Blog Smith

Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.

Monday, October 11, 2021

What Couldn’t Lennon Imagine?

 What Couldn’t Lennon Imagine?

The TuneSmith Series BB


John Lennon’s smash song “Imagine” from his 1971 album of the same name was the best-selling single of his solo career. The lyrics encourage listeners to imagine a world of peace, without materialism, without borders separating nations and without religion. Shortly before his death, Lennon said that much of the song's lyrics and content came from his wife, Yoko Ono. Lennon believed in open borders and no religion. He sings:

“Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin' life in peace.”

Songwriters: John Winston Lennon
Imagine lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing

Fifty years later and we can grasp what Lennon could never imagine. Today, the popular track from Jimmy Levy & Hi-Rez symbolizes a growing movement that’s changing the music industry. Powerful anthems like “This Is A War” are their way of punching back at this spiritual war waged by the global elites. Marketing to listeners who continue to gravitate towards freedom-loving artists that offer more substance and inspiration during dark times. It is the exact opposite of what Lennon, the hippies, and the previous generation envisioned. Two artists who use their musical talents to fight for freedom are American Idol sensation Jimmy Levy and rapper Hi-Rez. Levy and Hi-Rez released a new song titled “This Is A War.” The single raced up the iTunes hip-hop chart and hit #1. “This Is A War” outpaced songs from mainstream artists such as Lil Nas and Drake.

The anthem’s lyrics of “This Is A War” touch on the war being waged on humanity. The lyrics states this is a “war on religion,” a “war on children,” and a “war on tradition” which resonates with those facing the rise of COVID tyranny and contrasts itself precisely with Lennon’s vision. Jimmy Levy & Hi-Rez teamed up for a music video where they hit the streets with New Yorkers fighting against COVID-19 injection mandates. The music industry wants to feverishly pump out garbage lyrics and propaganda. It’s a war to control the minds of Americans. But not all artists capitulate to the global elite. Instead, they take a stand for freedom.

This is a war on religion
This is a war on the children
They give you the cure with the sickness
This is a war on tradition
This is a war that we living through
They won't reveal to you that they all slowly been killing you
They don't tell you what the hell you agreeing to
Sheep in a herd and you don't know who leading you

Your mind is hallow
While you being coddled
By government swallowing up everything that media tells you without a question or a problem
All of these sheep being slaughtered
They poison the water, removing the father
Ain't trusting these doctors, ignoring blue collar
Keep printing the dollar

But I'm down to ride for my freedoms
And die for your freedoms and question the government lies

The devil he hides in ego and pride
They selling they soul but they paying the price
God won't give you more than you can handle
Government should be dismantled
Every politician got a scandal
Prepare for this war, we going to battle

I'd rather be red pilled and get killed
Then ignorant living, and meet death still
Don't stand up for something, you falling for nothing
Don't wait till the world that we know fall ill
This is the revelation of our generation
Losing civilization

Cannot alienate us, or exterminate us
I'll just keep on praying
For your salvation

They feed off 'ya fear
They want you scared
Death and despair its all in the air
So just beware, you think I care?
The more that you know, the more that its clear
This is a war its already here

Home of the slave 'til the crickets make a sound
Where's the bold and the brave? We all have to stand our ground
 

Jimmy Levy tweeted:  Wow we have the #1 Song About the Spiritual War were in! We are changing the music industry! GOD IS REAL! ALL GLORY TO GOD! Love, Jimmy Levy

In another tweet Jimmy says: “I’m a 23 y/o outspoken, unsigned, & independent artist with 2 impactful freedom fighting anthems that are charting worldwide & I have my soul! You can’t tell me that God isn’t real! All Glory to God!”

However, this is not the first time Levy has marketed a hit song. If you notice the dramatic impact “This Is A War” has had this isn’t Jimmy Levy’s first pro-freedom anthem to hit the charts. Levy’s collaboration with Nitti Gritti called “Matrix” hit #2 on the world music charts not long ago. At that time he stated: “I’ve been in the industry for 8 years. After speaking out, I never thought that I’d make #2 on the charts & have an outspoken song that would reach the entire world during a revolutionary time. I just want to thank Jesus & the brave freedom fighters worldwide! Love, Jimmy Levy.” Also, Hi-Rez thanked fans for support and spoke on the new wave of independent artists who value freedom.

Nitti Gritti, "Matrix," featuring Jimmy Levy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPb_7I5JeBw

In a previous episode, Why Did the Teenagers Rock ‘n’ Roll During the Pandemic of 1957?, I noted the impact that “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” by Huey “Piano” Smith had. It sounds as if “This Is A War” is the first salvo marketing a popular message against COVID restrictions for the younger generation. It includes freedom, liberty, closed borders, and religion, specifically, the Judeo-Christian American tradition.

