-secure way forward, not seeking lifetime employment which no longer can be for a lifetime.

8 September, Thursday.
Back after the conference. Gains: new vocabulary, new friends, deeper relationships with older friends, and potential for greater multiplication of efforts in studying and reporting on civil society issues in Iraq and beyond. Potential for a new book: "Deconstructing the romanticized construct of global civil society." In other words, applying common sense and scientific process to vague generatilities about local and global forms of civil society. I will work through my notes later and summarize them on another page, and may insert some points retroactively by date or topic.

Big news on email and dealing with repressive governments.
Yahoo China helped Chinese authorities imprison a journalist reporting on new media restrictions. This was shortly after Yahoo was allowed to invest US$1 billion dollars to buy into the Chinese communications market. This violation of trust and respect by Yahoo gives me extra gratefulness for my own email systems--I pay for subscriptions and get high quality service with high standards of security. Free email from Yahoo or Google does not carry any warranty of care for customers. Securenym.com, for example, has one of the best reputations for protecting its customers, and making sure that their email is always working and that technical support always answers within a very short time any questions.

7 September, Wednesday.
"In my family we have a saying, 'Always do the kindest thing and don't make others squeak.' So began my forum comment to the friends and acquaintances at the end of the week. After four days of anti-right, anti-left, anti-religious, anti-market, and anti-government expressions, I called for civility in speech by those calling for global civil society. Truth is found behind the words, and some of the strong demands for globalization of civil society systems were weakened by lack of respect for those different.
As an example, some participants expressed several times that religious faith has no right to be included in forums on civil society because those with faith-based organizations are biased towards their own agendas. They also did not want representatives of government or state agencies to be included, especially if they were connected to governments of western countries.

Very interesting--demand civil society, but act with uncivility; demand freedom from government intereference, and condemn over and over governments of England and the USA, but offer no suggestions as to _how_ to move beyond criticism to problem-solving. At least this was a forum where conflict could be discussed and debated with mostly intelligent pause for considered responses.

Main points of interest:
-John Keane as keynote speaker on global civil society. Philosophical concepts of the utopian ideal.
-Kumi Naidoo. South African anti-apartheid activist and now global activist on civil society.
-NGO workshop with Christian Aid charity working in Iraq and Afghanistan. Good discussion of the role of outsiders in local issues. Claire Spencer and Ben Hobbs. They were not as "Western government-bashing" as some of the other groups, and they do have a good track record of doing good through local organisations.
-Nigel Dower. Defining global civil society by universal content and also by place of action. This gets to the heart of the issue: are there genuine universal absolutes accepted by everyone everywhere regarding acceptable behaviour at the personal and group level? Are there or should there be organizations with impact in every single community and life in the world?
-Setting up personal websites for conference participants. I set up ahead of time websites for each participant, and was able to work with several one-on-one at the conference to add content and to help them take control of their own communications system.
-My own Iraq presentation. I felt very prepared and was able to succinctly present the highlights and then have an extended time of question and answer. The personal questions I received then and later were often about predicting the future in Iraq--what could or should be done to develop local civil society organisations and peace-making initiatives. No easy answers there!
-Most fun? The 30 minute walk from the hostel to the conference. Never alone, there was always opportunity to learn and get to know others along the way.
-Least fun? Very difficult to keep computers, network, and internet cooperating to help participants with their communications questions when they wanted help. I really did not want to be in a tech support role, but seemed to do that quite a bit. Fortunately, I also could sense when the techie things were not the real issue, and could stop to talk about deeper issues on communications strategies and research or activism priorities. That was far more important than the technical "which button do I push?"
2 September, Friday.
Bookkeeping today, along with a fun break. I found a website with the "Top 100 Speeches." Top Speeches
Very interesting to listen to portions of some of the great speeches by Churchill, Reagan, Martin Luther King.
There is a lot of powerful content in these, especially as they address the post-1945 foundations of civil society.
I plan to listen to more of them.
This may be my last post for a week or so.

A well-written blog giving advice on post-storm reconstruction is below,
scroll down to the September 2 presentation of specific recommendations.
He mentions a "Homeland Security's new Center for the Study of Mass Casualty Events"
This can move all of us towards a "prevention counseling" attitude instead of
"attack the government for not doing enough after the calamity."

"This is the boat people model, on fiscal steroids.
It requires judgment, not rules. And it takes cash money and credit cards."
Hugh Hewitt

My page of dealing with my own water problems: water world
1 September, Thursday.
Packaged up all the documents needed for the presentations, with overhead transparencies, printouts, and copies of everything on CD and on a small pendrive. Ready to focus on the audience and how to think about what they might need in way of relevant examples and coaching.
Then a phone call to my parents (Happy 50th Anniversary!).

Sad content was about the destruction on the Gulf Coast. Thousands of refugees seeking a new life, with food and water and dry beds and work and school. It is hard to connect my understanding and experience with refugees from other parts of the world to these newest refugees in the USA. For the first time today, I took time to study the CNN and BBC reports on what is happening. Dozens of communities wiped from the face of the earth, just as in Asia earlier this year. The world is one, and suffering in one place does affect everyone else. Whether it is a bridge collapse in Iraq that kills hundreds, or a flood anywhere that kills thousands, it still takes away from all of us.
Time is short, isn't it? The choices are to become obsessed with myself and seek to take as much as possible from others while become bitter and anxious, or to seek to serve and help and find peace inside me along the way. It is my choice. I choose to solve problems, not to cause them.
31 August, Wednesday.
Finished the presentation on social systems research in Iraq, and then received a package from Basrah, Iraq, with another 100 surveys on social networks and social capital. These, plus the 50 on my desk from the Netherlands, and another 70 or so in Rotterdam waiting for me to pick up, add up to many months of work ahead. Slow work. My skill at deciphering handwritten Arabic is not too fast or accurate.
The evening was a delightful time with a neighbor family. All kids and dog and other pets all together. Delicious food and many topics of conversation. Good people who have been kind and encouraging to us.
30 August, Tuesday.
Worked on a presentation on how to better communicate using a combination of email send out (push to the readers) and webpage content (pull the readers to the material). I used the new Apple software, "keynote" to do the presentation design. It is similar to Powerpoint, but offers more benefits on the actual presentation delivery. I found it with many more features suitable to include audio and video, but more limited for my text-only project. So, I decided to do the full keynote/powerpoint presentation and put it online at my conference wiki, but to plan on using overhead transparencies for the actual presentation (getting computer + beamer setup and operating in the short time I have available may not work). I will have then powerpoint + overhead transparency + paper note formats to do my best with whatever tools are available.
The other talk, on social systems research in Iraq, I should finish tomorrow in the same formats.
Once again, the IOM (International Organization for Migration) office in Utrecht gave great counseling and support to a friend from the Middle East who has Dutch nationality but wants to return to his homeland before his father dies. IOM time and time again gives practical counsel on how immigrants can make the best decisions.

29 August, Monday.
 The brother-in-law gave all of us an explanation and powerpoint presentation on "What is an engineer?" As a senior civil engineer building airports and bridges and such, he has a lot of experience to share with us. He explained in simple terms how an engineer does a project, and how to keep the client satisfied. Very interesting.
Followed by a long bicycle ride to Naarden-vesting, a fortified and moated town from the 16th century. Followed by apple pie and chocolate cookies to celebrate the last evening he will have with us. This has been a great week for me, and for all of us.
28 August, Sunday.
Fun family times in the morning with great food, family meeting to discuss events of the week and a brief discussion of "doing right things."
Followed by 7 hours with a new group of friends, playing the "Cashflow" game by Robert Kiyosaki and discussing how the game principles apply to real issues of starting a business and growing it appropriately. I look forward to being with these and similar people again, to see what I can contribute to the need to train people how to invest for the future, and not depend on supposed job security.
27 August, Saturday.
A delicious long bicycle ride this morning with my wife and brother-in-law allowed us to go up in a 1735 windmill and see it working, and to see a drawbridge go up and down three times with the operator explaining how it works. 54 kilometers of fun. No rain, little wind.
26 August, Friday.
Work on the conference presentations was renewed by notice that I would be able to do workshops each day to help conference participants develop their own websites to promote the sharing and application of their writing and research. That will give me something useful to do besides just sitting in meetings and hearing about other research. I rather prefer solving problems than listen to lectures. There are also a number of new presenters listed in the program, so I created a web page for each one, using this wiki system for rapid editing.
I noticed that my first presentation is the first paper on the first day, on communication impact using a combination of email and web-publishing. That will be good, to give me plenty of time the rest of the conference to meet one-on-one with those with questions. My second presentation is Wednesday, the third and final day, which will be good. I can relax by then and enjoy sharing about the practical benefit of people-centric, social system research in a post-war, almost-civil-war environment.
25 August, Thursday.
My brother-in-law arrived this morning for a week's visit. He is a greatly-experienced engineer with a lot of wisdom in dealing with people issues. We had a great catching up on basic family stories and then I went to meet with a friend developing social impact projects in Rotterdam. We had four hours together to discuss connections between social systems research, theology, missiology, and practical application to solving problems of poverty. He is well-connected to dozens of immigrant community social organizations and with that breadth of understanding comes a macro view of causes of poverty and some of the solutions. My main role, I guess, was to ask questions to clarify his exact purpose and mission in leading the projects, and to distinguish between the core issue for his research project, and the many interesting questions that he could learn about. Those are two different priorities.
The trip home was delayed by problems with the train caused by the severe thunderstorm. Then I got to ride my bicycle home through that same thunderstorm. My rainjacket did not keep the rain out.
24 August, Wednesday.
Finished up the Arabic survey revision. Except for three questions that I am not sure what to do with. As I've gone over and over the surveys and the whole project, more and more questions seem interesting, but not relevant to the main focus of the work. The time with the translator & partner is always such a pleasure, with joy of working together to do something right, something good, and something useful. I have a strong vision that such studies on social networks can answer many questions about how to support peace- making. I need first to get data entered and analyses completed for the 110+ surveys that I already have, and with another 100 to arrive in the next few days. That is enough work to last 6 months or more. But I also need to do significant fund-raising to support the next level of data collection, analysis and publication. Surveying in Europe costs about Euro 20.00 per survey collected. Collecting in Iraq costs about Euro 8.00 per survey. I need data from both places, from many places, in order to make meaningful comparisons.
A difficult communication was with a research assistant who wants me to hire her to do more work. Her prices are the highest I have ever paid for anyone, and she did good work, but the extra costs involved cut short the amount of useful data that could have been gathered. Large government-funded organizations are able to pay very high rates for data collection, and so they create obstacles for others, like myself, who want to focus on smaller populations and more practical problems. Getting grants for research usually takes 6 months to one year, and I did not put much time into seeking grants before launching this project. With civil war near happening in Iraq, I wanted data and I wanted it now, before things change too much. So, some of my work is covered by my day-job, and some of my work is paid for by me personally. That is ok, as it allows me to give and invest personally in researching, writing, and counseling individuals. And, all of these things are important to me and my family.
23 August, Tuesday.
Today's questions were about refugees, again.
1. A refugee woman with a child wants to return home. Two options: International Organization for Migration (IOM) will arrange paperwork, travel, and legal advice on re-entry; or, independent on her own paperwork, her own ticketing, and exposed to legal problems on re-entry. The IOM route has a lot of benefits, but is a high-profile re-entry that some returnees fear because they believe that they are in danger from the government. The independent route puts all risk and expense on the individual, but is lower-profile in the eyes of the government. So, is it safer to have big-brother IOM to watch over your return and to let others know if the receiving government violates international law? Or, is it safer to stay low-visibility and hope that there are no problems that might end up with you disappearing without anyone knowing?

2. An asylum-seeking woman has been waiting for over five years for a decision on her case. This week she telephoned to her attorney to check on status of her case. She was told that she was given full refugee status in 2/2003, but that someone "forgot" to let her know. With the growing animosity against foreigners and refugees, my mind immediately thought that maybe it was intentional, in hopes that she would get tired of the emotional pain and harrassment of the asylum process and would choose to leave, allowing the government the cost and bother of caring for her. What is the purpose of immigration agencies? To keep out or force out, or to protect those needing help? The decision-making process is always being tweaked and fine-tuned, but the basic role and motivation is keep out all except the most desireable of incomers.
Is the government leading to the future, or managing problems of yesterday? Reduce spending or increase revenue? Stopping sources of out-migration or stopping in-migration?

