DNA And Synthetic Life

All life on Earth - be it a bacteria, a microbe, a virus, a plant, a tree or an animal encodes its generic information as DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid). DNA is a sequence of four types of nucleotides (A, C, G & T) which make up genes which in turn make up chromosomes.

A human being possesses 23 pair of chromosomes, that is a 22 pair of chromosome plus a X-Y pair for males or a X-X pair for females.

Man share 98.8% of their DNA with the chimpanzee. Any two human beings share 99,9% of their DNA. Think about it - only 0,1% of your DNA separates you from every other human being out there.

Recently, Man has been able to decode DNA sequences from various species (including human) and it has been able to recombine and assemble entire new DNA sequences from scratch. It has even come to the point where it's possible to create new simple synthetic organisms. It's quite impressive! Watch Craig Venter on TED speaking about creating synthetic life. It's really amazing!

Take My Advice - I Don't Use It Anyway

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." - Erica Jong

We often look for other people advice. We are sometimes uncertain or uncomfortable with a decision. Several times we take some advice because it makes us feel more confident and at the same time less responsible since after all it was a 'shared decision' (by the way, that's why so many businesses rely on external highly-paid consultants).

Often there is the case of cognitive dissonance, which is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two contradictory ideas at the same time in your mind. Most of the cases, a decision is already made on an emotional basis, but the rational side of the brain can not find logical reasons or arguments to sustain that decision. No matter how many people we turn to for advice, no matter how logical all the arguments may be, we will inevitably follow the emotional decision, the heart always wins.

I think that you can (and sometimes you should) ask for opinions from people you trust to be honest and tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it, but at all times you have to make up your mind on your own. The final decision is yours and yours alone, and you have to make your own path taking at all times full responsibility for you and for your life.

So my advice to the reader is - don't take advice!

My Personal Chaos Theory

One of the most exciting things in life is that every second you are presented with a multitude of options - big and small, and you have to make a choice. Even doing nothing is a possible course of action. Once the decision is done, and an action is taken, it can not be taken back. It immediately belongs to the past. The past and the future always meet at the present. We can not never know the future, but have the obligation to learn from the past.

For sure, all of us have our personal experiences about things we did, which we wished we did differently... even if only curiosity to know what it would be like if we have chosen a different path. Our jobs, our education, our friends and our loves are often dictated by random events, special circumstances, apparent coincidences or even fate. There is no such thing as destiny... we all create and write our destiny, with every small decision and every small action.

Like the Chaos Theory, our the path of our lives move in twisted turns and are deeply intertwined with the lives of other persons and with the environment. Similarly, like the effects on weather caused by the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly in China, all of our own decisions and actions, no matter how small and insignificant they may seem, in the long term, they will change the World.

Looking at life this way, every moment of every living being becomes truly special.

The Next Twenty Years Are Going To Be Completely Unlike The Last Twenty Years

I just watched the Crash Course by Chris Martenson. It consists of 20 chapters (videos) of about 3h20 duration. It was quite a revelation. It describes a well formulated integrated approach to the three 'E's: Economics, Energy and Environment.

It states that the next twenty years are going to be completely different from the past twenty years, because over the past 100 years, mankind has built social, economical, financial, environmental models that are simply not sustainable, and that need to be changed dramatically or they will collapse.

I wish some of the facts and conclusions would not be true, but the arguments and logic is grounded in the laws of mathematics and physics, and those laws can not be changed.

I don't want to sound alarmist or pessimistic, my advice is that the reader watches the Crash Course and makes up their own mind.

George Orwells's Animal Farm and 1984

I recently read both Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell. They share a lot of common elements, such as the betrayed revolution; the oppression and repression of a totalitarian regime; the exploitation of the majority for the benefit of a small minority; the suppression of free thinking and free will; a continuous state of war and terror; and the fact that the cure turned out to be worse than the poison.

Both of the books are a satire to the communist regimes, specially the old Russian one. 1984 is deeper and more dense, and also an essay on the human nature and human condition.

