Shows
RagCastThe return of Major!Major returns in this season finale of RagCast
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2022-04-251h 31
The RagcastGoodhart's Law Companies and governments usually have some form of assigned metric that they measure and try to move towards desired outcomes with a system of incentives, rewards and punishments. Goodhart Law questions the validity of measures becoming a target, as once it does because a target, then it ceased to be a good target. This can be very complicated trap to avoid. The economist Charles Goodhart was referencing the adage he is known for about monetary policy, or another law linked to the same theme, which is Campbell’s law from the notable social scientist Donald Campbell about un...
2020-08-1803 min
The RagcastThe Working One When one is immersed in employment, especially one that required a lot of time commitment, physical and mental labor, that person becomes mostly preoccupied by the occupation and what routine obligations remains of their day. When the world wants society change, which happens periodically though group effort from generation to generation, sometimes successful and sometimes not, the working one is usually regulated to spectator status in the participation of that change. Most people are spectators, as the change agents are more commonly bestowed to the adolescent and early adults. The social construct and peer groups...
2020-08-1703 min
The RagcastPrice of FreedomIn history, a heroic story is often told of bravery and courage of people that unify to fight oppressive regimes or circumstances and through massive sacrifice of time, livelihoods and even life, they prevail under extraordinary odds to win their freedom. The price of freedom is shown through the cost or loss calculated of gaining that freedom, as if that once obtain, freedom is a glorious outcome where everyone mutually benefits without any downsides or cost. But the price of freedom, to either have or to maintain it, has a price all its own that is rarely...
2020-08-1604 min
The RagcastHuman Risk EquationThere is no easy or acceptable answer to the most challenging puzzle of human existence, and that is; what is the cost of a human life? Insurance risk management on human causalities on cost payout is usually done by economic value of a human being potential future economic productivity and earning and that of support of beneficiaries. So, a human being past and current earning, up to death, is used to calculate on an average life span moving forward. So those that have earned more, will receive larger payouts. Insurance itself, is a basically a pooled collection...
2020-08-1603 min
The RagcastStasis PointThere is a theory in evolutionary biology that depicts the changes that species incur through the glacially slow time period is not one of gradual small changes over a long period of time, but actually a short period of hyper change followed by a long time period of stasis where little or no changes takes place. Think of this as stair steps analogy of evolution biology. This isn’t a theory to explain away the gaps of the fossil record but the way molecularly how things work and how slowly a beneficial gene mutation must go through to...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastThe Main PainThere is no other idiosyncrasy of a person than pain. Outwards looking into a person, we can never fully measure the pain a person is feeling or has gone through. No matter how detail or relatable the experience is communicated, it doesn’t seem to ever come through. A person’s main pain can be physical, physiological or emotional, but it’s best described as whatever stresses is placed upon that individual that it causes major disruption to their productive lives. The one that trends to the top in a lot of individuals is fear. Fear o...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastThe CometsWhen things don’t make sense and you searching for answers or if you are forever exploring the wealth of knowledge and wisdom that is bountiful in just about every subject matter, you are bound to come across a polluted asteroid belt of experts. Some qualified, some not so much. Some have large megaphones while others have narrow-minded agendas veering more political and ideological than anything else. Trying to steer your starship mind towards something more attuned to the factual truth is a brutal and damaging journey. Most of the time we just really don’t kn...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastHuman InteractionWhen considering social distancing, or what I would rightly label as physical distancing, there is a large deduction of what really binds us together in human social behavior. There are certain hormones in mammals, called social hormones that are released with humans, in the flesh, when interacting. These are oxytocin and vasopressin and they serve a unique role in helping us strengthen positive social behavior bonds with each other. In absence of the interaction and physical distancing, we can default to our paranoid reptilian brain, where everyone is suspect as prey (a lack of trust), with mass...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastThe Panic of CrowdsThere tends to be moments of time when humanity experiences panics brought in by the herd of people showing fear and moving the crowd towards safety. What that safety is? Mostly hiding, perhaps preparing or being really on guard. Does panics and paranoia serve any real positive purpose to our lives? Most panics are way overblown and the form of the statistical probability that the boogey monster will come in contact and affect you in any way. Shark attacks, terrorist bombing, flesh eating bacteria, alien abductions and the list is long. But there are some panics that...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastLast Piece of the PuzzleThere is an interesting observation that is reportedly very common among children that gives us insight to a behavior or even a possible personality trait that may perhaps explain how people act in a social or workplace setting. Working through the years as a direct report to many different managers and even interacting with senior leadership of a large corporation, who also come and go through time, there is something that is always in abundance, and that is individuals taking credit for all the “good results or performance” and deflecting or mitigating the “poor results”. Watching...