Learning to deal with deception by refugees, by friends, and lies by
government representatives builds a different skillset, although I guess it is the same
as when I deal with a 6 year-old who is hiding his vegetables under his plate.
 All of them take a lot of time to perceive truth and to perceive subsequent action by me.
It is frustrating when a mature man forgets the lies he told about another person (when I was present) and then is hurt when this other person months later calls him a lier and a troublemaker.
"In the abundance of words there is sin"
22 August, Monday.
As our family reads and discusses the new book on learning styles, a lot of useful insights are coming out. We discussed writing a book summary, along with our perspective on multiple intelligences. The main point in all of this is that traditional formal schooling is developed by, operated by, and evaluated by audio-sequential (left-brain dominant) people. Those of us who learn "different" have to struggle to succeed. But, some of us do. And will. I am excited to learn more about how to liberate myself and my own children to learn much more, faster, in a way appropriate to our optimal learning styles.
This relates to giving talks and writing reports as well. With more of the world becoming (again) graphical and interactive in learning and in playing, the traditions of formal communications will change. Few people read, and even fewer will be reading massive books and journals on paper. Skimming great amounts of screen content will become more valued, as will speed-processing of other audio-video content. We do not have time to buy and leisurely read all the new material being printed right now, and the time and money available will become even less. These are fun times to be alive and learning, in many different ways. To learn about non-linear and spatial intelligences:
Gifted Development
20 August, Saturday.
Computer Service Survey is the latest customer service survey published by ITWorld. The main points were that Apple computer still has the highest rating for customer service, and Dell is dropping.
An interesting report also found that The latest ZOTOB worm to hit Windows machines was apparently part of a contest between three rival groups to see who could disrupt the most computers. This particular worm made your PC reboot and left a back door open so hackers could take over the machine to send out spam or DOS attacks. In comparison, the fact is that apparently few viruses, few worms, and few trojan horses have infected Mac OS X. I have had trouble with MS Word attachments that aggrevated my email, but that was more likely to be my fault.
19 August, Friday.
http://www.nabuur.com/ is "neighbor", a site to connect on a worldwide basis donors and projects. Very interesting opportunities to make connections. But, I find its approach counter-intuitive. It talks about the features of networking people, but it does not present (in my opinion) a clear description of the benefits. Why promote features (of a product) when they could address benefits (to participants like me? Selling an idea, a dream, a vision of the future depends on benefits, not features, and thinking in short, repeateable "sound bites."
In my paper on Iraq social systems, it was easy to define the questions the research needed to address. But the presentation on communication impact, demonstrating the use of seedwiki, will be more of a challenge. What are the quesions dealing with increasing communications impact? Readership, citation multiplication, co-authoring, online collaboration, rapid dissemination, multi-lingual publishing, and combinations of print + digital distribution. This will be a good topic to think through over the next day.

A telephone call just now was about beginning a new association to discuss financial intelligence development, in business and in schools, and to play CashFlow games to stimulate thinking. This could be very interesting for me and my own network of contacts. I appreciate the invitation to participate, and look forward to meeting new friends and learning what I can. One of the initiators told me that there is a growing move in Europe to privatize retirement plans as the state is approaching its limit in every country to continue the generous pension and medical welfare programs of the past. There is a growing openness by old and young people to seek other ways to protect their financial security. If inflation is at 4% per year, then any savings that are not making at least 4% per year are actually losing money for the investor, and are much more susceptible to economic instability in the marketplace. I talked by phone with a financial planner. He told me that because of the risk of investment in real estate and business ownership, he advised buying life insurance policies and mutual funds. Risk?

18 August, Thursday.
I learned a lot today about two new tools.
1. Keynote: the new multimedia presentation tool by Apple. Similar to Powerpoint, but with more options for themes, audio/video integration, and export into powerpoint or quicktime formats.
2. Firefox: a fast, reliable, and stable web browser with many, many extensions for that allow stylesheet editing, downloading of many links at once, and skimming more data more efficiently. One of my favorite set of extensions allows me to quickly copy links and citations and paste directly into MS Word or into this wiki. Firefox is very stable for me, and has many ways to save time and trouble with online work.
Firefox Get Firefox!

17 August, Wednesday.
Exciting progress on several topics today.
1. Set up wiki presentation framework to practice giving my talks. I first created an outline at Research Presentation Outline. Then copied each topic onto a new page, with links between them. Then connected a borrowed beamer to test how to quickly set it up and use it from different computers with different settings. This is great experience and fun (which leads to my second point, below).

2. The new book for the family: _Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner_ by Linda Kreger Silverman, 2002. This book is about those of us who are not the brilliant, linear-logic, word-loving people who score highly on verbal-logical tests written by other verbal-logical (auditory-sequential) high-achievers.

"Visual-spatial learners usually don't conform to the typical notions we have about bright people. We rarely think of them as gifted children. Yet, in adult life, it is visual-spatial reasoning that leads to true genius: scientific and technological breakthroughs, innovative forms of art, inventions, new perspectives in every field, and visionary leadership...Traditionally, we think of gifted children as academically successful, straight-A students, who excel in the three r's: readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic...This is a left-hemispheric {of the brain} view of high intelligence. Individuals with greater right-hemispheric abilities are usually seen as oddballs, ill-supported within the educational system--often left to their own devices to figure out how to cope with learning things differently."
This thinking gives me hope, a lot of hope, not just for my sons who are not always learning the way others do, but also for me. I can learn by reading and writing, and I can function in a world of left-brain people. But I have other strengths and look forward to learning how to do more with who I am, and with my children who can act like me. Which leads to my third point, below.

3. Needing a small amount of dark-green paint to touch up our front door, I stopped in a new paint shop. I did not see my colour on the shelf, and asked the owner for help. On hearing the colour number, she said, "Yes, that is a popular colour, especially with the city government." She grabbed a small tin of "Base 000" and walked around behind the counter. I followed. She popped the lid up and put the tin of beige paint into a cabinet that looked like a microwave oven and pointed to the computer screen on top. "We enter the paint code number here, EPS1510, and press start." The machine squeaked like a toy rubber ducky once, while the first light glowed, again while the second light glowed, and again while the third light glowed. She pulled the tin out and showed me that it had three teardrops of other colour in the middle of the beige. Pressing the top back on the tin, she slid it under a shelf in yet another machine that also seemed in the microwave family and pressed "start." The shelf lowered quickly and the whole machine began rattling and shaking and dancing around on the table. It was exciting and I wondered what it would be like to clean up the tin of paint when it fell out on the floor with the machine on top. But, nothing happened and one minute later it was finished, completely mixed and homogenized, ready to use. I picked up another brush and a few roller pads, paid and wished that the kids could have been with me to see this interesting equipment. This is a way I love to learn--watching and doing real things. My earned Ph.D. is proof that I can also learn in a classroom and by reading.


16 August, Tuesday.
The family left, so we had a family meeting to review all that had happened over the last week, and what was to happen this week. We commended the little guys for playing well with the guests, and the bigger guys for being helpful.
Since it was sunny outside, we assumed that today was summer, even though we though summer was give weeks ago when we had sun (this is a family joke!).
After asking my wife what house projects she wanted done, with two boys helping, we took off one of the w.c. doors, carried it out back, sanded it smooth, and the one of the less-experienced guys got to paint it with a roller. I was very surprised--no paint mess, and very little paint on either the painter or me, the painter's helper. We discussed paint viscosity, surface preparation, and how to apply paint. Then we quit before we did any damage. Success!

15 August, Monday.
Another airport trip, and another time to practice reading signs and getting around an airport. The son did arrive, and we then got to debrief his trip and discuss his adventures. Good learning moments for all of us.
The house was full later on as a family came from Germany to spend the night. Great kid-times in the garden and beyond while big people ate too much and talked too much and laughed not enough. A favorite activity with these friends is also "what have you been reading lately?" A few moments of book reviews seems to give us much more in common, and potential to work together on different interesting projects.


14 August, Sunday.
Trip to the airport this morning with two boys to meet an arrival. The plane was two hours late. Then it was cancelled. It was a long trip, but we tried to learn as much as we could. I had the boys read the signs and tell me when the plane was landing, what gate it would arrive at, and where we should stand. Since we had plenty of time, we also discussed and practiced what to do if they became separated from me. Such contingency planning is never wasted because it trains in thinking ahead, and for boys that can be more work than for girls.
We also discussed train schedules. And, when they did not respond to a train conductor's greetings, it gave opportunity to learn more about politeness and courtesy to public servants.

13 August, Saturday.
 Today was time to clean up storm damage, cleaning water drains and building up walking paths above water level. Working with the boys gave me good opportunity to talk about water flow and drainage and soil management. It is great to have hands-on examples to make learning alive and practical--this is the way to build habits of lifelong learning.

12 August, Friday. References.
Thanks to Amit S. Pande for the mention as a collaboration wiki: comminit
I appreciate very much the comminit forum, and the great communication resources they provide.
Too much rain today--flooded walkways in front and behind the house. I repaired a power cord on a computer and worked six hours on revising my SPSS statistics forms for the old Iraq survey input.

A great article on the need for a responsible, thinking view of social systems in Iraq:
Iraq's Social Contract .

The Social Contract We Need in Iraq by Mazin Sahib

"Ever since the ninth of April, 2003, the developments in Iraq have prompted us to pause and contemplate several questions: What kind of Iraq do we wish to see? And how is it possible for such a broad spectrum of different Iraqi political groups to coexist in one country?

If we want to understand the present in any country, it is also important to have an objective understanding of its past in order to predict its future. In other words, we should try to reproduce the past if we are to gain momentum for the future. Simply put, if you want to leap forward you should take a few steps back."



11 August, Thursday. Translations.
This was a fun afternoon of working on the next ten questions
on the new social networks survey. The partner and his wife
sat with me in the very nice public library in the centre of Utrecht,
and worked three hours together. Actually, it was enjoyable more
than work, as it rolled around the deliciousness of translation,
and how some languages have such delightful ways to saying
things. Our conversation was a mix of Arabic, Dutch and English.
The difficult part was that I took my own computer (not the Macintosh,
but another kind) and it was not very accomodating to the combination
of Arabic and English script. We did make progress, but it would
have been much faster to have gone to another computer that was
only Arabic. Maybe next time.

Good days, good friends, good work.

The personal question today was, "How does this research matter?"
The study of civil society is really a study of structures two or one degrees
removed from real cause and effect. Civil behavior is an individual action,
either initiating or responding. It is a choice--to do good for others or not.
"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say.
I just watch what they do." -- Andrew Carnegie

There are so many organizations and programs focused on changing
structures and systems, but ignoring the personal choice patterns underneath.
Social evils exist because individual people, like me, make decisions
that are self-centered. When my life centers around pleasing me,
then pleasing others and doing good for others is secondary.

"Civilization is all about subordinating our personal? baser instincts in order to live together in peace, order, and mutual respect." -- Bob Garfield in Advertising Age magazine, December 22, 2003, p. 19.

10 August, Wednesday. Data.
Today was another computer-intensive day, setting up analysis forms for my current social networks data. The tool of preference, SPSS, is a database that allows every single piece of data to be tested against every other piece of my data for significance.

In science, we look at ideas and things and represent them with numbers. After comparing numbers with each other, looking for patterns of meaning, we convert those numbers back into ideas and interpretations of reality. Sometimes it is like the old "telephone game" where one person tells the next person a piece of information. That person tells the next person, and the news travels all around the group and back to the starting point. Often, the original message is little like the ending message. In the same way, I attempt to capture peoples' thoughts on paper with a short and simple question, convert their answers to numbers, compare their answers with all of answers I have, and make a guess about what happened. The dependent factor (variable) is what I am actually trying to measure, for example "who do you go to for personal help." The independent factor is what many different people will have in common that could influence who they go to for personal help, for example if they live with their parents or if they live alone in a different country. Research is an attempt to predict, or to explain how and why.

