The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Aug. 31, 2011
10 Great iPhone Apps for Foodies
By Josh Ozersky
Don't get me wrong: I hate my iPhone. I only got one after I accidentally left my Droid on a bus. So I'm not coming to you as a wide-eyed enthusiast, the sort who thinks everything that Apple makes is pure gold. I don't play Angry Birds, I don't have a set of bejeweled Hello Kitty cases, and every day I think wistfully of the BlackBerry I had a few phones ago. That said, there are some awesome apps on the iPhone, especially for gastronomes. In no particular order, here are 10 of my favorites.
Yelp
There a million different sites and services that promise honest, crowd-sourced guidance to the baffling, brave new world of restaurants. Yelp is simply the best. The reviews are generally accurate and unbiased, and the app, like the site, features integrated maps and a linkable phone number you can click on to reach the place. As a food writer who travels a lot, I find it indispensable. And you will too.
Seafood Watch
This sleek, no-frills little app was created by the good people at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It tells you how sustainable different fish are, as well as what the best choice is for any given species (e.g., coho salmon vs. sockeye salmon vs. chinook salmon). This app, by the way, is only permissible to use if you don't start showing everybody that you are using it.
Epicurious
As with Yelp and restaurant reviews, there are a million recipe sites, but Epicurious is the best. All of its recipes have been vetted by pros, and even the not-so-good ones work. It gets bonus points for having a shopping-list applet as part of the package, demerits for too aggressive advertising. If you get fed up, try BigOven, which claims to have 170,000 recipes, with no frills — and no ads.
Jamie's 20-Minute Meals
Every food personality has his or her own app, and really, I just chose Jamie Oliver's because I love the way he cooks. (Also, it works very well on the Droid — sigh.) But Mario Batali, Nigella Lawson and all the rest have put a lot of money and time into their own apps, and if you like them better, by all means download them. Better still, download all of them and compare their recipes on similar dishes. You'll be surprised how much you learn.
The Perfect Egg Timer
The cool thing about smart-phone apps is that there's one for everything, and unlike dead-tree cookbooks, you can make room for as many as you want. Take the Perfect Egg Timer. It tells you how long it should take to boil an egg, to the second — depending on your elevation, the size of the egg and exactly how you like it, as represented by a precise closeup graphic. Why something like this doesn't exist for steaks and chops is beyond me. Maybe I will create one. But I know it won't be this good.
Wine.com
Wine apps, like wine directors and sommeliers, tend to have the same problem: they know too much and insist on sharing it all with you. If you want to know how the '86 Lynch-Bages compares with the '88, get the Wine Spectator vintage guide. If you want to know how a wine you see on a menu or in a store tastes like, or just a general guide to what to buy, this is the way to go. The intuitive interface helps those among us who are intimidated by wine jargon.
LocalEats
There was a time when you had to depend on your "foodar" to find the best places in a small city — especially those odd little ones often presumed to be of little interest to out-of-towners. Chowhound and Google changed all that, and now there is a bustling commercial traffic in local-eats apps, some of which even include GPS guidance via Google Maps. LocalEats is stripped down and simple and easy to use, which is what I like in an app.
Broadcastr
Restaurant guides, whether curated or crowd-sourced, suffer from essentially the same problem: a narrow mission and a binary hot-or-not model. Broadcastr is a social-media site for local stories; turned into an iPhone app, it provides cultural context from people who lives with and grew up around the nearby restaurants. Which is helpful because maybe you would like to know more than just whether to go there and how to get there. A happy recent alliance with the Southern Foodways Alliance has given immeasurable richness to the experience, at least when you're traveling in the South.
Locavore
It's one thing to be a locavore where you live; it's another thing entirely to know what is in season in the places where you're traveling. This handy, simple app is organized by region, and it helps you tell the difference between what you ought to be eating and what just came in on a diesel-flying fortress from Chile.
OpenTable
The most amazing thing about OpenTable has always been that it works. There are still a few restaurants that don't hook into the centralized-reservation software, but those that do have never lost my reservation or been confused about the number of seats in my party. The software team must work as hard as Apple because the app is even easier to use than the website, and also includes detailed restaurant information and a GPS locator. Used in conjunction with Yelp, no traveler should ever eat poorly again.
Source: Time Magazine
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Survey: College Plagiarism Is at an All-Time High
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Survey: College Plagiarism Is at an All-Time High
By: Kayla Webley
A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows plagiarism in college is on the rise.
