(토요모임) [ 23. Mar. 2019 ] Saturday meeting topic

[Scarlet]

Hello ! Everyone !~   It's me Scarlett !   

This week we have 3 categories of topics which are connected with 'Gender discrimination and vacant Housing'.  Do not be obsessed with all the articles too much. Just pick some articles that you have interests in and prepare your opinions related to them. :)

Detailed lists are as follows.

◈ Art of living

---- Do These 5 Things to Become a Top Performer

---- 10 Questions that Uncover High Performers…

---- Elon Musk says he owes his success to a 3-step problem-solving trick used by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla
---- Warren Buffett's Best-Kept Secret to Achieving Massive Success: Critical Thinking

◈ Gender discrimination countermeasures

---- ‘Mind the Pay Gap’: Reduced Berlin Transit Tickets for Women to Highlight Discrimination

◈ Gender parity in jobs

---- The 5 Hidden Career Lessons In 'Hidden Figures'

---- Hidden Figures Movie Exposes A New Real Figure
---- The Most Powerful Part of Hidden Figures? The Women, Of Course

---- A Woman Just Won the 'Nobel Prize of Math' for the First Time

◈ Social issues 

---- Proposals to tax pieds-à-terre in New York are gaining ground

---- Housing crisis: more than 200,000 homes in England lie empty
---- A Mumbai problem: Many vacant houses, many homeless
---- Abandoned buildings still house problems
---- Editorials: The vacant housing problem

Hope you enjoy the topics

With luv

Scarlett

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Do These 5 Things to Become a Top Performer
February 4, 2018/Austin Fabel

It’s easy to look at football and assume it’s almost entirely physical. But the emotional and mental aspects of the game are just as important and impactful. Becoming a champion (and succeeding in anything you do, really) is just as much about mindset, mental awareness and preparation as anything else. Just ask world-renowned high-performance coach Dr. Michael Gervais.
 
Dr. Gervais knows the mindset of a champion. He has worked and taught winning mindset practices to some of the world’s top performers including NFL teams such as the Seattle Seahawks, Olympic champions and Red Bull athletes like Felix Baumgartner.
Dr. Gervais recently sat down with The Science of Success and shared some of the most impactful skills he teaches his clients, helping lead them to become Super Bowl champions and world record holders, and achieving success in every aspect of their life.

1. Create a personal philosophy.
If there is not a clear outline of what we want to achieve and, more importantly, who we must become to accomplish that goal, we’re wasting our time.
“When we talk about training the mind, it becomes almost fruitless to have mental skills if there’s nothing to calibrate who you are and who you’re becoming,” Dr. Gervais says. “Which is where your personal philosophy comes in. The idea is to physically write down your personal guiding philosophy, which you will then use to line up your thoughts, your words and your actions across any environment.”
Dr. Gervais’ clients agree there is a sense of power that comes from a personal philosophy. Just as many legendary icons began by reverse engineering their own paths to success, we must also start with the end in mind to become who we wish to be. Take some time this year to put pen to paper and begin to define your own personal philosophy.

2. Find a rugged and hostile environment.
In order to become your best at anything, you have to train yourself to perform in rugged and hostile environments. According to Dr. Gervais, “The rugged and hostile environment is relative. It does not have to be physically dangerous to be rugged.”
“What this means is, any environment where your heart starts to thump because you know that something is (or will be) on the line,” he says. The key here is to step out of your comfort zone, even when practicing. For athletes, this may be practicing against a rival teammate in a stadium they know will soon be packed. It can even be something as small as striking up a conversation with a stranger at a party.
Whatever you want to succeed at, you have to push yourself past your comfort zone in order to achieve greatness.

3. Train your brain for optimism.
In sports, business and life, it’s important to focus on the positive in every experience. Dr. Gervais points out three steps he teaches his Super Bowl-winning clients.
First, you have to acknowledge that change is possible. “Both optimism and pessimism are learned behaviors,” he says.
Next, become aware of your inner dialogue. Everyone has negative thoughts at times. The worst thing you can do is ignore them. Instead, acknowledge them, examine the causes behind them, learn from them, and move on.
The last key to training your brain for optimism is to simply focus on the good things in life. It’s not enough to try to see the good. Gervais recommends writing down at least three good things at the end of each day. This not only causes your subconscious to focus on the good, but also sends you to bed in a better headspace.

4. Pay attention to recovery.
It’s impossible to grow physically or mentally if you’re constantly exhausted. In order to perform at your highest possible levels, you have to pay attention to recovery each and every day.
Dr. Gervais recommends focusing on the four pillars of recovery: sleep, diet and hydration, movement and exercise, and mental practices such as meditation after a long day. If you’re going to be a top performer in your field, whether in sports or in life, you have to make time for and focus on recovery.

5. Be driven, but avoid attachment.
If you’re going to be a champion, you have to be driven. You have to want to succeed so badly that you are willing to push yourself like you never have before. Despite all your best efforts, there will be times that no matter what you do, you fail. So it’s important to strike the proper balance between being driven to succeed and the outcome.
It’s all right to be upset by failure, especially in the moment. It’s what you do after the failure that defines you. Every failure is a learning experience and can push us forward in ways nothing else can. Keeping a growth mindset not only allows you to learn from your mistakes; it ensures you never repeat them again, making you much more experienced and aware in the process.
A high-performance mentality and lifestyle are critical components to finding success in business, sports and life. Whether you’re trying to become a Super Bowl MVP or building your own company, these tactics will help you get there.

Article source : https://www.success.com/do-these-5-things-to-become-a-top-performer/?fbclid=IwAR3G6HqJMMgNbkmyzvbp08k4XZvf8Cbb04kGQ3Rld0laR3clkD3BSBRHtJE

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10 Questions that Uncover High Performers…

Feb 9, 2018 | Posted by Roderic Yapp | business, culture, leadership, management, Recruitment

One of the challenges involved in building a high performing team is selecting the right people. You can’t build a high performing team with low performing people so who you let into your organisation matters. It is arguably one of the most important decisions you make especially if your team is small.

Hiring someone is supposed to give your team (and you) a great level of capability. You should be able to deliver more. But if you get it wrong and hire the wrong person you will create management challenges that take up your time rather than ‘free up’ your time.
There are plenty of people who can advise you on how to create a good recruitment process. My view is that you must try to resist the temptation to hire someone who has done the job before. If the opportunity doesn’t stretch the individual and give them an opportunity to learn and develop, it’s not a good fit for them or you.
At some stage in the process there is likely to be an interview.
Typically, these are designed to get people to share a story of when they’ve dealt with a challenging issue that relates to the role. The initial questions should focus on ensuring that the person can actually do the job. Do they have the required experience, are they competent?
Try and consider your own bias beforehand. I once worked with someone that placed a huge value on where candidates went to University. I have never been convinced that the decisions someone made at the age of 18 correlated with their long-term potential.
Think about your own internal bias – what do you value? Is there a strong correlation between what you value and how someone performs?

Soft Skills vs Hard Skills
I believe that the ‘soft skills’ are actually more important than the ‘hard skills’.
Attitude and mindset trumps skills and experience. Think about the best people you’ve worked with, chances are that their performance was more down to the fact that they had a great attitude rather than what they’d done in their past. Of course they have to be competent in order to be effective but great people tend to be the ones with the following characteristics. They can build relationships, prioritise, delegate, they’re accountable, easy to work with etc.
So the question becomes, how do we find those people? How do we dig beneath the surface to uncover these soft skills?
Below is a list of questions that is designed to uncover how someone thinks. How someone thinks informs how they behave. How they behave is how they achieve great results. If you want to understand potential, you have to understand how someone thinks. These questions and their respective explanations should give you a deeper insight into the way someone thinks and their potential.
They’re focussed on understanding the following qualities: honesty, humility, perseverance, initiative, adaptability to change. I have found that these are essential if you want to create a high performing team.

Tell me about a time when you have had to admit to making a mistake, what did you do?

Interviews traditionally focus on the positive stories. But work isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. How does someone react when things go wrong? What you’re looking for is someone that is comfortable admitting when they have made a mistake. They take accountability for the mistake, including any consequences, and work hard to resolve the issue. If someone has never made a mistake or fails to answer the question, they’re either lying, have never been pushed/taken a risk or are blissfully unaware. You don’t want to hire a candidate that falls into any of these categories.

Can you describe a past situation at work which led you to grow as a person? or Can you tell me a time when you were faced with a major obstacle (work/personal). How did you overcome it?

These questions also focus on a difficult situation. Examples might include handling a challenging stakeholder or managing a project that is going wrong. What you’re looking for is a story that shows the candidate has been challenged and has learnt from the experience. Failing to answer this question means that the candidate has either not been challenged sufficiently or that they’ve not reflected on and learnt from their experience.

Drawing on your work experience. Can you give me an example of a time when you wanted to give up and chose not to?

Determination is an essential quality. You want people that won’t give up easily and will see things through. It doesn’t matter where you work, you will want people that are resilient in the face of challenges. Will they ask you to solve their problems or will they explain a situation and give you a few courses of action so you can make a decision? The second type of person creates mental capacity for their leadership, the first type diminishes it.

