Life's too fast to play it safe.

worldfigures.

Maybe in contradiction to the previous post on measurement, I decided to start sharing one of my favourite readings every month: the "world in figures" column in BrandEins (http://www.brandeins.de).

Let's you put things into perspective..
(all figures have been found in int'l news)

Estimated worlwide turnover on drugs p.a. in billion dollars: 322
Amount, that the U.S. annually invest to fight drug sales in billion dollars: 20
Amount, that Germany invests annually to fight drug sales in million Euro: 150

Streetprice for one gramm cocaine in 2003 in Comlumbia, in dollars: 2
Streetprice for one gramm cocaine 2003 in Austria, in dollars: 90
Streetprice for one gramm cocaine 2003 in Japan, in dollars: 394
Amount of portions, concerning one gramm cocaine: 20

Year, in which the first Coca-Wine, "Vino Mariani" was invented by a chemist: 1863
Year, in which Coca-Cola was sold in a pharmacy in Atlanta for the first time: 1886
Amount of cocaine, the first recipe of Coca-Cola contained per litre, in milligram: 250
Year, in which cocaine was replaced by coffeine as a result of an anti-drug law: 1906
Amount of Coca leafs, that Coca-Cola nowadays imports annually from Peru and Bolivia as means of flavour, in tons: 500

measurement.

Doing research for a book, that is supposed to come out in a years time. It will be on the topic on national innovation, and something that hits me again, is the role and ruling of measurement in society.

In the U.S. - and this might be an assumption, I feel, that performance and success is measured by looking at the top.
Looking at the E.U., or at least some of the northern countries, it seems as if the general national performance is 'felt', measured form the bottom. If things are not working there, something has to change on the higher steps, not vice versa.

How do you measure 'good enough'? Why are we trying to find measurement indicators, for innovations without precedent cases, that might fail, but need to happen?

I believe measurement in certain contexts to be one of the main threads of our time..

Reading Fritjof Capra..

"Aus systemischer Sicht beginnt das Verstehen des Lebens mit dem Verstehen von Mustern."

"From a systemic point of view, understanding life starts with understanding patterns."

story by the picture.

seen at a fantastic compilation of her best pictures, Gonzale. (http://flickr.com/photos/gonzale/)

Gregory Bateson:

"The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it... But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster... If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; élite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure...

The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way."

space..

..to work at home. nice, ah?

Sharks vs. Blues!!!

They promised a night of original american culture, and that it definitely was. I went with 'the guys' on a road trip to San Jose, an hour from San Franc. in order to see the ice hockey game of Sharks, the local team against Blues from St. Louis. The Sharks won, 5:2. You want to know some good shouts? Call me, I'll teach you..
I got lecturing on the rules and roles of hockey in the car, burgers and pitches of Budweiser before the game started and a lot of good laughs during the game. They called me an entertaining travelling companion. nice. a clown.
It was a special experience, I believe nothing compared to what such a game would look like in Europe. When two started hitting each other the whole stadium was going crazy and screaming to see more. We had the anthem, donuts and loads of eating around us, families teaching their youngsters the shouts, a happening.
Thanks for the night, Per, Maans, Jimmy and Jo. Det var trevligt!

team day into the blue..

We had a fantastic day planning outcomes and ambitions for the project the day before, and decided to have some good view when deciding upon the next steps. So we went all the way to ocean beach, some 40 Blocks from where I live. Cliff Cafe was hosting us;) and the wind did a wild job..

Truman Capote.

"The greatest tears are shed over answered prayers, not over unanswered ones."

redefining public service..

..in Canada.

"The Kaospilots Summer Studio is an experiment. Last autumn, we decided to create the course we wanted to take in university but was never offered. We decided that the course would blur several disciplines: public policy, sociology, entrepreneurship and design.
It would be hands-on and project-based.
It would be intense, last less than a month and it wouldn’t need to compete with other courses for attention. We didn’t want to teach in a classroom.
Instead, we wanted to build a studio where staff and students worked collaboratively on a project that would have some kind of public impact."

we would need this focus as well. In Aarhus, back at the HQ of the KaosPilots, but also in the rest of Europe. Where are the mavericks that dare to start a program without credit points?

read more here >>>
http://theplanningdesk.com/summerstudio/