Volleyball Trick Shots

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Everyday NASA Inventions

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Friday, April 13, 2029

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What Presidential Campaigns Used to Look Like

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Countries With Biggest Prison Populations

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What You Expect From A Boss

Good advice from the Blue Skunk blog:

Core beliefs of extraordinary bosses

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 at 05:43AM

Had I realized Scott McLeod's Leadership Day event was coming up so soon, I'd have saved this posting instead of letting it rip back in June. Anyway, Scott, here's my entry. As you know, good management interests me a great deal more than good leadership. This post reflects that.

It's been so long since I've worked for a bad boss that I tend not to think a lot about what makes someone a good person for whom to work.  I do hear plenty of complaints from family members about their own supervisors, so bad bosses do exist somewhere.

My guess is that most of us have learned how to boss other people by experiencing being bossed ourselves - for good or for ill. (The term "boss" has such a perjorative slant - couldn't we use supervisor, manager, team leader???.)

Anyway this online article caught my eye: 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses by Geoffrey James, Inc. April 23, 2012. While James is writing about the business world, these beliefs seem especially applicable to school library and technology departments. James's words are in bold; mine aren't.

Extraordinary bosses believe:

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield. Library and technology leaders understand this. Our departments support teachers, administrators, and students. Our own success can only be measured by how successful we make others. We need to be fighting for those we serve, not against other departments.
2. A company is a community, not a machine. Again our success is dependent on the relationships we build with others. Whether it is with our knowledgeable and skilled technicians or our teaching staff or administrators in other departments, our codependency makes us a community. And while we would like to operate sometimes with machine-like rules for everyone, education seems to be a place where effectiveness lies in making exceptions.
3. Management is service, not control. This is tough for many of us technology folks whose primary goals are security, adequacy, and reliablity. The more control we have over our applications, networks, and equipment, the better we seem to meet these goals. But we too often lose sight that security, adequacy, and reliability are simply a means to providing good service - and too much control can be counterproductive if the technology is not easy-to-use, convenient, and available.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children. There are two ways of looking at treating people like children. Of course, treating anyone "like a child" is demeaning - even to children. But as more and more of the people who work for me are of my own adult children's ages, I often think about how I would like my sons and daughters treated by their bosses. I hope they have supervisors who help them grow, support their learning, enable their advancement, encourage them to tackle ever bigger responsibilities, and to find ways to make a difference. How much does a good mentor really differ from a good parent?
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear. For those of us in libraries and educational technology, this one is pretty easy. The vision has to be no more complex than remembering what we do is always centered on helping kids learn. Period. As much as I would like to put the fear of god into a couple of people around here now and then, I have no clue about how to be scary.
6. Change equals growth, not pain. Change has been constant and unavoidable in both libraries and technology for twenty years. If the new is painful to you and the members of your department instead of it being exciting, you are all a bunch of masochists and have stayed in the field too long. Go work at Wal-mart.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation. Good managers understand that making decisions makes a job interesting and fulfilling. All technologies ought to help people solve problems and make good decisions and then carry them out. (Librarians, this is why information literacy skills are the most important things that technology can help teach!) If a computer can do your job - it should.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil. If the boss doesn't look forward to coming to work everyday (and I mean every day), how one expect others in the department to look forward to heading to the office? 

Core beliefs or attributes you appreciate in extraordinary bosses?

Using Math To Amaze Your Friends

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Talent?

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Never Could Get One of These To Work

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  Lucky Shot below Click here for the link.

50 years Ago Today

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Dirty Car Artist

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Some Bad Nuclear Accidents

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World Wonders You May Not Know About

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Simple Household tips

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How Far Have we Come with The Uneven Bars

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Climbing The World's Tallest Tree

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Can You Find The Trick?

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Have One of These Genes?

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Strongest Girl Trick

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Vanishing Girl

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Walking into Things

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More Bad News For a Major Paper Company

Investors are now asking, "will this company survive?"
From Foresttalk blog site:

Resolute Forest Products pension plans underfunded by $1.9 billion

August 10th, 2012 | Posted in Financial News | No comments »

Resolute Forest Products‘ pension plans are underfunded by $1.9 billion and its employees say they have already given up enough to keep the company in operation.