In my 2003 research, I found that animosity against foreigners in Iraq was greatest among "moderate Arabs." There was much less animosity expressed by very poor people or by very religious people. So, the dependent variable was level of animosity, and the independent variables were religious importance and level of income. My favorite part is meeting people and learning from them and seeing how I can solve troubles for them. Computers are not people.

"You don't get points for intent, only for results."
--Annie Morita, senior vice president of marketing
at Columbia TriStar


9 August, Tuesday. Computer.
I solve problems and find solutions. This seems a good contribution to my networks of contacts, and I used to spend a lot of time solving technical problems. Sometimes I like to think that I have moved beyond technical trouble-shooting into more people-centered activities. Today, though, was a regression into computer pain. My first computer days were with a DEC workstation, then punchcards on an IBM 360, and then the great leap to personal computers with Tandy TRS-80, IBM PC, and then a Macintosh. In the 1990s, I was very comfortable with keeping a variety of DOS, Windows and Macintosh computers working, alone and on a simple network.

Yesterday, though, I invested time reading help files on both Macintosh and Windows systems. The trouble is combining English, Arabic and Farsi in a multi-column table for use on paper, in a digital file, and online in a wiki where users can fill in a survey online, or download and email it or post a paper copy to me. This type of project is not a common one solved on the internet, and it will have to stay in my projects background for a while until I find someone else to help me. I was able to get English and Arabic text forms of the survey on a wiki, but the use of columns did not work well, and editing back and forth between English and Arabic did not go as smoothly as I hoped.

But, this is still a great step forward to sharing resources online. I'm not sure where the border between public research data and private research data should be. My data on social systems in Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq, yet I have responsibility to extract and share a reasonable amount of honorable meaning from it before giving it too completely to the internet. I am trying to do that. On the other hand, storing the data for years until I milk out of it all possible interesting meaning is not right either.

Today was also pleasantly wrapped in phone calls with family and friends in several lands, and visitors from Germany. Humans need people contact to stay human.

“Brilliant flashes of insight--so-called “eureka” moments---do not occur as often to people working alone. Rather, breakthrough observations are more likely to be made when several people with broadly different backgrounds work together and realize that seemingly unrelated concepts can be combined in exciting new ways.” Phil Lopiccolo, Computer Graphics World, November 2003, p. 4.

8 August, Monday.
I woke up early with a great sense of mission for the day. In my resting time Sunday I thought through how to take the "very messy" MS Word documents with the new social network surveys, clean up the tables, and put them onto a test page to allow live editing by those who want to contribute. It worked. Of course, it took a bit longer than I hoped for, but it did work. The next step is to get the survey questions and answers revised to be better questions and to be easier for respondents to understand. Then, to get them into a database link so that the survey can be taken online, with results emailed to me. I enjoy this type of problem-solving. The best part is bringing together people who are experts in different parts of a project, and helping each participant make their best contribution.
For example, a Baghdadi sunni helped me to find a Kurdish sunni to find a translator to help produce a Kurdish survey, and do survey collection here. And, a Hollander introduced me to an Iranian to begin working on a Farsi study. The Arabic and Kurdish versions went quickly because those helping were very computer-literate. The Farsi will not be a fast project because the translator-helper is not familiar with sociological terminology or approaches. But, I will find someone, and maybe soon, and then the project will open new relationships. And, it will be exciting to get pages of research on the wiki in Arabic, Dutch, English, Farsi and Kurdish. This is a good preparation for the new Journal, which we hope to have multi-lingua. This wiki handles so many languages so easily that I can focus on content instead of on technical tweaking.

Revised draft of the new Arabic social networks survey: Survey Draft Arabic. It is very, very, very, very slow to load because of the tables.

I made some new discoveries today on the differences between Macintosh and Windows XP browser functions on the wiki sites, and find that switching between these computers helps me to keep wiki use optimized for both.

7 August, Sunday. Threes.
"So there grew three groups among us {foreigners}. there were those who said that, though it was very late, {if we withdrew} that Gorth could build a world of her own...returning to her own heritage, re-fashioned in a way native to her. Then there were those, luckily a very few, who were of a different mind. There will always be born, in every race and species of man,... certain individuals who have a thirst for power...But there were others o fus, who, though we were not of mixed blood, had taken Gorth to our hearts. And when we came to think of raising from her, we could not bear it." --From _Star Gate_ by Andre Norton.

An opposite look at ingroups and outgroups in Western Europe is at 3 Worldviews.

Today is a day of reflection, of thinking of the past and the future, and how I should move from one to the other.


6 August, Saturday. New Communications.
Today gave a great first. For months I have wanted to have a webcam, and a way to let family and friends see and chat with our family over the internet. Actually, I started testing ideas and tools in 1996, but never could get a solution that was satisfying. Today most parts finally came together. Out of my old techie junk box that lives under my desk I pulled two old webcams. Plugging both of them into my iMac, I started finding and loading different video drivers for webcams. Then, I took a break and my daughter started up her Yahoo Messenger chat session and I saw a link for "webcam." Oh! What is that? I took over, politely, and began adjusting the settings, and all at once a video window opened up on my computer and I was looking at myself. Not very pretty to look at, I admit, but it worked! I found the focus adjustment on the camera, but found that I looked better when the camera was out of focus. Anyway, I was excited and sent the daughter up to the other computer, logged in to Yahoo Messenger, and invited the iMac to share its video with me. She immediately saw the picture and messaged me that it worked. I was again away from the computer and returned to see a niece chatting on Yahoo with my daughter. I quickly joined in and asked her to test my video connection. It was not long before she could see us, and then she jumped away to look for her own mislaid webcam. About 30 minutes later she was online and her children and mine were waving to each other. Success! The audio problem was not resolved, but we could type and see each other, sharing family across thousands of miles. What a great adventure, and how grateful I am for internet and for computers.

I received a proposal from a graduate student for a medical videoconferencing study. I look forward to studying it and seeing what I can contribute and learn.

"To know what's coming, you don't look into a crystal
ball, you ask people."
- Melinda Davis, Author of The Culture of Desire

5 August, Friday. Security.
I started out early on my bike, walked into the train station and was very surprised. First, there was almost nobody there. Second, there were five security guards checking documents from everyone approaching the train platform. This is not a large station, and to have such a large security detail was surprising. And, they were training other guards at the same time. Six months ago, it was very difficult to find police or security people anywhere. All of a sudden, it is a large, visible, and very expensive operation. I guessed that there must be an additional 5000 security people working the train stations in the Netherlands. What does that cost? Maybe, Euro250,000 per year in total cost? And very little likelihood that the "public transport security budget item" will every again be so low.
To avoid public lack of confidence in the government, there is an increase of control over the public, and a corresponding loss of public freedom. Citizens may want security from fear, and allow the government to take away rights in exchange for the promise of an appearance of safety. I am still far more fearful of being attacked by a few underemployed youngsters on the street than I am of any possibility of a bomb underneath my train carriage.

"State inefficiency is the last bastion of freedom."
--Michael Cross


After a meeting at the university, and picking up a newer version of SPSS software to do data analysis, and searching for a new dictionary, I met an Iraqi friend to work on another survey, and our new journal project. Some of the draft ideas at at: mideastjournal

We worked out an outline of how and what to include in a presentation of current thinking on social systems among Middle Eastern people. Emphasis is on letting insiders speak for themselves, through surveys or through their own description of their systems. We plan to being by seeking to find authors who would submit articles or permit reprints of other published articles.

Four hours later, I had learned a lot more about nuances of Arabic dialect differences between street language, educated language, and then sociologist language. We then walked around his town a bit to look at other projects he is working on. In the rain. Then the train. Then a long bike ride in the rain. Wet, and then very wet. And cool.


4 August, Thursday. Neighbors.
MS word and Excel most of the day, and contact with friends in Iran and Iraq and Turkey. Then a big table event this evening with a neighbor family. They were some of our first friends in the Netherlands, and are still people we choose to see a lot. We talked about kids and the neighborhood and friends and work. Then the husband took me for a drive in his car to show me his new "Tom-Tom" satellite navigation system. That was impressive. One of my dislikes about driving my car is that I feel I can either watch the road the other cars, or I can watch for signs and directions. If I do not have a navigator with me, I usually will not go to far away by car. This device might change that, and save a lot of money and time in travel.
Tom-Tom is about 12 x 25 cm, and shows a live map of wherever the car is. When you start, you enter the destination address using the touchscreen menu (city, street, number). When you start moving, it starts showing and voicing directions towards the destination. It is only accurate to about 50 meters or so, and if you go through an intersection too quickly, it might tell you to take a long detour to get back to the destination. But, it does get close. I may borrow it from my neighbor the next time I go someplace I know, and see how well it can actually get me there.



3 August, Wednesday. Word and Excel.
Many hours today getting my English survey form revised so that I can make it match the Arabic. Before I start putting the data into a computer file, it is important to plan out what that file will look like and what it will do. I first copied the whole 11 pages of tables out of MS Word into MS Excel. Then spent hours cleaning up the mess. It is not yet done, because I have some questions with three sub-items and four possible answers for each sub-item. I will eventually have a record for every single survey form, and a cell for each answer. But today all I want is a clean copy of an English survey form that exactly matches the numbering sequences on the Arabic form. I need to sort the Excel file based on the Arabic ordering. That is difficult to think through. Manually changing the merge status of every cell is real slow.
MS Word may be a sort of standard for documents, but it is not very happy running combinations of English and Arabic tables on my Macintosh. Searching the internet found a lot of similar complaints from others. I used Nisus writer in the past and may need to revert to that if I cannot get MS Word to do what I need it to do. It is very cool to type a sentence in English, then click on a button on my menubar and immediately start typing in Arabic or Farsi. matching fonts is a challenge, of course, to get the right sizes and shapes to look good, but it does work.

My new Apple Powerbook is at my parents' house, for my daughter to use while she is finishing her university exams. Then she is supposed to bring it to me and let me keep it! Will she????

A great step forward today was Kenneth Tyler's repairing of the header and logo on the civilsociety series of wiki pages. From anywhere in the wiki pages, I can now click on the word "civilsociety" in the upper left corner, and I will jump back to the homepage for all the civilsociety wikis. This is such a great help, and it makes the whole system easier to use.

The more interesting event was a two-hour visit by a Dutch writer for a broadcasting company. He told stories of his recent vacation trip through France, Spain and Portugal. Great photos of castles and churches. The last hour was about my research on social systems in the Middle East, and the potential ways that peace could come to Iraq, and how my research methodology might work also in other troubled places. I had not thought much about that before.
I have been trying to get connections set up to send money to a research collector in Basrah, and how to get my research surveys back to me from Basrah. I'm praying for R, the collector, that asking questions on social networks and social systems will lead to peace and protection on him; he does not need harrassment or worse from people who are afraid of hard questions.



2 August, Tuesday. Arabic.
Today was mostly Arabic, setting up my coding system to enter the Arabic surveys into the analysis program. I cross-checked two English and two Arabic versions of the survey and did find several mistakes. Two questions were omitted in the latest Arabic version, and two others were reworded, and now have a different meaning than the original survey design.
A pleasant email came from Basra, Iraq. It was from a lawyer who collected surveys from me in 2003 and we have stayed in email contact since then. He is eager to do more work, but the tricky part seems to be getting money to him, and him sending the completed surveys to me. He uses a bank in Kuwait for money. It may take some time to work out the international bank transfer system going that way. The second question is how to get surveys to me. There is DHL, UPS, FEDEX, and Aramex courier services from Iraq, and I sent an email to each of them, asking how to send a parcel from Iraq, and how much it will cost. Maybe they will answer.
I wish I was able to get more Iranian surveys. It has been hard to find a motivated Iranian to do the translation checking and the survey collecting. Maybe in the fall.

I did take an hour to work with the number 2 son to help put together a Bamzooki robot. We built a spider-like creature. The hard part was getting the legs to move in the right sequence and speed and movement. think about it---how does a real spider move its legs? This needs a lot more work before our spider is ready to put to work.

Another big project was putting more files and pages onto this wiki. I set up a new section, on how to do things. The first topics were how to begin a research project, and I will later add many more details on the full scientific but fun approach to quantitative research. The other page was on strategic academic communication, combining print and digital communications tools. I love learning, and have learned how to do so many fun things that I thought I should write some of them up and put on the wiki in case anyone else is interested.

