Friday, December 17, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Poise (& Balance)
Absolutely! I agree with Gary Henry on this one- Poise (my emphasis: and Balance), is one of the greatest qualities for leadership success, most especially in the turbulent environment of transformational leadership.
It has (poise) has always kept me out of trouble, and always alert to those little funny detractors of my transformational agenda...
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The Real Story of Christmas
It is probably a story not one (of those who believe in Santa, Xmas & all) wants to hear. Most religious leaders who know and have studied the history of religion, including that of Christianity, will be well aware of the claims on this interesting article.
After having read this, and inquired widely, and researched appropriately, I ask, as Lawrence Kellemen, does in his conclusion, how will you celebrate this one, and the subsequent Xmases?
Amplify’d from www.simpletoremember.com
The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’
birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the
baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked
interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C.
The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius
Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as
follows:
a.
In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from
ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC
signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of
Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor
Au
Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th
in the year 1 C.E.
B.
The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’
birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the
baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked
interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C.
The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius
Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as
follows:
a.
In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from
ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC
signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of
Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor
Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c.
Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years
old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.
d.
If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he
lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th
year of reign).
e.
Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put
Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f.
However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of
Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which
Dionysius places Jesus birth.
The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document
believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus
birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought
Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses
that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.
How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on
December 25?
Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia,
a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During
this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could
be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong
celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the
Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected
a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures
throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th,
Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by
brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B.
The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in
his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in
his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread
intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other
sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some
English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th
and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were
forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers
of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome
sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual
Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to
make any innovation.”[6]
On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into
Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews
were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.
Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.
The Origins of Christmas Customs
The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with
the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were
recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.[7]
Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes
and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian
veneer by the Church.
by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use
mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8]
The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of
the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]
by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below)
Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and
later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He
was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b.
Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened
the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they
produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11]
who sentenced Jesus to death.
c.
In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved
his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas
supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua
Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The
Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the
Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant
they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
d.
The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by
German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden
–their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long,
white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When
Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard,
mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom
modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby
face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca
Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and
commercial idol.
IV. The Christmas Challenge
carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept
away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the
celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
Many of the most popular Christmas customs –
including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are
modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.
On December 25, 1941, Julius
Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas
by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der
Stuermer:If one really wants to put an
end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish
blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s
son, root and branch.It was an appropriate thought for
the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?
KELEMEN
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"If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then the world is yours and all that's in it." -- Rudyard Kipling http://amplify.com/u/idkh
Sunday, December 12, 2010
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." -- Martin Luther http://amplify.com/u/i8ai
"You have a calling which exists only for you and which only you can fulfill." -- Dr. Naomi Stephan http://amplify.com/u/i8aa
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
4th Annual BEE Conference
It is the Compliance issues of BEE, as well as the required leadership and organisation culture shift, that will deliver growth, both at macro, and at micro-economic level of our economy in South Africa.
It is also required that we shift our personal spectrum of consciousness regarding our history, so that we make sure the culture of exclusivity does not creep up on us, due to failure in exercising our own personal rank and power, irrespective of our position in the hierarchy of the organisations we serve.
Amplify’d from www.annualbeeconference.co.za
Brown
Ayn Brown is the Executive Head: Human Resources – Nedbank Business Banking. Ayn is a Human Resources Professional, with both a strong Generalist and Learning and Development background, but with a special focus on identifying and developing young talent, as well as the role that personal mastery and engagement plays within team effectiveness. She has played an integral role in the merger, turnaround and growth of several key teams and business units within Nedbank. She is a true proponent of the “HR as Business Partner” philosophy and has excellent business acumen, which makes developing and delivering through the HR value chain, both practical and sustainable, but with high impact. As a keen photographer and interested in the natural world, she is a constant student of the impact of human behaviour on people and the environment.
Brown
has a BCom in Business Management and a background in finance and education; he has been involved in the black economic empowerment (BEE) industry since 2007. His BEE experience includes strategic BEE consulting, verification assistance to businesses of all sizes, and Enterprise Development programme development, feasibility studies and implementation. Duncan is a regular speaker around the topic of Black Economic Empowerment and focuses specifically on the potential economic impact and sustainability of BEE programmes. He has been involved in changing the mindsets of many people throughout corporate South Africa.
Goodnews Cadogan is a Director of The Village Leadership Consulting. He qualified as an Engineering Electrician at Volkswagen South
Africa. He moved to Goodyear SA and assumed a role of Production Area Manager. His ability to coach and mentor others was seen in the marked improvement of the
scorecard for the manufacturing plant.
In 1999 he joined the South African Revenue Services as Manager: Personnel, with
achievements in the areas of change management and policy development.
As the regional manager for Gauteng Central enforcement, he
focused on changing the way people, systems and processes interacted to create a high
performance region.
His deep understanding of the public sector as well as the interaction between the
executive management teams and the politicians, make him the ideal person to help
teams with both intra-team and inter-teams relationships and
performance pressures. In March 2008, Goodnews became a director and equal shareholder of The Village
Leadership Consulting, a boutique leadership consulting company, specialising in
organisational development, leadership development and change management.
