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	<title>Gary Metcalf</title>
	<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog</link>
	<description>Systems and how the world works</description>
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		<title>PNC Online Banking: A Service Nightmare</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The announcement that National City was being acquired by PNC Bank happened towards the end of October, 2008.  It was many months before the signs on the local branches where I live changed, and not until the third weekend in February, 2010 that the online banking system switched to PNC.  So basically, PNC had about [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=48</link>
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		<title>Service, security, location and identity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Convergences are always interesting.  In the last two days I&#8217;ve been dealing with issues about location, identity and security, and thinking about how these related to questions of service. I am currently less than 200 miles from my home, in Louisville, for a few days.  When I tried to use my Visa card at a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=34</link>
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		<title>The challenge of large-scale systems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Aside from all of the personal reasons that people do or don&#8217;t like President Barack Obama, his choice (or willingness, or apparent need) to intervene in systems at the highest levels has caused great consternation.  Conservatives seem to see this as inappropriate or unnecessary government intervention.  Liberals have been more supportive, but mostly about the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=25</link>
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		<title>Business, Government, and the Economy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The principles of laissez-faire capitalism are clear that government should not control business.  This leads some people to think that government should have no involvement in business at all; that there is, or should be, a clear, bright line separating them.  Obviously, that can’t happen.  There is a constant dance about how they interact in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=21</link>
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		<title>Mental Models and Problems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The idea that people hold &#8220;mental models&#8221; of the world may seem trivial or obvious, or both.  Everyone has a way of seeing the world, affected by the cultures and the families in which we were raised, our own experiences, our personalities, and so on.  Mostly, they account for our individual differences; why some of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=17</link>
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		<title>The reality of economic systems</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The question of the “reality” of systems can quickly devolve into a philosophical battle about the nature of reality itself.  Much of the answer for systems research depends upon how you define the system – as to whether it refers to the things that you are trying to learn about, or the process that you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=16</link>
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		<title>Boundaries</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How do you choose what you want to study – or learn more about, or better understand, or solve?  In systems work, this entails the drawing of a boundary.  The boundary separates what is to be examined from what is to be excluded.  It defines the question or the problem.  While this may seem patently [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=15</link>
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		<title>Systems and Research</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have been struggling for years now with issues about systems.  First, how do you introduce the basic principles of systems to students, or other people who are interested but have no previous background?  There have been many different books and articles written at different levels, for different audiences, but (for me) all of them [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=14</link>
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		<title>Welcome to garymetcalf.com</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have reconstructed this blog, at least for now, to test some of my own ideas about systems and the ways in which I understand them.  Comments, questions, retorts, and alternate views are welcome. This WordPress installation was installed and configured by David Ing, as he wrote the instructions on the Coevolving Innovations blog.]]></description>
		<link>http://garymetcalf.com/blog/?p=1</link>
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