The survey, called "The Digital Revolution and Higher Education," asked 1,055 college presidents from two- to four-year schools, private and public for their thoughts on how digital technology has impacted college.
More than half of the college presidents surveyed said that plagiarism in students' paper has increased over the past 10 years. Further, an overwhelming majority — 89 percent — say computers and the Internet have played a major role in the rise in stealing others work and claiming it as their own.
Some other key findings:
— 62% of college presidents anticipate that 10 years from now, more than half of the textbooks used by their undergraduate students will be entirely digital
— 77% of college presidents say their institutions now offer online courses, a figure they expect to expand. While 15% say most of their current undergraduate students have taken an online course, 50% predict that 10 years from now most of their students will take classes online
— Online courses are more prevalent in public colleges and universities. While 89% of four-year public schools offer online courses, just 60% of private schools offer them
The survey also asked questions of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older and compared them against the responses from the presidents. One notable difference in opinion between the presidents and the public was over the value of online learning. While 51% of college presidents say online courses offer an equal value compared with courses taken in the classroom, only 29% of the public agree.
Source: Time Magazine
Survey: College Plagiarism Is at an All-Time High
By: Kayla Webley
A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows plagiarism in college is on the rise.
The survey, called "The Digital Revolution and Higher Education," asked 1,055 college presidents from two- to four-year schools, private and public for their thoughts on how digital technology has impacted college.
More than half of the college presidents surveyed said that plagiarism in students' paper has increased over the past 10 years. Further, an overwhelming majority — 89 percent — say computers and the Internet have played a major role in the rise in stealing others work and claiming it as their own.
Some other key findings:
— 62% of college presidents anticipate that 10 years from now, more than half of the textbooks used by their undergraduate students will be entirely digital
— 77% of college presidents say their institutions now offer online courses, a figure they expect to expand. While 15% say most of their current undergraduate students have taken an online course, 50% predict that 10 years from now most of their students will take classes online
— Online courses are more prevalent in public colleges and universities. While 89% of four-year public schools offer online courses, just 60% of private schools offer them
The survey also asked questions of 2,142 adults ages 18 and older and compared them against the responses from the presidents. One notable difference in opinion between the presidents and the public was over the value of online learning. While 51% of college presidents say online courses offer an equal value compared with courses taken in the classroom, only 29% of the public agree.
Source: Time Magazine
PSYCH-The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Jan. 08, 2009
The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder
By John Cloud / Seattle
Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic art.
Because our knowledge of the mind's afflictions remains so limited, psychologists — even when writing in academic publications — still deploy metaphors to understand difficult disorders. And possibly the most difficult of all to fathom — and thus one of the most creatively named — is the mysterious-sounding borderline personality disorder (BPD). University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading experts on BPD, describes it this way: "Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree-burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering."
Borderlines are the patients psychologists fear most. As many as 75% hurt themselves, and approximately 10% commit suicide — an extraordinarily high suicide rate (by comparison, the suicide rate for mood disorders is about 6%). Borderline patients seem to have no internal governor; they are capable of deep love and profound rage almost simultaneously. They are powerfully connected to the people close to them and terrified by the possibility of losing them — yet attack those people so unexpectedly that they often ensure the very abandonment they fear. When they want to hold, they claw instead. Many therapists have no clue how to treat borderlines. And yet diagnosis of the condition appears to be on the rise.
A 2008 study of nearly 35,000 adults in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that 5.9% — which would translate into 18 million Americans — had been given a BPD diagnosis. As recently as 2000, the American Psychiatric Association believed that only 2% had BPD. (In contrast, clinicians diagnose bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in about 1% of the population.) BPD has long been regarded as an illness disproportionately affecting women, but the latest research shows no difference in prevalence rates for men and women. Regardless of gender, people in their 20s are at higher risk for BPD than those older or younger.
What defines borderline personality disorder — and makes it so explosive — is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged. Such problems may be exacerbated by impulsive behaviors: overeating or substance abuse; suicide attempts; intentional self-injury. (The methods of self-harm that borderlines choose can be gruesomely creative. One psychologist told me of a woman who used fingernail clippers to pull off slivers of her skin."
