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Short Takes: Are we turning Steve Jobs into a saint?

pammye — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:49:42 +0000

LINK: CLICK HERE
Source: CNN Belief Blog

CNN asked four experts on religion and technology to weigh in on whether former Apple chief Steve Jobs is achieving a kind of secular sainthood. Here are their responses:

Steve Jobs for Sainthood? Absolutely.

Gary M. Laderman is chairman ofEmory University’s religion department, director of the online magazine Religion Dispatches and author of “Sacred Matters.”

The face. The face is everywhere now.

Steve Jobs the man is dead. But Steve Jobs the myth is only growing in stature and will only continue to grow as a cultural point of reference as an inspiring model for aspiring entrepreneurs, as a compelling success story with perplexing moral commitments and as an appealing icon whose life, death and products will, for many, cross over the line from profane to sacred.

In a USA Today review of Walter Isaacson’s new book, “Steve Jobs,” the author rightly suggests that no Silicon Valley figure has attained the “mythical status” of Jobs and notes his “almost messianic zeal” for work.

Why the religious language to characterize his life and death? How does a mere mortal transform into a superhuman, glorified cultural hero?

Jobs has been the object of numerous memorials, and tributes – more than a million – are being posted on Apple’s “Remembering Steve” webpage, with condolences as well as testimonials about how Jobs and his products have touched and indeed transformed the lives of countless individuals.

Make no mistake about it, the veneration we are seeing in the aftermath of Jobs’ death is religious through and through – not “kinda” religious, or “pseudo” religious,” or “mistakenly” religious, but a genuine expression for many of heartfelt sacred sentiments of loss and glorification.

It is not tied to any institution like a church or to any discrete tradition like Buddhism; it is, instead, tied to a religious culture that will only grow in significance and influence in the years ahead: the cult of celebrity.

As more and more people move away from conventional religions and identify as “nones” (those who choose to claim “no religion” in polls and surveys), celebrity worship and other cultural forms of sacred commitment and meaning will assume an even greater market share of the spiritual marketplace.

In life Jobs may have been something of an enigma who maintained his privacy and generally stayed out of the public limelight. In death, Jobs now is an immortal celebrity whose life story, incredible wealth, familiar visage, and igadgets will serve as touchstones for many searching for meaningful gods and modes of transcendence.

It has been said that death is the great equalizer – rich and poor, successes and failures, the powerful and the disempowered cannot escape the one inevitable fact of human existence.

Jobs and other celebrities cannot escape this reality, but unlike you and me, they live on in the memories of fans and followers and become guiding lights in the mundane darkness of our ordinary lives.

Reassessing Jobs’ elevation to sainthood

James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest and author of “My Life with the Saints” and “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor and Laughter are at the Heart of the Religious Life.”

Asking if we have turned Steve Jobs into a saint is different from asking if he was a saint. The first question turns on how society sees the digital-age genius. That’s a question of perception.

The second turns on how Mr. Jobs lived his life. That’s more a question of reality. The first is easy to answer; the second less so.

So onto the easy answer: Yes, we have turned Steve Jobs into a saint, in the same way that we often project qualities of holiness onto any celebrity with whom we felt affection.

The reactions to his death, which both surprised and moved me, mirrored the ways that many respond to the passing of those revered as “living saints,” like Mother Teresa.

But it wasn’t hard to see why people reacted with displays of quasi-religious affection, like leaving handwritten messages at Apple stores, offering heartfelt tributes on Twitter and posting worshipful photos on Facebook.

After all, he had several things in common with the saints. Steve Jobs was – and obituary writers seemed obliged to use the word – a visionary. (The word originally described the mystics, who were literal visionaries.)

Jobs was the object of a “cult,” in the classic Christian sense: someone who evokes great devotion and whose words and actions are anticipated, catalogued and scrutinized.

Like the saints, he was both worldly (manifestly human in his foibles) and otherworldly (particularly in his protean creativity). He gave us something we didn’t know we needed. He was mysterious.

Finally, Mr. Jobs was, as his now-famous Stanford commencement speech shows, a spiritual man in his own way.

Yet there is a key difference between the saints and Mr. Jobs that we may overlook. For all of his talents, Mr. Jobs did not seem to be – to put this as charitably as possible – the kindest man in the world, which is something of a requirement for a real saint.

Walter Isaacson’s new biography, “Steve Jobs,” is chock full of incidents of its subject’s less-than-charitable behavior. And even though the saints didn’t always act lovingly, that is a rock-bottom requirement for a saint: kindness.

So here’s a third question: Is it accurate to speak of Steve Jobs as a saint? Probably not.

There are many other worthy, albeit lesser known, people who have not only accomplished great things but also have done them without, as a New York Times column said of Mr. Jobs, “incorrigible bullying, belittling and lying.”

