Sugar as Citizen Relationship Management | SugarCon 2011

CITIZEN

RIGHTS

MANAGEMENT

When three or more sugars are combined the resulting complicated structure is called a polysaccharide.

One interpretation of the recent and ongoing unprecedented events northern Africa and southwest Asia is that governments neglected to cultivate relationships with their citizens. What might have evolved had governments in more than 20 countries extended Sugar CRM to maintain two-way information interchanges with their citizens?

About 100 days ago a series of events in Tunisia resulted the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

For many, the situation was a classic zero-sum two-party game where what was good for the President and his Constitutional Democratic Rally party was equally bad for the opposition and vice versa.

This viewpoint is tragically wrong. In Egypt and Tunisia, like many countries in the Super-Sahelian region, there are at least three other players in the game: microbes such as AIDS; earthquakes and tsunamis; and the sands of the Sahara itself. None of these opponents are compassionate or rational.

Twelve thousand years ago people much like us were seeking water for their flocks.Then, as now, the summer monsoon rains often brought life to the Sahara Desert.

One problem was to know what to move. It seems clear that, despite valiant and persistent efforts by people living near Uan Afada in southwestern Libya, Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) were not suitable for domestication.

The second problem was when to move the goats and the cattle and the people to the wells. If you could remember where the wells were. Some nameless genius found an answer.

The red line is the Tropic of Cancer. At the time of the summer solstice the sun will be directly overhead at noon so objects below will cast no shadow.

At Nabta, about one hundred kilometers west of Abu Sembel, people built the earliest known houses, made ceramic pots and dug wells. They also quarried and then dragged stone megaliths that were placed to serve as a compass and as a calendar. The monuments documented when and where to move the cattle.

As we cross that immensity of time, the Tropic of Cancer could use a new name since the Sun has moved out of that constellation. Long ago, Africa’s climate warmed, the monsoons moved, and the Nabta people had to abandon their homes as the sands of the Sahara began their relentless march northward. Perhaps the people moved northeast and contributed to Egyptian civilization.

In the thousand years after they were built, the Pyramids have seen the northern Pole star change and have witnessed the launch on September 5, 1977 of a spacecraft named Voyager 1.

Voyager 1 photographed other planets and is still working despite now being almost ten billion miles away and traveling with a velocity of 17 kilometers per second. Among other things, Voyager carries recordings of sounds, music and greetings in fifty-five languages including Arabic. Current expectations are the Voyagers will continue transmitting fourteen more years. Back here on Earth the species that launched the two Voyagers has not always solved other engineering problems quite so well.

The KUDUS software application main menu as seen on an Intel Atom netbook.

If we selected Countries on the main menu and then clicked Population here we would see

In this sample and on the planet, Egypt is a first quartile country – considerable management skills are needed.

As one might expect in a developed nation, the national capital is the largest city BUT Cairo does NOT house the bulk of the population.

Note the differences in Mali (population about 14 million)

Were Egypt to evaluate national candidates based on performance as governors, there are some considerations due to the diversity in populations, densities and environments.

Urbanization only measures how many people live in what are defined as cities – not how well they live. Of concern to leaders is whether services can be scaled as quickly as populations grow.

Another view of urbanization.

A reasonable goal for Egypt would be 270,000 doctors. The equally important goal is to have doctors and hospitals reasonably distributed across the country.

We note in passing we are somewhat skeptical of some of the claims – overstating your doctors working leads to hard feelings when a neighbor needs help, and you can’t deliver.

No SUGAR coating: Egypt has an estimated unemployment rate of 10% (not good for several reasons) and a Knapp kappa of -40,271 (very dangerous).

Egypt has a powerful advantage: if these figures are at all accurate, this is essentially a monolingual country.

The real questions for Egypt are: is someone truly literate (has been tested as being able to speak, read, listen and write) AND does that person have reliable and inexpensive access to the internet?

One of the KUDUS submenus – this time we are interested in statistics (middle of lowest row)

KUDUS showing off some of its eye candy and unpaid advertising. We had to SLOW DOWN the synchronization with SUGAR to get a screenshot of the green progress bar.

Another of the KUDUS submenus

We remain unconvinced that even after normalization measures like the quartile variation coefficient have any meaning.

For those who find spirals visually attractive or mathematically interesting KUDUS has a section on the underlying analytical geometry – we use the graphics to test both GPUs and CPUs.

Besides being a famous Irish pattern the triple spiral is also used as a symbol for the closely related trisaccharides Nigerotriose, Maltotriulose and Maltotriose.

Generally, one wants (1) a longer red line (2) a red line that goes from the lower left to the upper right and (3) blue bars that decrease in amplitude toward the right

Another KUDUS submenu – this time for real-time continuous counting.

Biometrics from two fingertips is sufficient.

Much to be said for a database linking addresses with GPS. And for giving people in seismically dangerous area identity cards with RFIDs.

Kudus is concerned with whether an individual computer can host KUDUS itself. Egypt should be concerned with whether this computer has current operating system patches and antivirus.

Notes in case the interviewee needs immediate services. We would be inclined to use armed forces auxiliaries because, like all soldiers, they have sworn to defend their homeland. That defense always begins when one Egyptian helps another Egyptian.

KUDUS also prefers to record an individual’s emergency contact email, education, skills, work location and family connections.

Where relevant, KUDUS also records an individual’s military, medical, disaster response, vehicle driving and ecclesiastical specialty training and qualifications.

In our experience, all Homo sapiens are homogeneous: all hominid parents want their children to grow up stronger and safer and smarter. For Egypt today that means an emphasis on electricity from solar panels, the cultivation of bio-fuels, and enhancement of the education system to produce more doctors and 21st century communications networks. It all begins with accurate counting.

Egypt must actively encourage Saudi Arabia and and Mediterranean neighbors to jointly construct at least one maglev from Casablanca to Mecca to transport both goods and pilgrims economically and safely.

It does not matter whether the location is Nicaragua, the Ivory Coast, the two parts of Libya, the three parts of Sudan, the seismically ravaged prefectures of Japan or even any of 45 American states or about 2500 United States counties. Wherever people are, especially if data about them is dynamic, the question of quality of life has to be asked. And the answer is Sugar.

The Sahara is defeating humans again – but not if we put up solar panels. A million millions is a trillion. The prefix for that is ‘tera’. That would make any partners building such grand structures tera-ists. And they would also be advocates of Terra-ism. We think that would make our Nabtan predecessors very pleased and proud.

Peter F. Zoll

pzoll@imagsts.com

I-MAG STS Corporation

www.imagsts.com

March 4, 2011All rights reserved; all wrongs reversed