Harmony?

Harmony?

I am working with the feeling
That the company is stealing
Fifty pennies from my pocket every day;

But for every single pennie
They will lose ten times as many
By the speed that I'm producing, I dare say.

For it makes me so disgusted
That my speed shall be adjusted
So that nevermore my brow will drip with sweat;

When they're in an awful hurry
Someone else can rush and worry
Till an increase in my wages do I get.

No malicious thoughts I harbor
For the butcher or the barber
Who get eighty cents an hour from the start.

Nearly three years I've been working
Like a fool, but now I'm shirking

When I get what's fair, I'll always do my part.

Someone else can run their races
Till I am on an equal basis
With the ones who learned the trade by mining coal.

Though I can do the work, if s funny
New men can get the money
And I cannot get the same to save my soul.

I am translating the book "The Servants of Power", this poem is from chapter 6. Written by a labor around 1920's, posted on the bulletin board where he was labored. Is it the same voice deep inside your heart too?

BIG FIVE Personality Test

大五人格測驗(Goldberg,1992)是心理學家廣泛使用的人格測驗。我們都知道買一套人格測驗是很貴的，自己找人做評量也是很貴的。這裡有個好消息！我發現Goldberg等人已經將大五人格測驗做了一個公共財產版(public domain)，大家可以玩玩看，有短版（題數較少）和完整版，對公共財產測驗有興趣的可以看Goldberg(1999)和Goldberg,et al.(2006)。可以列印回饋喔！

The Big Five

In contemporary psychology, the "Big Five" factors of personality are five broad domains or dimensions of personality which have been scientifically discovered to define human personality. First documented by J M Digman in 1990 in his five factor model of personality and later at the highest level of organization (Goldberg, 1993). These five over-arching domains have been found to contain and subsume more-or-less all known personality traits within their five domains and to represent the basic structure behind all personality traits. They have brought order to the often-bewildering array of specific lower-level personality concepts that are constantly being proposed by psychologists, which are often found to be overlapping and confusing. These five factors provide a rich conceptual framework for integrating all the research findings and theory in personality psychology. The big five traits are also referred to as the "Five Factor Model" or FFM (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and as the Global Factors of personality (Russell & Karol, 1994).

The Big Five model is considered to be one of the most comprehensive, empirical, data-driven research findings in the history of personality psychology. Identifying the traits and structure of human personality has been one of the most fundamental goals in all of psychology. Over three or four decades of research, these five broad factors were gradually discovered and defined by several independent sets of researchers (Digman, 1990). These researchers began by studying all known personality traits and then factor-analyzing hundreds of measures of these traits (in self-report and questionnaire data, peer ratings, and objective measures from experimental settings) in order to find the basic, underlying factors of personality.

At least three sets of researchers have worked independently for decades on this problem and have identified generally the same Big Five factors: Goldberg at the Oregon Research Institute, Cattell at the University of Illinois, and Costa and McCrae at the National Institutes of Health.These three sets of researchers used somewhat different methods in finding the five traits, and thus each set of five factors has somewhat different names and definitions. However, all three sets have been found to be highly inter-correlated and factor-analytically aligned.

It is important to note that these traits have been found to organize personality at the highest level, and so they are most helpful as a conceptual, organizing framework for regular, lower-level personality traits. However, because the Big Five traits are so broad and comprehensive, they are not nearly as powerful in predicting and explaining actual behavior as are the more numerous lower-level traits. Many studies have confirmed that in predicting actual behavior the more numerous facet or primary level traits are far more effective (e.g. Mershon & Gorsuch, 1988; Paunonon & Ashton, 2001)

The Big five factors are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism (OCEAN, or CANOE if rearranged). The Neuroticism factor is sometimes referred to as Emotional Stability. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret the Openness factor, which is sometimes called "Intellect". Each factor consists of a cluster of more specific traits that correlate together. For example, extraversion includes such related qualities as sociability, excitement seeking, impulsiveness, and positive emotions.

The Five Factor Model is a purely descriptive model of personality, but psychologists have developed a number of theories to account for the Big Five.

http://ipip.ori.org/
Short Form for the IPIP-NEO (短版)
The IPIP-NEO - Full Version (完整版)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

回家

半夜收東西準備回家，這是每一次回家都會做的事，說真的是會累的，但是收拾的時候並不會感覺到，只有擔心會不會忘了把東西帶回家。的確，常常忘了這個那個，但是今晚並沒有這種感覺。慢慢地細心地去想上次忘了甚麼，在房間一直找，把它帶回家。對，我想要寫回家的感覺。

來台灣讀書不知不覺已經六年了，經過了很多人事物，成長很多，這樣的回憶自己回想起來的確是想當欣慰的，有一種「感動流淚」的氣快要從喉嚨奔出，卻又被自己克制著的感動。這張照片是我第一次搭飛機的時候拍的，第一次出國的經驗，目的地是一個叫台灣的陌生地方。雖然我們都覺得天空的雲都是一樣的，來來去去就是那幾種，但是不知道為甚麼，之後達飛機，我再也沒有看見類似的雲了。對不起，我扯遠了。