People who were both creative and kind. Successful and charitable. Hard-workingand forgiving.

Perhaps Mr. Jobs is, as all those editorial cartoons have depicted, in heaven showing St. Peter how to use an iPad. I hope so.

But a saint? To answer that question let’s begin not with how successful a person was, or even how much they changed the world, but how much they loved. Even if you spend more time with iPods than icons, “saint” isn’t a word to be thrown around lightly.

How Jobs’ sainthood was derailed

Leander Kahney is editor and publisher of CultofMac.com, a news site that tracks Apple and the people who use its products.

Steve Jobs was quickly on his way to becoming canonized when a strange thing happened. Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography hit bookstands.

Following his death earlier this month, the outpouring of grief for Jobs was huge and unprecedented. All over the world, people felt a keen sense of loss. Not since Michael Jackson has there been such an outpouring of public grief. And it’s never before been lavished on the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation.

But Jobs was no mere business leader. He was a cultural figure of the highest order. He was an artist whose medium was business and technology.

He crafted superb products that had great impact on our lives, His products, or copies of his products, have become near universal in the West. We all have computers, iPods and iPhones. They are indispensable – at work and play. They are well crafted. Before the iPhone, people hated their cell phones.

The story of Jobs’ life also touched many people. He was an adoptee, a college dropout who enjoyed great success but also battled near-devastating setbacks and failures. He became an inspiration to lots of different people, from aspiring entrepreneurs to transplant patients.

He’s a good candidate for a saint. There was something otherworldly about him. He clearly wasn’t like the rest of us.

His severe aestheticism, his stern, intimidating self-assurance, his complexity: He was a Buddhist anti-materialist who made the world’s most desirable products. A leftist multibillionaire who loved Bob Dylan but off-shored production to China. An elitist loner whose stated ambition was to democratize complex technology and make it easy enough for any bozo to use.

He was cut short in his prime. He was just getting started really. For most of his career, Jobs was regarded with skepticism or disdain. The business press regarded him as a mercurial madman who was good at marketing and got lucky with the iPod.

But when the iPhone took off, and Apple became the most valuable company in the world, he was suddenly lionized as the world’s greatest CEO.

There was always the problem of his horrible reputation as a manager, of course. Everyone knew about the legendary tantrums, the outburst, insults and humiliations. That often got swept under the rug. It was just Steve being Steve.

Quirks, oddities, the price paid to put a dent in the universe. No one seemed to mention his lack of philanthropy, or the Chinese sweatshops that made his products.

And Isaacson’s biography shows that Jobs’ mean streak is much worse than we ever suspected. On page after page, the book details just how mean he could be. It’s actually exhausting and more than a little bit depressing reading about the incessant torrent of outbursts and humiliations heaped upon his hapless colleagues – even the ones he liked.

The initial reaction is one of muted shock – people aren’t liking what they’re reading. Headlines like “Jobs the Jerk” aren’t helping the canonization process.

But it’s early days. The book has been out only a few days. Jobs’ life and career were marked by bouncing back. Perhaps his reputation will outlive his own biography after all.

Steve Jobs was a saint. At least partly.

Gerardo Marti is L. Richardson King Association Professor of Sociology atDavidson College and author of “Worship across the Racial Divide “and “Hollywood Faith.”

The passing of Steve Jobs provoked an outpouring of appreciation for a man who, frankly, most people did not really know.

Admiring his company, his design, and the devices he promoted, mass sympathy gave way to an idealization of the person behind the products. The recent accumulation of reams of Post-it Notes on retail Apple Store windows is one of many testaments to his status as a fetishized icon.

Should we be idolizing this assuredly genius entrepreneur?

Let’s be honest. Steve Jobs was no saint, that much is clear. Every day we know more about his character, most recently through the startling revelations in the best-selling biography published by Walter Isaacson.

Jobs could be callous and cold. He rejected paternity of his first daughter. He refused many co-workers the riches of company stock options. He thought of himself as smarter than just about anyone else he
ever met.

If “saintliness” is measured by the virtues of extraordinary kindness, generosity or humility, Jobs fails the test.

However, “saintliness” in religious practice is less measured by a person’s moral perfection than his or her ability to serve as a mediator between the ordinary and the transcendent.

In lived religious experience, a saint is not always admired as a righteous person to be imitated. But a saint is always trusted as a negotiator, a bridge-builder, an esoteric “middleman,” who removes obstacles, facilitates progress and promotes blessing.

Fundamentally, a saint is an intermediary who makes the intangible accessible and more readily available.

Jobs had a single-minded vision for the varied media he designed, making complicated technology supremely accessible. He promoted his own genius while striving to bring out the genius of others.