How do you react when you are asked to do something beyond your capability?

All roles evolve. The world of is not a fixed place, roles evolve and change because the world changes. People will be asked to do things that they have not done before; high performers will expect that. You need candidates that are able to adapt and learn new skills. Understanding how someone approaches these challenges is important in understanding an individual’s ability to adapt to change.

Who is your most inspiring role model and why?

I love this question because this goes right to the heart of how someone thinks. The people we hold up as role models are the people we seek to emulate. It doesn’t matter who the person chooses. What matters is how they answer the question and why they’ve chosen that person. You’re looking for a candidate that can clearly articulate a person that they want to emulate.

Could you please give me an example of when you’ve had to have a difficult conversation at work? How did you handle it?

Difficult conversations are a part of working life. Sometimes you have to give feedback up, down and across the hierarchical structure. You want to hire someone that has the guts to confront challenging issues and have difficult conversations. The majority of managers avoid these conversations. It is much easier to ignore poor performance and overload the people who consistently deliver. The problem with this is that it’s unfair, breeds resentment amongst co-workers and ultimately causes your top performers to leave.

Could you describe a situation in which you felt you were right but you were still obliged to follow established workplace policies?

This is the hardest question to answer because there isn’t really a right answer. You’re looking to understand how someone handles a contentious issue. What do they do when they feel they are right but have to follow the rules? Do they go with their gut and are they a risk of being a rogue or are they a conformist? This is a sliding scale but obviously you don’t want anyone who will break the law!

Why did you leave your last role? and/or Why do you want this job?

The best answers to these questions relate to the fact that the person is ‘looking for their next challenge’. They’re actively moving towards something and are working on building a set of skills and experiences that will be valuable in the future. You do not want someone who is ‘sick of their current role’ and looking to run away from something. Whenever people ask why I left the Royal Marines, the story I tell is consistent, positive and above all honest. It usually goes something like this.

I had a fantastic career in the Corps and genuinely loved it but there are three reasons that I left. Firstly, I got married in my final year of service and wanted to start a family. I didn’t want to spend as much time overseas as I had done in my seven years of service. Secondly, I had a sense that the UK Government and to some extent the British public were weary of overseas campaigning. When I made the decision in 2012, I believed that the British Military would re-enter a fallow period post Afghanistan. I believed that the jobs behind me were better than the jobs in front of me and I wasn’t interested in leading a company of 120 marines on exercise when I’d led 30 on Operations.

The underlying messages are as follows. Firstly, it is a positive story. Would you want to hire someone who starts with, ‘I was sick of being sent overseas to fight in wars I didn’t believe in…’ What does that tell you about their attitude?
Secondly, it demonstrates my commitment to my family and illustrates what is important to me. Many people don’t value family placing their career and working lives first. If you value your family, you don’t want to work for these sorts of people!
Lastly, I am demonstrating that I am future focussed and politically aware. Choosing a moment to leave ‘the party’ is a difficult thing to do. I wanted to look back on my time in the Corps fondly, and I sincerely do, which is why I chose to leave in 2012.

Are you lucky?

Again, there is no perfect answer here. But this gives an insight into how someone views what they’ve got in the world. Do they express a sense of gratitude for the fact that they were born in the West and therefore are extremely lucky to be well-educated, have a safe comfortable place to sleep and access to clean water.
Do they believe that they are in complete control of everything that happens to them? In which case they are likely to be more accountable than those who feel that they’re victim of their own circumstance.
Attitude and Mindset are the strongest drivers of an individual’s performance. Whatever your selection process, you have to make sure that people have a baseline competence for the role. Most selection processes will achieve that.
However, if you’re looking to assess potential and understand character, you have to drive deeper. Understand how someone thinks. These questions are deigned to help you do that. Resist the temptation to hire quickly because you need someone now.
Get this right and you will add value to your culture and organisation, freeing you up to be able to deliver more. Get it wrong and you will create more problems for yourself.
Hiring is an investment decision. It is a balance of good process and judgement.
I wish you all the very best of luck. Please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like to talk about anything I have mentioned here, I’d be happy to help.

Article source : http://www.leadershipforces.com/10-questions-reveal-high-perfomers/

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Elon Musk says he owes his success to a 3-step problem-solving trick used by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla

Mayo Oshin, Contributor

■ It's easy to link Elon Musk's rapid success, ability to solve unsolvable problems, and genius-level creativity to his incredible work ethic.

■ But during a one-on-one interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, Musk attributed to his genius-level creativity and success to a method of reasoning called first principles.

■ First-principles thinking works like this: First, you identify and define your assumptions; then, you break down the problem into its fundamental principles; and, lastly, you create new solutions from scratch.

By the age of 46, Elon Musk has innovated and built three revolutionary multibillion-dollar companies in different fields — Paypal (financial services), Tesla (automotive), and SpaceX (aerospace).

This list doesn't include Solar City (energy), which he helped build and acquired for $2.6 billion.

At first glance, it's easy to link his rapid success, ability to solve unsolvable problems, and genius-level creativity to his incredible work ethic.

Musk himself said that he worked 100 hours a week for over 15 years and recently scaled down to 85 hours. Rumor also has it that he doesn't even take lunch breaks, multitasking between eating, meetings, and responding to emails all at the same time.

No doubt work ethic plays an important role in unlocking your inner creative genius and becoming the best at what you do — but there's more to this — there are extremely hardworking people who still make little progress in life and die before sharing their best work with the world.

What, then, is this missing link for innovative creativity and accelerated success?

Just like Musk, some of the most brilliant minds of all-time — Aristotle, Euclid, Thomas Edison, Feynman, and Nikola Tesla — use this missing link for accelerated learning, solving difficult problems, and creating great work in their lifetime.

This missing link has little to do with how hard they work. It has everything to do with how they think.

Let's talk about how you can use this genius problem solving method.

■ First-principles thinking

During a one-on-one interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, Musk revealed this missing link, which he attributes to his genius-level creativity and success. It's called reasoning from first principles.

Musk: Well, I do think there's a good framework for thinking. It is physics. You know, the sort of first-principles reasoning. Generally, I think there are — what I mean by that is, boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there, as opposed to reasoning by analogy.

Through most of our life, we get through life by reasoning by analogy, which essentially means copying what other people do with slight variations.

First-principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you know about a given problem or scenario, and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. Almost like a newborn baby.

On the flip side, reasoning by analogy is building knowledge and solving problems based on prior assumptions, beliefs, and widely held "best practices" approved by majority of people.

Essentially, first-principles thinking will help you develop a unique worldview to innovate and solve difficult problems in a way that nobody else can even fathom.

Here's how you can quickly use this in three simple steps recommended by Musk himself.

■ Step 1: Identify and define your assumptions.

"If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions." —Albert Einstein

Here are some examples from everyday life in business, health, and craft.

"Growing my business will cost a lot of money."

"I have to struggle and starve to become a successful artist."

"I just can't find enough time to work out and reach my weight-loss goals."

When next you're faced with a familiar problem or challenge, simply write down your assumptions about them. (You can stop here and write these down now.)

■ Step 2: Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.

"It is important to view knowledge as sort of semantic tree. Make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e., the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing for them to hang on to." —Elon Musk

These fundamental principles are basically the most basic truths or elements of anything.

The best way to uncover these truths is to ask powerful questions that uncover these ingenious gems.

Here's a quick example from Musk during an interview with Kevin Rose on how this works:

Somebody could say, "Battery packs are really expensive and that's just the way they will always be. Historically, it has cost $600 per kilowatt hour. It's not going to be much better than that in the future."

With first principles you say, "What are the material constituents of the batteries? What is the stock-market value of the material constituents?" It's got cobalt, nickel, aluminum, carbon, some polymers for separation, and a seal can. Break that down on a material basis and say, "If we bought that on the London Metal Exchange, what would each of those things cost?"

It's like $80 per kilowatt hour. So clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a battery cell and you can have batteries that are much, much cheaper than anyone realizes.

This is classic first-principles thinking in action.

Instead of following the socially accepted beliefs that battery packs were expensive, Musk challenges these beliefs by asking powerful questions that uncover the basic truths or elements, e.g., carbon, nickel, aluminium. Then he creates ingenious innovative solutions from scratch.

■ Step 3: Create solutions from scratch.

"The person who says he knows what he thinks but cannot express it usually does not know what he thinks." —Mortimer Adler

Once you've identified and broken down your problems or assumptions into their most basic truths, you can begin to create new insightful solutions from scratch.

Here are three simple everyday examples of how this works (steps one through three).

Assumption: "Growing my business will cost too much money."

First-principles thinking:

What do you need to grow a profitable business? I need to sell products or services to more customers.

Does it have to cost a lot of money to sell to new customers? Not necessarily, but I'll probably need access to these new customers inexpensively.

Who has this access and how you can create a win-win deal? I guess I could partner with other businesses that serve the same customer and split the profits 50-50.

Assumption: "I just can't find enough time to work out and reach my weight-loss goals."

First-principles thinking:

What do you really need to reach your weight-loss goal? I need to exercise more, preferably five days a week for an hour each time.

