More news here than in the news
Quick blog to flag this project. A project that seems to be filling a gap in our visibility, addressing behaviours seemingly of importance to us all, and addressing questions of trust. {here}
Category Archives: Beardall.Blog
49 not out
Birthday meeting today was strictly business
18th December
It was all by the rules. My 49th birthday celebrated in the same manner as the year before. Let them eat cake. Because, as we all know, celebrating is a luxury event that is less important than saving lives.
Just think:
- this time last year there was no party going on at No. 10 either.
- this time tomorrow England may have bettered my 49 not out
- this time next year England may be lifting the World Cup
Warning: some of these claims may be easier to believe than others…
Antibodies or wider immunity response?
A few quotes of hope if you score poorly on antibody tests. Documents links attached. Less likely to be relevant to the immunity-suppressed (like my wife) but some useful information here for others.
people with low levels of antibodies do still appear to be sufficiently protected, particularly against severe disease
Theconversation.com
There is wider immunity response:
Neutralising antibodies are an antibody that is responsible for defending cells from pathogens
[not to be confused with binding antibodies] …binding to a pathogen and alerting the immune system to its presence so white blood cells can be sent to destroy it.
News-medical.net
B-cells and T-cells…the adaptive immune system is slow and can take several days before two key cell types – B cells and T cells – are brought into play.
Once the adaptive immune system has vanquished the invader, a pool of long-lived memory T and B cells are made. These memory lymphocytes remain dormant until the next time they encounter the same pathogen. This time, though, they produce a much faster and stronger immune reaction.
Theconversation.com
We can hope that people with low levels of neutralising antibodies, even after a booster, will therefore be protected by these other immune defences remaining largely undiminished. This, though, is not a given, and we need further studies to measure real-life protection.
Theconversation.com
The article concludes, “levels of infection and disease attributable to omicron to allow rapid, rational public health decisions to be made. Research groups around the world are addressing all these areas and, in the near future, we can expect their reports to make the situation clearer.”
Qualification vs Experience PART 1
To own or apply knowledge
This is a LinkedIn favourite. Click-bait, guaranteed to provoke reaction. It is an ever-valid discussion to return to. In my consulting discussions the debate of demonstrating qualified staff or experience in role is equally divisive. But I have no doubt, experience counts.
PART 2 of this blog will perhaps revisit some past threads of discussion. For now however, I simply want to demonstrate what I think is really being asked. For me this is simply the difference between having and being.
I have blogged about having vs being before. Links will appear at the bottom of this post. Nothing here is new. Dave Snowden regularly speaks of people relying on form when it is process that counts. John Vervaeke runs regular YouTube dialogue presenting these differences as contributors to the meaning crisis.
From a knowledge perspective we can consider this as the difference between acquired and applied learning. In those terms it perhaps becomes self-evident what the difference between qualification and experience reflects. But I will elaborate for clarity.
This can be explained across the categories of visibility | behaviour | trust (v|b|t).
Qualifications v | b | t
visibility | b | t
High visibility. But only visibility of potential. Measurable as standardised evidence to demonstrate that a core knowledge has been achieved. Employers can advertise expectations in standardised language for all potential candidates to self-select against. It also presents benchmarks to aim toward. At the heart of the visibility is the question “is this particular example of human form able to contribute to our process?” In this regard the qualification presents an attribute – a speculative possibility.
v | behaviour | t
Them and us behaviour. This is having mode. Ownership. To have a degree certificate is to own a qualification. To be Associate or Fellow qualified in a professional capacity is to have achieved a demonstration of learning in your craft. This is to have. This is form. It is a material representation of attaining a learning from an institution. It is something that has been acquired. By the application of personal resources of time and money towards gaining something others have offered you as an exchange. The conclusion of which is a necessary demonstration that this acquisition has been successful. A confirmation is awarded based on a manner of pre-determined examination of your account or recall.
v | b | trust
Them and us, as credibility. Trust is inherently placed in the hands of a third-party. These are institutions of learning, academically or otherwise accredited. It thereby increases distance between candidate and employer; prospective service provider and customer. At scale this is organisational accreditation or licence to operate. But such certifications are also an enabler of the defensive decision-maker. Lowering the necessary skill-base of the assessor; reducing decision parameters; optimising short-lists. This trust is assumed. It is therefore fragile, rigid to the framework it reflects, standardised, and potentially subject to abuse.