In doing so, Jobs accomplished what few are able to do: connect with everyday lives, enrich people’s aesthetics with evidence of beauty and offer tools for exercising personal gifts and talent.

Steve Jobs is certainly not a god-some otherworldly being who wrangles with intangible spirits in a largely unseen realm for justice or glory.

Instead, we see Jobs as an imperfect mortal who crafted software that stimulated our imagination alongside machines that motivated a seamlessness between ideas and objects, making the elusive tangible, decreasing the distance between ourselves and our ideals.

Jobs is being canonized to a secular sainthood as a flawed, charismatic visionary who transformed wires and plastic into sophisticated, supremely handy tools fitted alternatively to the demands and the dreams
of everyday life.

Yes, he altered the trajectories of whole industries, but for the ordinary worshipper, Jobs alleviated our frustrations while allowing us to go beyond them in cultivating words, objects and whole environments that give us fulfillment while productively transforming the world.

The opinions expressed in these commentaries are solely those of the authors.

Financial Inequality: Are the Rich Making You Poor?

pammye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 09:17:23 +0000

Jan 4th 2011, 16:35 by A.S. | NEW YORK
Read More: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/financial_inequality

MOST adults accept that life is not fair, but the word fairness gets used a lot when we talk about income inequality. Is it right that some have so much material comfort and security, while others have so little? On the other hand, is it fair that talented, hard-working people must give away the fruits of their labour? What’s fair and whether it matters depend on one’s personal values. But for policymakers, the important issue to think about is the nature of the income inequality. Are the rich getting richer while the poor and middle class stay the same? Or, are the rich getting rich at the expense of the poor? When the latter is true, the case for intervention is stronger.

According to a recent New York Times article the rich getting richer has made the poor worse off. The argument is that the poor and middle class become discouraged and give up:

Yet the increasingly outsize rewards accruing to the nation’s elite clutch of superstars threaten to gum up this incentive mechanism. If only a very lucky few can aspire to a big reward, most workers are likely to conclude that it is not worth the effort to try. The odds aren’t on their side.

Inequality has been found to turn people off. A recent experiment conducted with workers at the University of California found that those who earned less than the typical wage for their pay unit and occupation became measurably less satisfied with their jobs, and more likely to look for another one if they found out the pay of their peers. Other experiments have found that winner-take-all games tend to elicit much less player effort — and more cheating — than those in which rewards are distributed more smoothly according to performance.

The logical leap between the two paragraphs is confusing. There’s a world of difference between being frustrated that the guy in the cubical next to you makes more for doing the same job and your feelings about the fact that Kim Kardashian made $6m last year. (Maybe your soul dies a little every time you watch “Keeping up with the Kardashians”, but the show probably does not make you want to give up on life all together.) Also the policy implications of this argument are unclear. It would be a terrible idea to put a limit on how much one person can earn because it makes someone else feel bad.

Tyler Cowen’s excellent essay on income inequality points out that envy and resentment tend to be local and not directed at economic superstars. Mr Cowen points out that as income inequality has increased, Americans (of all income levels) also experienced an increase in living standards, life expectancy and access to cheaper goods. An increase in well-being is probably more important than stagnant income.

But Mr Cowen is concerned that so much of America’s income disparity is the result of compensation in the finance industry. He worries that the current state of finance means the rich do get richer at the expense of others. One way this is true, he argues, derives from the very nature of finance. Extraordinary profits are made by spotting an “incorrect” price and trading on this. But not everyone can get rich this way. There is only so much money to be made in any one arbitrage opportunity. The first person who acts gets the biggest piece of the pie.

There’s a second reason why the financial sector abets income inequality: the “moving first” issue. Let’s say that some news hits the market and that traders interpret this news at different speeds. One trader figures out what the news means in a second, while the other traders require five seconds. Still other traders require an entire day or maybe even a month to figure things out. The early traders earn the extra money. They buy the proper assets early, at the lower prices, and reap most of the gains when the other, later traders pile on. Similarly, if you buy into a successful tech company in the early stages, you are “moving first” in a very effective manner, and you will capture most of the gains if that company hits it big.

The lucky talented traders and portfolio managers do make an obscene amount of money while other traders just get rich. But making money this way consistently is very hard. Sometimes you will be wrong or your timing will be off and you lose money. This is why the average American is not actively trading. Being consistently successful at it takes knowledge, expertise and capital. The winner-takes-all nature of finance explains the income disparity within the industry. But it does not mean a Wall Street fat cat is getting rich at the expense of a more naïve investor whose stock holdings are limited to the mutual fund his 401(k) is in. The only thing that naïve investor is betting on is that the American economy will continue to grow and that companies will be profitable in the long run. Speculators actually can do this naïve investor a service. They can eliminate mispricing, promote efficiency, and provide market liquidity; this can enhance growth in the long run.