No one knows exactly what causes BPD, but the familiar nature-nurture combination of genetic and environmental misfortune is the likely culprit. Linehan has found that some borderline individuals come from homes where they were abused, some from stifling families in which children were told to go to their room if they had to cry, and some from normal families that buckled under the stress of an economic or health-care crisis and failed to provide kids with adequate validation and emotional coaching. "The child does not learn how to understand, label, regulate or tolerate emotional responses, and instead learns to oscillate between emotional inhibition and extreme emotional lability," Linehan and her colleagues write in a paper to be published in a leading journal, Psychological Bulletin.
Those with borderline disorder usually appear as criminals in the media. In the past decade, hundreds of stories in major newspapers have recounted violent crimes committed by those said to have the disorder. A typical example from last year was the lurid tale of an Ontario man labeled borderline who used a screwdriver to gouge out his wife's right eye. (She lived; he got 14 years."
There are several theories about why the number of borderline diagnoses may be rising. A parsimonious explanation is that because of advances in treating common mood problems like short-term depression, more health-care resources are available to identify difficult disorders like BPD. Another explanation is hopeful: BPD treatment has improved dramatically in the past few years. Until recently, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was seen as a "death sentence," as Dr. Kenneth Silk of the University of Michigan wrote in the April 2008 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Clinicians often avoided naming the illness and instead told patients they had a less stigmatizing disorder.
Therapeutic advances have changed the landscape. Since 1991, as Dr. Joel Paris points out in his 2008 book, Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, researchers have conducted at least 17 randomized trials of various psychotherapies for borderline illness, and most have shown encouraging results. According to a big Harvard project called the McLean Study of Adult Development, 88% of those who received a diagnosis of BPD no longer meet the criteria for the disorder a decade after starting treatment. Most show some improvement within a year.
Still, the rise in borderline diagnoses may illustrate something about our particular historical moment. Culturally speaking, every age has its signature crack-up illness. In the 1950s, an era of postwar trauma, nuclear fear and the self-medicating three-martini lunch, it was anxiety. (In 1956, 1 in 50 Americans was regularly taking mood-numbing tranquilizers like Miltown — a chemical blunderbuss compared with today's sleep aids and antianxiety meds.) During the '60s and '70s, an age of suspicion and Watergate, schizophrenics of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest sort captured the imagination — mental patients as paranoid heroes. Many mental institutions were emptied at the end of this period. In the '90s, after serotonin-manipulating drugs were released and so many patients were listening to Prozac, thousands of news stories suggested, incorrectly, that the problem of chronic depression had been finally solved. Whether driven by scary headlines, popular movies or just pharmacological faddishness, the decade and the disorder do tend to find each other.
So, is borderline the illness of our age? When so many of us are clawing to keep homes and paychecks, might we have become more sensitized to other kinds of desperation? In a world so uncertain, maybe it's natural to lose one's emotional skin. It's too soon to tell if that's the case, but BPD does have at least one thing in common with the recession. As Dr. Allen Frances, a former chair of the Duke psychiatry department, has written, "Everyone talks about [BPD], but it usually seems that no one knows quite what to do about it."
Inside the Mind
To have coffee with Lily (a pseudonym), you wouldn't get much sense of how she has suffered. She is 40 but could pass for 30. She has blue eyes and long blond hair that falls across her shoulders in slightly curly tendrils. On the December day we met at a diner outside Seattle, she wore a pink wool cap pulled down tight and an Adidas jumper zipped all the way. She was friendly but not terribly expressive, and she carried an aura of self-protection.
At one point in the late '90s, Lily was taking five drugs that doctors had prescribed: three antidepressants, an antianxiety medication and a sleeping pill. Borderline patients are often overmedicated — partly because therapists see them as difficult — but for Lily, as for most borderlines, the meds did little. "Drug treatment for BPD is much less impressive than most people think," Paris writes in Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
As a teenager, Lily felt little self-confidence. "Junior high and high school just sucks, right?" she said, laughing. "But I had a propensity to take it a little more seriously." With the help of therapy, she made it through high school and college, but in her late 20s, she became dissatisfied with her job selling specialty equipment. One October day, as she headed out for a mountain-biking trip, she looked at the dun sky and had the feeling that something was wrong. Bleakness massed around her quickly, much faster than it had when she was younger. Soon, nothing gave Lily much joy.
She recalled a talk show in which girls had discussed cutting themselves as a release, a way to relieve depression. "I was so numb," she said. "I just wanted to feel something — anything." So she took a knife from the kitchen and cut deeply into her left arm.