Could you still lose weight exercising less frequently? If so, how? Possibly, I could try 15-minute workouts, three days a week. These could be quick, high-intensity full-body workouts that will speed up my fat loss in less time.

Assumption: "I have to struggle and starve to become a successful artist."

First-principles thinking:

What do you really need to create great work and make a good living as an artist? I would need a reasonably sized audience that will appreciate and buy my artwork.

What do you need to reach a larger audience? I probably need to do some marketing, but I don't like self-promoting, so I'd rather not do this.

OK, is there any way for you to promote your work without being sleazy? Yes, if the focus of selling my artwork is meaningful with a purpose of serving the audience, then I could make more money to make more art, so I can serve more people.

■ Think differently

Usually, when we're faced with complex problems, we default to thinking like everybody else. First-principles thinking is a powerful way to help you break out of this herd mentality, think outside the box, and innovate brand-new solutions to familiar problems.

By identifying your assumptions, breaking these down into their basic truths, and creating solutions from scratch, you can uncover these ingenious solutions to complex problems and make unique contributions.

Mayo Oshin writes at MayoOshin.com, where he shares practical ideas at the intersection of science, art, and philosophy, for better thinking and decision-making. You can join his free weekly newsletter here.

Article source : https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-3-step-problem-solving-trick-thomas-edison-and-nikola-tesla-2019-3?utm_content=buffer767ad&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-lifestyle&fbclid=IwAR2PMp8VYgT2A8z1rqv3DHmt3Ev-zs9V75zQFPOumrckcfoOM4Kbvo2zGB8

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Warren Buffett's Best-Kept Secret to Achieving Massive Success: Critical Thinking

Denise Hill/ Speech Writer/Senior Editor

Critical thinking skills are essential to success — any kind of success. Successful individuals are thinkers and they surround themselves with thinkers.

Consider Warren Buffett. He is known as the most successful investor of all time, and by his own estimate, he has spent 80 percent of his career reading.1 And what makes him so successful is that he isn’t willing to be a passive recipient of what he reads. Instead, he schedule time to eval‎‎‎uate the information he gets so as to form his own insights. This may sound counterproductive. We’ve been taught to work more, sleep less, and hyper-focus on the things that directly pertain to our goals. We call it being productive. Buffett and those like him find thinking, reading, and contemplating more productive than taking meetings and “working.” He actively pursues knowledge.

 Why people with strong critical thinking skills like Warren Buffett are more likely to succeed

Critical thinking involves being able to process information independently and to think clearly, logically, and reflectively. It is the ability to engage in rational thought and to understand and establish a connection between ideas. In essence, critical thinking is the ability to reason. It is about being an active learner rather than a passive recipient of information.2

They always question the status quo

The status quo is the current state of affairs. It’s the norm. It’s how things are done. You know you’ve found it when you hear the phrase,“We’ve always done it this way.” Critical thinkers ask questions such as, “Why do we do it that way?” “How can we make it better?” “What are our other options?”

They break down problems into smaller components and see the subtle connections between them

They love to test boundaries. They dissect issues and then find a way to systematically solve them. By examining the individual pieces of a problem they are able to apply solutions that create a domino or cascading effect. They solve one issue which effects another issue and are able to solve them both simultaneously.

They are sensitive to the loopholes in their logic 

Critical thinkers ruthlessly question ideas and assumptions rather than accepting them at face value. They will always seek to determine whether the ideas, arguments, and conclusions represent the entire picture. They do not rely heavily on intuition and instinct. They test, prove, and disprove their hunches.

We are all fallible. Critical thinkers understand this and actively work to find the flaws in their own logic. One’s ability to think critically varies according to his/her current state of mind. Thinkers work to maintain objectivity, view the problem from all possible angles, and seek the input of others who are adept in logic and reasoning.

They tackle problems with a systematic plan

A system is designed to streamline and simplify processes. It improves effectiveness and makes effort more efficient. Most critical thinkers use a top down approach to problem solving. They are systematic in their efforts. They also set aside time for investigating challenging issues and brainstorming ways to push through them. They don’t tackle a problem without a plan.

They apply the scientific method to problem solving

Critical thinkers are usually highly methodical. They approach a problem the same way a scientist would and then move through the phases of the scientific method, conducting experiments to prove and disprove their hypotheses. Each experiment provides insight into the problem and proves or eliminates an idea or solution.

 3 steps to improve your critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is a skill set, meaning it can be learned. Learning to think critically often involves tweaking some of our processes instead of merely trying to adjust our way of thinking. If you do things a certain way, your thinking will follow a certain pattern. You will begin to develop the habit of thinking practically and then critically. Developing this skill takes deliberate practice and persistence.

Here are three steps to get you started:

1. Recognize the biases in your thinking

Biases are common. We all have them. However, our biases lead to fallacies in our thought processes and rob us of our objectivity. The most common and detrimental bias is the confirmation bias- our tendency to see what we want to see. We tend to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirm‎‎‎s our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

To cure confirmation bias, experts3 suggest that inundating yourself with information is not the answer. It’s all about how you filter the information you do have. When you don’t selectively filter information, you lose your objectivity which is the heart of logical thinking. This particular prejudice is most preval‎‎‎ent in emotionally- charged situations and when you have something to lose. It also shows up when wishful thinking is present.

For example, in the middle of basketball season the home town team has a record that is below 500 and has been on a seven game losing streak. The star player has just gone out with a torn ACL and your friend says to you, “I know in my heart that our home team will win the NBA Championship.”

This statement disregards the facts–or at the very least, fails to consider them– and makes a prediction based on a feeling.

Here are a few ways to overcome confirmation bias:

When you recognize a bias don’t abandon your initial hypothesis right away. It may be completely or even partially correct. Test your theory.

Keep an open mind. Work on trying to come up with alternatives no matter how far-fetched they may seem. Test all of your ideas.

Embrace surprises. Don’t discount them or get discouraged. The unexpected happens. Use this new “surprising” information to your advantage.

2. Use 5 “Whys” to find out the root causes of problems

The “Five Whys” methodology, developed by Sakichi Toyoda (founder of Toyota), uses a”go and see” philosophy. This turns the decision-making process into a search for a solution that is based on an in-depth understanding of what’s actually happening. This method simply involves asking, “Why?” five times, allowing you to dig deeper each time. The goal is to drill down and find the core of the issue.

Here’s a quick example:

The problem you are attempting to solve is that customers are complaining that when they receive merchandise they purchased online it does not match what they ordered (they are getting incorrect items, sizes, etc.).

Why are customers receiving the wrong products? Because the shipping company’s warehouse shipped products that are different from what the customers ordered.

 Why did the shipping company warehouse ship different products than what was ordered? 

  Because the personnel filling the online orders called the order in and gave it to the warehouse via telephone to expedite shipping. Errors were made during this process.

 Why are the online order fillers calling in orders instead of using the normal process?

  Because each shipping order has a slip that must be signed by the shipping directory before it is put into the system and sent to the warehouse.

 Why does each order slip have to be signed by the shipping director before it is shipped?

  Because the shipping director records the information for his weekly reports to the company CEO.

 Why does the shipping director have to record the information for each order this way?

  Because he does not know how to generate the report using the system the order fillers use to send their orders to the warehouse.

Using this process, we were able to locate the breakdown in the process around the third “why.” Asking “Why?” the last two times generated our solution: train the shipping director to use the existing software to generate his reports for the CEO.

3. Treat each problem like an experiment

Using the scientific method to solve problems is an effective and efficient mental model for solving problems. Most people approach problems haphazardly and dive into the middle of the issues and become overwhelmed or miss key elements. Following a process allows you to establish a habit. Remember critical thinking is a skill that requires practice and persistence. Start at the beginning of the process every single time. Here are the steps:

 Define the problem. Ask a question to discover what the true issue is.

 Do background research. Gather information.

 Construct a hypothesis. Make a prediction based on what you know so far, being careful to account for confirmation bias.

 Conduct experiments. Test your hypothesis. Apply the “Five Whys” methodology when necessary.

Analyze your data and draw a conclusion. Analyze the results of your experiments and put them to the test. Are there any other possible solutions? If so, test them out.

 Communicate your results. Present your solution along with your research and evidence.

Always reflect on and review your processes. It helps you to find gaps in your thinking and to adjust. Reflection helps develop objectivity.

With time, practice, and diligence using these three steps your critical thinking process will become a habit. You’ll be able to better predict results, anticipate pitfalls, and avoid biased thinking.

References

[1] ^ Inc.: Why Successful People Spend 10 Hours a Week Just Thinking

[2] ^ Skills You Need: Critical Thinking Skills

[3] ^ Global Cognition: Confirmation Bias: 3 Effective (and 3 Ineffective) Cures

Article source : http://www.lifehack.org/572725/why-critical-thinking-essential-your-success-and-how-you-can-improve?ref=featured_article

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< Questions >

 High performer -----------------------------

Q1. Are you a dreamer or a doer ?

Q2. Do you have your own philosophy? What is your motto?

Q3. What is the definition of 'Grit' or 'Growth mindset'? Do you have one? 

Q4. Tell me about a time when you have had to admit to making a mistake, what did you do?