Experience v | b | t
visibility | b | t
High visibility. Measurable in years, or reputation, or demonstrable by tangible success. Success measurable by metrics of application not acquisition.
v | behaviour | t
Applied know-how is able to be demonstrated. Learning whilst doing and understanding of contextual application in action and deeds. Contextually relevant is therefore more detailed in explanation and demonstration. It can command more respect simply because it is the being part of the process, not simply representing the potential to be.
v | b | trust
A closer approximation of fit to role is possible. It requires a greater ability to share a trust. A trust can be built based upon shared understanding of process. Abstraction by both parties (e.g. employer and employee) who can better empathise with the other, having better modelling in mind of what the process they share as intentions, requires of the other.
A practical example of having or owning knowledge vs applying it
I conclude with a further example of the limited visibility that owned knowledge represents. This is day 643 of lockdown in Casa Beardall. Undoubtedly now my most intense era of knowledge acquisition. One MSc completed, and another underway. Owned knowledge by qualification. But my owned knowledge is accumulating by another metric – by the volume of literature I have acquired. This last 12 months, the calendar year of 2021, I have spent over £1,000 on books. I have accounted for them all. They are listed in the table below. I can claim to have read them all. I do claim to have read most. But all you can seek as validation is visibility e.g., evidence that I physically own them.
Some of these books have been heavy reading. Some almost impenetrable (Kant or more recently Heidegger). Some of the books are just a guide to others. The point is who is to know if I have read them, let alone understood them. But even if I sit an exam to demonstrate an understanding of them, it has no reflection on whether I can apply them to anything meaningful to you or anything worldly at all.
A book seems to me the perfect metaphor as a simplification of this debate. Anyone can own a book. Have this knowledge to hand. It is a literal form of knowledge. But to apply knowledge is to not have it to hand. It is to have it abstractly available in mind. And thereby find means to apply it to something new.
In the zoom age these displays are everywhere. Bookshelves strategically located behind camera shots. Mine included. The academic class more guilty than most. Other than perhaps politicians.
We can display all, but in the end it is application that counts. And experience is the easiest representation of that.
I will conclude the crassness with the following table. Hubris on show.
Having or Being | Form or Process | Acquired or Applied?
A list of books purchased in 2021. A gratuitous display. That demonstrates more of my commitment to charities vs publishers, than it does to how the content may be applied.
| £paid | Title | Ref# |
| £1,172.01 | Total | |
| £803.70 | Subtotal from Oxfam | |
| £36.84 | The goal | amazon |
| £29.99 | Historical Sociology and World History | o51**** |
| £27.07 | What is ancient philosophy? | amazon |
| £24.99 | Language and Social Relations | o50**** |
| £21.95 | Fool’s Gold | amazon |
| £21.38 | Becoming human | amazon |
| £20.00 | Jungian psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of Carl Jung | o38**** |
| £20.00 | Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper | o51**** |
| £20.00 | William James and the transatlantic conversation | o44**** |
| £19.99 | Social Psychology — 8th Edition | o65**** |
| £19.99 | Psychology and Alchemy | o38**** |
| £19.99 | History of Western Philosophy – Bertrand Russell | o51**** |
| £19.99 | what causes human behaviour – stars, selves or contingencies? | o61**** |
| £19.33 | Essays of Francis Bacon | amazon |
| £16.48 | Karl Jaspers : The origin and goal of history | amazon |
| £15.99 | Kants Critique of Practical Reason | o46**** |
| £15.00 | Representing and Intervening | o51**** |
| £15.00 | Short History Of The Communist Party Of The Soviet Union | o44**** |
| £15.00 | ETHIC of Benedict de Spinoza: Demonstrated in Geometrical Order | o44**** |
| £14.99 | Principles of Brain Dynamics Global State Interactions | o38**** |
| £14.99 | Summa Theologica – Volume 17: Psychology of Human Acts | o33**** |
| £14.99 | Existentialism and Humanism | o33**** |
| £14.99 | Leibniz: Nature and Freedom | o51**** |
| £14.99 | The Psychology of Politics | o61**** |
| £14.99 | The human use of human beings | o61**** |
| £14.99 | The Philosophy of David Hume | o45**** |
| £14.99 | The Freud Jung Letters | o50**** |
