in #TodaysReads, Corruption, Laughter

#TodaysReads : Corrupt Kenyans, Google’s affair with the NSA, Laughter and more(7/5/2014)

So I want to try something new that may or may not work. Everyday when I wake up the first thing I do is check my news feed for cool things that I usually share with my followers on twitter and more recently, so that people who consistently read the links I post can find them, I’ve been tagging them with #todaysreads. Now I want to bring a few of those links here to the blog.
I’m doing this because on twitter, with a 140 character limit, doesn’t provide enough space to leave a comment on why you think someone should read this or any thoughts on the link. I’ll be able to do this on the blog quite easily, though it may not always happen. I think I’ll limit the number of links to about 6.
Now lets begin:

‘Everyone Is Corrupt in Kenya, Even Grandmothers’ from Michela Wrong. Title is linkbait but it’s a frank, damning piece of writing laying everything wrong with Kenya right now right, including the recent terrorist attacks(see this), on corruption’s feet. Who knew Transparency International was launched because of us?

“A presidency under ethnic Luo contender Raila Odinga, the argument went back in 2013, carried the risk of unprecedented “eating” by a long-sidelined group, hungry for the perks of office. “There was definitely a narrative doing the rounds that the country couldn’t ‘afford’ a Raila election win, whereas these guys [Kenyatta and his allies] had already made their fortunes and their appetites would be smaller,” says one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

The global anti-corruption group Transparency International owes its very existence to the intractability of Kenya’s “eating” culture. It was in Nairobi that Peter Eigen, then the retiring World Bank director for East Africa, frustrated at seeing a succession of development programs undermined by graft, decided in the 1980s to create an organization dedicated to tackling the blight.

Managing with Trust and Expectation by Eric Hersman. He talks about the best way to ensure compliance in an organisation reminding us that making the right hires are more important than the oversight structures in any organisation.

I suppose what I’m saying is that if you truly trust people to act like the adults they are and to do the right thing, they generally do. All the corporate oversight you can apply won’t stop an Enron from happening, so something else has to work. It has to be something that’s real though, people can sniff out very quickly if it’s a manufactured, or fake, trust. This means as much of the onus lies on the leaders to “let go” as it does for the team members to shoulder and own the expectations that come with their role.

CBK orders financial institutions to freeze Bangui assets in The Business Daily. We’re complying with a UN Security Council resolution. We should’ve done this sooner, I mean can’t we make decisions ourselves? They may not have many assessts here but this would send a strong message that we don’t support the violence.

Emails reveal close Google Relationship with NSA from Aljazeera. Damn Google, what happened to “Don’t be evil”?

Supply chained: Apple’s sapphire production will be hard to copy from the Verge. Apple’s supply chain management is considered legendary among people who deal with this type of thing. Now they’re moving more of this chain in house.

The act of laughter — or simply enjoying some humor — increases the release of endorphins and dopamine in the brain, which provides a sense of pleasure and reward.
These positive and beneficial neurochemical changes, in turn, make the immune system function better.