Q5. Can you describe a past situation at work which led you to grow as a person? or Can you tell me a time when you were faced with a major obstacle (work/personal). How did you overcome it?

Q6. Drawing on your work experience. Can you give me an example of a time when you wanted to give up and chose not to?

Q7. How do you react when you are asked to do something beyond your capability?

Q8. Who is your most inspiring role model and why?

Q9. Could you please give me an example of when you’ve had to have a difficult conversation at work? How did you handle it?

Q10. Could you describe a situation in which you felt you were right but you were still obliged to follow established workplace policies?

Q11. Why did you leave your last role? and/or Why do you want this job?

Q12. Are you lucky?

 Problem solving trick ----------------------------- 

Q1. What is the concepts of first principles? 

*** First-principles thinking is basically the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you know about a given problem or scenario, and then creating new knowledge and solutions from scratch. Almost like a newborn baby.

Q2. Do you have any complex troubles ? What are they? What is the fundamental factor of your problem? 

Q3. According to Elon musk, first-principles thinking will help you develop a unique worldview to innovate and solve difficult problems in a way that nobody else can even fathom. Why don't you try 3 steps following first-principle for your complex troubles. 

Step 1: Identify and define your assumptions.

Step 2: Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.

Step 3: Create solutions from scratch.

Q4. We can make differences by think-different strategy. Do you have any similar experiences to solve the problem by applying this strategy instead of following stereotype?

Q5. Do you like meditation? 

Q6. What is the meaning of 'Stay hungry and stay foolish'?

 Critical thinking -----------------------------

Q1. Do you know any successful individuals like Warren Buffett or Bill gates around you? Do you find any unique characteristics of those people from ordinary person? For your reference, this article suggests 5 characteristics of successful person as follows. 

- They always question the status quo

- They break down problems into smaller components and see the subtle connections between them

- They are sensitive to the loopholes in their logic 

- They tackle problems with a systematic plan

- They apply the scientific method to problem solving

Q2. What is your definition of success? What components are required to be a successful person?

Q3. What is the definition of a 'Critical thinking'? How do you build up and improve critical thinking skills? For your reference, above article suggests 3 steps to improve critical thinking skills as follows. 

1. Recognize the biases in your thinking.

2. Use 5 “Whys” to find out the root causes of problems.

- Why did the shipping company warehouse ship different products than what was ordered? 

- Why are the online order fillers calling in orders instead of using the normal process?

- Why does each order slip have to be signed by the shipping director before it is shipped?

- Why does the shipping director have to record the information for each order this way?

3. Treat each problem like an experiment.

- Define the problem.

- Do background research.

- Construct a hypothesis. 

- Conduct experiments. 

- Communicate your results. 

Q4. While you are reading, are you an active learner or a passive recipient of information? 

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‘Mind the Pay Gap’: Reduced Berlin Transit Tickets for Women to Highlight Discrimination
By Christopher F. Schuetze/ March 15, 2019

BERLIN — In Germany, women are paid an average of 21 percent less than men, one of Europe’s widest gender pay gaps. In Berlin next week, for one day only, the public transportation system will offer them a corresponding discount.
The BVG, which runs the city’s bus, tram and subway systems and is the country’s largest public transit authority, will offer women an unlimited day pass for 5.50 euros, about $6.20, instead of the regular €7.
The Frauenticket, or women’s ticket, is limited to Monday, which campaigners in Germany have designated as Equal Pay Day, and the authority is calling the promotion “Mind the Pay Gap.”
“The women’s ticket not only challenges the discriminatory wage gap in our country, but also shows that the BVG itself is doing something about it,” Sigrid Nikutta, the authority’s director, said.

Despite its reputation as a socially progressive country — and its long-serving female leader — Germany has the third-widest pay gap in the European Union, according to 2017 figures from the bloc’s statistical agency. Only the Czech Republic and Estonia, both much smaller countries, did worse. (It also lags the United States, where the figure was 19.5 percent in 2017.)
Quotas for the representation of women on corporate boards became law here in 2015, but the number of women in the national Parliament has declined since then, with the arrival of a male-dominated delegation from the far-right Alternative for Germany. There are now two male lawmakers for every female one.

The city state of Berlin, which is governed by a coalition of progressive and socialist parties, has been actively pushing women’s rights, and for the first time this year made March 8, International Women’s Day, an official holiday in the city.
Iris Spranger, a member of the city’s House of Representatives who campaigned for that measure, is also supportive of the transportation system’s public relations exercise.
“The women’s ticket is an original idea to highlight the gender pay gap,” she wrote in an email. “The lively discussion alone shows that it was a good idea.”

According to Ms. Spranger, even more important than the ticket is the fact that the BVG has had an equal-pay policy since 2003.
Equal Pay Day, which in Germany this year falls on Monday, has been around since 1988. It symbolizes the extra days into the new year that German women have to work to earn the same as men.
The public transport system in Berlin attracts over three million riders a day and has rails spanning almost 300 miles. Its yellow subway cars have become symbols for the city, as have its cheeky ads.

In one of its online ads for the women’s ticket campaign, the BVG says: “Gender-specific wage gap. Sounds stupid. Is stupid. We’ll close it.”
Men found using the special tickets, the authority said, would be treated like regular fare evaders and charged €60.
But in a city where day passes are largely purchased by tourists — regular riders tend to buy monthly tickets — few men seemed to be taking offense at the idea.
“With the campaign, we also call on women to apply for jobs with us,” said Ms. Nikutta, the first woman to run the BVG and the first leader to make it profitable.

Correction: March 15, 2019
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the Berlin House of Representatives member who had campaigned to make International Women’s Day a holiday in the city. She is Iris Spranger, not Sprangler.

Article source : https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/world/europe/germany-pay-gap-berlin-transit.html

----------------------------------------

< Questions >

Q1. What images are coming up when you heard about below words?

- Gender Pay / Management positions / Racial equality/
- Income equality/ Age equality/ Sexual orientation

Q2. Should the women get cheaper rail tickets?

Q3. Why do men get paid more?

Q4. What do you think of men earning more than women despite of equal work?

Q5. How difficult is it to achieve equal pay?

Q6. How happy would you be with cheaper rail fares?

Q7. Should male workers insist on equal pay for female colleagues?

Q8. How do you think men feel about the pay disparity?

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The 5 Hidden Career Lessons In 'Hidden Figures'

Feb 6, 2017, 11:36am
Nancy Collamer / Contributor / Personal Finance / Retirement coach, author and blogger for NextAvenue.org

The new Oscar-nominated movie Hidden Figures is a true story about three African American women who worked as “human computers” at the NASA Research Center in Langley, Va. in the early ‘60s: programmer Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), math genius Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and engineer Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae). At its core, the film is a powerful reminder of the destructive consequences of discrimination. But it also holds important career lessons about how to manage and excel at work, even under challenging circumstances.

Set in the Jim Crow South, the women are subjected to constant racial and gender discrimination. They are denied promotions, forced to use separate, distant bathrooms and are expected to never complain. But if not for the critical contributions of these three, NASA might never have successfully sent John Glenn into orbit.
Here are five key career lessons I gleaned from the film and ones I think could help women and men at work:

1. Be indispensable.

At the start of Hidden Figures, the three women are assigned to a larger group of “human calculators” who toil away anonymously in a back room, far away from the more important male scientists. But thanks to their hard work, smarts, dogged determination and prowess, each of the women eventually finds her way to a promotion.

For example, after discovering NASA has installed a new "IBM machine" that can work far faster than humans, Vaughan decides to teach herself the FORTRAN programming language needed to operate it. This is a formidable challenge, but by being the first to master the new technology, Vaughan not only saves her job, she gets bumped up to supervisor of the new computing department.
The takeaway: Whether you want a raise, a promotion or a flexible work schedule, the single best thing you can do is find a way to make yourself indispensable. That means doing a great job and contributing to projects that are critical to your employer’s success. In other words, make yourself so valuable, they can’t afford to lose you.

2. Focus on what you can control, not what you can’t.

The working conditions at NASA for African American women at the time were discriminatory, degrading and demoralizing. In particularly disturbing moments in the film, Johnson is forced to use a colored-only bathroom a half-mile away from her desk and then gets reprimanded for “taking breaks.”

Rather than allow the negativity to defeat them, however, the women do what they can to lift themselves up: they work hard, bond together and find significant ways to contribute that others can’t ignore.
The takeaway: Fortunately, few of us will ever face such extreme conditions at work. But no matter what frustrations you do face, you’ll be happier when you focus on your work, your attitude and your professionalism. As Spencer explained to People and Entertainment Weekly editorial director Jess Cagle in an interview about the film, “No matter what is going on, you have power.”

3. Cultivate a strong support group.

One of the more uplifting themes in Hidden Figures is the power of sisterhood. The women depend upon each other for advice, laughter, support and a safe haven from the daily stresses of their lives and workplace.
The takeaway: As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in this essay, “Everyone needs this kind of connection. We need people who encourage us, believe in us, support us, and remind us that we are not alone. For women, this kind of support can be especially important — because, too often, the world tells women what we can’t do.”