Mr Cowen lists another reason why finance sector pay comes at the expense of the poor, which is very worrying and problematic. It stems from the distortions that exist in the industry. Mr Cowen reckons that the large rewards and guarantees of government bail-outs provide too much upside with too little downside. This asymmetry encourages excessive risk taking where the rich get the all the upside (when their bets pay off) and the poor and middle class bear the downside by being more adversely effected by recessions (when the bets go badly).

The solution to this problem is more regulation and credible policies that limit moral hazard. But that’s easier said than done. Regulation is a blunt tool. Rules that seem like a good idea in the abstract often have unintended consequences because banks can always increase profit by avoiding regulations. Regulatory arbitrage often causes distortions in certain markets and more opacity (see Basel I and II).

A good start might be to hire more qualified regulators. This is hard when the government cannot offer the millions the private sector does (again with finance pay being a problem). But this does not mean that putting arbitrary limits on finance sector compensations is a good idea. Firms will merely find a way around the limits or do more business abroad. Making compensation contingent on medium-term firm profitability is not guaranteed to work either. Many bank executives lost a fortune when their company stock at Lehman and Bear became nearly worthless, and this threat did not make them any more prudent. There are no easy answers, but understanding the nature of inequality and the aspects of it that require thoughtful remedies is a good start.

Why Happiness Isn’t Always Good: Asians vs. Americans

pammye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 09:14:56 +0000

By John Cloud Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Related Topics: Asian, Asian American, Depression, Happiness, Mental Health, Psychology, Psychology
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/04/why-happiness-isnt-always-good-asians-vs-americans/#ixzz1Zc8NuUXg

Among journalists — and less so among psychologists — the subset of mental-health research called “positive psychology” has become powerfully influential. Positive psychology, which was more or less founded by a University of Pennsylvania professor named Martin Seligman, focuses not on ordinary or pathological behavior — the two subjects that most psychologists study — but on how we can cultivate positive emotions to build resilience and well-being.

Many research psychologists, either out of academic rigor or academic jealousy, have questioned Seligman’s work. And now a growing body of research challenges whether most humans even see “positive” emotions as better than ordinary ones — whether feeling happy actually leads, in the end, to a good life.

In a new paper in the journal Emotion, a team of psychologists at the University of Washington finds that not everyone sees positive emotions such as joviality and self-assurance as unequivocally good. Depending on your ethnic background, you may find such emotions suspicious and even dangerous.

The UW team, led by psychologist Janxin Leu, surveyed more than 600 students from three groups: European-Americans, Asian-American U.S. citizens, and Asian immigrants to the U.S. Their research built on previous studies that have found, for example, that while Americans associate feelings of happiness with personal achievement, the Japanese associate those feelings with an entire society’s harmony.

In 2002, another research team that administered questionnaires about emotions four times a day for a week reported that Japanese people feel emotion — any emotion — less often than Americans. And the Japanese respondents tended to rate their emotional events as more neutral than Americans rated theirs. Overall, Americans were more likely to see their experiences as “somewhat pleasant.”

Another team of researchers asked Japanese and American respondents to describe situations in which they felt mixed emotions. That team — a group led by Yuri Miyamoto of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — reported last year that Japanese respondents more often have mixed emotions in “predominantly pleasant situations” than Americans do.

The UW team advanced all this research in the recent Emotion paper, which was published in March. Beginning with the provocative hypothesis that Asians may tend to “find the bad in the good,” the psychologists compared 330 European Americans with 147 Asian Americans, all of them born in the U.S., and 156 Asians who had immigrated to the U.S.

The researchers asked participants to rate their levels of stress and depression, including how often they were in sad moods, felt worthless or had changes in sleep or appetite. The participants were also asked to rate the intensity of the positive emotions they felt.

The study found that having positive emotions — “happy,” “joyful,” “proud,” “strong” — tended to reduce stress and depression symptoms among European Americans but not immigrant Asians. The results for U.S.-born Asian Americans were mixed.

Why would Asians and European Americans respond to happiness so differently? One reason suggested in the paper is that Asians seem to define advancement of social harmony as more worthy than mere individual success. This theory about Asian culture is certainly not new — philosophers have compared Confucian ideals regarding interpersonal enlightenment with Western ideals regarding individual achievement at least since the 19th century.

The new paper doesn’t take a stand on how Asians and Americans differ in their views, but it does show, through its controlled experiments, that positive emotions are less important to Asian-born Asians than to Americans. Mental-health professionals should take these results into account when they decide whether to suggest to Asian patients that they cultivate self-promoting and happy emotions. For some, happiness isn’t the passage to satisfaction.