I personally think that democracy is the 'least evil' form of government. Still, I think it gives too much power to the government and it encourages short-term popular actions in detriment of more useful long term policies. I believe in the motto 'Less Government, Better Government'.

Anyhow, these two books are timeless, powerful masterpieces which I highly recommend.

Tennis: I Love This Game

Tennis - I absolutely love this game. It's a mixture of skill, art, strength and intelligence. It's a pure delight to watch a professional tennis game.

My favorite male player is the swiss Roger Federer and my favorite female player is the serbian Ana Ivanovic.

I'm pushing for Roger Federer to win the 14th Grand Slam and to regain the #1 ATP rank title! I also have a tennis ball signed by Federer (in the photo).

At the moment, the Indian Wells tournment is being played in California. It's worth 1000 ATP points and it finishes on the 22nd of March. Go Roger!

Nothing Comes From Violence

It looks like ever since the beginning of mankind, that we are condemned to violence, specially against the weak. We read about it everyday in the newspapers, we see it everyday in the television.

Our governments spend obscene amounts of taxpayers money pursuing more sophisticated and powerful weapons which do not contribute nothing to the happiness or wealth of the citizens. Ironically, and just as in George Orwell novel '1984', the 'Ministry of War' was called 'Ministry of Peace', so our governments name our 'Attack Ministry" the 'Defense Ministry'. Even more ironically still, the countries with the largest stocks of Weapons of Mass Destruction (the ones which were never found in Iraq) are the ones who try to prevent other countries from acquiring them.

Could it be that mankind is doomed to self annihilation? The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have created a symbolic Doomsday Clock that marks the minutes before midnight, where midnight represents "catastrophic destruction". That clock is mentioned often in the recent movie Watchmen.

I'm against the use of violence with the exceptional case of self-defense. Violence only breeds more violence, and as Mahatma Gandhi said 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind'. We are all humans, with all our feelings, thoughts, dreams, hopes, aspirations, flaws and frailties.

A favorite quote of mind is 'Hate has a reason for everything, but love is unreasonable' by Raiuhes Ahaefvthe.

And to finish this post, I leave here the words of wisdom of Monsieur Le Sting:

Fragile, by Sting

If blood will flow when fresh and steel are one
Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrows rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
Perhaps this final act was meant
To clinch a lifetimes argument
That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could
For all those born beneath an angry star
Lest we forget how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are

On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are
How fragile we are how fragile we are ...

Celebrating The International Women's Day

Women are absolutely fascinating and beautiful in every possible way... so it's only fair that today, the whole world celebrates and honors them.

The greatest mystery to men has always been the question "What women want?". I suspect that not even women know the answer...

And now, let John Lennon do the talking:

Woman, by John Lennon

Woman I can hardly express,
My mixed emotion at my thoughtlessness,
After all I'm forever in your debt,
And woman I will try express,
My inner feelings and thankfullness,
For showing me the meaning of succsess,
oooh well, well,
oooh well, well,

Woman I know you understand
The little child inside the man,
Please remember my life is in your hands,
And woman hold me close to your heart,
However, distant don't keep us apart,
After all it is written in the stars,
oooh well, well,
oooh well, well,

Woman please let me explain,
I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain,
So let me tell you again and again and again,
I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,
I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,
I love you (yeah, yeah) now and forever,
I love you (yeah, yeah)...

Performance Objectives & Employee Appraisals

There is a quite fascinating almost magical view of performance objectives at work. Usually they are attached in any form to money and this is exactly the problem. As soon as the compensation of an individual is determined by an indicator, the measurement of the indicator becomes distorted, similar like the Bohr principle that states that you can not measure an object without interfering with it.

Also, there is often the case where one measures one indicator that he believes will accurately represent a desired outcome, whereas the opposite is true, thus creating a dysfunctional system. There's a wonderful paper On the folly of rewarding A, while hoping for B that describes exactly that problem which can be observed in Sports, Consulting, Universities, Business and Government.

