Monday, April 27, 2009

Communication code

A = Alpha
B = Bravo
C = Charlie
D = Delta
E = Echo
F = Foxtra
G = ??
H = ??
I = ??
J = ??
K = Kilo
L = Lima
M = ??
N = ??
O = ??
P = ??
Q = ??
R = ??
S = Sierra
T = ??
U = ??
V = ??
W = Whisky
X = ???
Y = Yankee
Z = Zulu

Monday, April 20, 2009

Star Wars dictums

  • Belief is not a matter of choice, but of conviction.
  • Great leaders inspire greatness in others.
  • Easy is the path to wisdom for those blinded by themselves.
  • A plan is only as good as those who see it through.
  • the best confidence builder is experience.
  • you hold onto friends by keeping your heart a little softer than your head.
  • Heroes are made by the times.
  • Ignore your instincts at your peril.
  • Most powerful is he who controls his own power.
  • The winding path to peace is a lways a worthy one, regardless of how many turns it takes.
  • Fail with honor rather than succeed by fraud.
  • Greed and fear of loss are the roots that lead to the tree of evil.
  • When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side.
  • Arrogance diminishes wisdom.
  • Truth enlightens the mind, but won't always bring happiness to your heart.
  • Fear is a disease, hope is its only cure.
  • A single chance is a galaxy of hope.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

On Talents and Recruitment

This is to Tim, as i promised, and as he said, i should blog it out in case i will forget. :P

on a company, Talents not only count for the employee, but also employer. both of their ability should be match in order to making the company growth smoothly. just like our 2 legs, should be same long. However, employer should have something more: he is the one who lead the company direction. if a weak employer, i don't suggest he should hire someone more talent. well, not everyone able to be the leader.

so, the first thing is to understand yourself. what kind of personal you are? what is the advantage in your personality, attitude and ability? Can you be a standard for your staffs?  what is your goal on the company? 

the 2nd thing to consider for recruitment is: (1)whether you want to hire someone already good to use, or (2) someone has great potential to be modified. 

i will only talk about case (2). because case one may be another thing.
  1. able to take responsibility when he fail -- many people, especially, Chinese, are afraid to admit his failure and find excuses. that is really bad for a team. we can set an imaginary situation when interview potential employees to test this.
  2. don't afraid to argue, or give ideas or suggestion - this is so called insist when you have the truth. if a person will easily change his mind under public pressure. i will regard he is useless in 3 points. 1) he don't believe himself. 2) he don't like to argue, and may be regarded argue is bad. 3) he don't have guts, may be his metal age is too old. 
  3. don't afraid to ask - since not one can be the "known it all". however, if someone always ask without find the answer by himself in advance, then he is just an question box. 
  4. ambition, but don't be too much that without working plan or solid foundation - ambition is the engine of all company. 
  5. care about foundation of knowledge - (i believe) people care about that must have his point of view, a person with idea, knowing the power of knowledge. if he know the power of knowledge, than he must understand the power of rational thinking. if he know the power of rational thinking, then he must be independent, because he can always rely on his knowledge. you know, it means everything!
  6. when his idea conflict with ration thinking and experiment, he don't afraid to change his mind and accept the failure. -- that is related to the point (1)
  7. Moral, ability to control himself to do something wrong. - that is a hard aspect to see. using imaginary situation can possible reveal that. like some "cross-road of life" cases. this also can see whether his idea match with you. the conflict of family and office matters.
  8. how many steps he can foresee for his action - this not only test his general ability but also imagination and creative. some people can have fancy imagination but that is far form real world. just like a good chess player, the more step he can see, the more advantage he has. another reason for this is - can he think of the other? to have "public moral" (公德). you know, if you work in a team, what will happen if someone only think about himself.
well, it seem that it is hard to found someone fulfill all these :P more like a principle for advanced man. anyway, don't believe me, use yourself adjustment. don't forget that i know nothing about this world, but just a bit of physics.




Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Knowledge Horizon

in medieval world, people believe earth is flat. because they lack of knowledge. 

lets make an analogy between earth and knowledge.

on earth, it has surface. some filled wih lands, some filled with water. human, may like to divid the land by boundary, and call each area in term of nation. A more natural division may be the heritages, like ice land, tropical, dessert, etc.

on knowledge, it has a lot of subjects, like physics, arts, Psychology, politics, biology, etc. but these are the man made boundaries. in reality, we can see the boundary of different subjects is hard to distinguish, just like the boundary of tropical and dessert. 

if our understanding of knowledge reached certain level, we can see our knowledge system form a globe. there is one and only 1 knowledge, but different aspects of it. 

that's why, when we study at some level. we will entitled Doctor of Philosophy. because there is only 1 knowledge.

and human is now working on the discovery of different landscape of the knowledge globe.