| £14.99 | Kant’s Critique of pure reason; translated by Norman Kemp Smith | o45**** |
| £14.99 | Will Hutton – Them and Us – Signed First Edition | o44**** |
| £14.99 | Newman on the Psychology of Faith in the Individual [1928] | o44**** |
| £14.99 | An Introduction to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy: Second Edition | o44**** |
| £14.99 | Joseph Campell’s selected letters 1927-1987 | amazon |
| £14.50 | Josepeh Campbell’s hero with a thousand faces | amazon |
| £14.02 | Joseph Campbell’s pathways to bliss | amazon |
| £13.99 | Being and time | o44**** |
| £13.66 | Your Leadership Legacy : becoming the leader you were meant to be | amazon |
| £13.62 | Tales from two sides of the brain | amazon |
| £12.99 | Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition | o46**** |
| £12.99 | 1177 BCE : the year civisation collapsed | amazon |
| £12.95 | Explaining the Brain | o44**** |
| £12.15 | Bandit Capitalism : Carillion | amazon |
| £12.00 | Complex/Archetype/Symbol in the Psychology of C.G. Jung | o33**** |
| £11.99 | Imitatio Christi | o46**** |
| £11.98 | The goal of philosophy | amazon |
| £11.94 | Flow | amazon |
| £11.63 | The conciousness instinct | amazon |
| £10.99 | Freedom and belief | o38**** |
| £10.99 | The Essential James Hillman: A blue fire | o44**** |
| £10.00 | The Problems of Philosophy | o33**** |
| £10.00 | The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism | o51**** |
| £10.00 | Statistics for psychology | o44**** |
| £10.00 | Vygotsky’s Psychology | o44**** |
| £9.99 | Analyzing Social Science Data | o65**** |
| £9.99 | Ego & Archetype | o38**** |
| £9.99 | Coleridge’s Works – Aids to Reflection – published in 1890 | o51**** |
| £8.99 | Buddhismwithout belief : a contemporary guide to awakening | amazon |
| £8.96 | Applying AI to Project Management | amazon |
| £8.75 | How the Project Management Office can use AI to imporve the bottom line | amazon |
| £8.44 | Gods in Everyman : a new psychology of man’s lives and loves | amazon |
| £8.15 | Risk Savvy | amazon |
| £8.00 | The structure of scientific revolutions | o46**** |
| £8.00 | Routledge philosophy guidebook to Kant and the Critique of pure reason | o44**** |
| £7.99 | The Story of Civilization. Rousseau and Revolution 10. The Protestant North | o46**** |
| £7.99 | Chomsky’s Reflection on Language | o46**** |
| £7.99 | The Conscious Mind In Search of a Fundamental Theory | o38**** |
| £7.99 | The Poetical Works of Shelley | o45**** |
| £7.99 | The desert fathers :sayings of the early christian monks | amazon |
| £7.78 | Who’s in Charge? | amazon |
| £7.50 | Mind and cosmos | o51**** |
| £7.49 | The Vision of Judgment and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Cantos III & IV | o51**** |
| £7.49 | Existential Analysis 11.2,12.1 & 13.1 | o50**** |
| £7.19 | The Human Side of Managing Technological Innovation | o46**** |
| £7.01 | Mindfulness | amazon |
| £7.00 | Time – Rhythm and Repose | o38**** |
| £7.00 | The House at Pooh Corner | o33**** |
| £7.00 | Radical priorities | o44**** |
| £7.00 | Mapping The Mind | o44**** |
| £6.99 | Linked | o65**** |
| £6.99 | Foundations of Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry | o46**** |
| £6.99 | The Neurotic Personality of Our Time | o46**** |
| £6.99 | An Essay concerning Human Understanding | o45**** |
| £6.99 | Early Christian writing : the apostellic fathers | amazon |
| £6.71 | Will Durant’s The Story of Philosophy | amazon |
| £5.99 | The Shakespeare Classics: The Taming Of A Shrew | o33**** |
| £5.99 | Critique of the Power of Judgment (2008) | o51**** |
| £5.97 | Critical chain | amazon |
| £5.00 | Mapping the Mind | o51**** |
| £4.99 | Social Psychology: A Study of Human Interaction (1965) | o65**** |
| £4.99 | Two treatises of government | o46**** |
| £4.99 | Rousseau’s Political Writings | o45**** |
| £4.99 | An enquiry concerning human understanding | o45**** |
| £4.99 | Freedom Evolves, Daniel C. Dennett, Penguin Paperback | o44**** |
| £4.99 | Workplace counselling | o44**** |
| £4.84 | Plato : The Republic | amazon |
| £4.79 | Aquinas | o46**** |
| £3.99 | Understanding the Self-Ego Relationship in Clinical Practice | o51**** |
| £3.99 | Mind Watching: Why We Behave the Way We Do | o61**** |
| £3.99 | The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and the Mind | o45**** |
| £3.99 | The village effect | o44**** |
| £3.00 | Oscar Wilde | o45**** |
| £2.99 | Real Confidence | o44**** |
| £2.99 | The emerald tablet of Hermes | amazon |
| £2.49 | The Science of Passionate Interests: … Tarde’s Economic Anthropology | o51**** |
| £2.49 | The measure of all things | o51**** |
About Me
In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.