2020-05-2503 min
The RagcastMigration to the UnknownThere is a fascinating aspect of nature, especially on how the animal kingdom moves through the world in the form of migration. Some over very long distances from the Artic to the Antarctic, while another species will migrate less than 300 feet down a mountainside. But with all distances these animals cover, they have a homing beacon that takes them back to the same place, and sometimes the exact same tree, nest or den that they were born in. The flock and herds move with great numbers, all in unison and all following the leader. But there are...
2020-05-2503 min
The RagcastCaptain of your LeadershipThere is so many articles, books and speeches conducted by many people from many different backgrounds that explain what leadership all is about. They explain, in their view, either one or more of the following; what is it, what is does, what it means, what is looks like, who has it, how to posses it and so on. I find the topic of leadership extremely fascinating, because it shows the hierarchical construct of our social society and of organizations. It can dynamically change or never change. It can be positive and help everyone around them or it...
2020-05-2503 min
The RagcastStasis PointThere is a theory in evolutionary biology that depicts the changes that species incur through the glacially slow time period is not one of gradual small changes over a long period of time, but actually a short period of hyper change followed by a long time period of stasis where little or no changes takes place. Think of this as stair steps analogy of evolution biology. This isn’t a theory to explain away the gaps of the fossil record but the way molecularly how things work and how slowly a beneficial gene mutation must go through to...
2020-05-2502 min
The RagcastShade Tree InventorsThere was a fascinating statistic that I heard about how most all inventions, improvements and new creative products were pretty much done by average people without an ounce of having a profit motive. These are individuals, and there are millions of them, working on solutions to everyday problems on their own or in a group collective with a simple goal of just solving a problem. This was more than just building a cleaver mousetrap, but when beyond sometimes the most well-funded R&D programs of large corporations. Bio-medical devices, computer programming, process improvements and radical new ideas...
2019-12-2502 min
The RagcastReturn from BreakThe real moments of joy in most everyone’s youth while at school as the ‘break’. Those few moments that you can unleash your crazies, talk to your friends without repercussion and it was a true break from the mental grind of learning. As working adults, most breaks fall on the weekend, holidays or your occasional vacation, but there are many working adults, increasing in numbers, who never truly experience the real break. Weekend is catch-up for other mental or physical work or even occupational work, holidays is taxing, and vacations come with their own mental anguish and gr...
2019-12-2502 min
The RagcastThe Brick and Mortar of ThingsThere is a business fascination about all things ‘brick and mortar’. The physical retail venue for most shoppers is saying to go by the wayside as online and direct to consumer brands continue to gain market share of the retail commerce pie. There is no doubt that brick and mortar will always be present and most likely will continue to overly dominate the retail landscape for many decades, regardless of the internet trends. It is interesting to read the history of mail-order catalogs that started even as far back as the late 1400’s, but begin to really come i...
2019-12-2503 min
The RagcastThe New DecadeThe surreal decade of the teen years is going to pass, when it was odd to say the aughts or aughties and the teenies, we will soon cross into the new decade of the new twenties. What will this new decade bring and what lessons did we learn, if any, from the past decade that we can carry over to the new? Everyone experiences their time and place differently from one another. Another person’s lost decade will be their neighbor’s best. That means we shouldn’t hang the weight of the decade on any one thing...
2019-12-2503 min
The RagcastOne Moment of FocusThere is a very interesting revelation about human’s cognitive ability to focus. It can be a thought, a sight or even a sound, but that revelation is that we can only focus on one moment at a time or small view at a time, where the peripheral is obscured, out of focus and even invisible. There have been very interesting studies on human sight, on how narrow of a focus we can clearly see through the input organ. They say it is only a 2% of highly focus, were we can see fine details, and less than 20% of...
2019-12-2503 min
The RagcastThe Energy of TimeA friend and I were debating the concept of time. It started out with a trivial thought about how what we see is what happened in the past. Basically, what we see, though going at the speed of light, takes a moment to be process in the eye and interpreted in the brain, and by the time it has been sent to our senses, that moment has already passed. We see and talk in a moment in the past. It was trivial, but it led to larger questions about what does time really do to us? No...
2019-12-2503 min
The RagcastThe Parable PerspectiveParables were once used as a common way to communicate a lesson of morals or behaviors, but in the modern age, we don't see it used much anymore. Using parables can capture the attention of an audience, so it is worth trying it out in a group team meeting or public speaking, especially it being so uncommonly used, that you will most likely get great feedback from the people if utilized. Sometimes the right moment comes forth and a parable can be the best answer that is delivered. I had an example of this used one time...
