Neurologist Robert Sapolsky is an interesting character. The Edge has an interesting piece by him, which seems to be fairly stream of consciousness. Sapolsky, of couse, has done some fascinating field research on baboons and lab research into the inner workings of the brain, and a little of both all the time. In the Edge pice, Sapolsky writes about what …
What Makes a Good Ontology
Since we’ve been talking about naming, and Glenn Mehltretter posted such a great example in his comment, it’s a good time to consider Ontologies. Since Kinston’s Taxonomy is what the knowledge management people would call an ontology, I’ve been looking at them. Barry Smith of the Basic Formal Ontology project at Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) …
Business Writing Speaks Truth, Albeit Unintentionally
While sorting through my notes, I came upon the following, which was published by some self-important systems architects at a major financial institution. They were later all “made redundant”, poor sots. But perhaps their habit of writing without ever saying anything (see previous post) didn’t help their company succeed. The Detail Recommendation List is a collection of recommendations that have …
On Naming: It’s For Survival
Warren talks a lot about the power of naming, that until you get the all the names right in a particular framework of the Taxonomy, the whole thing seems wrong somehow. He’s not the only one to recognize the power of naming, of course. The Bible’s Adam starts naming things almost immediately, and it’s important enough that it is about …
Why Work Levels Are Rejected: Others Are Selfish Fallacy
While reading the excellent and highly recommended book by Heath & Heath, Made to Stick, I came upon this passage about Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs: Imagine that a company offers its employees a $1,000 bonus if they meet certain performance targets. There are three different ways of presenting the bonus to employees: Think of what that $1,000 means: a down …
The “Taboo of the Blank Slate” (Why Work Levels Are Rejected)
The levels of work from Requisite Organization / the Glacier Management Method / Stratified Systems Theory are routinely dismissed out of hand, almost without review. It’s an instinctive rejection rather than rational at any level. What drives this? While doing some research, I came upon Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. In it, Pinker describes …
New Upgrade, New Breaks
I should change to a managed server. The new upgrade has broken things again (for example, Al Gorman is now the author of everything) and I’ll have to figure things out. It may be that my provider is automatically handling updates, which breaks my site. Anyway, enjoy the retro look for a few days until I get back and fix …