About Performance Measurement and Management there's an excellent book which I greatly recommend: Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations (link to Amazon).

All in all, here are the problems I see with the current practice of establishing objectives and rewarding people in regard to the degree of achievements of those objectives:

• There is a considerate amount of effort that needs to go into the whole objective setting, monitoring & measurement process. This involves the discussion about the relevant objectives, how they can be quantified and measured, the monitoring of those indicators and the verification of those objectives.
• The objectives are usually set at the beginning of the year. What will happen is that other tasks, activities and projects, even if more important for the company (or department) will not be given attention, because they are not being rewarded. Even in the case that the initial objectives become obsolete, they are still pursued.
• The objectives take the character of an extraordinary achievement as the result of super human effort. Is this really the case? Do people really work above their capability and capacity in order to achieve them? Is that desired or even useful? Besides, people work within the capability of the system they belong to. It's not realistic to expect system capability improvements without changing the system itself - or is a miracle expected?
  
• People, as human beings, will naturally tend to make the numbers look good. This aspect can take many forms. For instance: short term results can be improved at the cost of mid term results; the calculation formula can be used or interpreted loosely; or the dirt can simply be swept under the rug or the eyes can just look the other way.

What should be done instead?

My opinion is that first and foremost, people should be rewarded by aggregated meaningful indicators, such as Return On Investment, or Return On Equity or Margin. Note that these are all relative profitability measures, which is what really counts for measuring business success.

Second, we can not discard the responsibility of managing people. That includes being informed and giving feedback. That being the case, the manager should be in an excellent position any time of the year, to make a sound judgment of the employee. I personally believe that the manager alone should not be given the power to solely rank an employee. I'm more in favor of a weighted 360 degree evaluation that takes in consideration the feedback of the employee, the manager, colleagues and customers.

About the appraisal of the employee, the normal evaluation systems have tens of parameters. It's almost necessary to have a training on how to understand and use each parameters. I would prefer less than ten parameters.

Finally, each employee should prepare and present a one page with the achievements of the last year. This page should not contain more than ten achievements. Small is beautiful, and less is more!

Less Government, Better Government

I just started a new portuguese blog called "Menos Governo, Melhor Governo" ("Less Government, Better Government").

It intends to inform the portuguese citizens of the impacts and effects of the government policies on their daily lives. It follows the Austrian School of economics theory.

http://menosgovernomelhorgoverno.blogspot.com

A Case Against Public Spending

Specially in times of economic crisis, governments wants to increase public spending. The argument goes that it creates jobs and encourages consumption. Let's pause for a second. If those arguments would be true, a country could get out of a economic crisis by putting all their citizens building pyramids, or instead, just digging up and covering holes in the ground.

Also - there is no such thing as public spending. All the money that the government spends is private, as it is taken (or more politically correct - collected) from the citizens.

My arguments against public spending are the following:

• First of All... money can not be created out of nothing. Governments can only finance themselves by either a) borrowing and therefore creating debt, a liability imposed on future governments and generations; b) printing more money, which effectively reduces the wealth of everybody holding money and creating inflation; or c) increase taxes.
• Government has no way to verify whether its investment is a worthy, needed investment or not. For what is worth, it may build pyramids in the desert. In the private sector, the validity of all investments is tested by the means of profit and loss.
• There is a constant pressure on the government, from lobbies, special interest groups, companies, cities, regions for a "piece of the pie". The government is made of people, who as human beings are sensitive to these forces.
  
• By investing in public projects, resources (capital, workers, equipment, land, ...) are diverted from other projects which would be managed more carefully, and more efficiently.
  

Why it's generally assumed that the government is better suited to manage the money of the citizens than the citizens - who provide the money - themselves remains a mystery to me.

Parkinson Law also dictates that over time, government will want to spend more, and more and more, and that it will also need constantly more people to manage all the contracts and subcontractors.