In-between the big projects today, I painted some of the kitchen cabinets. The old paint was a dark and dingy yellow that make the whole kitchen seem shabby. Most of the lower cabinet and drawer faces are now a bright and happy off-white. Things I learned: the round popular paint brush does not work for me as well as the slim and flat brush; painting a high-gloss enamel paint on cabinets should be done outside, with the cabinet faces flat so that paint does not drip and run; a little paint can make an old room look much better.

The best part of the day, and week, was having our number One son return from his two months away. I have missed tychicus so very much. He was tired, so he ate, showered, chatted a very few minutes, did a few emails, and went to sleep. Maybe tomorrow he will be alert and able to share wonderful stories about his camp in Germany. I have such a great family. My oldest daughter, mroz, called to say that she passed her CLEP exams--two semesters worth of French and one course in Human Growth and Development. Only six more courses and she graduates with her bachelor's degree. Maybe by mid-October she will be done with this part of her education. Two years for her first degree--not bad!


From Tychicus: It was great fun getting home and talking with you as well! Thank you!

1 August, Monday. Bamzooki.
The favorite new tv show for the little guys is called "Bamzooki". At BBC television http;//www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/bamzooki you can join in building small online robotic creatures that compete in climbing, pushing, running, and jumping. It is amazing the new vocabulary our guys are getting as they talk about appendages and "axis of rotation". They have built the most marvelous spider-like things with ten legs that jump and walk. It would be even more fun if I could find a lego set that allows them to make real 3-d versions of their virtual creations. I did search a bit on the internet and found a few lego Technic kits that seem to offer creature-building challenges. At euros 75 each, it does not seem like much lego for the money. Virtual is cheap, for now.

I started reconciling the Arabic version of the surveys with the original English version. The content is almost identical, but the numbering sequence is completely different. Not a difference to the data entry or interpretation of results, but it is slowing me down a bit. I just sent a copy of the survey form to a contact in Iraq who wants the work of collecting for me. The only difficulty is sending money to pay him and him, in return, sending the completed surveys back to me.

The other project today was an attempt to work on the appearance of these wiki pages. I have a good logo and top header for the pages, but I simply cannot get the html coding to work. As a result, these pages stay ugly until I get time to work on them again. I can do the technical detail work, but I do not do enough to remember how to do it fast or correctly. At this point in my life, I need to be moving faster to mentor people and make things happen, not to spend hours on technician work, unless it is with my kids to train them how to do it. The boys wanted me to help them make a bamzooki this morning after the tv show, but I needed to get started on the arabic surveys. I guess I'll stop this and go apologize to them for not helping, and make an appointment for tomorrow to do that with them. They are such great guys. They hauled in buckets of sand for me this evening so that I could build up the foundation under the walkway paving tiles to get the water running off the walkway. I think it worked, but it is dry now and I'll have to wait until tomorrow when it rains again to see if the water does run away and not pile up in front of the door.



31 July, Sunday. Homeday.
Rain early this morning as we began at 07:00 to collect the newspapers from the distributor. They are to be delivered before 09:00 each day. The stress increased as we found no-one there at 7, 7:30, 8, or 8:30. Finally, we could pick up the papers at 09:10. Raining very hard by then. Three of us put on our rainjackets, rainpants, and tried to keep the papers dry as we delivered into the mailslots. There were not many people on the streets, except for dog-walkers and those leaving on vacation with little trailers behind their cars.
Returning wet and cold, a hot cup of coffee and a change of clothes helped me to feel much better. The front walkway flooded again, so I drug around a very large paving tile to step on and keep us and the neighbors out of the water. This week I will have to find some sand and reshape the walk so that water runs off instead of settling into the middle.

We all took a break in the afternoon and watched tv together. This was a favorite show--Junk Yard Wars, with two teams in a scrap heap/junk yard building giant lifting machines. Great fun for all of us to see which team could build the cleverest machine in a short time. The kids had mountains of lego blocks on the floor, building their own creations while we watched. http://tlc.discovery.com/fansites/junkyard/junkyard.html

30 July, Saturday. Surveys.
I have on my desk 54 of 10-page Arabic surveys on social networks of Iraqis in the Netherlands. Another 55 surveys in the Kurdish language are waiting for me with the translator who has to get the comments into English and Dutch before I can use them.
This is great, and I look forward to having the numbers in my computer to see what new and exciting information is in there. Again, this should be the first time that anyone surveyed these people with such in-depth questions on their social relationships, the access to and use of money and information, and their connections to their traditional family villages in Iraq. But, a lot of hard work is yet to come before the raw data means anything. This has to become a higher priority than some of my other high priority projects. I could not sleep, or I could stop writing on my other papers, presentations, and communications projects. At the moment it is hard to excited about spending a full month translating Arabic to English and then type-type-typing all the numbers and comments into the computer. I've already told my reseach partner that she is not to collect any more data for me until either I am caught up, or until I get money to pay her for her work. Research is expensive, and I need to look ahead and collect money to do more. The research on social systems that I'm doing could explain how peacemaking happens in some communities more than others. It can solve peace-problems. I guess I have an obligation to do the hard work of seeking support from others instead of just enjoying solving little problems inside these datasets.

‘If you want to sell an idea to an administrator, talk about cutting costs and saving money; if you want to sell an idea to an owner or field person, talk about making profit. You must talk to the motivations of the person you want to convince.” --Brian Tracy

29 July, Friday. Systems.
I had several projects finished today. The big one was to send off a full paper on the use of electronic plus print forms of communication for a more rapid spread of information. I'm glad to have it gone. I have been submitting publications recently to the Electronic Journal of Sociology.
The other project was to create a new set of webpages for a project in Rotterdam. I've decided to start using the wiki system for more writing, as others can collaborate easier with me if the documents stay online. It is much better than the continual emailing back and forth of documents and trying to remember which revisions we liked best. Having the writing and editing online means that all text is viewable online at all times, and we can even use neat new tools like Skype and Jyve to split the computer screen into the main document we are working on, a "whiteboard" section where we can send notes and files to each other, and then we can be talking through our computers to each other======all at the same time. This is great service.

On the other hand, a phone call from a refugee reminded me of the struggles they face every day.
They do not know how to battle the huge, static organizations that dominate life. Whether it is the immigration agency, the welfare agency, the energy company, the telephone company, hospitals, or a multinational corporation, the issues are the same. The organizations are ruled by administrators working at desks, not by field people with extensive personal contact with people of other cultures who do not yet know how to work the system.
Example 1. A neighbor is again at a hospital, seeking medical help. She has been sick, really sick for two months. Her physician believes that she is well. The rules in the Netherlands are that the local community physician must give referral and permission for a resident of a community to get medical care. If the physician does not believe that the patient is seriously ill, then there is no appeal process, and there is no recourse to medical treatment except for going to a hospital emergency treatment room, and acting sick enough to get admitted for a long enough stay to get an opinion from another physician.

Example 2. A refugee had a heart attack, was given a pacemaker, was given a medical retirement and prohibition against work. He worked anyway for a brief time to make money washing dishes for a catering service. He was caught and fined 120 hours of community service as his punishment. And, he was told to walk or bicycle the 12 kilometers from his house to the place of service every day, but is only allowed to work 5 hours per day because of his heart condition. So, he is to ride a bike 90 minutes or walk 2.5 hours each way to do his punishment, but he is not allowed to do more at a time because he is not well? Again, there is no appeal process, only submission or going to jail. And this is for a refugee who came here to escape persecution from his former government?

Example 3. An asylum-seeker, 24 years old, has been here 5 years waiting for a decision on his case, to know if he will be allowed to stay longer. While he is waiting, he is not allowed to attend school; he is not allowed to work; he is not allowed to move to any other location in the country to be near family; and he must be at his local police station every Wednesday between 10am and 4pm to have them stamp his papers showing that he is still "in process." The police station is a one hour walk or 30 minute bus ride from his dormitory room. If he is caught working or attending school, or if he misses a Wednesday check-in time, his asylum process may be cancelled and he will be declared immediately an illegal resident of the country.

How does an outsider like me battle an unresponsive system of state control, requesting humane treatment? How do I, also an outsider, address the injustice received by those weak and helpless?
Should I?

28 July, Thursday. Strategies for Experience.
 I had two meetings today with a similar theme: how to provide more "guided" cross-cultural experience, for people trying to find a role for themselves in peacemaking. It is not really about peacemaking, but is more about those people I meet who do have a concern about barriers between ethnic and religious groups, and want to do something to make communities friendlier to residents of different cultures. I used to be much more involved in recruiting and training and leading cross-cultural experience tours and meetings, but have not done much at all this past year in a formal, planned way. The unique situation I am in here is that westerners can easily come with me in Europe to meet and get to know non-Westerners. It can be a safe, risk-free environment where differences can be discussed and debated, as long as there is a commitment to a few basic rules:
1. No attacking of the others' person or belief system;
2. Using basic civility in speech, such as saying "I understand that you believe...." instead of "You always believe...";
3. always deal with others as a person to be respected, not as a thing to be destroyed.
Where many of such cross-cultural events fail is that participants either have no rules governing their behavior, or else they are so concerned about being "nice" that they will not discuss real issues and real differences of belief. For example, Netherlanders have long supported the concept of a tolerant society, where anyone can believe whatever they want and that is ok. Suddenly, they are forced to realize that many newcomers in the Netherlands are intent on seizing control and installing a totalitarian government. The Netherlanders have a difficult time accepting that when they have been so nice and accomodating to foreigners that those foreigners may want to take over, even when those foreigners have never hidden their intent of separation until they can gain domination. This really is a war of worldviews, and the newcomers are much more passionate about winning than are the oldtimers. Poorer outsiders with passion win over wealthy and comfortable insiders with apathy if there is no outside powerholder to force civil behavior on both sides. Contempt wins over neutrality in politics.
Am I being too nice in my writing here? Being provocative and edgey might be good for professional columnists seeking to build an audience, but that is not my intention.

27 July, Wednesday. Multi-talk.
 Again a multi-lingual day. Dutch with auto repair shop, emails, newspaper, physical therapist; Arabic conversation and editing on a new website for social sciences; Persian vocabulary drill and practice on the computer; English on everything else. The most difficult was switching between Arabic and English text on the webpage editing. The header had to be done with a graphics program while the other work was done with a text editor. I do not have my old keyboard with the sticky-labels on the keys with Arabic and English characters. I planned to sleep early tonight since I did not sleep well last night, but ended up on the telephone and more web editing until now--11:30pm. Finally, I think I am tired enough to quit.
The big project today was updating the personal webpages for each of the conference participants in the September conference "A World For All? Global Civil Society." The purpose is to make it very easy and attractive for the conference-goers to make their own co-authoring and collaboration website. I am pushing the dream of virtual teams and instant global dissemination of research and analysis. What I do best is solving problems and having the ability to easily set up web pages for others should help them realize that they have been limiting their impact by focusing on print-based communications. The combination of print + web-based + email "push" communications will give each user a greater audience for their work. I hope so.

The other big project was to start a wiki to co-edit a new journal on sociology in the Middle East. mideastjournal
This was my first attempt to do serious writing in both English and Arabic on a wiki. Thanks to Kenneth Tyler of Seedwiki, it works! And there is something very cool about seeing English and Arabic text on the screen next to each other. There is not much Arabic there, yet, but it will come.

26 July, Tuesday. Leaving home.
 Our 19 year-old daughter left this morning for three months in the USA to finish her university work. With the availability of CLEP and DANTES exams, she can do two course credit exams per week if she wants. She buys a book, learns it and takes the course final exam, transferring all credits earned into her official degree plan at her university. No mandatory classroom time, and she has plenty of time to work as fast as she can on earning credits while working a job and playing volleyball. This is a very efficient way to earn a degree, both in time and money. But, it requires a lot of self-discipline. This is a perfect way to get through school without wasting a lot of time or money, especially in the global world where work and life will not stop while a student takes five years to "enjoy the college experience." Perfect.