Africa. He moved to Goodyear SA and assumed a role of Production Area Manager. His ability to coach and mentor others was seen in the marked improvement of the
scorecard for the manufacturing plant.
In 1999 he joined the South African Revenue Services as Manager: Personnel, with
achievements in the areas of change management and policy development.
As the regional manager for Gauteng Central enforcement, he
focused on changing the way people, systems and processes interacted to create a high
performance region.
His deep understanding of the public sector as well as the interaction between the
executive management teams and the politicians, make him the ideal person to help
teams with both intra-team and inter-teams relationships and
performance pressures. In March 2008, Goodnews became a director and equal shareholder of The Village
Leadership Consulting, a boutique leadership consulting company, specialising in
organisational development, leadership development and change management.
Ntshona
Sisa Ntshona is the General Manager for Specialised Finance Solutions at Absa Business Bank, focusing on the development and fostering of emerging enterprises through innovation and product development. Prior to this, he worked at the Absa Small Business division and at Absa Capital as an Investment Banker. Sisa is a seasoned executive who for six years worked extensively in the rest of Africa and the Middle East fulfilling business and operational roles in the Financial Services Industry, he has the experience of working with diverse cultures and languages and concluding agreements in different juristic and legal environments. An accountant by training, Sisa also holds an MBA from GIBS and an International Executive Programme from INSEAD in France and Singapore.
ENQUIRIES
E-mail Ryan or phone him on (011) 726-3040.
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UNIQUE, YOU ARE... "There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson http://amplify.com/u/hz00
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Cancun Calling: Rorts and all
My take is that the rich nations are at their games again, and do not seem to be able to shake the 'vested interest' label, which is closely tied to their own short-term economic stability.
They lack the ability to break away with the present, and the poor nations know no better, as they want to have it all: an economic shift, coupled with being paid, along with the oil-rich nation states that seek compensation for reduced dependence on fossil-fuels.
No one cares about what the science is telling us, but they all care about how they can cook the books such that everybody looks good, without responding to the scientific challenge.
I wonder how the 2nd generation, and subsequent ones that follow, will judge us, if at all they will be able to pass that judgement, when humanity is no more...
Amplify’d from www.climatespectator.com.au
Cancun Calling: Rorts and all
Giles Parkinson
Don’t pay too much attention to the emission abatement targets coming out of Cancun at the end of the week. They may not mean much.
When Australia's climate change Minister Greg Combet joins the high level round of talks that kick off this week, one of his key briefs will be to play his part in one the biggest negotiating stings since the Kyoto Protocol numbers were agreed to in 1997.
A study by Simon Terry, the executive director of the New Zealand Sustainability Council, goes further. Terry says that by adding in aviation and shipping – which are not accounted for under the Copenhagen Accord – the pledges may turn out to produce an increase in global emissions of 3 per cent from 1990 levels, rather than an advertised fall of up to 18 per cent.
To help achieve this, Australia will not rock the boat over the issue of “hot air”, the estimated 1.3 billion surplus credits created by the huge overestimation of economic growth in Russia, Ukraine and other eastern Europe countries.
Australia – along with New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Norway and several well-treed EU countries – is also at the heart of highly contentious negotiations on land use and forestry in a mechanism called LuLuCF. This seeks to define accounting rules for complex issues such as forest and rangeland management, droughts and bushfires.
This is significant. If retained, it will allow the review to not just take into account the latest science that will roll out from the IPCCC during that time, but also what UNEP describes as “gigatonne gap” – the difference between what the parties have aimed for (2°C) and agreed to do (3-5°C) and the impact of hot air and LuLuCF – heading towards 6°C and 7°C. There is also an agreement to consider aiming for a target below 2°C.
The priority, however, is the need to obtain an agreement to continue meeting – hence the importance of a “positive” Cancun outcome.
Simon Terry says that one of the problems dealing with complex issues such as LuLuCF is that so very few people – and only a handful of negotiators – fully understand them. Forest industry lobbyists – who understand enough to know they can potentially make windfall gains for the industry – are thick on the ground in Cancun.
The CDM now looks like extending to carbon capture and storage, partly as bait to win over the recalcitrant Saudis, who are reluctant to agree to anything that might result in less oil consumption. Oil and gas companies have a particular interest in this, which may explain their strong presence here, as new rules being developed could allow them to claim credits for reinjecting CO2 to assist in the recovery of oil and gas reserves – an activity they already undertake.
It could mean that LNG tankers that return empty from Asian destinations may instead bring back millions of tonnes of CO2 from China and Japan to sequester in depleted gas basins, generating huge credits to the LNG industry. But that may also mean they have less claim for compensation under an Australian carbon price.
Party, party, party
The basic idea is to drink as much tequila as you possibly can, dance, and take the water slide from the back of the main bar, over the dancefloor, past the balcony, and into the lagoon. Then hope that somebody will save you. Some Australian types were set to attack this task with considerable gusto and aim for the 5am closing time, until an advisory came just before midnight from an office-bound flunky that Combet would give them an audience at 10am the next morning. Recovery plans were hastily implemented, but even the water costs $3 a glass.