離開家去唸書之後，很多東西都變了，家裡少了我，結構變了，人的互動也有點變了，變好了還是變壞了，誰能說甚麼標準，但感覺好了。不是沒有衝突，不是沒有隔閡，但是互動變了一點。說不上是甚麼，但我喜歡這個家。這也是我每次回家特開心的地方，見見媽媽爸爸，姊姊弟弟，雖然姊姊一樣是嘮嘮叨叨的，弟弟一樣是靜靜的，媽媽一樣是煮好吃的把我喂得飽飽，爸爸一樣是會發脾氣，而我也一樣自由自在的做我自己愛做的事，這就是我的家。回去，我就有一種家的安全感。

台灣，在不久的未來，我將離開它了，是不捨這裡的人事物。我想感謝這些人事物，特別是人。哀，喉嚨有點難受的感覺又來了。我會祝福你！雖然我知道這一別，再聯絡是難得，不聯絡是平安，但我想告訴你說如果我聽到你的消息，我會很開心，真的。

The Age of Stupid

Cop15 had just ended. You can have a look on what was really going on along the meeting of world leaders at Copenhagen from the youtube above, done by The Stupid Show which happens to be the "real movie" of life. Also the director of the film The Age of Stupid, Franny Armstrong, act as a reporter in The Stupid Show.

You can watch the Making of The Age of Stupid here, download of the movie can be done using emule, but just be aware that pirating it illegal!

I had watch the movie last night, err.. my opinion was.. well, right, we are stupid enough, and perhaps stubborn too. And I found it very dedicated for the subtitle done by some Taiwanese. It goes like this:

雖然電影內容批評的對象

感覺好像跟台灣一點關係也沒有

台灣人民似乎只需要同聲譴責美國、英國等大國就好

但給各位一些數字參考一下

2006年各國每人排放二氧化碳噸數

台灣每人每年13.19公噸

Alvin的美國19.78公噸，為台灣的150%

Fernand的法國6.6公噸，為台灣50%

Piers的英國9.66公噸，為台灣73%

Jeh的印度1.16公噸，為台灣的9%

Layefa的奈及利亞0.77公噸，為台灣的6%

由上面的資料可知

台灣人民在抵抗氣候變遷的任務中，責無旁貸

你還是只把這部電影看完憂鬱無力一下就好嗎?

你還是只是看完以後仇恨美國人為何這樣殘骸地球而已嗎?

不要猶豫了!請一起加入環保的行列吧!!

每天多坐大眾交通工具，少開車、少騎機車

購買食物、飲料時盡量選擇台灣出產食品，以減少碳足跡

每周選擇一兩天吃素，平常也盡量少吃肉，肉類是碳排放的一大原因

隨手關閉電源、列印影印使用雙面或用單面廢紙

夏日冷氣調至26~28度即可...等

還有很多很多可以為地球做的事情

氣候變遷是真實存在並且由人類造成的問題

現在再不下定決心解決，電影的預言就會成真

請告訴你的朋友、鄰居、同事、同學

跟他們說明現在地球遭遇的狀況

大多數的人並不是不願意作

只是不知道氣候變遷後果的嚴重性，和它的的急迫程度

每個人的一點點力量，就可以造成很大的改變

阻止全球暖化，就差你一個而已

你的一切行動，都會影響地球的未來!!!

今天就去開始起而行!

The Tough Get Growing: How to Succeed in a Down Economy

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/733

Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow

It happened to be I just need to tidy up my files in my Download Folder, I found this piece of video, which is good to share. After having a look at the wikipedia site, I find it interesting in this "FLOW" theory, especially when I try to implied it into the role of workers or so called employee, including managers' experience. And yes, he does talk about work as well. Enjoy.

For those who wanna know more about optimal experience in work and leisure, article written by Csíkszentmihályi, can be reach by the link provided.

Abstract
Followed 78 adult workers for 1 week with the experience sampling method. (This method randomly samples self-reports throughout the day). The main question was whether the quality of experience was more influenced by whether a person was at work or at leisure or more influenced by whether a person was in flow (i.e., in a condition of high challenges and skills). Results showed that all the variables measuring the quality of experience, except for relaxation and motivation, are more affected by flow than by whether the respondent is working or in leisure. Moreover, the great majority of flow experiences are reported when working, not when in leisure. Regardless of the quality of experience, however, respondents are more motivated in leisure than in work. But individuals more motivated in flow than in apathy reported more positive experiences in work. Results suggest implications for improving the quality of everyday life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

Csíkszentmihályi suggests several ways in which a group could work together so that each individual member could achieve flow. The characteristics of such a group include:

• Creative spatial arrangements: Chairs, pin walls, charts, but no tables; thus work primarily standing and moving.
• Playground design: Charts for information inputs, flow graphs, project summary, craziness (here also craziness has a place), safe place (here all may say what is otherwise only thought), result wall, open topics
• Parallel, organized working
• Target group focus
• Advancement of existing one (prototyping)
• Increase in efficiency through visualization
• Existence of differences among participants represents an opportunity, rather than an obstacle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow psychology
http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html
http://www.psychologie.uzh.ch...pdf