4. Look for the greater meaning in your work.

Despite all the injustices at their jobs, the women in the film clearly take tremendous pride from their association with NASA. One of my favorite scenes is when Glenn requests that Johnson be the one to double-check NASA’s calculations before the final approval for his lift-off. (The look of surprise on Henson’s face when Glenn asks for her input is priceless). Knowing that her work is vital to the outcome of such an important national mission clearly sustains Johnson, even though her colleagues are shamefully reticent to acknowledge her efforts.
The takeaway: Admittedly, it’s unlikely that you’ll find an employer with a mission quite as grand as NASA. But, meaning can be derived in any number of ways — by having a positive impact on customers; contributing to your community or by offering a much-needed product or service. When you connect with meaning at work, it inspires you to work harder. And that, in turn, leads to better outcomes for you and your employer.

5. Never leave a high-stakes career moment to chance.

In one of the most riveting scenes of Hidden Figures, Jackson petitions the Virginia State Court for the right to enroll in engineering classes at the local segregated high school. She makes an impassioned plea to the judge for his help making her the first female engineer at NASA, reminding him that he was the first in his family to join the Armed Forces and to attend college.
“Your Honor,” Jackson says, “Out of all the cases you’re going to hear today, which one is going to matter one hundred years from now? Which one is going to make you the first?”
The judge is clearly swayed by Jackson’s personal appeal and, to the amazement of everyone (including himself), agrees to her request — with the caveat that she only attend night classes.
The takeaway: There are high-stakes moments in every career — job interviews, performance reviews, making important presentations — when careful preparation is a must. So the next time you have a critical career moment like this, do your homework, refine your message and practice relentlessly before making your pitch.
Who knows? Done well, it just might lead to your own Oscar-worthy performance.

Article source : https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2017/02/06/the-5-hidden-career-lessons-in-hidden-figures/#9d1084b25ffb

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Hidden Figures Movie Exposes A New Real Figure
Jan 07, 2018 /Olympia LePoint/ Rocket Scientist, TED Speaker & Author

When I saw Hidden Figures, two thoughts entered my mind. I experienced gratitude, and I felt shock. To further explain, Hidden Figures is receiving many stellar as well as controversial reviews.  From its Oscar talk to its soundtrack discussions, Hidden Figures is a movie that is stirring up major conversations in the entertainment and science worlds. And it is a film that I personally felt compelled to review.  For I am a real life “hidden figure.”  I am a real female rocket scientist of color. While watching the film, I was simultaneously inspired and surprised by what I relived through its scenes. 

Directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Theodore Melf and Allison Schroeder, the Hidden Figures film depicts the real life struggles of three genius women Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (played by Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monáe),  who were instrumental in  launching astronaut John Glenn (played by Glen Powell) to space and changing the way NASA viewed the technical competence of African-American women.  The film is set during a time where racial segregation, sexual segregation and educational segregation posed great hindrances to not only women, but especially to women of color.  Through the character’s struggles brilliantly portrayed in the 20th Century Fox film, the audience is cleverly hypnotized into fully understanding the racial challenges of three separate segregation stories interwoven into one uplifting plot.  The film does an extraordinary job in honoring these three women who helped reenergized the world as  the first African-American Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) experts during the American Space Race in the specific year 1961.  To add, the math in the film was accurately applied. Naturally, these aspects of the film are inspiring.  However, some movie scenes left me unsettled.

I am a young “hidden figure” who is choosing to be exposed. I helped build and launch NASA rockets through mathematical calculations as a rocket scientist for nearly ten years at a major aerospace company. I won many awards as a rocket scientist.  And Hidden Figures reintroduced a bit of shock to me. I was surprised that my experiences were almost identical to Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson’s stories. When I watched the struggles these ladies faced in the film, tears ran down my face. I intimately knew how they felt.  Despite being a scientist nearly 40 years after these ladies’ stories, I was brought back into time where my experiences were being reenacted in this film.  Three personal experiences jumps from the screen onto this page.

1. Women bonded together in the bathroom to for a powerful purpose.

A moving scene in Hidden Figures surrounds a bathroom scene.  Katherine Johnson is newly assigned to a work group with only white men, and the “colored ladies bathroom” is nearly a half mile away from her work station.  She runs there, because no other colored women’s restrooms are near. When she arrives, the restroom is her safe haven.  It remains so until she is caught in the rain. She returns to her desk late and soaking wet.  From her experience, her NASA boss, Al Harrison (played by Kevin Costner) makes a leadership move to passionately remove segregated restrooms from his NASA locations.

My real life experience is very similar to the bathroom scene which happened nearly 20 years ago.  When I was first hired as a rocket scientist, I received the best piece of advice in the ladies’ bathroom. On my second day, this man (who later would become one of my biggest supporters and professional leads) walked passed me and his mouth dropped open.  He looked at me puzzled.  He began walking slowly around me as if I was a museum exhibit.  I was new scientist, and I honestly did not know how to respond to his actions.  He circled me again, never saying a word. He looked at me as if I was an alien from another planet.  At the time, I was unaware that he was surprised that a woman had been hired into the engineering group.  But soon after, I discovered he was one of the “supportive guys.”

Moments later, some of the administrative assistants in clerical roles, motioned for me to join them in the ladies’ bathroom.  They introduced themselves and told me that they were supporting me, because they were awaiting to see another female engineer. And they told me that whenever I am upset, never let the male engineers see me cry.  When I asked why, they explained that a couple of the men would do anything to provoke emotion from some women. They needed reason to suggest giving a man the job instead of a woman. It was not everyone, but just a few men. These particular men would label the women as “too emotional to handle the work.” These ladies encouraged me go to the ladies room whenever I felt emotional. 

I was in disbelief, until I witnessed this fact for myself.  Numerous times I saw other women challenged.  I was often challenged too.  But I always remained calm and took their advice. In the process, I unknowingly turned off my feelings in order to execute the work.  I did this action for the sake of science. My love of science overruled any experience, and it gave other women hope. And in turn, these ladies gave me hope. Later, several administrative assistants asked me to mentor their young daughters who have since become young scientist, doctors, lawyers and civic leaders as a result. 

2. Extra challenges still exist for women of color in STEM.

There was a scene in the movie where Katherine Johnson is told that “there is no protocol for women to give technical briefings” by Paul Stafford (played by Jim Parsons).  Yet through the support of her executive boss, she is invited into a boardroom to explain the last necessary calculations to successfully help the Friendship 7 mission land given its reentry trajectory. When she enters the room, men look at her in shock, because she is a young woman of color. Equally she looks like a deer caught in headlights, until she relies on her mathematical skills to calm her and prove her value on the NASA Friendship 7 program.

When I saw this scene, tears ran down my face.  I literally knew how Katherine Johnson felt in the inside. I thought to myself, Katherine went through this too?

Through watching this scene, I relived my character-defining moment as a scientist. After much hard work, I became an expert in knowing how explosions could occur within and outside of rockets.  I understood rocket designs and authorized engine tests. I stayed at work for long hours after everyone left because I knew I had to perform twice as hard, like the character Katherine Johnson. 

Olympia LePoint performs mathematical calculations. Image courtesy of

California State University Northridge Alumni Association.

As an expert, I would attend design briefings with over 200 men. I was lucky if I saw another woman in the room. And the most defining moment is when a program manager suggested that he present my work instead of me.  Like in the movie, he said, “There is no protocol for a young woman like yourself to give these technical briefings.”

Thankfully two weeks earlier, one of the more seasoned female African-American engineers took me aside and warned me that there had never been an African-American woman to present the work that I was creating. And fortunately, she gave me empowering words to use. 

I said to this program manager, “There may not be a protocol.  But I am fully prepared to give the presentation of my work that I have created within the last 6 months.  I am the author of the work, no one else.” 

Olympia LePoint used mathematics to helped launch 28 NASA Space Shuttle Mission

 to Space. Image courtesy of California State University Northridge Alumni Association.

He did not anticipate my response, and he miraculously agreed. I gave the presentation to 500 NASA officials. The mathematics gave me comfort as I presented. Later he thanked me for my presentation. And other engineers called me the “Engine News Reporter,” because my presentations were the most organized anyone had ever seen. Through being the first African-American female at the age of 23 to give a NASA briefing of this type, I inspired other program managers to give opportunities to other young engineers. 

3. True leaders are individuals who stand up to inequality and promote knowledge in the face of challenge.

Katherine Johnson shakes John Glenn’s hand in the movie Hidden Figures.

All characters give a stunning performance in life-transforming scenes paired with well-placed soundtrack music produced by Benjamin Wallfisch, Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer.  In the movie, Dorothy Vaughan oversees the calculation area despite not being a supervisor.  She foresees that the new IBM machine will replace all her co-workers’ jobs. Courageous, she learns a new programming skill and shares her knowledge within her group. Further, Mary Jackson realizes that in order to become the first African-American design engineer, she must petition a court to attend a segregated school for engineering classes.  Al Harrison dismantles segregation activities in his offices to promote team knowledge. And Jon Glenn stands up for Katherine in making sure she returns to the program.

Leadership is standing up for what is right, even though it is easier to run away.

