Sydney Morning Herald: November 24, 2007 - 10:47PM

Kevin Michael Rudd is the new and 26th Prime Minister of Australia.

At Sydney’s Wentworth Hotel, Mr John Howard conceded defeat saying, “My fellow Australians, a few moments ago I telephoned Mr Kevin Rudd and I congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on an emphatic victory.'’

I’ve just got back from choosing the next Prime Minister of Australia.

Today is Election Day in Australia and I, along with millions of my fellow Australians, am an Elector of Australia. By tomorrow we Electors should know whom we have chosen to form the new government as our next Prime Minister.

An Elector is one of the handful of entities formally enshrined in the Constitution of Australia. The others are the Sovereign, the Governor-General, the House, the Senate and the High Court of Australia.

The Constitution of Australia is internationally regarded as one of the cleverest agreements ever designed. It was crafted in Australia by our own people. It was a product, not of war nor of revolution, but of many years of business discussion, political debate, legal argument and peaceful referendum.

But, what is Australia? Click through here to find out more …

From Fox News:
As any Baby Boomer will tell you, Americans have more information to cram into their memories than ever. Yet, as we age, our capacity for recall grows weaker.

But what if you could capture every waking moment of your entire life, store it on your computer and then recall digital snapshots of everything you’ve seen and heard with just a quick search?

Renowned computer scientist Gordon Bell, head of Microsoft’s Media Presence Research Group and founder of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, thinks he might be able to do just that.

He calls it a “surrogate memory,” and what he considers an early version of it even has an official name — MyLifeBits.

Yesterday was my mentor, George Gallup’s birthday.

Professor George H. Gallup, was born 18 November 1901. He was the inventor of polling and market research and Founder of The Gallup Poll at Princeton, NJ.

He said: “Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. Any other interpretation is nonsense.”

On November 17, 1979, at JFK International Airport the School of Thinking was born.

At that meeting I outlined my plan to Edward de Bono to create Thinking Instructors to teach thinking skills in schools, businesses and families around the world.

The School of Thinking–now based on the internet at http://www.schoolofthinking.org–is exporting Thinking Lessons from Australia to over 43 countries every day.

Over the past 28 years this idea has spread around the world and has now become the second largest program for the teaching of thinking in the world. The Vatican’s 500-year mission–exporting its own European thinking system know as logic–is still farandaway the largest program in history.

Today, I was invited to Canberra (Australia’s Capital) to lecture to an audience of over 1000 accountants in the National Convention Centre.

I discussed a number of themes including the need for a BVS–a much better way of looking at how we value the assets of a company.

Amazingly, most of today’s investment and business decisions are still based on an invention that has not yet been updated for over 500 years!

In Venice in 1494, a Franciscan monk and Leonardo Da Vinci collaborator, Fra Luca Pacioli, invented double-entry bookkeeping and published the world’s first textbook on accounting principles and practice. Ever since, this has been the basis of investment decisions. Double-entry bookkeeping shows a map of how money and goods flow through a business.

But it has a major flaw. It is blind to the Intellectual Capital of the business, most of which walks out the door at 5pm every afternoon.

For more on this subject click through to What is the Real Value of a Business? …

In Beijing, in 2000, I conducted the first SOT program in China for people in the emerging IT industry. Since then SOT has continuously trained members in China through our online training programs.

In 2008 we are planning to conduct a series of SOT programs in Shanghai and we will post more information early in the new year.

SOT training, for over ten years, has been explaining the ideas of Confucius as an interesting alternative, a point of reference and as a useful comparison to Western thinking traditions.

For example, both Jesus and Confucius, as two of history’s most famous thinkers, have some things in common and there are also some interesting differences worth noting.

For more on these two thinkers click through to The Lord and The Master: Jesus and Confucius …

From time to time SOT conducts advanced leadership training with a focus on Leadership Thinking and Strategic Thinking.

There are ten positions open for the next intake of SOT Leadership Training 01/07 which will start on 01/12/07 and finish on 31/12/07.

If you would like to be considered for this 2007 intake you will need to personally commit, on your honour, to do one DFQ each day or 5 DFQs a week. Less than that will not qualify you for this training.

To express your interest write to Michael here.