Sunday, October 10, 2021

Building a Learning Organization


Building a Learning Organization
Takeaways
“Create an environment where getting smarter every day is a way of life.” Jack Welch
Creating a Learning Organization
What it Means
An organization that truly embraces a culture of learning is one where everybody comes to work asking, “How do I find a better ways every day?” When you create a learning environment, you take the organization to a whole new level where people strive to improve what they do, share knowledge across boundaries, constantly find new efficiencies and better processes, and get smarter at every turn.
Why it Matters
·         Because doing everything the same old way isn’t a path to wining—your competition will make sure of that.
·         Creating a culture where new ideas are relentlessly sought is energizing and gets every brain in the game.
·         Builds a can-do attitude in your team and empowers people to want to make the organization the best it can be.
·         Fosters a spirit of boundary-less behavior where people are always on the lookout for good ideas from everywhere—inside the company, outside the company, even from other industries.
·         Builds candor and trust in your organization as team members learn that it is not only safe to ask questions and challenge assumptions; it is expected.
Action Plan
Getting Results
Great leaders create a culture where people are excited to try new ideas; they push and probe their team in a supportive manner to ensure that no one is satisfied with the status quo.
“If you come in and do the same thing every day, you’re not getting any better.” Jack Welch
Your Starting Point
The start is “role model leadership.” If you are going to create a team with a culture of learning, then you have to be the shining example of what that means.
1.       How much time do you spend thinking about how to improve everything you do? Are you driven by a genuine curiosity to find ways to increase your competitiveness through innovation?


2.       What are some of the best improvements you’ve made to your operations in the past 6 months? How did these changes come about?


3.       Are you constantly scanning your organization, your industry, and leading firms in other industries for best practices?


4.       Have you set the expectation for your people to constantly look for improvement opportunities and to take action when they come across great new ideas?


5.       Do you share your team’s successes with other parts of your organization? What steps do you take to make sure that your team’s innovations are well-known, acknowledged and rewarded?



6.       Think back to a time when things did not turn our as you intended because you accepted the status quo and did not ask enough questions. What could you have done differently to have gotten the information you needed to win?


Quick Wins to Foster a Learning Culture
·         Resolve to stop thinking that, as a leader, your job is to be the smartest person in the room with all the answers. Your job is to have all the questions.
·         Today, ask everyone on your team to ignore all the reasons why it cannot be done or why it would be hard to do, and identify:
1.       One current process at the organization you wish could change, why you feel that way, and how you would change it.
2.       One process/activity/action/step that the organization does not do today and you wish it would do, why you feel that way, and how you would introduce it.
This sort of brainstorming exercise would allow your team members to get the key items they have been thinking about but may not have share with you on the table. Perhaps they were waiting to be asked? Don’t forget to participate in this process too!
·         There’s no requirement for good ideas to be home grown. Today, ask every member on your team to identify something that they have seen going on at another organization that they thought was impressive, noteworthy, or effective and could be adopted by your organization. These observations could be from other parts of your own organization, competitors, or any organization in any other industry or sector. Ask your team membe4rs to think about how your organization could adopt or adapt these activities or processes. The idea here is to encourage boundary-less behavior: in the relentless pursuit of improvement, good ideas can—and will—come from many different sources.
·         Praise people who exhibit the behavior you are seeking. When people ask good questions and bring good ideas, go out of your way to acknowledge it. And when someone executes a great improvement, make sure to reward them however you can.
Asking the “Right” Questions in the “Right” Way
Ask Open Ended Questions.
Closed questions (those that can be answered with yes/no or with a simple factual response) have their place when you are looking for statements of fact, but when you are seeking ideas about “possibility and potential” you need to use questions that are open ask things like:
·         What if . . .
·         Why not . . .
·         How come . . .
Focus on the Issue, not the Person
Raising issues and challenging assumptions (especially when the questions are focused on fixing a problem or shortcoming) can easily feel very personal to those on the receiving end. Your job as a leader is to never let that happen. The goal is to look at processes and find improvements, it is never to attack. If there are performance shortcomings that need to be addressed, those are done privately.
Good Questions Lead to Good Answers; Good answers lead to Actions
There is a huge difference between:
·         The Good:
Fostering a culture that come to work asking questions every day about how to make things better; and,
·         The Bad:
Asking the same questions over and over and never making a decision on an action.
As you prepare for your next meeting, you can help your team be more productive by circulating questions in advance. Prepare a mixture of closed and open-ended questions that require the team to both review facts and imagine possibilities. As they prepare their ideas for the meeting, make sure they know there will be a follow up meeting scheduled to evaluate progress.
Brainstorming and Survey Questions
Here is a list of questions to ask every member of your team on a weekly basis. The answers will create follow-up questions for the next week’s discussion.
1.       What part of your job/responsibilities is the least enjoyable? Why? If you could change them, how would you do it?


2.       Speak with two other people on our team about their ideas for improvement. How can you apply those ideas to your job?


3.       Speak to two other people outside of our team, but elsewhere in the organization, about their ideas for improvement to our area. Discuss how you could apply any of their ideas here.


4.       Identify three of our strongest competitors. What do they do very well and what can we learn from them?


5.       Identify three organizations in different industries that you admire or that have impressed you. What is it that those organizations have done to create that impression? Do they have any best practices they use that we can apply or adapt to our organization?


6.       What have you done this week to try and improve what you do? What progress did you experience? What worked? What didn’t work? Why?