I too had a defining leadership experience through an unconventional occurrence. I am truly thankful for the various managers, directors and CEOs who supported me. They did their best to guide me given that I was unique.  But one day, my experience almost turned fearful.  Not everyone was excited to promote knowledge. I just won Engineer of the Year Modern Day Technology Leader Award, and I was the youngest from the company to receive that type of award.  Then one day after work, I went outside to find my car deeply scratched from end to end with racial slurs, in anger from my award. I reported it.  The company did everything it could. Unfortunately the person was never caught. But, I had a choice.  I could become angry. Or I could become powerful.

Olympia LePoint supported Mission Control from her R.O.S.C. desk,

now an exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles, California. 

 Image courtesy of California State University Northridge Alumni Association.

I will always thank my manager Steve for helping me be courageous during that time. He told me that terrible things may happen in life, but I show my strength by how I respond.  He said that I was at the company for a powerful reason.  And it was my job to keep my head focused on the science.  And my work will always speak for itself.  He did everything he could to provide access to higher training for me.  And I will always be thankful for Steve’s executive mentoring. Although I had to repaint my entire car and be escorted at nights, I realized that sometimes we must go through challenging situations to become the leaders we wish to become.  With Steve’s leadership and support, I later channeled my emotions into producing life-changing science that changed how NASA views System Safety and Reliability practices. This work later landed me into a new leadership role where I supported Mission Control during Space Shuttle launches.  It was in that room where I was helped launch my dear friend, retired NASA astronaut Robert Curbeam to space, who flew John Glenn on his last mission to space.  Sometimes life comes back around in a full circle.

In conclusion, I highly encourage audiences to watch Hidden Figuress.  Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Jim Parsons and Kevin Costner all give phenomenal performances.  They honor the women who made my career as a rocket scientist possible. I honor Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson’s courageous life stories, and I am thrilled that this film was made.

Article source : https://www.huffingtonpost.com/olympia-lepoint/movie-review-hidden-figur_b_13997592.html

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The Most Powerful Part of Hidden Figures?

The Women, Of Course

By Glynis Costin / Updated Jan 05, 2017 @ 2:14 pm 

In the early 1960s, three African-American female mathematicians who worked at NASA headquarters in Virginia as “computers” helped launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit. The behind-the-scenes actions of these unsung heroines helped put America ahead of the Russians in The Space Race, boosted confidence in the U.S. Space program, and changed history. But it wasn’t until many years after their brilliant contributions that these women were finally recognized. Hidden Figures (based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s book of the same name) tells their true story. 

Their journey was unsurprisingly fraught with rampant sexism and racism, from the opening scene in which a white cop pulls up to them on the side of the road and questions them as they attempt to fix their Chevy Impala, incredulous that a woman (Octavia Spencer as Katherine Johnson) can repair a car.  “It’s the starter,” she says triumphantly. He’s even more amazed when the three women tell him they work at NASA.

Impressed, the cop ends up escorting them to work, prompting Mary Jackson (played by Janelle Monae) to quip, “Three negro women are chasing a white police officer down the highway in Hampton, Virginia, 1961. Ladies, that there is a God-ordained miracle.” From there we see the three friends both in and out of the workplace, dealing with segregated bathrooms, coffee stations, libraries and buses, not getting credit for their work, being denied education and promotions, consistently being underestimated by men, and the list goes on and on.

On her first day working a with a group of male engineers, one of them hands Katherine Johnson (played by Taraji P. Hensen) a trash can to empty. Her work partner (played by Jim Parsons) attempts to derail her by blacking out crucial numbers in reports she needs to analyze, insisting they are classified. He also removes her names from the reports they co-author.
While the film obviously presents racism and sexism in a critical  light, it nevertheless portrays the time period itself in more of a Mad Men kind of nostalgia—from the colorful dresses and skinny ties to the rotary phones, gingham picnics and cat-eye glasses. There are also a few moments that feel a bit contrived—like when Mary almost gets stuck in a NASA lab where dangerous tests are being conducted because her high heel gets caught (Yes, we get it! She’s a woman who wears pumps!). Or when Katherine’s boss Al Harrison (played by an even keeled Kevin Costner) dramatically tears the "Colored" sticker off the coffee pot Katherine has been forced to use then destroys the "Coloreds Only” bathroom sign with a hammer, declaring,  “Here at NASA we all pee the same color.”
 
Still, the history of conquering racism and sexism in America is about slowly chipping away at injustices—and the end result here is a feel good movie about an important subject and a fascinating moment in our history.
Here, we celebrate the most powerful part of Hidden Figures: the women.

Taraji P. Henson
■ HOW YOU KNOW HER:

As the acid-tongued, fur-wearing matriarch Cookie on Fox’s Empire. She also earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2009.

■ IN THIS FILM SHE PLAYS:

Katherine Johnson, a brilliant mathematician and widowed mother of three who helped calculate the launch coordinates and trajectory needed to launch U.S. astronaut John Glenn into outer space.

■ BEST MOMENTS:

After weeks of suffering in silence, Katherine erupts into an angry speech explaining to her boss why she is perennially late (she has to run to the inconveniently located  “coloreds only” bathroom). When she talks her way into a “classified” meeting and ends up doing a calculation nobody else could do, impressing astronaut John Glenn (played charmingly by Glen Powell) who calls her “the smart one,” and when she tells off a handsome military officer (Mahershala Ali,) for underestimating her, which of course, only makes him like her more and romance ensues. 

■ WHAT’S NEXT?:

An untitled film co-starring Tika Sumpter in 2017 and, of course, more Empire.

Octavia Spencer

■ HOW YOU KNOW HER:

You've seem her in major films like The Help, Fruitvale Station, Allegiant and more.

■ IN THIS FILM SHE PLAYS:

The no-nonsense Dorothy Vaughan, another NASA mathematician who is denied promotion to supervisor even though she’s already doing the job.

■ BEST MOMENTS:

Sensing how computers will make her job obsolete, Dorothy teaches herself and her co-workers how to program. When a librarian won’t lend her the book she needs because it’s not from the “colored section” she steals it, justifying the behavior to her surprised child, declaring, “I pay taxes, too!”

■ WHAT’S NEXT?:

The film Gifted this April alongside Chris Evans.

Janelle Monae

■ HOW YOU KNOW HER:

Best known for her music (including hit song Tight Rope), she’s also a CoverGirl spokesperson. Her film debut was in this year’s critically acclaimed Moonlight as a supportive second mother figure to a troubled teen.

■ IN THIS FILM SHE PLAYS:

Mary Jackson, another NASA employee and the sassiest of the three friends. She wants to become an engineer but is prevented from taking the classes she needs due to Virginia’s Jim Crow Laws—the state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the south.

■ BEST MOMENTS:

When she petitions a judge, cleverly flattering him that his judgment will be an important step in the Civil Rights Movement, which convinces him to let her take night courses. One night when she even convinces her workaholic pals to let loose, drink, and dance.

■ WHAT’S NEXT?:

More music and working on her charity Fem The Future—a grassroots movement to raise awareness of and opportunities for women and those who identify as women. Based on this year's debuts, she will also likely be in more films (we hope!).

Kirsten Dunst
■ HOW YOU KNOW HER:

As the ambitious head cheerleader in Bring it On, plus The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, Spiderman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, FX’s Fargo and more.

■ IN THIS FILM SHE PLAYS:

 Vivian, the condescending boss who oversees the female mathematicians at NASA.

■ BEST MOMENTS:

When Dorothy asks her why she’s not being promoted even though she’s doing the job of a supervisor Vivian replies cooly, “Well, that’s NASA for you.” And then, when she awkwardly tries to connect/apologize to Dorothy as the two share a moment in the newly non-segregated restroom.

■ WHAT’S NEXT: 

Beguiled with Nicole Kidman this June, and then Woodshock, written and directed by Kate and Laura Mulleavy, the designers of the fashion label Rodarte.

Article source : https://www.instyle.com/reviews-coverage/movies/hidden-figures-movie-powerful-women?slide=1634653#1634653

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A Woman Just Won the 'Nobel Prize of Math' for the First Time
Karen Uhlenbeck is a mathematician and professor at the University of Texas.

By Daniele Selby/  March 20, 2019

 Why Global Citizens Should Care
Science, technology, engineering, and math have been historically male-dominated fields, but trailblazers like Karen Uhlenbeck are proving that they don’t have to be. Uhlenbeck is shattering stereotypes simply by succeeding in her field and showing girls and women everywhere that anything is possible. You can take action here to help advance gender equality.

Pythagoras, Euclid, Guillaume L’Hôpital, Johann Bernoulli, John Nash. History is littered with the names of famous mathematicians, nearly all of them men, after whom formulas and entire fields of math have been named.
But Karen Uhlenbeck, a mathematician, has proven that when it comes to math, women are absolute equals — and she didn’t even need theorems to do it.
The University of Texas professor became the first woman to win the Abel Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize of Math,” on Tuesday.

Uhlenbeck’s decades of work have touched on several disciplines, including geometry, quantum theory, and physics, but is being recognized, in particular, for her “pioneering achievements in geometric partial differential equations, gauge theory and integrable systems, and for the fundamental impact of her work on analysis, geometry and mathematical physics,” according to the prize’s website.