Study: For Women, Skinnier Figures Can Equal Fatter Paychecks

pammye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:46:11 +0000

By: MEGAN GIBSON
Topics: BUSINESS, FEMINISM, GENDER, HEALTH, INCOME, INEQUALITY,SEXISM, SOCIAL ISSUES, WAGE GAP, WAGES, WEIGHT, WEIGHT GAIN
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/06/07/study-for-women-skinnier-figures-can-equal-fatter-paychecks/#ixzz1Zc1MlADg

Ladies, are you feeling bad about those extra five pounds? This might just make you feel worse. (Sorry!)

According to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology, women who are “very thin” earn nearly $22,000 more than their “average weight counterparts.” The study was conducted by Timothy A. Judge from the University of Florida and Daniel M. Cable, from the London Business School, who examined the relationship between income and weight in men and women.

(MORE: What Women Want Now)

And not only are women earning less if they are of average weight, they are actually punished if they are overweight; Forbes reports that “‘Heavy’ and ‘Very Heavy’ women lost over $9,000 and almost $19,000, respectively, than their average weight counterparts.”

Sadly (but not surprisingly), gaining weight seems to have a harsher impact on women’s income than it does on men’s. The study showed that when men gain weight, their paychecks don’t suffer the same way women’s do. And of course, you can’t forget that men were likely already earning more to begin with. So ladies, even if you’ve worked to close that gender wage gap, there’s also now the gender and weight wage gap. We wish we could make some snarky jokes about this, but frankly, we’re just too depressed at the moment. (via Forbes)

It’s No Joke: Why Laughter Kills Pain

pammye — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:40:17 +0000

By Maia Szalavitz Wednesday, September 14, 2011 |
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/09/14/its-no-joke-why-laughter-kills-physical-pain/#ixzz1ZbzrjqwV

What do joke-lovers and junkies have in common? According to new research, they’re both responding to the same kind of “high.” The study suggests that genuine laughter releases endorphins in the brain, chemicals that activate the same receptors as drugs like heroin, to pain-killing and euphoria-producing effects.

Researchers led by Oxford University’s Robin Dunbar conducted a series of experiments — both in the lab and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — to tease out the effect of laughter on people’s ability to withstand pain.

Previous research has linked hearty ha ha‘s with pain relief. Watching comedy videos, for example, has been shown to decrease hospital patients’ need for opioid painkillers. But it wasn’t clear whether it was laughter itself or general positive emotions that were responsible for relieving pain.

In the new study, scientists tested dozens of participants’ tolerance to pain through various methods: a tightening blood pressure cuff, a frozen wine-chilling sleeve placed around the arm, or a strenuous exercise in which participants had to hold themselves against a wall with their legs bent at a 90-degree angle, as if sitting on a chair. (Trust me, it hurts).

In several lab experiments, the researchers subjected people to the painful stimuli both before and after exposing them to episodes of comedy, including video clips of shows like South Park, The Simpsons and Friends or clips of stand-up by performers like Eddie Izzard. The lone field experiment at the comedy festival involved people who had either watched or acted in comic performances.

MORE: Why Laughing at Yourself May Be Good for You: First-Ever Study

Viewing or participating in comedy led to higher pain tolerance, the researchers found, and there was a dose-related response to laughter: people who laughed more felt less pain later.

In one experiment, researchers compared the effect of watching funny videos with watching feel-good ones, such as a nature video from the series Planet Earth. Turns out, it’s the laughter, not the positive emotion, that elicits pain relief.

Laughing along with other people was also better at relieving pain than laughing alone, and that, according to Dunbar, may be the key to its effects. As the New York Times reported:

Dr. Dunbar thinks laughter may have been favored by evolution because it helped bring human groups together, the way other activities like dancing and singing do. Those activities also produce endorphins, he said, and physical activity is important in them as well. “Laughter is an early mechanism to bond social groups,” he said. “Primates use it.”

The current research did not directly measure endorphins in the brain, but prior studies of opioid-blocking drugs in humans and animals show that endorphin activity is tied to pain relief. Earlier research shows also that endorphins are important for bonding between parents and children. Endorphins are released in babies’ brains when a soothing parent responds to their cries, providing safety, warmth and food; babies come to connect that endorphin-induced stress relief with their parents’ presence. Research has further shown that opioids are one of the few things that can ease the cries of young animals that have been separated from their mothers.

MORE: ‘Love Hormone’ Oxytocin Enhances Men’s Memories of Mom — Good or Bad

This may help explain why childhood trauma — particularly abuse and neglect — dramatically raises a person’s risk of future heroin or prescription opioid addiction. When a person’s stress system becomes overactive in the absence of parental nurture or social support, he is more likely to seek external opioid drugs to soothe it.

Increasingly, research finds that emotional and physical pain are not distinct and that social contact, whether it be a parent’s touch or a friend’s joke, can provide relief. That should be good news to all those working comedians out there—or maybe, a bit more pressure. If they’re not laughing, they’re may be hurting!