If Lily had a hard time figuring out what was behind such dark emotions, she was in good company. When a psychoanalyst named Adolph Stern coined the term borderline in the 1930s, borderline patients were said to be those between Freud's two big clusters: psychosis and neurosis. Borderlines, Stern wrote rather poetically, exhibit "psychic bleeding — paralysis in the face of crises." Later, in the 1940s, Dr. Helene Deutsch said borderlines experience "inner emptiness, which the patient seeks to remedy by attaching himself or herself to one after another social or religious group." By 1968, when Basic Books published the groundbreaking monograph The Borderline Syndrome, the No. 1 characteristic of borderline patients was said to be, simply, anger.
Eventually, borderlines became pretty much anything a therapist said they were. Says Dr. Kenneth Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness: "If you hated the patient — if the patient was pissing you off — you would bandy this term about: 'Oh, you're just a borderline.' It was a diagnosis that was a wastebasket of hostility."
It was Linehan who changed all that. In the early 1990s, she became the first researcher to conduct a randomized study on the treatment of borderline personality disorder. The trial — which showed that a treatment she created called "dialectical behavior therapy" significantly reduced borderlines' tendency to hurt themselves as well as the number of days they spent as inpatients — astonished a field that had come to see borderlines as hopeless.
Dialectical behavior therapy is so named because at its heart lies the requirement that both patients and therapists find synthesis in various contradictions, or dialectics. For instance, therapists must accept patients just as they are (angry, confrontational, hurting) within the context of trying to teach them how to change. Patients must end the borderline propensity for black-and-white thinking, while realizing that some behaviors are right and some are simply wrong. "The patient's first dilemma," Linehan wrote in her 558-page masterwork, 1993's Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, "has to do with whom to blame for her predicament. Is she evil, the cause of her own troubles? Or, are other people in the environment or fate to blame? ... Is the patient really vulnerable and unable to control her own behavior ...? Or is she bad, able to control her reactions but unwilling to do so ...? What the borderline individual seems unable to do is to hold both of these contradictory positions in mind."
Linehan's achievement was to realize that borderlines are, in fact, on the border between various dualities — dualities that they have to learn to accept and reconcile in order to change their lives. That's easy to say but seems impossible to do — until you see it work.
A Life Redeemed
After she cut herself, Lily was horrified. In a panic, she called her father, who took her to the hospital. When she was released, she and her parents redoubled their efforts to find her good psychiatric treatment. Through a friend at the University of Washington, they heard about Linehan and contacted her Behavioral Research & Therapy Clinics, which are housed in a homey little annex on the UW campus, where you might find little foil-wrapped chocolates next to the coffee and tea.
Linehan, who grew up in Tulsa, Okla., and spent several years as a nun before becoming a psychologist, embodies several dialectical contradictions: a nun who has never lived in a convent; a careful scientist whose most engaging feature is her wry irreverence; a 65-year-old who has a maternal steeliness but was never a mother. It doesn't pay to underestimate Marsha Linehan. In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder, she writes, "If the patient says, 'I am going to kill myself,' the therapist might reply, 'I thought you agreed not to drop out of therapy.' "
In one intense session a few years ago, a patient told Linehan that her work stress was going to lead her to suicide. The patient said Linehan could never understand this stress because she was a successful psychologist. Suicidal borderline patients often confront and alienate therapists in this fashion; for many years, this kind of confrontation was seen as a defining characteristic of the disorder. Linehan believes that borderlines are hurting, not manipulating, but that doesn't mean she indulges them. In this particular confrontation, Linehan responded, "I do understand. I live with a similar amount of stress ... You can just imagine how stressful it is for me to have a patient constantly threatening to kill herself. Both of us have to worry about being fired!"
Such in-your-face tactics were highly controversial when Linehan started out. Other mental-health professionals accused her in public meetings of being heartless, even unethical. But her therapy has saved so many lives and worked so well in randomized trials that few criticize her today. For Lily, who calls Linehan's therapy "Zen philosophy meets tough love," Linehan was the first therapist to understand that managing Lily's illness would require Lily to take a new kind of responsibility — a willingness to grow the emotional skin she never had.
In the beginning, Lily resisted Linehan's assistance. She felt no one could truly understand the depths of her pain. But Linehan was the first therapist who responded to Lily with more than just endless psychoanalysis and pills. Instead, Linehan taught her practical methods of getting by day-to-day. Once, just after she started with Linehan, Lily locked herself in her parents' bathroom and swallowed six or seven antidepressants in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Her father broke the door down; her mother called the police. Lily never lost consciousness, but the cops said she had to go to the hospital anyway. Linehan advised Lily's parents not to accompany her. She also told them they needed to get Lily to work the next day. Lily learned that she wouldn't be cosseted.