The Abel Prize, first awarded in 2003, is bestowed by the King of Norway and comes with a 6 million Norwegian kroner (approximately $700,000) cash prize.
Uhlenbeck is a celebrated mathematician, having previously won the National Medal of Science in 2000 and receiving a MacArthur Fellowship — also known as a “genius grant” — in 1983.
“Uhlenbeck’s research has led to revolutionary advances at the intersection of mathematics and physics,” Paul Goldbart, dean of the University of Texas’ College of Natural Sciences, said in a statement.
“Her pioneering insights have applications across a range of fascinating subjects, from string theory, which may help explain the nature of reality, to the geometry of space-time,” he added.
Read More: The First Person on Mars Will 'Likely' Be a Woman, NASA Head Says
Uhlenbeck told the New York Times that she has been acutely aware of the unique opportunity she had to be a role model for the next generation of women in academia. Growing up, she said her own role model was famed chef and television personality, Julia Child.
“I certainly very much felt I was a woman throughout my career. That is, I never felt like one of the guys,” she said.
Still she considers herself lucky, telling the Times, “I was in the forefront of a generation of women who actually could get real jobs in academia.”

But almost as important as her contributions to her field, are Uhlenbeck’s contributions to the next generation of women. Trailblazers like Uhlenbeck help show women and girls around the world that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, which have traditionally been male-dominated, do not need to remain so.
Her historic win is not only helping to advance the field of mathematics, but shattering gender stereotypes.

Article source : https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/math-abel-prize-first-woman/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=global&utm_campaign=general-content&linkId=65062061&fbclid=IwAR2F2yH3o9NNPULBw3QcO2AtMZ_uSHRhnKrxLZmu5SCh8gbBssyK1rsbTZQ

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< Questions >

Q1. What images are coming up when you heard about below words? 

Stereotype	NASA	Gender role	Racism	Math
Scientist	Spacecraft	Hidden figures	Novel prize	Sexism

Q2. In your country, do you have gender specific jobs?

Q3. In your country are the responsibilities of a mother the same as the responsibilities of a father to their families?

Q4. The University of Texas professor became the first woman to win the Abel Prize, considered the “Nobel Prize of Math,” on Tuesday. Do you know any women Novel prize winner? 

Q5. Are there different expectations for sons and daughters?

Q6. What jobs are deemed as appropriate for men but inappropriate for women?

Q7. Is it common for women and men to take part in sporting activities? Do they take part in the same type of sporting activities?

Q8. Have you been the victim of discrimination? What kind of discrimination?

Do you have many friends of a different race or ethnicity? Are these differences meaningful?

Q9. What are traditional male and female social roles and responsibilities? Are you a traditional person?

Q10. Do you trust men or women more in any particular profession? How do you feel about male nurses? How about a female president?

Q11. Women are on average paid less than men for doing the same job. Why is this?

Q12. When you are with your friends of the same gender, do you complain about the opposite gender? What kind of complaints do your friends have?

Q13. If someone tells a racist or sexist joke, how do you react? If you laugh, does that mean you are racist or sexist?

Q14. What do you think about gay marriage? Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children?

Q15. Who suffers more discrimination on the basis of age? Old people or young people?

Q16. Are you a member of a religion? How does your religion treat members of other religions?

Q17. Which types of people suffer the least discrimination? Are you one of them? If not, do you envy those people?

Q18. Is the level of discrimination in the world rising or dropping? What makes you think so?

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Proposals to tax pieds-à-terre in New York are gaining ground

London and Vancouver have both come up with ways to tax occasional residents

Mar 14th 2019 | NEW YORK

NUMBER 220 Central Park South is one of New York City’s swankier addresses. Its amenities include a golf simulation room and a saltwater swimming pool. In January Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel, a hedge fund, bought a penthouse in the building for $238m, setting a record for the priciest home in America. Mr Griffin, who has homes in Chicago, Florida and London, reportedly will not make this his primary residence, thus reigniting an old proposal to tax New York City’s many pieds-à-terre.

Pieds-à-terre are part-time second homes occupied for less than half the year. Many are simply convenient places to park money and are vacant most of the time. Because their owners have their primary residences out of state, they are not subject to state or local income taxes. Nor do they generate much in local sales-tax revenues. After the Griffin deal closed, Corey Johnson, the city council’s Speaker, announced that it was “time for a pied-à-terre tax”.

Article source : https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/03/16/proposals-to-tax-pieds-a-terre-in-new-york-are-gaining-ground?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/proposalstotaxpiedsterreinnewyorkaregaininggroundislandsinthesky&fbclid=IwAR0-jr8E5ongW3VxZzCAc3mhKTbCaawtQRZk5__2WAwGcqVjxGWmGNALYcI

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Housing crisis: more than 200,000homes in England lie empty

Phillip Inman/ Thu 20 Apr 2017 19.15 BST

Birmingham is the city outside London with the most unused properties, followed by Bradford and Liverpool, new figures show

More than 200,000 homes in England with a total value of £43bn were empty for at least six months during 2016 despite the desperate shortage of properties to rent and buy.

According to official figures, Birmingham was the worst affected city outside London with 4,397 empty homes worth an estimated £956m, followed by Bradford and Liverpool.

The wealthy borough of Kensington and Chelsea was the worst performer in London as super-rich owners rejected renting them out or selling up in favour of leaving their properties lying idle.

The royal borough had 1,399 empty homes worth £664m, compared with second-placed Croydon, which had 1,216 empty homes worth £577m.

Across London there were 19,845 homes sitting idle for over six months in 2016, which amounted to £9.4bn worth of property, based on the average price in London of £474,704.

In response squatters groups have sought to occupy empty homes, with one group in January taking over a £15m central London property purchased by a Russian oligarch in 2014 to open it as a homeless shelter.

Councils and the government have worked to cut the number of empty homes, primarily by reducing tax incentives which encouraged owners to leave properties unused.

In recent years most councils have increased council tax bills on second homes and adopted stricter rules on council tax discounts for empty homes.

But some councils appear to have worked harder than others to make inroads into the stock of empty homes. While Birmingham recorded a 13% jump in empty properties in the last year and Liverpool suffered a 5% rise to 3,449, Manchester registered the greatest fall over a decade, dropping 88% to 1,365.

Towns and cities in the north and Midlands filled the top 20 list of local authority areas with the highest number of empty homes. Blackburn shot up the rankings to ninth place after a 35% jump, the biggest increase of any authority outside London, pushing neighbouring Bolton into 10th place.

Homes sitting idle for over six months

Property investment firm Property Partner, which collated the report from the latest Department for Communities & Local Government figures, said Kensington and Chelsea stood out from most London boroughs, which have recorded a fall in the number of empty homes over the last 10 years.

In 2006, Newham in East London, was the worst performing borough in the capital, but dramatically cut the number of empty homes over the following 10 years from 2,070 to 593. Likewise, Lambeth has recorded a fall from 2,807 in 2006 to 756 in 2016.

The trend for the world’s super-rich to invest in prime London property as a way to safeguard their wealth, without the need to secure a rental income, has meant the number of empty homes in Kensington and Chelsea rose 22.7% over the same period and 8.5% since 2015.

Property Partner said a large drop in the number of empty homes across England from 2006 stalled in 2015. The figures for 2016 showed little progress.

Article source : https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/20/over-200000-homes-in-england-still-lying-empty-despite-housing-shortages

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A Mumbai problem: Many vacant houses, many homeless
mumbai Updated: Mar 22, 2018 10:39 IST/ Smruti Koppikar/ Hindustan Times

This must be the biggest conundrum in Mumbai – lakhs of unsold or unoccupied high-end apartments and millions of poorer citizens living in squalid and dehumanised housing. Yet, affordable or inclusionary housing remains a pipe dream in the city that should have perfected a few models by now.

With unfailing regularity, international property consultants produce reports that offer an insight into how deep the problem runs. There are now 1.09 lakh unsold apartments in Mumbai, most in the upper-middle class segments, according to a recent report. Despite discounts and freebies ​offered by builders and relentless seductive advertising promising unimaginably utopian lives to buyers, the number of unsold apartments has hit its highest mark.

Add to this inventory the lakhs of unoccupied apartments across the city. Most of these, it would be fair to estimate, would be in gated enclaves with exotic – often misspelt – names bought as “investment homes” or second house and so on. Together, these unsold and unoccupied apartments represent the worst side of the city’s housing policies and its skewed market.

At the other end, the numbers of Mumbaiites living in squalid slums, informal or decrepit houses, living without a roof over their heads, or migrants sharing a bed by the hour in a single room remain a blot on the city. Slum dwellers comprised nearly 50-53% of the city’s population in the last decade; the number has marginally declined since slums were redeveloped. But as resettled slum-dwellers say, their quality of life did not vastly improve whereas the cost of living increased. Many sold their flats and went to other slums.

The 2011 Census Survey showed that Mumbai had the maximum slum population of any metropolitan city in India, nearly three times that of Delhi. This has been variously exploited by agencies, real estate lobby and politicians who targeted migrants as “outsiders”. People flock to Mumbai because, above all, it offers work or jobs giving them a chance to improve their lives.

