This might sound like a good idea on the surface, provide incentives to those closest to the day to day operations of government, but if you look a little deeper it could seriously backfire.

First, spend a few minutes brushing up on the latest phsycology of motivation.  Here’s a quick video of Dan Pink speaking about his research:

What Dan Pink has found, is that for anything other than basic assembly line type production, fincancial incentives always result in LOWER productivity, and worse moral overall.

It sounds counterintuitive, and I bet that’s what the government hopes you will think as well. It seems to me more and more that the Conservatives are a govern-by-gut party that has little interest in evidence-based descision making. Better to go with what feels right.

Now government operations not only have to worry bout how thier actions might look politically, but how anyone inside the organization might try to turn anything they do into a financial witchhunt, so they can make a few bucks. I can see how this would result in very tense working environments, and really discourage good people from entering into management.

It’s like the larger problem in our society; why would a smart kid choose engineering when she can make 10 times more money going into financial services? Great for her, but with our dwindling production of things, we’re looking at a dark future for growth if we don’t get more smart kids inventing stuff people want.

I’m sure Mr. Day thinks this is a great idea, and I’m sure many Canadians will too. Who knows, it might even work; hey, you might win the lottery too. But the evidence seem to say this just will not work at best, and at worst, toxify the public service working environment.

I’m not usually a big believer in new year’s resolutions, but this year I think I’ll be giving it a try.

I’m going to try to become more active in an effort to get back in shape. I’m setting up a 20 pound weight loss challenge for myself, and I’ve bought a used rowing machine to help me get there.

So wish me luck, I’ll be tweeting my progress.

It’s fun! The controller takes some getting used to… But I’m looking forward to internet enabled games! I hear by March 08 MarioKart for the Wii will be out with online play! I’d like a Sim City, and I really hope Spore comes out for the Wii.

Not sure if this is a tactic, but including a controller in a game is a great idea. We picked up Wii Play so we have about 13 multiplayer games and two controllers. The controllers are expensive! I think around $100 with nunchuk and classic controller attachment. But I guess over time I can collect a full set of 4. Can’t wait to try it out on a 42″ Plasma @ 720p….

My bike computer seems to push me harder… when I see that I’m going slower than average I have to pump it.

The hot weather is so much easier to deal with after losing a few pounds. It’s 32C today but we haven’t turned the A/C on yet {besides to check if it works }.

While I weighed in at the beginning at 190lbs, the scale was a bit off, so I’m going with a 187-190lbs starting weight.

The results are:

14 days ~ 9 pounds lost.

I’m down to 179lbs as of now. I even got a digital scale so I can’t squirm out an extra pound like I could on those dialed scales.

While I’m almost at my goal of 10 pounds, I’m going to continue with my regime until I leave… I wonder if I can get down to 166? At this rate I’ll be around 170 when we leave, unless the first 9 pounds are “easy” fat?

This is the guy who brought us the iBot and Segway.

As the Google video says:

Drexel University’s Engineer of the year Dean Kamen is working with the government to create a fully robotic arm for amputees. This is an … all » amazing accomplishment and on behalf of NSBE, I commend his work on this and other projects.

This is amazing. I believe it will be disabled people who will spur the technology that will enable the merging of man and machine. Cochlear implants {provide hearing to the deaf} are blunt versions of the human ear today, but it won’t be long before they offer fidelity and range that would be considered superhuman today.

Double-leg amputee runners are quickly catching up to non-amputee athletes, and will probably surpass them soon. imagine that soon you’ll be hearing how amputees will be disqualified from the Olympics because their prosthetics are too much of an advantage. The special Olympics may someday draw a larger audience than the normal Olympics. Don’t you want to see a man with no arms and no legs run the 100m dash in under 9 seconds… how about under 7 seconds?

Here I am running WordPress 2.1.1 together with some kick-ass plugins, and my custom theme. This is my first jasonprini.com WordPress theme 100% built from scratch. I’ve made a lot of WP themes by starting with some basic WP themes, but I wanted to start from a blank slate, and here it is!

I know of several issues in IE 7 and IE 6. So those who refuse to use Firefox or Safari as their browser of choice are going to have to deal with it…for now.

I also know that my feeds have gone missing! Oh the horror! If you’re desperate for my feeds you’ll have to use your browser discovery or this link until I sort things out.

I also need to work out a few other details like spacing and such. But at least I’m not a shoe-less shoemaker anymore. I’ve been building wordpress templates for clients for years now, it’s about time I had one of my own.

A few items on my to-do list:

• Archives links list and page
• Integrating link lists like my blogroll
• Typography and white space tweaking
• ugly font issue
• IE 6 and 7 CSS sheets
• RSS lnks and page
• Fill out the Portfolio with recent work
• 404 page

Please feel free to comment with any issues you uncover, and I’d love to hear your thoughts about the new theme. Particularly I would like to hear any feedback regarding:

• The web site font, the paragraph text specifically
• Any errors that you encounter
• Missing images
• Broken links
• The design in general

The establishment overreacted and now blames someone else.

I can’t believe any sane, reasonable person would consider a Light-bright magnetically attached to a metal post any kind of threat.

Here’s how the guys who pulled the prank are reacting to the brew-ha-ha:

Absolutely fantastic!

Now we’re just organizing the installation. We have family coming up from Toronto to help up install it, so we should have a new floor upstairs before Christmas!

This will cover all the floors in the bedrooms and hallway on the top floor of the house. Pictured here is about half of the total amount. We figured oak flooring was a good material for selling as well. Most people consider oak to be the best wood for flooring, and eveyone has their own opinion about more “trendy” woods like bamboo.

I’ve recently posted about the Nikon D40, which is the first DSLR I’ve found that might convince me to take the leap into SLR territory. If I’m going to go DSLR, it’s going to be with a F1.2 50mm lens.

I’ve also got few other blogs I’m slowly experimenting with. I note them all on the My Websites page.

There are still a few in the cooker as well…