How to Log on and Clock In - Solutions by PC Magazine
Here's a nice summary of how various online software tools could be used by any member of the team who has internet access, regardless of location. These include a universally accessible desktop, instant messaging, mind-mapping, office suite with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation, file sharing, personal finance and expenses, among others. Does anyone have additional suggestions or improvements?
Monday, August 11, 2008
Friday, August 08, 2008
The Power Really Is in the Network
Instant-Messagers Really Are About Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon - washingtonpost.com
Here is one of the keys to our impact. Consider some numbers: the American Chemical Society has over 160,000 members; the American Medical Association has over 360,000 members. Suppose we assume that there are a like number in the rest of the world. That amounts to about one million people, professional people, educated people. Now consider all the other occupations that are necessarily involved in accomplishing our goals, for it is not just science and medicine that solves humanitarian problems. Many other activities are involved, from accounting to distribution to plumbing to information management to diplomacy to law to architecture, etc. (Another opportunity to stress that Chemists Without Borders is not just for chemists: "If all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail." Some of the most exciting stuff comes from the interface between unlike and improbable things.) That's a lot of people.
One important point is that these millions of people are all connected to one another through their professional organizations and other relationships, and indeed there is nobody in our profession, whom we could do not reach in the six steps described referred to in the Washington Post article. We can reach anywhere on the planet just in our own profession never mind all the other people we know. One of the things that makes the Information Age so exciting is that we can capitalize on all these connections much more easily than people could do in the past. Networking is in. Social networking is a phenomenon unseen before. We have an opportunity that others do not have. The American chemical Society is the largest scientific society in the world. We uniquely positioned to connect people to address problems. Chemists Without Borders is devoted to seeing that happen.
Here is one of the keys to our impact. Consider some numbers: the American Chemical Society has over 160,000 members; the American Medical Association has over 360,000 members. Suppose we assume that there are a like number in the rest of the world. That amounts to about one million people, professional people, educated people. Now consider all the other occupations that are necessarily involved in accomplishing our goals, for it is not just science and medicine that solves humanitarian problems. Many other activities are involved, from accounting to distribution to plumbing to information management to diplomacy to law to architecture, etc. (Another opportunity to stress that Chemists Without Borders is not just for chemists: "If all you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail." Some of the most exciting stuff comes from the interface between unlike and improbable things.) That's a lot of people.
One important point is that these millions of people are all connected to one another through their professional organizations and other relationships, and indeed there is nobody in our profession, whom we could do not reach in the six steps described referred to in the Washington Post article. We can reach anywhere on the planet just in our own profession never mind all the other people we know. One of the things that makes the Information Age so exciting is that we can capitalize on all these connections much more easily than people could do in the past. Networking is in. Social networking is a phenomenon unseen before. We have an opportunity that others do not have. The American chemical Society is the largest scientific society in the world. We uniquely positioned to connect people to address problems. Chemists Without Borders is devoted to seeing that happen.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Perspective from John MacIntyre for the San Jose Mercury News
I didn't find a link for this. The column is called Figuratively Speaking, August 3, 2008. How novel it is, I don't know, but it bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and repeating, and .......
A picture of a starving African baby in its mother's arms tops the column; the caption is, "What's wrong with this picture?" Then:
$30 billion
The amount of money needed annually to eradicate world hunger, relaunch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over food, according to the Director-General of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf.
$1.2 trillion
The amount of money spent on arms in 2006.
Given our capacity to run up an annual deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits (and that's just the US) with seeming impunity, why don't we just tack this on and get the job done? If we're going to run up credit, why not spend the money to improve the planet and the human condition? (But then, the demand for armaments might diminish, and then where would we be? Who was that Eisenhower fellow, anyway?) What then must we do?
A picture of a starving African baby in its mother's arms tops the column; the caption is, "What's wrong with this picture?" Then:
$30 billion
The amount of money needed annually to eradicate world hunger, relaunch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over food, according to the Director-General of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf.
$1.2 trillion
The amount of money spent on arms in 2006.
Given our capacity to run up an annual deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars of deficits (and that's just the US) with seeming impunity, why don't we just tack this on and get the job done? If we're going to run up credit, why not spend the money to improve the planet and the human condition? (But then, the demand for armaments might diminish, and then where would we be? Who was that Eisenhower fellow, anyway?) What then must we do?
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