2019-12-2504 min
The RagcastLegacy Systems you can't get rid ofIf you are old enough to remember the Y2K buzz slash fear, because it stemmed from old legacy computer systems and software that somehow had internal program clocks not designed to handle '00'. The whole world was supposed to go dark with chaos and mayhem unleashed and running rampant in 2000. But that didn't happen, unless you had heavily invested in dot.com stocks. There is something to say about old stuff that still works and why get rid of it? Furniture and homes last centuries, cars last a generation some of the time, and airplanes ev...
2019-10-1704 min
The RagcastKnowing the Stress WoodI have often shared the story of the fascinating discovery from an earth science project called Biosphere 2. While there was many discoveries and insights from that project, the one that caught the most attention is the trees that were grown inside the self-contained indoor artificial environment. The plants and trees grew OK but were noticeably much weaker than their counterparts in the outside world, most notable were the trees. The trees never grew strong roots that secured itself well into the dirt and the trees can easily be pushed over and pulled out of the ground with...
2019-10-1703 min
The RagcastIs Death a MotivatorMost of us can understand and are aware of the concept of death, and it is probably one of the most feared aspects of our being. Glancing thoughts are usually the most we attribute to the time and place for which we will go dark, so it isn’t thought of most of the time as we pass day to day. There is plenty of people who speak on behalf of a motivating factor of death, by using aphorism such as “you only live once’, “carpe diem” and “life too short”. This is spoken, written and even tattooed on sk...
2019-10-1703 min
The RagcastMeeting in CirclesMeetings can be productive, if the right agenda and framework is in place to allow it to be productive. Most of the time, meetings are not very productive, even if it has great intentions of being productive, it often goes stale with little engagement. The overriding factor that I have experience on why meetings are not productive, goes further back then the meeting itself. It is the time for which it plans to be conducted. Most times, these meetings are almost impromptu or have very little forenotice between the time of the meeting and the time it...
2019-10-1703 min
The RagcastThe Human PerspectiveThere is so much about human psychology that we probably don't know and what we do know is astounding. We humans do work in illogical ways, but it is only illogical in the modern sense, as these illogical ways we act have an evolutionary advantage, that is the reason why it exists in nature. Understanding how these illogical nudges work to produce outcomes is a totally new field or study called, behavioral economics. This is noble prize-winning research that really shows how both vulnerable but guarded we are. As much as I have consumed on this subject, w...
2019-10-1702 min
The RagcastSomewhere in the MiddleThere is a common cliche that there are two sides to every story. When encountering a situation between parties, there is always two different versions, and the balance between the two is most likely the closet to what really happened or is it? We all see our own version of events and our memory of those events can be very clear in our mind, but we could be psychologically inserting false memories to align our thoughts of the events to reconstruct that narrative we believe to be true. There is also the progressive distortion effect...
2019-10-1704 min
The RagcastStairs or TrackWhen moving forward on a path, you have three directions you can go; up, down or level. Everyone’s life experiences this forward momentum and these three directions can vary through time and tempo. Even if you think you are sitting still and not moving, time is moving you forward with it. What is considered ‘up’ would be successes or goal attainments that helped you reach a higher level of satisfaction. That differs per person and business and it could be one goal or many. For example, buying a house, visiting Greece, finishing a car project, climbing Kilima...
2019-10-1703 min
The RagcastOpportunity vs Solving ProblemsThis is what I would consider a great dilemma in business or at least two preached school of thoughts about what businesses needs to do to be successful. In the startup world, the great entrepreneurs of the world preach that a new business should be focused on solving a problem. Then you have the Drucker perspective that preached that you need to focus on opportunities and not fixing problems. What is the difference between the two? Could they both be right in their own way or should we lean more towards one than the other...
2019-09-2705 min
The RagcastGetting on the same pageWhen a large organization that mobilizes a collective workforce to focus on key objectives, sales goals and other performance metrics and it pounds the hell out of that to their employees day after day till they have everyone pointed and marching in the direction they want them to go, do they risk marching straight off a cliff? Any organization somewhat changes their focus on what is important from time to time, but it generally falls to generating revenue and keeping a healthy growth pace on revenues. Why does it seem like a major frustration for senior managers...
2019-09-2703 min
The RagcastWhat does radically innovate mean?"Innovate or die!" This is a very common mantra repeated by many commentators of the business world. They state that you must innovate your business in order to stay ahead of the death curve. There is a graveyard of businesses that are used as examples of very large companies that met the reaper when they decided to keep the status quo of their yesteryear and shelved their innovation, if they had any innovation at all. The employees that experienced the plunge from the inside of the sinking ship, in retrospect, say that the company or themselves just...