24 July, Sunday. Grateful.
 I feel today that I have been given, without deserving it, so many kindnesses from so many people. A neighbor family waving up at me in my bedroom window, a refugee friend eating and sitting with me for a few hours today, visitors from past communities stopping to see us and share their lives and adventures, and year after year the benefits of companionship and encouragement. Generations of ancestors who acted with gentleness to me. I appreciate that all I have came from outside of myself, and that from within myself I seek to give to others. That is enough satisfaction for me, for today.

"grace is the essence of theology,
and gratitude is the essence of ethics."
--G. C. Berkouwer

23 July, Saturday. Changing Minds.
 We had guests this weekend from the Middle East. Besides eating a lot and laughing and playing with the children, we talked. A lot. Some was about how to bring change to friends' perceptions of other (foreign) peoples. I have known so many kind and gentle and respectful people who are the object of wrong stereotypes. An Iraqi taxi driver once told me to be careful when in America because everyone there carried guns and killed good people.
I change my prejudices when I spend time intensely with honorable people of another culture. I can also change my prejudices when I am exposed to a lot of human interest stories and information pieces over a period of time. Either way, it comes to me gaining a deeper perception of what is beneath what I would pick up from newspapers or television or secondhand reports. Learning to think and ask more questions.
Why do I feel so free and relaxed this month, even with too many hours at the computer keyboard and not with friends or even much with family? Because I do not have to go to many meetings! Normal contacts and meetings and conferences and events are few because of the start of summer vacation. I meet with those few who are available, and spend a lot of time thinking and reading and writing. Focused on more than shallow conversations and making new friends and dealing with too many hours on the trains. This has been a pleasant change of pace. When I am too busy with other peoples' agendas, I lose track of my own, and my own centeredness of purpose in life. I need to set a timer somehow to remind me to leave the office, the computer, the phone, and walk and bike and think quietly. Maybe tomorrow--no, I take the friends to the train and then an Iranian friend is coming for lunch and an afternoon visit. Maybe Monday.........

22 July, Friday. Think for the Readers.
 My usual solution to someone else's question or difficulty is to recommend a book to them.
Josh Harris says, "Giving me a book is my mom's way of telling me I have a problem."
Slowly, I'm learning other communication styles. Most people do not or will not or can not read, and it does not matter in which category they are. They will not learn much by reading. I decided that I should begin making even more web-based summaries of books I read, with a focus on very short excerpts that are practical. I could distill a book down to a single paragraph of vital information, and add it to the list of reference books selection I have at CivilSociety Reference Library. At this moment, there are 22 books on a corner of my desk that have yellow sticky notes or coloured highlighted text throughout, marking significant statements. The next step is to select and rewrite these ideas into the most-important. Maybe I can do one book a week, in addition to the pile of books by my bed that I am reading through. Eventually, I should be able to pass on or dispose of many of the books. But, what should I do with books I have read and will not read again? I've given hundreds to libraries, and I've tried selling them on the internet. I need another solution.

And, writing for the reader. As I'm spending more and more time writing, and less time reading out of my own interest, I discover the deliciousness of a correct expression, of building a picture in my mind and squeezing it out through my fingers clicking the keyboard.

21 July, Thursday. Tribes.
 The New York Times has been running a series of delightful articles on the tribes of New York, New York Times Tribes. Tribes include horse riders, tunnel diggers, goth girls, missionaries, and church ushers. This is indeed a strategic way to view urban people--by who they hang out with. For a city to take care of its people, it must deal with them tribe by tribe, because that is how the people really live and comunicate.
And blogs are a way to find tribes and learn how they work. Even with the hype from stories at Agora, blogs open personal media that is human and real because it is not for sale.

20 July, Wednesday. MS Word.
 Another long project is about finished. Along the way, I discovered a great article on using styles to simplify big writing projects with Microsoft Word (or similar word processors). Bend Word. For me, the biggest help was defining hyperlinks and footnotes using a style command for each, and adding them as buttons on my formatting toolbar. The advantage was that I chose my own favorite font, size, colour, etc, for each, and then all other hyperlinks and footnotes were immediately changed to match! Fantastic! It is not often that a new trick actually saves me time. Today it did. The other great resource in my kit is my wife, who is a really good editor, helping my writing to be understandable and technically perfect.

19 July, Tuesday. Lies.
Lies and more lies. New York Times, Sunni Leaders and votes. Sunni "leaders" claim that they are 60% of the Iraq population. Why? Facts are irrelevant. Truth is meaningless. Talk is a commodity and trades words for things with more value. I have been lied to by so many Iraqis, and their regional cohabitants. There are no absolutes except "do not get caught." Lies about what is happening, lies about what was in the past, and lies about what will happen in the future.
A friend says that I am his very best friend; I later hear him say the same thing to another. A friend tells me that he will be at my house at 6pm; He comes at 7pm with obvious untrue excuses. A muslim tells me that "all religions are the same and we accept you and your Jesus with no problem; then he says "there is no difference between Sunni and Shia in Iraq--we are all the same in our belief."
Are these just quaint traditions that I am to smile at and appreciate because I like to think that I am an insider to their culture? Trust means that you speak truth and not lies. I also am guilty of saying nice nothings instead of saying nothing at all, or even telling what I really think. If I accomodate lies told to me, am I a partner in the lies? If I lie, I am a lier; if they lie, they are liers. Words have meanings, and false words mean something bigger than the false words themselves.
It is also very interesting to read the new report on "non-combatant casualties" in Iraq. http://reports.iraqbodycount.org/a_dossier_of_civilian_casualties_2003-2005.pdf I have followed this project since it began in 2003, with reports coming from IraqBodyCount . The main fault I see is the reporting based on news media reporters without verification with local government and military officials. And, by ignoring community-by-community data collection, or at least to study the many blogs from within Iraq that give much different interpretations to media reports. From the begining, the iraqbodycount.org expressed their political agenda that affected how they collected data. There numbers are not wrong, they are merely incomplete by themselves, and are not adequate to make the conclusions that they have. The oxford group helping with the research analysis focused on the processing of the numbers, not on the scientific validity and accuracy of the numbers themselves.


18 July, Monday. Egaming and the future of management.
 EmeraldInsight Egaming is an article on how the new generation of managers and leaders may offer significant skillsets never before present. That is videogaming, that is much different from the pinballing of my generation. New e-leaders have ability to truly multitask, keeping multiple roles and projects moving along--competitively. I frequently see my children doing homework, online exams, emailing, chatting by internet, and editing iMovie videos--all at the same time. The only problem seems to be inadequate screenspace, bandwidth, harddrive space, and RAM memory. Not the skills, not the typing speed, and not the parallel tracks of attention they manage.
As I look at my own frustrations of a work environment, some aspects would be helped by a wall-size video display with true always-synchronized desktop, palm pilot, and mobile phone. But, mostly it is by my lack of focus to get first priority work done first. It is wonderful to have older children now to whom I can give sub-projects to do for me. Their work style is different from mine, but they get results, and they will succeed in both technical and social arenas in great ways. I know it, and am so grateful that they are different from me.
Peter Schwartz, _Inevitable Surprises_, Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in a Time of Turbulence describes how to personally prepare for the future. 1. Enhance your awareness of what is going on. Look around to see what is happening that might impact you. 2. Develop your sense of timing. How rapidly is something coming (like the cars yesterday on the autobahn!). 3. Develop your own "early-warning indicators" that notice change and be prepared to act when they approach certain pre-defined points. 4. Develop capacity to do away with or restructure institutions, systems and traditions that do not work in the future you are building. Anticipate the cost/benefit analyses needed to know what to do and when.
5. Do not pretend that surprises are not real. If a change upsets you, work through why it upsets you, and how to deal with that discomfort. 6. Value of everything changes over time. Do not presume on the marketplace. 7. Know what you are competent in deciding, and keep learning aggressively, and surrounding yourself with real experts to help you make right decisions--fast. 8. Education is functional, and must continue. Learn to learn fast. 9. Value sustainability and and collateral impact. 10. Help society build capacity to survive. Everyone must be part of your giving back to society. You can not just take care of yourself, but must give to others. Generously. 11. Connect with more people more deeply. If you withdraw, you will be sidelined. To grow and contribute, you must keep moving deeper with some, and wider with many.

17 July, Sunday. Autobahning.
 I drove to Germany today, visiting friends, and bringing back a child that was staying there. Being early Sunday when I left, traffic was light and I could drive easily at my own pace, limited by the small engine in my Volkswagon van. No problem. However, on the return trip, it was much different.
Autobahn driving is different than in other places, because there are usually no posted speed limits. Time and time again I was (slowly) passing a small auto pulling a large camping trailer when suddenly there was a car at my rear flashing its lights for me to get out of the way. The surprises of having an empty rearview mirror, beginning to overtake the trailer, and just as I moved even with it having my mirror full of car was unsettling. And, it happened over and over again. I had to pass the slower vehicles because they were really moving slowly (110 kilometers/65 miles per hour). And, I could not see too far behind me to be sure if that tiny dark spot was a dirt spot on the rear window, a bird low in the sky, or a real auto coming over a hill.
My average speed was probably about 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour. I guess that the passing autos were traveling about 150-160 kilometers (95-100 miles) per hour. That is normal for many drivers. Since I was in a large Volkswagon, I was not afraid of the sportscars doing much damage to my car, but I was nervous about making them angry or of causing them to lose control and cause an accident. That would not be a happy pause in the journey. I need to rethink how to drive safer. I cannot add more power or acceleration to my car, but I might be able to pass more quickly if I took a longer run to build up speed before moving into the passing lane. And, maybe learning how to more quickly spot a faster car approaching from behind.

16 July, Saturday. Street Party, Block Party.
 Today was the third semi-annual party for the thirty families living in our neighborhood who lived in the houses around the playground. 45 adults and 20 children in the alley behind our houses. Two large barbq grills with hamburgers, sausages, and chicken. Tables of salads and sweets and drinks spread out so everyone had plenty to eat. The setup began at 3pm and now at 11pm it is almost empty. For many, this was the first time that they had a chance to talk to everyone. Most people were from this community, but everyone was happy to be together.
I am a bit uncertain when in crowds like this with such intense and varying levels of conversation, and it takes me a while to remember that these people are our friends and neighbors and that I can relax. At one point, I came out of our house with a cup of hot tea and a new neighbor said, "I would love a cup of tea; I drink one every night." I handed him my cup and he asked if I would make one for myself too. I did, and we sat in comfortable chaos, relaxing.
15 July, Friday. Statistics.
 Today was again trying to squeeze my research project on internet workgroups into smaller space. The holdup was trying to find exact numbers of online journals and readership of those journals. After finding bits and pieces of answers in various places, I started having enough information to see the big picture. It seems that there are 24,000 professional journals, and about 13,000 are online. The confusion is that many of the print journals are also online, and so are counted twice.
It is a very interesting project, finding that author "impact" is judged by how many times an article is referred to by other journals. Originally, I was seeking answers to how many people read an article, but then I came to only being able to compare journals according to this "citation impact" factor. The point of my project is that for maximum usefulness of a writing, authors need to focus on defining who is their principle audience, what they want that audience to do with the expertise of the author, and how to format a presentation of their expertise to make it most useful to the primary audience.

14 July, Thursday. Double-talk.
 This morning I met in Den Haag with a young woman working with me on social network research. In a way that is becoming more normal to me, she spoke Dutch, I spoke English, and we were discussing survey form content in Arabic and Kurdish. We both can speak in the other languages, but for accuracy of meaning, we talk in the language we speak better.
On the train going to our meeting, the seats behind me had a South African couple who spoke to each other in Afrikaans, and to their traveling companions in English. One of their companions spoke Dutch, and the other English.
I was with a neighbor family and the wife spoke to the husband in Spanish and he spoke to her in Dutch, as do the children.

In Europe, mixing languages is common. Our own family has a special private mix of American English with loan phrases of British English, Dutch, Greek, Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, and French. For some meanings, there are no exact translations, so we pick up words that have specific meaning to us. Fun!

After my first research meeting, I went to Rotterdam to learn more about the impact of immigrants on the social systems of the city. Very impressive. Scots International Church, with Robert Calvert as minister, is truly a multi-purpose umbrella organization that seems to serve the city very, very well. Founded in 1643, they are one of the most multi-national churches I have known.



