MBA progess etc., Philosophy, Myths and Books

[tcpip]

Finished two more courses of my MBA today with exams for Contemporary People Management and Strategic Management. The latter would be quite amusing for Brendan E; it was entirely dedicated to Nike, whom I discover neither make or sell shoes. Assuming I've passed both of these (a fair assumption) this means I've completed all all the rerequisite units for the qualification with only four elective units to do. I must confess I am rather unsure of what to select from the offerings and will spend some time considering these choices - and for that matter how many I do. I could be enthusiastic and try to get the lot done over summer, the equivalent of a full-time load. In other qualifications did the refresher course for my First Aid Certificate. The trainer wasn't very good; when people didn't understand his questions his strategy was to repeat himself, but louder. He also tried to tell us that a blood glucose level of 12 was normal for diabetics. I think that's a very dangerous thing to teach.

Last Sunday conducted a dual presentation with Rick Barker at the Unitarian Philosophy Forum on Teleology and Free Will. Deriving heavily from Aristotle which follows a somewhat Hellenic-centric approach we've had recently at the Forum, which will be followed up with The Hellenic Origins of Philosophy. Appropriately, I've just picked up the Folio Society edition of Graves' Greek Myths, a set both flawed and beautiful. Actually I should also mention that recently picked up a 1674 edition of Beuvelet's Meditations on the Principles of Truth and a mid-19th century Byron set. I am justly worried that I might be acquiring yet another hobby.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, 5.0 to 6.0 is normal.

Below 3.0 is hypoglycemic level. Time to crack open the lolly water!

Above 8.0? Perhaps time to have some insulin..

About 20...? Warning! Warning! Ketoacidosis pending!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Maybe that explains his confusion. Probably read the levels in a book somewhere. Mind you, he's a country Victorian so he shouldn't make that sort of mistake... The levels he was recommending are absolutely dangerous in an Australian context!

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Strategic Mgmt was one of my top-3 favestest subjects. *nod*

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yes, I really enjoyed it although that was helped by a very good course co-ordinator... The core features (internal/external analysis, strategic choice, implementation and optimisation) were supplemented well with structural, economic and especially technological changes.

Plus, it gave me another opportunity to take a shot at Porter's idea of "competitive advantage", which exists like a cancer is business studies..

[imajica-lj.livejournal.com]

If it were me I would take:

Engineering Risk Management
Strategic Management in Services
Managing Innovation
Management of Professional Services

Which can be distilled into the "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em." philosophy.

IT needs this. No really.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Interesting; of that set the only one I'd really considered was Managing Innovation... But Management of Professional Services would include a fair bit of pedagogy and politics which I could certainly get my teeth into and Engineering Risk Management would have some tasty quantifications which I didn't get to do last semester, but have done well in the previous subjects (e.g., Financial Management, Economic Decision Making)..

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

The oldest books I have are a nineteenth century H. Rider Haggard and a year-not-printed edition of the Rubaiyat.

Thumbs down for the ignorant first-aider. 12? If I go look at the chart on my refrigerator that's in the orange "this is going to be dangerous shortly but may not outwardly appear so" zone.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, the oldest the Rubaiyat can be is 1859. You might want to do a compare and contrast of some of the plates and verses on Wikipedia.

As for existing books of similar ilk I have a few; A massive Encyclopedia of English literature (volume 1, to 1750) (published) and a nine-volume History of French Literature (en francais), which is a mere babe, being published in the 1880s.

Not to say that I've read either cover to cover... I was pondering the other night on how long it would take me to read the books I haven't read among my collection.

And yes about the first-aid instructor. It is extraordinary that such advice should be given. Quite scary.

[mr-figgy.livejournal.com]

I could compare verses, but the important fact here is that I'm pretty sure mine isn't illustrated. Thus the Haggard wins as the oldest and also most tattered.

[shehasathree]

Congrats on the exams!
Ooh, it's time for me to renew my First Aid certificate, too. I wasn't too impressed with the place I went to last time, though. Nothing as bad as what your trainer said, though!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly.... If you don't mind me asking, where did you get your certificate (mine was St John in the city..)

[shehasathree]

It was emergency.com.au - to be fair the instructor wasn't too bad, but the class was full of people who were required to be there for their job and had done a first aid course before and obviously weren't taking it *at all* seriously, and I didn't think that the instructor handled that very well. When we broke up into pairs to study specific medical conditions one pair of jokers reported to the group about diabetes "there's two kinds of diabetes, high and low" and recommended "give them a coke" as an appropriate treatment. So I was not impressed, and fervently hope that I am never in a position to receive First Aid from the vast majority of attendees of that particular course.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

"give them a coke" as an appropriate treatment

Actually that's not a wrong short-term response for a person who is suffering hypoglycemia; assuming it's the non-diet version. Any form of candy water is a good immediate response).

It's probably not entirely wrong to refer to two types being "high" and "low" (rather than Type I and II); after all as the old wry comment about the two types of cancer ("the one you get better from and the one you don't"), those are the two levels that can kill.

But yes, some seriousness is appreciated. Keeping people alive in a moment of crisis is sobering. I was much more impressed with the first instructor I had on this topic who really emphasised the point and played it out quite effectively.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

But it's such a worth-while hobby, innit? I feel there's something special about books as artifacts, either as historical ones or artistic ones, that can easily transcend the (not inconsiderable) value of just having those particular texts available in just any old format. The past is a foreign country, separated by countless decades; now you can enjoy a few more tangible things from that strange land, in a form that those people first encountered and handled them in! (If a bit more scruffy around the edges... but that's how it tends to go.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

You're quite right, there is a great aesthetic to hold something that is hundreds of years old, that has passed through many hands and which has been read by others etc. I've always liked old books for this reason, indeed old things in general really... And as you say, if they are a bit scruffy, that's part of the charm... I'm not too sure I'd want to be the sort of collector who was only interested in mint/near mint copies...