Game Pages
Building a Learning Organization
Starting Point Questions
Improvement Survey Questions



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Reading since summer 2006 (some of the classics are re-reads): including magazine subscriptions

  • Abbot, Edwin A., Flatland;
  • Accelerate: Technology Driving Business Performance;
  • ACM Queue: Architecting Tomorrow's Computing;
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  • Collins, Francis S., The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief ;
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  • Conti, Greg, Googling Security: How Much Does Google Know About You?;
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  • Creel, Richard, Religion and Doubt: Toward a Faith of Your Own;
  • Cross, Robin, General Editor, The Encyclopedia of Warfare: The Changing Nature of Warfare from Prehistory to Modern-day Armed Conflicts;
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  • Defense Tech Briefs: Engineering Solutions for Military and Aerospace;
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  • Dennett, Daniel C., Consciousness Explained;
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  • Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, The Hound of the Baskervilles & The Valley of Fear;
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  • Drug Discovery News: Discovery/Development/Diagnostics/Delivery;
  • DT: Defense Technology International;
  • Dunbar, Richard, Alcatraz;
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  • Edwards, Aton, Preparedness Now!;
  • EGM: Electronic Gaming Monthly, the No. 1 Videogame Magazine;
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  • Ehrman, Bart D., Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why;
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  • Erlewine, Robert, Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion);
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  • Everitt, Anthony, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician;
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  • Federal Computer Week: Powering the Business of Government;
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  • Ferguson, Niall, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power;
  • Ferguson, Niall, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000;
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  • Fields, Nic, The Roman Army of the Punic Wars 264-146 BC;
  • Fields, Nic, The Roman Army: the Civil Wars 88-31 BC;
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  • Frazer, James George, The Golden Bough (Volume 3): A Study in Magic and Religion (Sony eReader);
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  • Grant, Michael, The Classical Greeks;
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  • Hanson, Victor Davis, Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How We Fight, How We Live, and How We Think;
  • Hanson, Victor Davis, The End of Sparta: A Novel;
  • Hanson, Victor Davis, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny;
  • Hanson, Victor Davis, Wars of the Ancient Greeks;
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  • Harris, Sam, Letter to a Christian Nation;
  • Harris, Sam, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason;
  • Hayek, F. A., The Road to Serfdom;
  • Heilbroner, Robert L., and Lester Thurow, Economics Explained: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works and Where It's Going;
  • Hempel, Sandra, The Strange Case of The Broad Street Pump: John Snow and the Mystery of Cholera;
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  • Hitchens, Christopher, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything;
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  • Hugo, Victor, The Hunchback of Notre Dame;
  • Humphrey, Caroline & Vitebsky, Piers, Sacred Architecture;
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  • Info World: Information Technology News, Computer Networking & Security;
  • Information Week: Business Innovation Powered by Technology:
  • Infostor: The Leading Source for Enterprise Storage Professionals;
  • Infrastructure Insite: Bringing IT Together;
  • Insurance Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
  • Integrated Solutions: For Enterprise Content Management;
  • Intel Premier IT: Sharing Best Practices with the Information Technology Community;
  • Irwin, Robert, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents;
  • Jeffrey, Grant R., The Global-Warming Deception: How a Secret Elite Plans to Bankrupt America and Steal Your Freedom;
  • Jewkes, Yvonne, and Majid Yar, Handbook of Internet Crime;
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  • Kansas, Dave, The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It: What You Need to Know About the Greatest Financial Crisis of Our Time--and How to Survive It;
  • Karsh, Efraim, Islamic Imperialism: A History;
  • Kasser, Rodolphe, The Gospel of Judas;
  • Katz, Solomon, The Decline of Rome and the Rise of Medieval Europe: (The Development of Western Civilization);
  • Keegan, John, Intelligence in War: The Value--and Limitations--of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy;
  • Kenis, Leo, et. al., The Transformation of the Christian Churches in Western Europe 1945-2000 (Kadoc Studies on Religion, Culture and Society 6);
  • Kepel, Gilles, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam;
  • Kiplinger's: Personal Finance;
  • Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism;
  • KM World: Content, Document, and Knowledge Management;
  • Koestler, Arthur, Darkness at Noon: A Novel;
  • Kostova, Elizabeth, The Historian;
  • Kuttner, Robert, The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity;
  • Lake, Kirsopp, The Text of the New Testament, Sony Reader;
  • Laur, Timothy M., Encyclopedia of Modern US Military Weapons ;
  • Leffler, Melvyn P., and Jeffrey W. Legro, To Lead the World: American Strategy After the Bush Doctrine;
  • Lendon, J. E., Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity;
  • Lenin, V. I., Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism;
  • Lennon, John J., There is Absolutely No Reason to Pay Too Much for College!;
  • Lewis, Bernard, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror;
  • Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East;
  • Lifton, Robert J., Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America;
  • Limberis, Vasiliki M., Architects of Piety: The Cappadocian Fathers and the Cult of the Martyrs;
  • Lipsett, B. Diane, Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Aseneth;
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