13 July, Wednesday. icons.
 I am sitting in a coffee shop waiting for friends to join me. Outside the window at my table, looking past the fly on the glass, and the rotten wooden frame, I see tourists grouped up with cameras flashing. The "line" moved slowly forward, as 2 or 3 at at time climbed into a giant, yellow, wooden shoe and smiled at the crowd of cameras.
Why was this such an attraction? To these visitors, did this wooden shoe represent, maybe, their Holland experience? Would a photo of them stiting in or on this shoe be proof, a trophy, a personalized souvenir?
Interesting to watch while waiting.

12 July, Tuesday. Open Access Publishing, Open Access Archiving.
 Today's reading was comparing traditional print-based restricted publishing and open, electronic distribution. And listening to a BBC radio report on the debate. Print journals claim that the traditional way of subscriptioned journal-paid peer review protects the high quality of academic publishing. Open Accessadvocates claim that author-paid peer review allows greater readership at a lower cost without compromising at all the quality. Print supporters say it is unfair for authors to pay for publishing. Open Access supporters say that it is wrong for governments to pay for research, for peer review, for journal subscriptions, and to maintain libraries to hold all the print copies, and that research grants often include 1% of the grant for publication costs.
As for me, I appreciate the speed of searching online journals to find very recent information that is not available in my library holdings, and that I pay 12.00 Euros to borrow from another library. The average journal price in the UK is 850 pounds per year! The librarian at Univ. of Nottingham said that their library pays more than 600,000 pounds per year to one of the many publishers they subscribe to.
It takes me about 8 minutes to add new documents to my e-print archive. Once there, it is searchable on the internet, and can be read by others within a few hours of my posting it. It is time-stamped so that it is a certified version for archives into the future without changes permitted. The US National Institutes of Health stated recently that all gov't funded health research must be archived into a public repository. Other nations are considering the same policy. I share easily things I learn, and value others who also share. Yes, there is a profit problem for authors and for publishers, but there will be solutions that satisfy everyone.


11 July, Monday. Hurricanes and thanks.
 I got up early to look at photos of hurricane Dennis, which was to have passed over homes of family members. It looked bad, real bad. The NOAA site has great photos of hurricanes and cyclones, but I was a bit uneasy until early afternoon when I could telephone to see what was the real damage. Surprisingly, there was no damage to homes or bodies of family. Only a few branches down from trees. This was a big difference from 10 months ago when Ivan destroyed thousands of homes.
Most of the day revolved around the paper I am writing on digital collaboration. I am learning so much about the limits of traditional paper-based publishing. For example, a study at http://lionshare.its.psu.edu/main/ claims that journal prices have risen 215% in the past 15 years. For that reason, many libraries are reducing the number of subscriptions, and authors (like myself) use paper journals less and less frequently. I do not have a paperless office, but, since I have a cd-burner in my computer, I keep multiple backups on cd, and am using less and less paper. For sure, I print a lot, but it is mainly for proof-reading. Most colleagues accept an email attachment easily, and can read and reply with no paper.


10 July, Sunday. Biking nature.
Early Sunday morning I was out delivering newspapers for my daughter. An usually bright and warm day, and it was fun to do. And it made me think about how that compared with my past adventures in selling newspaper subscriptions. In this case, the people wanted the newspapers. They would even telephone to the newspaper office if their papers were not delived on time. Some of the house numbers were hard to find, and one time, I was walking around the front of the house looking for a number. Just as I saw it, behind a bush, a small child waved at me through the front door and I handed him the paper and smiled at him, "Thank you." I saw a nest of swans, and beautiful rose gardens and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
On returning home, we decided to take a family bike trip. I pulled the back seat out of the van, loaded in the five bikes, and we drove the 9 km. to the Rhine river. One hour riding in the sun, taking photos along the way, and then an hour back. Then was our picnic, sitting on the riverbank and waving to boats passing by. The only misadventure was the losing of two mudguard bolts on my son's bicycle. I strapped it back on with a piece of wire and an elastic baggage cord. No accidents, no faults, no harsh words. This was a great day.
Coming back, I loaded the photos and video clips into our old iMac. In just a few minutes, I had a slideshow and iMovie showing our trip to the sound of "Chariots of Fire." This is so fun.


9 July, Saturday. Homestyle.
 Full day of houseprojects. I really enjoy fixing things and making the house and garden look good.

Phone call from refugee tired of dealing with the government who has asked the social welfare office to release him and let him go home again.
His limits (as he sees them):
--Proper papers were not filed by a restaurant he worked at for a few months and he owes tax money and one hundred hours of community service;
--the phone company sold him a replacement mobile phone when his old one quit working and claim that with the replacement phone he has two more years on contract that he cannot cancel, even if he pays in a lump sum all monies for future rents;
--once he leaves, turning in his residency, he might not be able to return to see family members here who do have citizenship;
--uncertainty of his former homeland government, which imprisoned and abused him in the past, will they let him alone?

A brief shadow on a sunny day full of garden work and laying brick and talking with neighbors about our upcoming cookout.
While repairing one of my old, but working computers, I listened to old songs by Willie Nelson, something I have not done since 1986. Happy thoughts for a few moments, using my son's iTunes account at Apple.com/iTunes. I don't listen to much music, but after hearing me happily cleaning my computer to Willie, she put on a BeeGees song from our newlywed days. Sunshine outside, sunshine in the house too.

8 July, Friday. Honor and shame in the deathcult.
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN of New York Times today summarized well the real issue with groups that live to kill.
"...it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. What do I mean? I mean that the greatest restraint on human behavior is never a policeman or a border guard. The greatest restraint on human behavior is what a culture and a religion deem shameful. It is what the village and its religious and political elders say is wrong or not allowed."
Some communities are ruled by law, some by tradition, some by honor & shame. If killing others gains personal honor, more people will kill. If killing is shameful, fewer people will kill. It is as simple as that.
With so much beauty and friendship and pleasure to enjoy in life, why do so many take a chance that destroying life might do good for themselves and for their families?

William Samii described the differences in definition of terrorism between east and west at Tehran, Washington and Terror
 Somehow, the discussions about words and theories seem far away from the simple pleasures I have with "normal" people from Iran or Iraq, eating, talking, laughing.


7 July, Thursday. Iran & Democracy.
 Peter Schwartz, again. Peter says that the best prospects for democracy in the Middle East are in Iran. (Unfortunately, he says that Iran is in the Arab world!). "Despite the theocratic government, there are powerful forces in Iran that continually push the balance toward secular, modernized progress, because the Iranian people want it...the desire fo rmodernity and progress cannot be stamped out any more than the desire for Islamic orthodoxy can...In countreis where teh Islamists win, modernity will become the opposition view...the most likely path to democracy in the Middle East moves through Islamic fundamentalism, as it did in Iran. Democratic progressivism is most persuasive when it, too, is seen as a reaction against the oppressive status quo." (pages 144-145).

This reminds me of the issue last year of banning religious headscarves in French public schools. I thought that the best way to deal with it would be to require all schoolgirls to wear a headscarf. If everyone was doing it, it would stop being an important issue. Three years ago in Europe, shoes with long, pointed toes were only worn by the most shocking and different young women. Now, they are very common, and are not quite as sensational as they were when only a few wore them.

If Iran's way towards republican representation is by passing through tyranny, how long will it take to nurture a non-violent softening of rhetoric? Can a repressive government be replaced by peaceful means? There are examples, in Latin America for example. Maybe Tatarstan, too?

6 July, Wednesday. Individual Progress.
 A meeting today was with a friend from the Middle East, and we talked about our new magazine on social systems, with political and economic influences. The unique niche this will fill is inbetween too-popular and too-academic. We are nurturing contacts to find contributing writers. It is refreshing to be with someone with a dream, a vision of a future different than what can be seen now. I like it, and am eager to get this magazine out in public.

Reading more from Peter Schwartz's Inevitable Surprises: Thinking ahead in a time of Turbulence an interesting paragraph caught my eye, with connection to the above. Peter says, "The distinction between America and Europe will inevitably become even more marked. As a culture believing in unlimited opportunity and potential...with policies that make it relatively easy for people to rise above their original wealth and education levels, the United States will continue to be a thriving destination for ambitious immigrants...Europe, by contrast, is a culture steeped in the belief that people cannot easily change the destiny they were born into." (pages 49-50).

I have noticed few such differences, except in how refugees get on with life. In most of Europe, they are considered refugees and dependents of the national social system. They are protected and provided for. The US system emphasizes the future, and invests little in caring for new refugees. UNHCR Magazine, April 2005, the lead story is "The Town That Loves Refugees." In short, a declining town, hundreds of refugees arrive, they start businesses and the whole town starts to grow and prosper again. The newcomers are encouraged and expected to be successful, and they are.

Peter Schwartz goes on to compare western and eastern values on change. "The European Protestant culture has a deeply embedded ethic about progress. it is not just feasible, but a moral obligation, to better oneself, even if it means contradicting authority. Most Asian cultures see people as having an innate place in life that they cannot break out of; to try is to succumb to an illusion." Then, he compares opportunities of immigrants. The opportunity is greater in the US. "If you are a Pakistani computer scientist, you'll be drawn to Silicon Valley to program supercomputers or launch your own company, not to a London suburb to operate a launderette."

This point of this is about the future, how to see it, how to shape it. My friend of today has a dream, and is willing to work hard to make it happen. He is not satisfied with just a normal job to make enough money and have security until he is old. But to become someone else, to change his life. I like that. And I know many Europeans doing the same. Son of a farmer who became editor for a major broadcasting network; son of a village baker who built his own business in sales and service of photocopiers; son of a farmer who owns a computer supply company. And, I know Americans who are like their parents, seeking lifetime employment and job security. The economic decline in many western countries is forcing many former employees to become entrepreneurs. It seems that more new jobs and new businesses are created in times of economic stress than during times of growth and prosperity.


One of my favorite emails each week is from , John Mauldin . In the JUne 24 issue, he discusses "The Idea of Europe."
The United States, it is often said, is more of an idea than a place. It is an idea that has compelled millions of people from every nation to come and join in a grand experiment of human liberty and opportunity.
"Europe, or at least the concept of a united Europe, is no less an idea. It is certainly not a country. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Composed of multiple countries with multiple languages and multiple currencies and a very diverse population who have many individual thoughts on what being European means, Europe is trying to find out what kind of an idea it is.
Is it a continent with many countries or is it a country which spans a continent? And if it is a country, what will be the basic philosophies which drive it? What is the idea that will be Europe?"
"Let's start with a powerful quote from James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg in one of my all-time favorite books, The Sovereign Individual. You may want to read it twice, as it is quite profound. Remember that they presciently wrote it in 1997, but it is even more relevant today emphasis John Mauldin?:
"In short, the future is likely to confound the expectations of those who have absorbed the civic myths of 20th-century industrial society. Among them are the illusions of social democracy that once thrilled and motivated the most gifted minds. They presuppose that societies evolve in whatever way governments wished them to - preferably in response to opinion polls of scrupulously counted votes. This was never as true as it seemed 50 years ago. Now it is an anachronism, as much an artifact of industrialism as a rusting smokestack. The civic myths reflect not only a mindset that sees society's problems as susceptible to engineering solutions; they also reflect a false confidence that resources and individuals will remain as vulnerable to political compulsion to the future as they have been in the 20th century. We doubt it. Market forces, not political majorities, will compel societies to reconfigure themselves in ways that public opinion will neither comprehend nor welcome.
For more details on why the union is not, write: JohnMauldin@InvestorsInsight.com.

The most important things I do are to solve problems for others, write research and to be with family and friends (old and new), looking for more ways that my work and hobbies can give something to others that is useful in their lives.


5 July, Tuesday. Rational Education.
 My phone rang a few minutes ago, from a friend who had sent to me information on microcredit finance, and how significant returns on a few investment euros come if they are loaned to trained entrepreneurs in an accountability program in low-income areas. With very little money, someone can set up a sewing shop in their home, or buy a set of mechanic's tools to start repairing cars, or buy a cow to start selling milk and butter. Low investment per person that often multiplies through communities until many are self-employed and self-sufficient without government support. I asked him about what types of people seemed to have the most potential in this microcredit initiative. He said that it seemed that during the first month that a newcomer was in Greece that they were highly motivated and eager to make their own way, but then they can get used to the free handouts.