2019-09-2704 min
The RagcastThe 4th QuarterIn the game of football, the 4th quarter is the near the end of the game. If the two teams are close in points, it can make for an exciting game, but if it is a blowout, usually the team on the losing side of points has a desperate fight to the end to try to win, which normally doesn't end well for the team anyways as they end up losing. In business, the 4th quarter is almost like that. There are a lot of business that have the 4th quarter as a do or die scenario...
2019-09-2703 min
The RagcastUnderstanding truth in the workplaceHave you ever worked with others in the workplace that were just obnoxiously liars? I used to call them the "bigger fish" story tellers. Office cooler or shop talk amongst co-workers when one tells a story of something in their life, that one dude would always interject with a crazier story. "I caught a bigger fish than you." That is the person that I'm talking about. Here is something that you may have experienced in the workplace. You have co-workers, you either work with or are direct reports to you, especially those that report to you, that...
2019-09-2703 min
The RagcastWhat criteria makes you a Tycoon?Reading the news today about the passing of T. Boone Pickens, a larger than life character with the cool name to go with it, the words that described him stuck me. I read these headlines that called him a tycoon, oil magnate, corporate raider, petroleum baron and many others. These are such descriptive words, which tend to be traded interchangeably with each other. Do they all mean the same thing and what is the criteria a person needs to hit in order to earn such titles? Tycoon has an interesting history. It is actually a westernized version...
2019-09-2704 min
The RagcastMeticulous planning doesn't work wellThe famous quote from one of President Eisenhower's speeches was, "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything." What does that exactly mean? I'm intrigued by stories that do comparison between meticulous technocratic detail plans on a project versus one that is sort of winging it but make it with just the focus of the end goal in mind. Which one wins out? I remember hearing the story between the Sydney Opera House, which was hailed as one of the most detailed planned projects to be devised in Australia, but became the world's gross example of one...
2019-09-2703 min
The RagcastWhat Boléro can teach us about a company's lifecycleI'm deeply intrigued by Maurice Ravel's masterpiece composition, Boléro. If you are unfamiliar with this composition, it is essentially a melody that repeats over and over again. It starts with just a light drumming of the snare drum and the flute and upon each repetition, it adds additional instruments to the melody in a hypnotic repeated pattern. Every time it repeats, more instruments play the melody and it keeps building on each other until the end of the composition when it quickly disassembles, crashes and ends. Boléro teaches us that there is such a thing as an end...
2019-09-2604 min
The RagcastFriends after fightA friend and I were discussing the topic of people fighting. He told me this story of these two guys trading blows, because one had a beef with the other. Classic, you stole my girlfriend or something like that. But as quickly as it started it quickly ended with the two men with blooded lips shaking hands and later becoming friends for quite some time. I also heard a recent story told to me about how at first that he didn't get along with another employee. Thought the person to be lazy, manipulative, all out...
2019-09-2603 min
The RagcastWhen others know you more than you know yourselfWe go through the motions to do what we can every day. We stay productive, make friends and sometimes enemies. We follow this liner path that we think is heading us in the right direction, but then someone tells you something different. That the path you are on isn't the path for you. Do we really know ourselves? Or do we think we are the better part of ourselves on point most of the time? Do we lack skills to even do our position effectively? It is so hard to evaluate ourselves in any accurate manor. Other...
2019-09-2602 min
Juggernaut WargamingThe 4.5th Episode - Emergency RAGCastWARNING: NSFW Content The Alpha & Omega of competitive Bolt Action discussion! Join Topher, Dan, Pete & Sheffield monthly, as we talk shop about our very favourite Tabletop Wargame! Keeping their fingers on the pulse of the world of Bolt Action, a rather interesting rules pack dropped that we just had to discuss in a RAG special! Please give us all of the feedback at the following locations: Email: juggernautwargaming@gmail.com Like & Comment: https://www.facebook.com/juggernautwargaming
2019-02-1648 minLampeter PodcastLampeter Podcast: RAG WeekIt's RAG week and we're BACK (temporarily)!!!!!11
Neill, Iwan and Tom discuss RAG week type things. Featuring all sorts of sexy; including hilarious fake trailers made by us, a brand new feature, talk of RAG, original theme music, lots of unnecessary swearing and also the hideous return of the dispicable Ents Droid.
PodRAG! RAGcast!
2011-02-0635 min