Saudi Arabia returned to the podium as Fossil of the Day on Friday for complaining about the number of representatives from “civil society”, which it said were a distraction to the talks. “Is there a pressing need to spend time with engaging these people,” its representatives are said to have argued. Saudi Arabia has also been pleading a special needs case, which some countries suspect may lead to claims of compensation if climate change policies result in the consumption of less oil.
The UNFCCC is also wary of the NGOs, and their habit of upping the ante with their protests in the final week of negotiations. So on Friday, the UN declared that NGOs now had to give 48 hours notice of a protest instead of 24. NGOs complained that was hardly conducive to spontaneity and their ability to respond to the issues of the day.
He will not be alone. While then environment minister Robert Hill had the element of surprise when he pulled one of the great negotiating coups by getting avoided land clearing included in Australia’s Kyoto numbers, Combet will enjoy an air of complicity: Other rich nations are looking to employ similar accounting gymnastics – if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
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Friday, December 3, 2010
"The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. That is why I wish to pay fair price for every value. If I have to pay for it or earn it, that makes something of me. If I get it for free, that makes nothing of me." -- Jim Rohn http://amplify.com/u/hczk
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Cancun Calling: One small step
Is it just mere involvement in shaping the future of global sustainability, in the face of anthropogenic impact on climate change, or is it real commitment, from those who contribute to the status quo, with enough resources to support the poor nation states?- How much do vested interests contribute to the lack of leadership commitment?
Amplify’d from www.climatespectator.com.au
Cancun Calling: One small step
Giles Parkinson
The thorny issue of a legally binding agreement raised its ahead again in Cancun on Wednesday, threatening to disrupt the collegial nature of the talks that the UN and Mexico are trying so hard to foster.
Centre stage was once again Ian Fry, an Australian environmental lawyer representing the island state of Tuvalu, whose insistence that a legally binding treaty be discussed at Copenhagen brought sharp divisions to the surface and caused a walkout of island states and the temporary suspension of the plenary sessions.
“We don’t have time to discuss whether we have legally binding agreement,” Saudi Arabia said. “We see this as threat to the KP. The most important question is how to maintain the status of the KP.”
The major players have been determined to maintain a positive spin on proceedings. UNFCCC secretary Christiana Figueres said she was confident that the six-pack of agreements that is the key ambition for a “balanced outcome” for Cancun, can be achieved.
Pershing also said it was possible to achieve the six-pack although he recognised that the toughest task would be in transparency and how to lock in the Copenhagen pledges. And he would not comment on whether a failure to reach agreement on all six items would imperil agreement on any. That remains a crucial question.
Unenlightened
It remains something of a mystery why so many countries – and businesses for that matter – have been slow to pick up on energy efficiency. The UN Environmental Program today highlighted the potential savings from replacing incandescent lamps with energy-saving lightbulbs, saying it could reduce energy costs for 100 mostly developing countries by $47 billion and avoid the need to construct $120 billion of new power infrastructure.
UNEP has launched the en.lighten program, in partnership with lightbulb manufacturers Osram and Phillips, to try and unlock funding to implement the program in developing countries. One of the mechanisms might be the type of “programmatic CDMs” pioneered by Australian company CoolNrg. UNEP is also looking to future technologies such as LEDs and solid state lighting, which it says can avoid some of the concerns about mercury levels in CFLs and achieve even greater efficiencies.
Look out overhead!
One of the hot topics among official parties on the endless bus trips to and from the COP16 venues has been the cost of this business. Anyone who thought that a country that offers a basic wage of $5 a day to its own population, and $40-a-day-all-you-can-drink holidays to US college students, might be less costly than the notoriously expensive Copenhagen, has been mistaken.
Another delegation lamented it would have been three or four times cheaper to buy their own printers than to hire them. “It’s just price gouging,” said one. “Even the sandwiches are $8 each and there’s no chips.” Others said the prices were not much different from Posnan and Copenhagen. “Prices have a habit of going up just as you arrive,” said the head of one of the larger delegations. At least the hosts are not insisting on serving organic food as the Danish did, although in my experience, refried beans have much the same effect.
The first demonstration was held inside the Moon Palace today, with a dozen or so waste collectors from South American countries, India and Africa protesting against waste projects funded by the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM is designed to bring investment in emissions abatement projects in developing countries, but the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers and Allies complains that its members were losing their jobs because of the emergence of huge landfills and waste incinerators, and families that made their living – or even lived – on large rubbish tips were being moved and disenfranchised.
It was suggested today that Qatar had been selected ahead of South Korea to have the honour of holding Cop18 in 2012, the one that will follow Cancun and Durban next year. That means that the cost of attending the event might not go down. Perhaps Australia could consider a bid for COP19 if the Frank Lowy-sponsored bid for the 2022 World Cup misses out later today. The Westfield COP has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
*Giles Parkinson will be filing daily from COP16 in Cancun for the duration of the conference. To read the previous dispatch, click here.
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A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.- R.Digest http://amplify.com/u/h37t
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