Find my professional mask here:
No early release
No antibodies detected
My immuno-suppressed wife gets to stay home some more – as therefore do I. In summary, vaccination is not assurance of immunity. And casa Beardall remains a lockdown zone – day 642
We can confirm that COVID-19 specific Antibodies against SARS-COV-2 – WERE NOT DETECTED.
Email we received today
The sample linked to C-602 was recorded as being NEGATIVE.
REF: ************
A negative result means that no antibodies were detected which specifically bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (original variant)
The news we had hoped not to receive. But news we had prepared ourselves for. This was after a third full vaccination. One month ago. Note we can only test for antibodies (not T-Cells).
1 in 10 people are estimated to be have no positive response!!!
The Omicron world moves on. Boosters seem more important than ever. If you have any trust in science to be reported factually then you should read the disclaimer that was offered with our news. Because this is reporting normal response – meaning you.
Here are reasons we were offered for no positive antibody response (which I think need to be updated for third dose and booster)
- It can occur if sampled too soon after a vaccine is given. (Sample no earlier than 2 weeks*, optimally >3 weeks sometimes longer).
- If a response to a vaccine is very poor.
- Only one vaccine was given, (NB An additional dose can significantly increase the outcome).
- The recipient is over 65.
- The patient is immunosuppressed.
- The patient had an underlying medical condition.
The email goes on to advise that not everyone produces spike antibodies in response to a vaccine or infection. The key statement though, I highlight in quotations below:
We know from efficacy studies conducted by the companies that manufacture the vaccines, that the vaccine will not be successful for around 1 in 10 people who receive both doses of the vaccine. Immunosuppressed individuals are usually excluded from efficacy data, as well as other vulnerable groups.
Test lab email information
The email concludes with a suggesting to retest regularly to confirm status. Which seems sound business advice when charging per test.
v | b | t
Get vaccinated. Get boosted. Don’t get complacent.
I think these observations are obvious but it is easy enough to consider your environment and make your own assessment of risk.
visibility | b | t
Be aware. Vaccination is lower risk, not risk free.
v | behaviour | t
Be vigilant and cautious. You have control of your own space, but have in mind the rest. Be aware of the basics. Be aware of those less aware, less considerate, or belligerently defiant. Mask wearing is the easiest means to determine attitude.
v | b | trust
Be responsible for your own actions and safety. Use visibility and behaviour to warrant trust afforded everyone else.
About Me
In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.
Find my professional mask here:
100 posts
Time, cost, or quality
Existence before essence. With over one hundred blogs offered I’m revisiting some basic principles of priority. The natural emergence of my blog topics seems to be me a key part of my process. I still have much to say. Much to read. Much to do. My research will carry me through.
But my personal intention to blog daily is now reaching its natural point of peak. I wish to retain the flow. But I also journal. I work. I research. I prepare for MSc exams.
From here-on-in it is daily blogging, perhaps. More correctly, it is affording as much time and as appropriate an amount of opportunity cost directed towards the deliberate attention to maintain quality of output. Quality, time and cost. Those seem to me the correct iron-law inspired priorities to guide my hand.
That’s my project musing for this evening. I return now to an existential crisis. A crisis of perspective for which Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Satre maintain. There’s a project angle here I am yet to land within this very different philosophical discourse. All the time I need – the luxury that projects are universally denied – now my ally and with it more possibility to understand.
—-//—-
About Me
In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.
Find my professional mask here:
Covid-19 links
Media reporting is still woeful. So here are a few links to sites offering better insight. Links to data embedded in graphics {here}
Dr John Campbell 5 min interview {here}
Additional info for clinically vulnerable {here}
KBO as Churchill would have said
Project Chatter #99
Time-bound intended change
Podcast appearance here. My thanks to Project Chatter. And to Paul Goodge, who never disappoints.
I like to think the thread of my argument is consistent. I like to think my research, consulting, and personal perspectives align. The shared discussion in this podcast was enlightening for me. I make no claims to philosophical expertise, more amateur curiosity, but I have loved gaining new insight from the little I have so far grasped. I still have to pinch myself that I get to say this stuff out loud. And in the company of such great people.
