State of Affairs

Rhapsody : An exalted or exaggeratedly enthusiastic expression of sentiment or feeling; an effusion (e.g. a speech, letter, poem) marked by extravagance of idea and expression, but without connected thought or sound argument. Also without article.
Oxford English Dictionary; www.oed.com




We do not yet have developed the theory for how to combine the physics of Macro and Micro (quantum)!!
BBC Radio 4 - The material world






Math Relations

To solve a problem, we need to analyse the problem, we need to play with the problem, spend time with it, in order to eventually solve it with fantasy, with sense for elegance, symmetry. Mathematical problems are the natural way to learn these abilities. When studying, your aim should not be to constantly think about how to prepare for the examinations. It is the other way around: the examination will test whether you learned to solve problems.

Take the maximal time span to think about the problems. This means thinking, rethinking, trying repeatedly, eventually improving the solution, finding alternative solutions. Repeatedly return to the problems you have not yet solved. Many ideas need to ripen first in your subconscious, before you see light. It is vital that you really know the problem.

Working in groups can be a good way of learning, only if there is a healthy balance between giving and taking. In the end you are measured on your own abilities.

When you found a solution, it could prove helpful to see how other
people solve the problem, or to let other people criticise your own solution.


Source: LINEAR ALGEBRA I, 2007/08, ANNE HENKE, Oxford Univ., Mathematical Institute.












Red Tape and Public Service Motivation

Findings from a National Survey of Managers in State Health and Human Services Agencies

This article examines the relationship between red tape and public-service motivation. Using a recent national survey of public managers in various state health and human service organizations, the authors examine whether perceptions of red tape are determined by differences in the level of public-service motivation. Across a variety of dependent measures, the results showed a consistent linkage between managerial perceptions of red tape and public-service motivation. Managers reporting higher levels of public-service motivation were less likely to perceive high levels of red tape. Among the dimensions of public-service motivation, attraction to public policy making provided the greatest influence on perceptions of red tape.
Key Words: public service motivation • red tape • bureaucrac
Patrick G. Scott
Missouri State University
Sanjay K. Pandey
Rutgers University, Campus at Camden







The Big Picture

People on average seem unable to increase their output per hour at better than 3% a year over a protracted period. That is apparently the maximum rate at which human innovation can move standards of living forward. We are apparently not smart enough to do better.

The new world in which we now live is giving many citizens much to fear including the uprooting of many previously stable sources of identity and security.

Despite the many short comings of human beings, it is no accident that we persevere and advance in the face of adversity. It is in our nature - a fact that has buoyed optimism about the future.

People exhibit remarkable similarity in appearing motivated by an inbred striving for self esteem that is in large part fostered by the approval of others. What contribute to self esteem depends on values people believe will enhance their lives. The need for values is inbred. Their content is not......Exuberance is celebration of life.

In an economy as sophisticated as ours, people have to interact and exchange goods and services constantly, and the division of labour is so finely articulated that every household depends on commerce simply to survive, if investors dump their stocks, or business people back away from trades, or citizens stay home for fear of going to malls and being exposed to suicide bombers - there’s a snowball effect - it’s a psychology that leads to panic and recessions. A shock like the one we’d sustained at Sept 11 could cause a massive withdrawal from, and major contraction in, economic activity. The misery could multiply.



....The defining moment for the world’s economics was the fall of the Berlin wall in 89, revealing a state of economic ruin behind the iron curtain far beyond the expectations of the most knowledgeable western economists. Central planning was exposed as an unredeemable failure, coupled with and supported by the disillusionment over the interventionist economic policies of the western democracies. Market capitalism began quietly to displace these policies in much of the world.



.......China’s shift in protecting the property rights of foreigners, while subtle, was substantial enough to induce a veritable explosion in foreign direct investment, FDI, into China following 1991, from a level of $57 m in 1980, FDI drifted upward, reaching $4b in 1991, and then accelerated at a 21% annual rates reaching $70 b in 2006. The investment joined with the abundance of low cost labour resulted in a potent combination that exerted downward pressure on wages and prices through out the developed world.



............With 14 years under my observation as Fed chairman I'd seen the economy pull through a lot of crises-including the largest one-day crash in the history of the stock market, which happened 5 weeks after I took the job. We'd survived the real-estate boom and bust of 1980s. The saving and loan crisis and the Asian financial upheavals, not to mention the recession of 1990. We'd enjoyoed the longest stock market boom in history and then weathered the ensuing dot-com crash. I was gradually coming to believe that the US economy's great strength was its resiliency - its ability to absorb disruption and recover often in ways and at a pace you'd never be able to predict, much less dictate.

by Alan Greenspan, Age of Turbulence, 2007



A man of very deep learning must have employed the greatest part of his time in books; and a skilful negotiator must necessarily have employed much the greater part of his time with man. ......................The other necessary talent for negotiation is the great art of pleasing and engaging the affection and confidence, not only of those with whom you are to cooperate, but even of those whom you are to oppose: to conceal your own thoughts and views, and to discover other people’s to engage other people’s confidence by a seeming cheerful frankness and openness, without going a step too far: to gain the absolute command over your temper and your countenance, that no heat may provoke you to say, nor no change of countenance to betray, what should be a secret

Earl of Chesterfield, Man of the World, 16 Nov. 1752



Deja Vu

In futurism basic knowledge written in 1920, political aims were clearly defined as: “establishment of a volunteer army, modernisation of public security forces, and a government led by young front-line soldiers.” Their radical agendas always aimed at international audience. Its protagonists carried the movement’s message with typical actionism to the cultured centres.

………..“Nothing being taught in schools or studios as the truth holds valid for us any longer. Our hands are free and clean enough to start over from the beginning.” the first futuristic manifesto with its notorious statement , “We shall glorify wars - that sole hygiene for the world - militarism, patriotism, the destructive deeds of the anarchists, the great ideas one dies for, and a disdain of woman.” At the time the WW1 broke out in 1914, many futurists went enthusiastically to war, thinking it the only way to break up the centuries of encrustation that blocked social progress.

It was out of the same conviction that the futurists envisioned jettisoning the moribund past and celebrating the emergence of universal dynamism.