Minimal solvency level not met

Resolute Forest Products has not met the minimal solvency levels in its pension plans regulated by Quebec and Ontario’s funding relief regulations.  These regulations, adopted in 2011, affect approximately 80% of Resolute Forest Product’s unfunded pension obligations.

As a result of these new regulations, Resolute Forest Products has until March 2013 to adopt corrective measures to attain the target solvency ratio within 5 years.  The company needs to reduce its pension plan deficits by approximately $500 million.

The company says it will work with other plan stakeholders, including employees, retirees, unions and the provincial governments of Quebec and Ontario to develop corrective measures.  Resolute Forest Products reports that with interest rates currently near historic lows, the company will work with these stakeholders to develop corrective measures that balance the need to meet their undertakings to retirees, but also to provide the company with the funding predictability they need to manage our business.

Employee reaction

Gary Bragnalo, president of Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union Local 39 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, said “We did enough. They went and bought Fibrek for a hundred-million bucks. They could have put that in the pension plan. So, if they’re gonna come back and ask for more from the workers, well, I don’t think it’s going to be too long of a conversation”.

Resolute trying to prevent wind up of pensions in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland and Labrador

Resolute Forest Products filed a motion with the Quebec Superior Court on June 12, 2012 seeking an order to prevent pension regulators in each of Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador from declaring partial wind-ups of pension plans relating to employees of former Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. and Bowater Incorporated operations in these provinces, or a declaration that any claim for accelerated reimbursements of deficits arising from a partial windup is a barred claim under the company’s 2010 creditor protection proceedings.

The company believes that such a declaration would be inconsistent with the court’s confirmation of the plan of reorganization and the terms of the company’s emergence from creditor protection proceedings.

Additionally, a partial wind up plan would likely shorten the period in which any deficit within those plans would have to be funded.

The pension regulators are expected to file contestations to Resolute Forest Products motion by the end of August 2012.

Letter to employees

Resolute Forest Products recently sent a letter to its employees with an update on the pension deficit.  In the letter, the company said  “the company has no intention of terminating the plan. However, if it were to become necessary to terminate the plan while it has a solvency deficiency, and where the company was not in a position to eliminate the deficiency, your benefits would be reduced.”

Sources:

• Resolute workers have done ‘enough,’ union says - Company and unions have 9 months to agree on corrective measures for pension plans (CBC)

• Resolute Forest Products 10-Q (Filed on 08/09/2012)

Water Properties in Space

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What Makes A Great Picture?

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What Makes A Viral Video?

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A Conversation Starter

HBO's Newsroom clip - Not suitable for work because of language.

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What America Has Lost

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July Fails

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Remarkable Fisherman

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Do We Really Hate Congress?

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Mind Stuff

Mind Stuff


Pretty Cool

Don't ask me! I don't know how it's done!! 

------------------------------------------------------

Read out loud the text inside the triangle below. 

More than likely you said, 'A bird in the bush,' and...
If this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
that the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

Next, let's play with some words.
What do you see? 

In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). Now, what do you see?






You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion. Look again! Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?

What do you see here?




This one is quite tricky! 
The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.

Last one. 
What do you see? 

You probably read the word ME in brown, but........
when you look through ME you will see YOU! 
Do you need to look again?



This is really cool. The second one is amazing so please read all the way though. 

ALZHEIMERS' EYE TEST 

Count every 'F ' in the following text: 

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

(SEE BELOW)

HOW MANY?
WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN! 
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down. 

The reasoning behind is further down. 
The brain cannot process 'OF.' 

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.


Look at the spinning woman and if she is turning right your right side of your brain is working. If she is turning left your left side of your brain is working ... 



If she turns both ways for you then you have a 160 or better IQ

More Brain Stuff. . . From Cambridge University . 

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs. 
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! If you can raed tihs psas it on !!

Makes Old Men Smile

Skinny Dipping

An elderly man in Florida had owned a large farm for several years.  

He had a large pond in the back.  

It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some orange, and lime trees. 

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while, and look it over.  

He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.  

As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee.  

As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women

  skinny-dipping in his pond 

He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.  

One of the women shouted to him,

"we're not coming out of this pond until you leave." 

The old man frowned, "I didn't come

down here to watch you ladies swim naked,

or to make you get out of the pond naked."

Holding the bucket up he said:

"I'm just here to feed the alligator." 

Some old men can still think fast.