We talk in this podcast of perspectival challenge. Of communication. And of boundary lines. Over the weekend I have pushed at a few more of my own. I must admit from my first visit this weekend to Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, it has me hooked. It’s a tough read. Immediately challenging, to even the few perspectives I thought I’d settled upon. Maybe all.
No way I can offer anything meaningful yet. It’s taken me two days just to grasp the outline of his Being and Time 1927 thesis. Only reading in detail the introduction and chapter one…and only then with regular visits to Herbert Dreyfus to steer me through {here} 🤯
But he’s making much of boundaries I didn’t even think to ask were there…
I hope you check out the podcast. And that the conversation started continues and expands anon.
—-//—-
About Me
In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.
Find my professional mask here:
Excuse my ignorance
Einstein’s curse
My meditative practice this morning turned into a lingering abstraction over breakfast. A trap of thought I needed to write down in order to unwind. As a release of tension, or as indigestion. Both may suit. Consider this a musing. A diary entry or placeholder. A journal entry that escaped.
That he was almost right. Almost complete. But his schema fails at the boundary cases of his paradigm. Space and time, or more correctly spacetime.
The Big Bang sits as a beginning. A paradigm that sits within itself. From which spacetime emerges and is contained. It is the beginning of change and of matter. Dynamics. The temporary. The paradigm of the transitional.
Physics now wrestling with the remainder. The parts of the indivisible whole that remained when we categorised what is beyond categorical. The whole. Or the hole. The subset of a meta physics, that which has relative place in time.
Infinities of possibility. Itself an analogy of the paradigm within which we are trapped. A hint at the boundary case we cannot escape. But within which we are thereby condemned to have or to be.
To even ask what is beyond is to fall back into the trap. To not ask is to be blind to possibility. To ask what sits amidst us in the dark. Or what pulls our light in. Or what is parallel to all universal norms. All notional paradigms each informed by the limitations of our constraints. Of course we fall with Newton. A course outlined by Galileo. Our relativity necessarily coordinate and squared. Why would subatomic reality care for our boundary case of space and time? Revealing one or other but never both. The coordinate translation is our prison. And ours alone.
But that is fine to work with. I’m not sure I understand the fundamentals of anything at these extremes. Nor is it my place in space or time to download all preexisting code and add a few lines of my own. I’ve tried, and failed – so far. I’m asking much more limited sets of questions. Contained within a prison of one mind, amidst a sea of others. Each translating one to another our singular experience in shared space but across a human expansion beyond one experiential time. A unique gift to one repeating closed system that connects to others. By memory and abstraction. Change is our construct. Whether intended or not. I’m just asking the simple questions within that one paradigm.
And with that thought I feel ready to spend a day or two with Heidegger, Vygotsky, Popper, and Jasper. Starting with Being and Time. And the pollution of all these musings I have uttered, which I now need to unwind.
Dialogos
Being more via dialogue – through meaning
The weekend starts here. Last weekend was all flu jabs and Moderna boosters, grumps and study deadlines looming. This weekend starts with new business about to begin, all university deadlines met with my best efforts offered, and a really enjoyable “riffing” session via Project Chatter today (recorded episode will be out on Monday).
I was pretty excited but nervous before my podcast today. In a good way. My normal momentary doubt, not really sure which way the discussion would go, knowing I would need to be on my game to keep up, but excited to be involved. For me that means I am in the right place – difficult but potentially expansive. No better feeling than contributing to a shared dialogue that is bigger than any one person. Especially among people I admire, who I have listened to extensively, and remain a fan. {Discussion link will appear here}
After all that I am feeling revved up but mindful, and glad for a quiet few days to regroup. After 637 days in lockdown, what does a quiet day look like? Watching lectures, reading, and listening to podcasts is not everyone’s idea of downtime. But it works for me.
My latest binge watch in a long list of new subject heroes is Dave Snowden. I heard him on a Rebel Wisdom podcast a few weeks ago {here}. I found out today he has also been a guest on Project Chatter {here}. It’s a brilliant episode – one of the few I missed – one I will be watching again. His insight is exceptional, and as an influencer of the great and the good he has authoritative wisdom to impart – check out his European Union Publication “field guide for decision makers” {here} and wider consulting and blog {here}. Academic breadth, business acumen, and an engaging speaker. I am already a big fan.
About Me
In psychology we are required to look beneath the mask. This blog series is attempting to unmask some hidden parts of projects to engender a more collaborative way.