The study was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

MORE: Love and Addiction: Voles in Love Just Say No To Speed

Maia Szalavitz is a health writer at TIME.com. Find her on Twitter at @maiasz. You can also continue the discussion on TIME Healthland’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEHealthland.

Countess LuAnn de Lesseps Entertains

pammye — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:22:43 +0000

Source: Hamptons Magazine

The secret to a great dinner party is making your careful planning look effortless. Being organized and creative is key so that your guests can relax and enjoy your hospitality.

Send a save the date in the mail or via e-mail a month or two in advance so that you get on your friends’ calendars before they book up. A written or printed invitation is always chic and should be mailed 30 days in advance; for a more casual gathering, a fun Evite is completely appropriate. Just remember to indicate how guests should RSVP and the time the party begins, and let them know the dress code.

Invite a wide variety of people—having a mix of personalities from all walks of life makes the party more interesting.

Circulate around your party and introduce people to one another to spark conversations. I like to tell a good joke or two when there is a lull.

Plan a creative and fun seasonal menu. In the summer, keep the food colorful, light and fresh—think ceviche, grilled chicken and fish and cold salads. Passed hors d’ouevres followed by a buffet supper is another great option for summer dinner parties. For this seated dinner party for 32, I used Robbins Wolfe Eventeurs to help me create the perfect menu (537-1926; robbinswolfe.com).

I love to serve rosé and white wines, but offering signature cocktails is also a great idea—think sparkly and fruity when choosing libations for summer.

Greet your guests at the door with a smile on your face and a glass of wine in your hand. If the party is outside, make it clear where your guests should go upon arriving by stationing a friend or staff at the entrance.

Illuminate the party with tiki torches and candles rather than electric lights. Everyone looks fabulous in candlelight.

Play easy-listening music for cocktails, then transition later to more festive, fun dance music. Maybe even sing to your guests, as I tend to.

Use citronella candles and other mosquito control measures so that your guests can be outside without being eaten alive.

All good parties must come to an end. Turn down the music, offer your guests an espresso, and call a cab for those who may have had too much to drink.

Psychology: The Power of Posture

pammye — Wed, 25 May 2011 11:42:44 +0000

How you hold yourself affects how you view yourself

Jan 13th 2011 from THE ECONOMIST

And get your bleeding hair cut, too!!!

“STAND up straight!” “Chest out!” “Shoulders back!” These are the perennial cries of sergeant majors and fussy parents throughout the ages. Posture certainly matters. Big is dominant and in species after species, humans included, postures that enhance the posturer’s apparent size cause others to treat him as if he were more powerful.

The stand-up-straight brigade, however, often make a further claim: that posture affects the way the posturer treats himself, as well as how others treat him. To test the truth of this, Li Huang and Adam Galinsky, at Northwestern University in Illinois, have compared posture’s effects on self-esteem with those of a more conventional ego-booster, management responsibility. In a paper just published in Psychological Science they conclude, surprisingly, that posture may matter more.

The two researchers’ experimental animals—77 undergraduate students—first filled out questionnaires, ostensibly to assess their leadership capacity. Half were then given feedback forms which indicated that, on the basis of the questionnaires, they were to be assigned to be managers in a forthcoming experiment. The other half were told they would be subordinates. While the participants waited for this feedback, they were asked to help with a marketing test on ergonomic chairs. This required them to sit in a computer chair in a specific posture for between three and five minutes. Half the participants sat in constricted postures, with their hands under their thighs, legs together or shoulders hunched. The other half sat in expansive postures with their legs spread wide or their arms reaching outward.

In fact, neither of these tests was what it seemed. The questionnaires were irrelevant. Volunteers were assigned to be managers or subordinates at random. The test of posture had nothing to do with ergonomics. And, crucially, each version of the posture test included equal numbers of those who would become “managers” and “subordinates”.

Once the posture test was over the participants received their new statuses and the researchers measured their implicit sense of power by asking them to engage in a word-completion task. Participants were instructed to complete a number of fragments (for example, “l_ad”) with the first word that came to mind. Seven of the fragments could be interpreted as words related to power (“power”, “direct”, “lead”, “authority”, “control”, “command” and “rich”). For each of these that was filled out as a power word (“lead”, say, instead of “load”) the participant was secretly given a score of one point.

Although previous studies suggested a mere title is enough to produce a detectable increase in an individual’s sense of power, Dr Huang and Dr Galinsky found no difference in the word-completion scores of those told they would be managers and those told they would be subordinates. The posture experiment, however, did make a difference. Those who had sat in an expansive pose, regardless of whether they thought of themselves as managers or subordinates, scored an average of 3.44. Those who had sat in constricted postures scored an average of 2.78.