An email just arrived from a young man in Iraq. He collected surveys for me in 2003 and we email occasionally. Today's question was if I could help him get into a university in Europe, one with not very hard extrance requirements. He dropped out of university in Iraq in 2003 and wants to resume, but cannot. He worked hard for me, and did what he promised to do. But there is not much hope for getting accepted back into university in Iraq, nor of getting accepted to university in Europe. I emailed back a few questions about what he really wanted to do as a vocation, along with my own philosophy of education. I said, "The main question is why do you want to go to university? A university degree will not guarantee you steady work in Iraq or high salary or good retirement.

People with the most new-wealth and security of income are those who:
1. worked hard at any and every job to make money
2. saved a portion of everything they earned, and also give 10% of what they earn to others who are in bad condition
3. took their savings and bought a business or property to rent to others
4. every year saved more and gave more, and buy new businesses and rental properties.
And this is how you also can have financial security, even in Iraq.

I found an interesting website on Future of Higher (Lifelong) Education , with sensible questions about why and how for education. My house is full of books and magazines because, in our family, the little ones learn to learn so that they can learn themselves for the rest of their lives. Some friends only have television and I feel that they have shut themselves into a very limited realm of wisdom. Even my youngest kids love to learn something new. This week, one of the guys got to go to sailing school, to learn water safety and how to handle a small sailboat. We all learned how to tie knots and the parts of boats and the basic principles of how to sail. The whole family got to learn something new. TeamGresham learns!

4 July, Monday. Thinking Ahead.
I began reading, Inevitable Surprises: Thinking ahead in a time of Turbulence by Peter Schwartz. This was a delightful challenge to thinking about the future. Peter comments, "There are many things we can relay on, but three of them are most critical to keep in mind in a turbulent environment. First: There will be surprises. Second: We will be able to deal with them. Third: We can anticipate many of them. In fact, we can make some pretty good assumptions about how most of them will play out."
One of the analogies is taken from the Ganges River in India. If you know that there are heavy rains at the upper ranges of the river, you can predict with absolute certainty that ten days later there will be a flood at the river delta.
In exactly the same way, events happening all around us today will have certain consequences in the future. I look forward to thinking through events that I can see in my own environment, and what they might mean for my own future.

A note from the European Union stated, "This year’s Programme provides 2 million euros out of the total budget (nearly 6.7 million euros) to support operational activities to address the emergencies caused by illegal immigration in the Mediterranean."
http://www.europaworld.org/week230/anewtool1705.htm.
A lot of money to spend to keep out people (often) willing to work hard. Schwartz has a lot to say about immigration and the floods of newcomers yet to arrive. Newcomers can be good news to weak economies.

Paradigms. Thomas Kuhn wrote _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, and gave new application to understanding paradigms. Kuhn defined scientific paradigms as “universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners." So, a success in an area of economics or migration is interpreted as a model solution, or at least as the baseline for governmental decisionmaking principles. Kuhn says that new paradigms must have signficiantly greater appeal if they are to replace old ways of thinking.
My grandfather used to say, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." He was willing to change, but needed first to thoroughly understand how the newer way would be much better than the older way. I was frequently being reprimanded because I always wanted to try to do something better or faster or easier. Once in a while I was correct, and if I thought through the whole cost/benefit situation first, my grandfather would help me to get even more out of my experience.

3 July, Sunday. Social Welfare.
I went today with refugee friends to an Iranian church. About 45 people, 3 hours, followed by a home visit for three hour, with a lot of great food!

I met a 20 year-old man, R., who had been waiting 5 years for resolution of his family's application for asylum. After he finished secondary school, he was not legally permitted to go to university or to work any job with salary or benefits. Like many law-abiding, "nice" refugees, he accepted the system rules and has sat in his room, or sat in the lounge of the "protection facility," waiting.
I asked R. about his plans. He said that his dream was to be a pilot, but since he was not supposed to do anything, he could not study. I said, "You are not supposed to officially enroll in a standard university class, be they are not stopping you from learning." He replied, "Yes, they will not let me go to school and not have to pay." This was an important point--"they" would not pay. As a dependent ward of the state welfare system, he thought he would get a free university education if he received refugee status (asylum). I asked if he worked. he said, "No, I am not to work." I countered, "No, you can do many types of work, only not with a regular salary, or with extra benefits. You can work legally and make money if you will work hard. You can get books and learn every subject necessary to qualify for pilot training. No one is stopping you from learning except yourself." He said, "Ok, I hope to see you again, maybe. Good bye." End of conversation.
I have this conversation about once a month, and it never seems to get any further. The asylum-seeker sees that there are no choices other than those prescribed by the social welfare agencies.
The conversations that are much different are those with asylum-seekers determined to succeed, with or without state help.
One was two weeks ago. I asked the man what he was doing for work. He said that from the first day he arrived in the Netherlands he began to study hard his Dutch language, and he began to work all hours possible doing newspaper delivery and errands and yardwork--things permitted by law (usually). He worked all day every day and within a year was speaking excellent Dutch and had saved a large amount of money. Instead of pursuing security through waiting for a university degree, he worked and saved and began hiring other asylum seekers to work for him in his expanding business enterprises. He believes that he was granted permanent residency and asylum because he worked hard at language and business, and he was seen as a positive force for good to the Dutch economy. He now owns several growing businesses and is helping many other newcomers to learn how to succeed in life. His advice: "Do not wait for others to help you. Work hard and take responsibility to make your own success."

An interview with Mark Steyn illustrates what I see happen with refugees in Europe.

"The era of the state church has been replaced by an age in which the state itself is the church. European progressives still don't get this: they think the idea of a religion telling you how to live your life is primitive, but the government regulating every aspect of it is somehow advanced and enlightened.'

Citizens are convinced that the state is capable of making the best decisions and taking care of everything?
Such citizens are neither advanced nor enlightened, but they want to make refugees just like themselves.
It is more interesting with refugees. One told me, "I have seen the abuse of power in the name of religion; now I want to be free to think in new ways; I love Jesus, it is religion I cannot enjoy."
Great quote, yes?

1-2 July, Friday-Saturday. Statistics on the World.
 A pleasant look at "who lives where and what do they do" is at Infonation. Compare nations by age, wealth, education, resources. Very useful.

I was looking at refugee statistics for 2004 at UNCHR, which show strong downward trends of asylum applications into western, industrialized countries. As I have seen in Europe, it is not because there are fewer refugees, it is because countries which can, have closed their borders to newcomers.

Another view of the UNHCR statistics is at Refugee Status Determination Watch (RSD) . RSD claims that as more countries require "preapproval" for refugee status before entering a host country, those host countries can set their own requirements for granting asylum which may not be consistent with international standards for asylum.

I spend a lot of personal time with asylum seekers and with refugees, hearing their stories and seeing who I know that can provide solutions to their particular problems. It is not the wrong decisions that are most difficult to deal with, it is the lack of transparency on the decision-making process. For example, I had neighbors from eastern Europe who were well-integrated and loved in our community. The national immigration administration decided (after many, many years of waiting) that this family was not deserving to stay in the Netherlands. The community organized petitions and the mayor's office campaigned to get permission for the family to stay. All was denied, and they were picked up by the police and sent back to where their home village used to be, before it was razed during ethnic conflicts.

There will always be refugees, I'm afraid, and they will always be at the mercy of others with more power. There are many who succeed, based on aggressive determination to succeed and circumstances that go the right way. But I am so disturbed that thousands of them sit for years, waiting for someone to either give them permission to stay permanently or send them back to their own countries.

I do get to sit with some to work through the benefits of staying here compared with the benefits of what they could do if they were in their home communities. Each person has a different story, but they seem to become similar over time. It seems to help them for me to keep discussing and asking questions and seeking to understand how and why they make the decisions that they do. When they get the right questions in their minds, sometimes the answers become obvious. Then we have something we can start to put work into solving.


29 June, Wednesday. Treaties and Time.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, at the end of World War I. Yesterday it was announced that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading Shi'a cleric in Iraq, supports increasing the role of the Sunni minority population in the Iraqi parliament.

These events share similarities: minority powerholders in one country become majority powerholders through the intervention of outsiders, the new majority is reluctant to trust the new minority after being abused by them, and a movement towards a representative expression of government replaces the former tyranny. And, negotiations take a lot of time.

One website on His Eminence Grand Ayatullah al-Sayyid Ali al-Hussani al-Sistani, born in Mashhad, Iran.

It is confusing to me how the most prominent peacemaker in Arab Iraq is a Persian Iranian. Where does this kind of power come from? I believe that the cure for ideological narrow-minded extremism is not debate or physical conflict.

28 June, Tuesday. Living ahead, connecting backwards.
One of my favorite success stories is of Apple Computer Company. The Stanford University commencement address last week was given by Steve Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple: Steve's Commencement Speech .

One quote was: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."
Yesterday, I was in my upstairs office-closet for most of the day, and took a break in the late afternoon to think about what to do with a mess of mud and gravel in the front garden. I would rather have finished a writing project, but decided to get a rake and shovel and remove some ugly stuff.

I began and my 13 year old daughter came out and asked if she could try to dig up the stump of a dead cedar tree. I finished smoothing out my own project and saw that she had done a lot of digging and was making good progress. Together, we dug and chopped and pulled until the root was out of the ground.

At that moment, I realized that even garden cleaning can evolve into an essential part of life--human partnership in making the world better. It wasn't about the garden. It was about us, my daughter and me, working together as partners. I learned a lot, living as if it was my last day on earth. A fun adventure together is what family is for.

27 June, Monday. Governing Iran.
Several websites offer views on how the national government of Iran operates.
1. Parstimes Government of Iran. The regular description. Power is held by: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Chief of State), President Ahmadinejad (Head of State), National Assembly (Legislative), Iran Judiciary (Judicial), and then the government ministries.
2. BBC Iran Power Relationships. It provides an excellent graphic showing lines of authority. The flow of control is not limited by ballots and titles.

It would be even more interesting if they could build a social network map to show how decisions are made, village by village, and how those village-level decisions integrate into the national power system of control.

26 June, Sunday. Local & Foreign Opinions on Politics.
I had two long discussions with Iranian expatriates yesterday. And compared that with what I heard from others living "under the influence" of Tehran politics. Those outside (for many years) saw it as bad, with only darkness to come in the future, unless there is another revolution. Those inside (still) reported it as probably not much different than it has been the past ten years--slow changes, with continued economic suffering.

What is the difference? It seems similar to the fears of those outside and fears of those inside. Those outside are afraid to return, afraid of prison and suffering. Those inside can cope with fear of prison and suffering easier because they experience it every day. They have more fear of things they don't experience daily, like war with the West. Fear can paralyze because of the unknown.

The people of Iran made their choice, or allowed a choice to be made. Yes, all candidates had to be proven loyal to principles and philosophies of the religious and political elite, but out of the possible choices, Mr. Ahmadinejad was chosen to serve the interests of the system, and there is some hope that he can bring the voice of "normal" Iranians into the government.
Or, is it like other government systems where the leaders come and go but the administrators stay on year after year, running the country the way they want to?

25 June, Saturday. civil child-first thinking
Today was family day at our community park. Free games and drinks. I watched the different game manager/volunteers. There was the normal range of "catch the falling ping-pong ball", "smash the lever and make the slider hit a bell", etc.

My favorite was "catch the swimming ducks." A circular channel of flowing water had about 25 small plastic ducks floating around the loop. A metal ring was upright on the back of each duck and the object was to catch a duck's ring with a long pole that had a hook on the end. The line was long and only one child at a time was allowed to try to catch their quota of three ducks. If they did, then they would get prizes.

Some of the smaller children had a hard time even holding up the long metal pole with the hook on the end, and the ducks were moving by quickly. But, the other children waited patiently in line, as did the parents alongside. Instead of having a time on the children to make sure that the line kept moving quickly, each child was given as much time _and_ help as was needed for them to get their catch of three ducks. The coordinated kids had to catch the ducks moving at full speed. Other children also got their ducks, in the end. The game manager would watch carefully and when she saw that a child needed help, she would first show them how to hold the pole, and then would show them how to hook the ring, then slow down the water flow, and if all that failed, she would block the channel making the ducks pile up and stop moving so the child could "win."