In a jobs-driven city, affordable or inclusionary housing should have been the de facto government policy. A clear government policy should have set the template. Instead, as the city expanded, the housing sector was left to the wisdom of builders, market principles, and monetisation of land. These favoured the profit-first approach, the anti-thesis of what low-cost or affordable housing required.

Mumbai has had mass affordable housing projects in its history. The chawls for textile mill workers, though not the most benevolent of all, gave the working class a low-cost housing option; chawls or semi-apartments built by the Bombay Improvement Trust and Bombay Development Department in the 20th century as “sanitary dwellings for the poor” in prime areas are examples of planned low-cost housing with government intervention.

But when affordability and nature of housing was decided by profits, it was skewed in favour of the high-profits segment. Affordable housing was reduced to a phrase in government documents; successive chief ministers promised it but it meant little on the ground. Now when affordable housing is back in public conversations, it is discussed for its economic potential – capital investment, millions of jobs generated, direct and indirect impact on other sectors, GDP and so on – but key points are still ignored.

Why, for example, can all slum land in Mumbai not be reserved for affordable housing? Despite the slum sprawl, slums occupy less than 10% of the city’s land mass. Why is Floor Space Index (FSI) the only parameter by which construction and housing viability is determined? Why can there not be a mandatory and strictly-applied policy that builders undertaking commercial construction must also construct a certain percentage of it as affordable housing to be sold by a state agency? The possibilities are many.

Affordable or inclusionary housing should be the default for housing policy in Mumbai. But it will require an audacious chief minister and a bold departure from the existing cosy-for-all paradigm. Till that happens, the contradiction of vacant unsold apartment and un​-​housed people will persist.

ARTICLE SOURCE : https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/a-mumbai-problem-many-vacant-houses-many-homeless/story-Nl7ArLUosMTOTw3uNHkfkI.html

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Abandoned buildings still house problems
by Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku/ Dec 3, 2016

Japan’s vacant house problem will become worse before it becomes better. According to government estimates there are 8 million residences in Japan with no one living in them, a number that Bloomberg reports will increase to 20 million by 2033, representing a third of all the homes in Japan. A good portion of these residences are abandoned. There are no plans for anyone to live in them ever again, a prospect that alarms the central government, as it should. Abandoned homes are firetraps. Often they are filled with garbage that breeds vermin and surrounded by overgrown vegetation. Unmaintained sewage systems and septic tanks can spread disease. They are eyesores that diminish surrounding property values.

For that reason, the central government implemented a law last year that allows for the designation of certain properties as abandoned houses (akiya) and outlines steps for them to be destroyed. The law gives local governments the authority to make the designations, after which a notice is sent to the owner of the property demanding that he or she remedy the situation and stating that if nothing is done within a certain period of time, the special property tax cut for residences will be rescinded. Normally, land for residential use that contains a structure is taxed at only one-sixth the normal rate, and the structures themselves at one-third the normal rate. So if owners ignore the akiya notice, they will be charged the full 100 percent rate on all property taxes, national and local. Then, if the owner still does nothing, after a certain period of time the local government will have the authority to tear down the house and send the bill to the owner.

Though this sounds simple enough, it is difficult to carry out. In many cases it is almost impossible to determine title to some properties owing to the fact that the person whose name is on the deed has died. In such a situation, the heirs to the property will have to be tracked down and if there is more than one, each person must be contacted and notified of the akiya designation before any action can proceed. This, in itself, can be an expensive undertaking and many local governments don’t want to do it.

To make things easier, some local governments provide subsidies in order to encourage property owners to tear down abandoned buildings. For instance, Kasama in Ibaraki Prefecture will cover one-third of demolition expenses up to ¥300,000. Toyohashi in Aichi Prefecture will pay up to two-thirds the cost of demolition when the expense is over ¥200,000, but only for wooden houses. In Minami Aizu, Fukushima Prefecture, you can receive a demolition subsidy of up to ¥800,000 if you do not pay any local taxes due to low income, or up to ¥500,000 if you are eligible for local taxes. Tokyo, as well as most other major cities, offers no demolition subsidy.

The process of tearing down a house is called kaitai, and some companies specialize in such a service. There are various portal sites on the internet that list these companies on a regional basis, with examples of jobs that give property owners an idea of what the cost may be. On one site we found an outline of a job for a house in Mitaka, Tokyo. The floor area of the house was 33 tsubo (about 100 sq. meters), and the cost of dismantling was set at ¥25,000 per tsubo. In addition, the property had a 33-meter-long cinder block wall that cost ¥2,500 per meter to take down, and a shed that cost ¥15,000 to remove. The disposal of various appliances on the property cost ¥30,000. Additional costs covered the use of special machinery (¥100,000) as well as scaffolding and other equipment to keep the demolition work contained (¥81,600). After a discount was applied, the total cost of the job came to ¥1,260,000.

Additional costs include removal of septic tanks and underground pipes, as well as refuse disposal. After the house is torn down, the kaitai company must get rid of everything. Such companies must be issued certificates to recycle construction materials, and they will definitely pass on the cost to the customer and maybe add a surcharge.

If you’re looking to knock down a building, as with any large job, it’s best to shop around in order to find the best price. In order to do that, however, a representative of the company has to visit the structure to be torn down. The owner should be there during the inspection in order to pin the contractor down on an estimate and make sure they explain every detail of the job. At the same time, the owner should talk to their neighbors so that they understand that this kind of work, which can be noisy, is going to take place.

After the contractor is chosen, the local government must be informed of the work at least one week before it commences if the size of the structure being demolished is more than 80 sq. meters. The contractor will normally handle the paperwork, including permits for recycling refuse and using public roads in case the property doesn’t have enough space to park vehicles and equipment. In addition, electrical and gas utilities should be informed, and if there is a septic tank that is going to remain it should be cleaned before work begins. Waterworks should remain turned on since demolition requires water to keep down dust.

First, the contractor will erect scaffolding and hang tarp so that dust and debris don’t escape. Then workers rip out walls and floors, and after that the frame is dismantled. All refuse is sorted by hand. Some local governments also mandate that the soil be checked for contaminants and cleaned if any are found. After all the refuse is carted away, the contractor will level the ground.

When demolition and removal is complete, the owner must report the work to the local branch office of the Ministry of Justice so that the structure can be removed from maps and other registries. If this isn’t done within a month after the work is finished, the owner will be fined. Notaries can do this work as proxies for a fee.

Article source : https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/12/03/how-tos/abandoned-buildings-still-house-problems/#.W14SPsKRVhE

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Editorials: The vacant housing problem

May 25, 2015

There were some 8.2 million vacant houses — or one in seven — nationwide as of October 2013. This record number represents more than a twofold increase over the past 25 years. A new law aimed at coping with problems related to them took effect on Monday. Both the public and private sectors need to work out measures under the law to reduce the hazards posed by vacant houses such as fires and collapse but also to reduce their numbers.

Behind the increase in empty houses is the graying of the nation’s population and a population flight to urban areas. When aging rural residents die or move to nursing homes, their houses end up unoccupied because their children, who often live and work in cities, have no interest in moving back.

More than 400 municipalities have enacted by-laws to deal with vacant houses. In response to calls for similar efforts on the national level, the Abe administration initiated the new law, which the Diet enacted in November. Targeted by the law are vacant houses that are in danger of collapse, contain garbage that poses health risks, or are deemed to be blighted. Once such properties are categorized as “specially designated vacant houses,” municipality officials can enter them and identify their owners by using fixed-assets tax information. The municipalities can then request the owners to eliminate the hazards and if they refuse to comply, the municipal authorities can demolish the houses.

The legal powers given to municipalities are expected to help them proceed with steps they deem necessary and appropriate in a legal manner. But municipalities must strictly follow the procedures spelled out in the law, so resolving problems may take a long time. Municipalities should share the knowledge they gain in applying this law with other authorities and the national government with the aim of improving the law as necessary.

What is more important will be adopting measures to reduce the number of vacant houses. In a commendable move, several regional banks in Kyushu have started providing low-interest loans to people who plan to demolish their unoccupied houses. Other banks should follow suit.

Developing the market for the sale of pre-owned houses will also be important. In North America and Europe, houses retain or increase their value over a long period because maintenance is regularly carried out, and used homes account for 60 to 90 percent of the housing market. The corresponding figure in Japan is slightly more than 10 percent.

The national government, the housing industry and the financial sector should develop measures that will help expand the market for used houses. The measures should include expansion of the house renovation industry, expanding the system to eval‎‎uate the real-estate value of used houses and improve tax measures and bank loans for those who want to renovate their houses as well as for those who want to buy used properties.

Article source : https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/05/25/editorials/the-vacant-housing-problem/#.W14NtcKRVhE

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< Questions >

Q1. What do you think of the vacant home phenomenon?

Q2. What are the pieds-à-terre?

**** Pieds-à-terre are part-time second homes occupied for less than half the year. 

Q3. How do you think about the proposal to tax New York City’s many pieds-à-terre?

Q4. In India, there are many vacant homes and beggars at a time. Why does it happen?

Q5. Is buying a vacant house a good Idea?

Q6. Is there a vacant property crisis in your country?

Q7. How can municipalities confront the vacant property challenge?

Q8. Where would you like to live between the city and the rural area? Why?