Having established the principle, Dr Huang and Dr Galinsky went on to test the effect of posture on other power-related decisions: whether to speak first in a debate, whether to leave the site of a plane crash to find help and whether to join a movement to free a prisoner who was wrongfully locked up. In all three cases those who had sat in expansive postures chose the active option (to speak first, to search for help, to fight for justice) more often than those who had sat crouched.

The upshot, then, is that father (or the sergeant major) was right. Those who walk around with their heads held high not only get the respect of others, they seem also to respect themselves.

The Fear of Failure

pammye — Mon, 23 May 2011 11:23:26 +0000

By: Mick Hagen

Published on 2/10/11

Article can be found here

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I was lucky enough to make the varsity basketball team my freshman year in high school. It was a dream come true. Overnight, I got all the attention and popularity a young 15-year old can handle before the head explodes.

The Senior

I knew I wouldn’t get much playing time in the varsity games but I wasn’t afraid to be aggressive in practice. I wanted to help the team the best I could.

There was a Senior on the team who was a really good player. He played college ball and went on to play professionally overseas. Unfortunately, he was also a major jerk.

This Senior made basketball practice a living nightmare for me.

If I turned the ball over — he’d yell at me. If I missed a jumper — he’d yell at me. If I got stuffed taking the ball to the rack — he’d yell at me. He got on my case for every little mistake I made.

I quickly became just a warm body out on the court — just taking up space. I’d get the ball and look to pass immediately. I was afraid to even just dribble. I didn’t wanna get yelled at. My nickname became “not-a-factor.” Everyone knew I wasn’t gonna try anything.

I was terrified of doing anything wrong. I was afraid to fail.

The Pattern

I hear of this type of thing happening far too often. Teams. Groups. Organizations. Companies. Whatever. Doesn’t matter what the setting or industry or profession — it happens all the time.

You aggressively go out on a limb to create something remarkable. You take a risk. You attempt the impossible or unproven.

There’s just one small problem… it doesn’t pan out. It doesn’t work. It fails.

The Senior (maybe a manager, a coworker, a teammate, a boss) isn’t pleased. He gets on your case. He says things like, “How bout we just stick to what we know works” or “Let’s get more data or do more research before we try something like that again.”

You keep trying new things but the resistance grows stronger with each failed attempt. You become discouraged, disappointed, disheartened. Though not always explicit, the message becomes loud and clear: stop trying new things.

So you do. You stop attempting. You stop pushing the envelope. Boo. Boo. Boo. Triple boo.

The Environment

Any environment where creativity, innovation and calculated “risk taking” isn’t embraced is an environment from which you should run far, far away. There won’t be progress. There won’t be happiness. Just static nothingness. Paper pushing all day. Bleh.

Everyone gives lip service to letting their team try new things. The true test isn’t in how the organization responds to the idea of innovation and creativity. Rather, it’s how the organization responds to failure. Does your organization embrace failure like it does victory? Does the team feel encouraged to try, try and try again — even when previous attempts failed?

The Solution

There’s no easy solution if you’re caught in this rut of an environment. You can either quit and find a better environment or you can keep persisting. Keep going. Keep trying. Keep believing.

You may not be the oldest. You may not be the most experienced. You may not be the smartest. The one thing that you do have that most don’t: guts to try. Most people are content watching from the sidelines or bleachers. You be the Man in the Arena.

I’m reminded of this with a special bookmark I have. My father gave it to me while in high school. It’s a simple index card etched with the handwritten words, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid of being special.”

Embrace your failures. Let them pepper your path to greatness.

“Ships are safe at harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.”

The Etiquette of BBM

pammye — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:42:03 +0000

By: Stephanie Georgopulos
Published on: Saturday April 23, 2011
Article can be found here

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A few months back, my then-boyfriend (an iPhone user) received a pitch from a casting agent he knew. The agent was looking to interview people about how they use BlackBerry Messenger to date, flirt, and keep up with friends. The gig was paid, and I was feeling particularly optimistic that day, so I shot her a message addressing some of her preliminary questions. My introduction was bland and made me sound like an eight-year-old. “Hi! I use BBM with my roommates. We send each other funny pictures, LOL!”

When I heard back from the casting agent, she seemed thrilled to speak with me. But what she was really interested in was how I used BBM to get my proverbial groove on. I thought of my then-boyfriend, the iPhone user, and how I was actually relieved that we didn’t communicate via BBM. Then, I thought about the guy I dated before him. How we did BBM. I never wanted to drink the BBM/dating cocktail again; so bitter was the taste and I didn’t respond to her email.

The casting agent in question was looking for real anecdotes to use in BlackBerry’s latest campaign, BBM Flirt. One of the longer shorts spawned from the campaign speaks to how Step One of flirting with a fellow BlackBerry user is getting his or her PIN.