I was impressed. Each child got to win. Because of that, they took turns, as did their parents. Everyone won. Isn't that a perfect picture of civil society? Those who share, win.



24 June. Prospects for tolerance.
It is pleasant enough to discuss global civil society, and the tolerance we must show towards others with different value and belief systems. But it is very interesting to see how quickly "different" can be labeled "wrong" when our own feelings of comfort and security is chalellenged.
My son just asked me about the tolerance in the Netherlands, and what that was supposed to mean. I explained that it used to mean that anyone can do what they want as long as they did not bother other people's person or property, but now it means that there are certain absolutes that all residents must honor.

For example, neighborhood boys used to ride their (loud) motorscooters up and down the streets--fast. The police began stopping, sound testing, and confiscating scooters, and now the streets are much quieter and safer. As a community, we are less tolerant than we used to be.

5 different news pieces came to me yesterday, with the same story.
1. Global Finance magazine's cover article was on the impact of China and India markets on the global oil supply prices.
2. New York Times lead article was on the bid by China's CNOOC to take over the Unocal petroleum company.
3. BBC and CNN had articles on the expansion of China into the international oil markets. For some interesting thoughts, consider that China is considering buying/leasing one million square feet of office space in New York.
4. Trouw, a Dutch newspaper decribed the aggressive expansion of China into buying western companies.
5. Agora Travel investment tour called: Explore the China of Unlimited Profit. Visit at least four Chinese companies that plan to come public on the U.S. stock exchanges in the months ahead. Join Agora Travel and China expert Andy Carpenter to experience and learn firsthand the powerhouse force behind why Chinese stocks just explode once they list on U.S. stock exchanges.

How does that relate to China's impact on my life in the west?
As long as China stayed in Asia, and bought western products, it was assumed good for the west. When they began producing very inexpensive goods for us westerners, that was even better.
Now they are buying external oil supplies to support their own industrial growth and consumer demand. That keeps oil prices much higher than we prefer, so now we feel that our tolerance and encouragement of China's growth is threatening our own comfort. And the western media talk is that either their currency must be devalued to reduce their impact on our economies, or else we must throw a lot of money into alternate energy research to reduce our dependence on high-priced oil. It seems the economic world is becoming more integrated, with multiple centers of power and influence.

It is not very "tolerant" to demand that China revalue their currency.
It was not very "tolerant" to stop the motorscooters from racing on my street.

Can some absolutes and intolerance be accomodated in a civil society philosophy?
And, the first four news articles were about win/lose (if they win, I must lose, so for me to win, they must lose).

The fifth item was about win/win (how can we work together so that both of us benefit). That is civilsociety thinking.

23 June. Courage isn't cool.
I was on the phone a few minutes ago with a friend in Baghdad. He is one of my heroes because he does what is right, leading his NGO to better serve development needs in Iraq. He is a hero, not because I think he is always right. Nor because he is fearless. But because he does what is right for him, even if he does not want to. He lives to love and serve others, even when it is very hot and there is no electricity and no water and he is sick.
That is courage--not the absence of fear, but of doing the thing you fear. Even when it hurts.
Pray for peace, in Iraq.

22 June. "A World For All?"
http://www.div.ed.ac.uk/aworldforall.html.
I am preparing two papers for this conference in Edinburgh, 4-7 September 2005:
"A World for All? The Ethics of Global Civil Society."

Main Speakers
  • Professor John Keane, founder of Centre for the Study of Democracy; author of Global Civil Society?
  • Dr Kimberley Hutchings, London School of Economics; author of International Political Theory: rethinking ethics in a global era
  • Professor Max Stackhouse, Princeton Theological Seminary, and editor, God and Globalization series
  • Dr Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Ecology; author of Water Wars: pollution, profits and privatization


    • Presentations from most parts of the world on:
  • Concept of Global Civil Society – exploring varied usages of the concept as an analytical-descriptive, strategic, or normative term
  • International Politics and Global Civil Society – empirical reality and ethical possibilities of global civil society in relation to international politics
  • Religion and Global Civil Society – reflecting diverse roles of trans-national religious bodies, and/or the distinctive nature of religious beliefs about civil society

    • My own papers are to be on
    1. CivilSocietyIraq (research findings on Iraqi perceptions of outsiders).
    2. Electronic communications for online collaboration and rapid sharing of research. I look forward to meeting new people and learning from them, and try my best to give highest quality presentations that are interesting and useful to those around me.

    I have built a new website for conference participants and plan that my presentation time will be a workshop on how to build electronic distributions systems to supplement paper publishing. Each participant has a webpage already begun, and they can go to: http://www.globalcivilsociety.seedwiki.com to try it before the workshop.

     For general conference information: A World For All.

    21 June. Iraq's step forward towards transparency of university entrance exams.
     A very interesting newspiece today on a significant step forward for equal access to university studies. Until now, students from wealthier or better-connected families got first choice in university entrance. High test scores were not enough, but required supplemental "incentives" to the decision-makers. Today that changed somewhat, with entrance exam scores being revealed online, or to mobile phone numbers. Anonymity allowed the exam graders and decision-makers to focus on scores, and not names or family connections. Irinnews.org carried this article.

    This is a great step forward towards competency-based access to education, and is a great example of how to reduce corruption in government systems. Yes, we all want our children to have the best opportunity, but children who have not studied and earned university placement may not deserve more training.

    What is the purpose of education? To have a degree? Or to get the training needed to get the first work experience, so that the better work can be had later on?

    My daughter is doing it another way--distance learning. She buys or borrows the textbooks, learns the material, and then takes only the final, comprehensive exam at a university. She earns her degree credits fast, and at very low cost. If she does not study, she cannot pass, no matter how much we may want to "help" her. If she learns, she moves on. She is working full time, earning her degree in less than one-half of normal time, and is saving money, not wasting it "on a college experience." It makes sense to me.

    20 June. CivilSocietyIran.
    There is a great and long tradition of civil behavior among Iranians. Several prominent articles and books are listed now in the resources page on the CivilSociety homepage.

    Civil Society is often considered as non-state sphere of activity, or anti-state activity. But, it is suggested in Persian literature that the religious institutions are the main force of civil society in Iran, and since family and close friend contacts are so tightly bound together that there is little opportunity for much change. Smallworld & social network thinking explains that closed communities resist change because of lack of significant contact with new and growing networks of contacts with different resources to offer.

    If the religious system in Iran is considered a proponent of civil society, and the religious and state government systems are tightly cross-controlled, then what does that form of civil society mean? Religio-Politico unity of control does not seem to be capable of innovative service. Civil Society I believe means people-first.

    19 June. Persian Learning.
    I did pick up one Persian phrase book today. It seemed right, now that run-off elections in Iran have been announced.

    Persian, from Pars Province of Iran, and Fars, the Arab version, are old names. Iran is a localization of Aryan, as there is a genetic link to the Aryan peoples of the far north. Persians, and the 41 other ethnic groups of Iran, were mostly monotheistic in the Zoroastrian (Zarathustra) faith, long before the rise of Islam, beginning in the sixth century b.c.

    The main values governing behavior are those of Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds. Many of the other traditional principles of zoroastrianism would seem very normal and reasonable today, and I suggest doing a webskim of some of the zoroastrian pages.
    As I meet more and more Persians, and their Parsi relations in India, I appreciate the living sensibility of these ancient ways, surviving even in spite of intolerant invaders.

    A new web-based Persian resource center is at: Persian Studies at the University of Texas
    Highly recommended.

    18 June. Blink2: Outgroup thinking.
    Finshed _Blink_ Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: the power of thinking without thinking by Gladwell and am thinking about his very interesting quotes about things and people that are "different."

    1. Contempt is closely related to disgust, and what disgust and contempt are about is completely rejecting and excluding someone from the community, and is the most damaging attitude in a marriage or partnership (p33).

    2. Our first impressions are generated by our previous experiences and our environment, which means that we can change our first impressions. We can change the way we evaluate someone or something--by changing the experiences that go before those impressions. It requires, for example, that we spend time with minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture, so that when we want to are with someone from that culture, we aren't betrayed by our reactions (p97).

    3. "They said they hated it. But what they really meant was that the chair was so new and unusual that they weren't used to it. . . . The problem is that buried among the things that we hate is a class of products that are in that category only because they are weird. They make us nervous. They are sufficiently different that it takes us some time to understand that we actually like them" (p173).

    My interpretation: "It is not wrong, it is just different that what I am used to. Therefore I think I hate it. But, I can get used to it/them by contact with it/them so that I am not repulsed, not upset, and may even come to consider it not hateful, but just different than my old way to comfort."

    17 June B. Iran Elections.
    I just logged into a few blogs to check on the status of the Iranian elections. The favorite overall coverage today: BBC News

    I even crawled up in the attic and retrieved a box of Farsi books and cassette tapes. Maybe I will start reviewing what I used to think I knew.



    My book for today is _Blink: the power of thinking without thinking_, by Malcolm Gladwell.
    The main point is that we do try hard to be rational in our choices and decisions, but rationality does not always make sense. If it did, then sellers of computers would not need to use glamour photos to sell computers, just listing the features and price should be enough to make a sale.

    Today, I shopped for a mobile phone and was handed a salespiece on T-Mobile. The cover had a young woman throwing a pillow at someone. I'm sorry, but I don't understand the connection between throwing a pillow and getting a mobile phone plan that is inexpensive and is reliable.

    Blink describes in so many different ways that our decisions combine logic and feelings, and that having a large photo of a friendly face makes us make a human, personal connection to a product that we are thinking to use.

    For example, would having a few photos of laughing and happy Iraqis make a difference in how this website is viewed and understood? I'm not sure that having my own photo on here would do more than scare off otherwise friendly visitors. But, I'm thinking about breaking up the "rational" presentation of pure text. An early draft of this webpage did have more color and even had a photo of a happy Iraqi schoolgirl. I cancelled the graphic because I could not get the columns to work well with the flow of text and menus. Maybe it is time to reconsider. And be a bit more emoting and feeling in this work.

    Blink is about how we "feel" something is right or wrong in a "thinslice" of time. That is to say that our judgements based on experience + knowledge are intuitive and often cannot be measured or described in a logical way. I bought a mobile phone based on how the menu system "felt" to me, not about the color or ringtones or battery life. I wanted mostly a phone that would allow me to quickly get it working the way that I want to work, without working through dozens of non-intuitive (to me) levels of menus. The phone is not perfect, but it works for me today.

    Blink is a good book to stimulate thinking about how and why we make choices. The previous book by Gladwell, Tipping Point, was about personal choice in the context of what other people are choosing to do, and how a feeling that "others are doing it" can give extra energy to our own desire to do something. Consider this a recommendation to think about thinking.

    16 June. Readings. Some here and some not yet.
    Many of the books I have found interesting as I have explored the social systems of the Middle East, and of Middle Easterners living in Europe, are listed in the resources section of the CivilSociety wikipages. Books and Resources Reference LIbrary

    I plan to add a review on each item listed, and already include an Amazon.com link where extra information is easy to find.
    Once I've heard of an interesting book, or article, I search Half.com and Amazon.com for reasonable prices (favoring used books if the price difference is enough to make a difference). For journal or magazine articles, it is a bit more difficult. I can use the university search tools, or use the GoogleScholar tool. My own preference is for electronic publishing over paper publishing, but having a piece of paper in the hand to read is a lot more natural for me than trying to read online.

    15 June 2005. Review of the beginning.
    In mid-April 2003, a phone call asked me if I would lead an assessment team in Iraq. I was not interested and said so. A few days later, a phone call asked again, saying that my many years of similar work in the Middle East, and Iraq, gave me a unique opportunity. I declined. At the third call, I agreed to go, if I could also collect data on social systems and ethnic/religious group relationships.

    After the agreement, I began to pull together contacts to write the best possible pilot project survey. With great help from Hub Linssen, Alena M, Louk H. for their encouragement and advice on the survey content and process.

    I did collect surveys, and was plunged deep into the excitement of seeing for the first time an in-depth look at how Iraqis see themselves and others. The civilsociety wikis began as I shared what I was learning, aggressively.



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