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Thursday, August 15, 2024

Why “Wisdom Work” Is the New “Knowledge Work”

 These finely crafted poems explore the rich diversity of life and do not shrink from the harsh realities of divorce, bewilderment, homelessness, or the stray dogs left behind. The poems are sometimes heartbreaking but also compassionate as they lean toward hope of rescue, of redemption. He understands that words are like snakes we sleep with and handles them carefully.

Michael Hogan, author of In the Time of the Jacarandas


John Pleimann is a magician of words that come alive on the page, like the child in the title poem who shows up at his door to collect, but instead ends up giving him a prized stone and an unforgettable poem. Pleimann is not only an astonishing poet, but a memorable teacher who opens the curtains of the page to reveal unexpected truths.



Is The Twelve based on a true story?

In short, no. The Twelve is not based on a true story. Actually the Australian series is based on a Belgian series of the same name- or the same name in Flemish - De Twaalf. 

The Twelve is ITV1's latest crime drama series set in a courtroom that's set to shock and delight viewers, but what is this series based on?

ITV1's latest drama The Twelve is set to hit screens this week. The Australian courtroom drama focuses on the lives of 12 ordinary people who are selected as jurors on a murder case involving a woman named Kate Lawson who stands accused of killing her niece. The members of the jury bring their prejudices, trauma and own life experiences to the stand and must find a way to work out if Kate is in fact guilty of the crime she is accused.

While the series has already delighted Australian viewers, many UK viewers are curious about this drama and want to know more about what inspired the events in the ten-part series. Here's what you need to know...


Miles Franklin Award


       They've announced the winner of this year's Miles Franklin Literary Award, the leading Australian novel award, and it is Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright. 
       See also the publicity pages from GiramondoNew Directions, and And Other Stories, or get your copy at Amazon.comBookshop.org, or Amazon.co.uk.
       This was the most noteworthy omission from this year's just-announced Booker Prize longlist -- see my previous mention -- though of course we have no way of knowing whether it was actually submitted for the prize, since they don't release the list of titles actually considered .....
       I do have a copy of this and am looking forward to getting to it.



Knolling is the practice of organizing objects in parallel or at 90° angles. The term has been popularized by artist Tom Sachs; he picked it up from Andrew Kromelow when both were working at Frank Gehry’s furniture fabrication shop. Gehry was designing chairs for furniture company Knoll, and Kromelow would arrange unused tools in a manner similar to Knoll furniture. Hence, knolling.

Knoll Sofa

UpdateThings Organized Neatly is really something. Lots of knolling.


Why “Wisdom Work” Is the New “Knowledge Work”

Harvard Business Review: “Today the workforce is getting older, and the number of younger workers in positions of senior management is growing. 

These two developments might appear to spell trouble, in that they seem to set the generations against one another, but the author of this article argues that in fact they represent an important opportunity: If companies can figure out how to enable the intergenerational transfer of the wisdom that comes with age and experience, they can strengthen themselves — and the workplace as a whole. 

We’re in the midst of two enormous demographic shifts in the workplace that seem to be at odds with each other. We’re living longer and working longer — either by choice or necessity. In the last century, the 65+ age group has grown five times faster than the rest of the population and, by 2031, according to a recent Bain & Co. estimate, employees 55 and older will constitute a quarter of the global workforce. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly half of the increase in the number of people participating in the U.S. labor force between 2016 and 2026 is attributable to those 60 and older. At the same time, there’s such a growing reliance on DQ (digital intelligence) that companies are desperate to hire and promote digital natives, who are often much younger. 

According to Harris Interactive in 2014, 38% of Americans reported to a younger boss and the Department of Labor suggests the majority of Americans will have a younger boss in the near future. Physiologically, 60 may be the new 40, but when it comes to power in the modern workplace, 30 is the new 50. 

And as the pool of older workers and younger managers grows, so does the necessity for understanding the value of age diversity on teams. With five generations in the workplace for the first time, some observers have predicted that battles will break out among the generations. I beg to differ. 

For years, in my role as the mentor to the Airbnb and other start-up founders — and as the CEO of MEA, the world’s first midlife wisdom school — I’ve observed how symbiotic relationships among the generations can develop in ways that take companies to great heights. For that to happen, though, we have to move beyond the obsession with “knowledge work.” That term dates back to 1959, when it was coined by the visionary management theorist Peter Drucker. 

“The true investment in the knowledge society,” Drucker wrote, “is not in machines and tools. It is in the knowledge of the knowledge worker.” That insight held true, with extraordinary influence, for more than half a century, but today anybody with a computer or mobile phone has vast amounts of the world’s knowledge at their disposal, and AI is increasingly able to handle knowledge-based tasks that until just a few years ago only people could perform. 

With this shift, and in a world where more and more young people will be running organizations, there will be less demand for human knowledge — and more for human wisdom…”



  • Should it be “illegal in most cases to fire an employee for their off-the-clock political activities or extramural speech”? — Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami) thinks so
  • “Sausages and Socratic method come together as PhD students set up unlikely street food business” — public philosophy in China
  • What happens when you repeatedly ask ChatGPT, after it answers a question, “That response… seems to rely on further foundational principles. What are they?” — on whether ChatGPT can explain “turtles all the way down”
  • A philosopher asked, “why do so many great ideas come to you in the shower?” and a cosmetics firm got interested — the story of the partnership between Zachary Irving (Virginia) and Lush. (Lush’s promo video about the collaboration)
  • “For the most part [extremists] have the same stupid ideas as the rest of us, only more so” — Joseph Heath (Toronto) on why, “when we think about extremism, our focus should be on the distribution of certain traits… in the population” and what this means
  • “I know quite a lot about the experiences of other women of philosophy… There’s a lot of really terrible things out there, and it’s still happening… However, there are also big positive changes” — an interview with Jenny Saul (Sheffield)
  • “If it were October 7 and IDF soldiers saved you, would you have been grateful? Or would you have preferred to die because they used violence to save you?” — the kind of question philosophers on the Israeli Defense Force’s Conscience Committee ask