Whatever happened to asking someone for a phone number? Isn’t that Step One? Asking someone for their PIN is like asking them for their social security number. You know what happens once a fellow BBMer has your PIN? They can see when their messages have been delivered to your phone. And they can see when you’ve read that message. “Hey, I know we just met, but can I set up a GPS tracking system on your phone? I need to know when you’ve read my messages and where you are, thanks!”

This is why I felt uncomfortable lying on film about how BBM is great for flirting. Realistically, BBM is like unprotected sex. It’s reserved for people you trust – not for people you met at the bar three hours ago. Here’s why BBMing with love interests is a terrible idea:

1. Sometimes, you’ll know that they’re ignoring you: Once you send a message, a few things can happen.

a. A clock will appear, indicating that the message is in the process of being sent.

b. A check mark will appear, indicating that you’ve sent the message successfully.

c. A check mark with a ‘D’ appears. This means the message has arrived to the intended PIN.

d. A check mark with an ‘R’ appears. Your message has been read.

So why haven’t they answered…? What are they doing?! Did this ever happen to you when you stuck with traditional texting? Probably not, because that ‘R’ makes all the difference. You can rationalize the blue out of the sky when a traditional text message goes unanswered. Try rationalizing an ‘R’ message and see what you come up with besides: “I am meant to be alone forever.”

2. Other times, your message will get lost in BBM limbo: Due to the flaws of modern technology, you’ll occasionally see a hieroglyphic BBM symbol that you can’t comprehend. No ‘R’, no ‘D’, just confusion and angst. This symbol will remain the same for a few days, at which point you’ll take to Google in order to decipher what it all means. “Was I deleted? Is their phone broken? What the hell is this symbol of what is seemingly a man talking on a phone?” It’s possible that you’ll never figure out the meaning of the offending symbol, and that you’ll never hear from your ex-BBM contact again.

3. Your PIN is unstable: With every new cell phone comes a new PIN. Anything sent to your old address is sucked into the ether. This could lead another party to believe that you’re actively ignoring them (see #2); thus driving them away with your apparent indifference and bad phone manners.

4. There’s no such thing as “taking a hint”: When you ignore someone via BBM, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to assume that it would be “okay” to contact you using some other vehicle, like GChat, Facebook, or traditional texting methods due to BBM’s lack of dependability. “She must’ve not received my last 20 BBMs… time to virtually infringe on her alone time some other way.” Don’t ignore someone on BBM and expect that they’ll go quiet into the night. You may have to end this one like an adult.

5. Your risqué messages are at constant risk: Unless you’re the motivated type who makes amendments to the nicknames in your BBM contact list, it’s likely that common names will show up in multiples. That means confusing your cousin Brian with your lover Brian; your roommate Steve with your one-night-stand Steve. Do you really want to ask your co-worker Dan if he enjoyed your “performance” the night before? Didn’t think so.

BBM isn’t wholly evil, but you need to treat it with respect. You don’t invite every Tom, Dick, and Harry to be your contact. Start with a phone number and work your way up, like the old days. Don’t play fast and loose with your PIN – it’s the virtual v-card.

10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make

pammye — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:15:15 +0000

By ROSALIND RESNICK

Published on September 2nd, 2010
Article extracted from: The Wall Street Journal (Running a Business)
Article can be found here for online reference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO andAxxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for start-ups and early-stage companies. She is also the author of “The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.”

When it comes to starting a successful business, there’s no surefire playbook that contains the winning game plan.

On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.

Recently, after a work-out at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.

Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:

1. Going it alone. It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project.

2. Asking too many people for advice. It’s always good to get input from experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-to-day yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, N.J., chocolate company, “Pull in your [advisory] team for bi-weekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls. You’ll wish you did it sooner!”

3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales. While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call [this misstep] the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”

4. Targeting too small a market. It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.

5. Entering a market with no distribution partner. It’s easier to break into a market if there’s already a network of agents, brokers, manufacturers’ reps and other third-party resellers ready, willing and able to sell your product into existing distribution channels. Fashion, food, media and other major industries work this way; others are not so lucky. That’s why service businesses like public relations firms, yoga studios and pet-grooming companies often struggle to survive, alternating between feast and famine. The solution: Make a list of potential referral sources before you start your business and ask them if they’d be willing to send business your way.

6. Overpaying for customers. Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or web site that spends $500 worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign. (See related article, “On a Tight Budget? How to Land a Client.”)

7. Raising too little capital. Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenues can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.

8. Raising too much capital. Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem, too. Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dot-com market melted down), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.

9. Not having a business plan. While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years [fooling around] thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius toward a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.” (See related article, “Are Business Plans a Waste of Time?”)

10. Over-thinking your business plan. While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision-making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.

Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.