Linehan also taught Lily various skills to regulate her emotions. Among the most important is one Linehan calls the "wise mind" — a kind of calm, Zen state that Linehan insists even the most debilitated patients can achieve. "Generally," she writes, "I have patients follow their breath ... and try to let their focus settle into their physical center, at the bottom of their inhalation. That very centered point is wise mind." Lily remembers this sensation clearly; she came to feel that her dark moods had a physical location in her body — her solar plexus — and when she focused on it, she could deactivate a destructive emotion.
Another skill Linehan taught Lily (and many others, via a popular DVD called Opposite Action) was an anti-anger technique for social situations: "Don't make the situation worse," Linehan counsels on the DVD. "And if possible, be a little tiny bit on the kind side. O.K.?"
If some of this sounds like advice you heard in kindergarten, it should. Remember that borderlines have never learned to regulate their emotions. It's important to note that Linehan doesn't just practice tough love with her patients; she also tells them she knows they are hurting and doing the best they can. She emphasizes that she believes in them even though many therapists have tossed them aside. "Clients cannot fail," she says. "But both treatment and a therapist can fail." Both compassion and irreverence, both validation and tough love — these are the dialectics at the heart of Linehan's approach.
One criticism of Linehan's Zen-derived method is that for some patients, it seems too foreign, too removed from Western experience. Linehan knows her therapy works for most people, but that doesn't mean she's unwilling to list its faults. "It takes too long. There are too many components. It takes too much training for therapists," she says.
Such shortcomings have not dissuaded other therapists from learning Linehan's techniques. Some 10,000 of them have been trained in dialectical behavior therapy, and Linehan, to her dismay, has become something of a cult figure. "Cults in psychology hurt patients," she says. "People should try whatever works, not my therapy because it has my name on it."
Lily, for one, is glad that it's the therapy she did try. One of her favorite films used to be James Mangold's 1999 adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, in which Winona Ryder plays a real-life borderline author. When Ryder's character learns she has received a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, she indignantly asks, "Borderline between what and what?" It's a question that weighed on Lily for years and one that many of us may start asking if borderline diagnoses continue to increase. But today Lily is able to laugh about the film because she knows, finally, that the answer doesn't really matter. The key is not defining that uncertain borderline but learning to be happy there.
Source: Time Magazine
Jan. 08, 2009
The Mystery of Borderline Personality Disorder
By John Cloud / Seattle
Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic art.
Because our knowledge of the mind's afflictions remains so limited, psychologists — even when writing in academic publications — still deploy metaphors to understand difficult disorders. And possibly the most difficult of all to fathom — and thus one of the most creatively named — is the mysterious-sounding borderline personality disorder (BPD). University of Washington psychologist Marsha Linehan, one of the world's leading experts on BPD, describes it this way: "Borderline individuals are the psychological equivalent of third-degree-burn patients. They simply have, so to speak, no emotional skin. Even the slightest touch or movement can create immense suffering."
Borderlines are the patients psychologists fear most. As many as 75% hurt themselves, and approximately 10% commit suicide — an extraordinarily high suicide rate (by comparison, the suicide rate for mood disorders is about 6%). Borderline patients seem to have no internal governor; they are capable of deep love and profound rage almost simultaneously. They are powerfully connected to the people close to them and terrified by the possibility of losing them — yet attack those people so unexpectedly that they often ensure the very abandonment they fear. When they want to hold, they claw instead. Many therapists have no clue how to treat borderlines. And yet diagnosis of the condition appears to be on the rise.
A 2008 study of nearly 35,000 adults in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that 5.9% — which would translate into 18 million Americans — had been given a BPD diagnosis. As recently as 2000, the American Psychiatric Association believed that only 2% had BPD. (In contrast, clinicians diagnose bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in about 1% of the population.) BPD has long been regarded as an illness disproportionately affecting women, but the latest research shows no difference in prevalence rates for men and women. Regardless of gender, people in their 20s are at higher risk for BPD than those older or younger.
What defines borderline personality disorder — and makes it so explosive — is the sufferers' inability to calibrate their feelings and behavior. When faced with an event that makes them depressed or angry, they often become inconsolable or enraged. Such problems may be exacerbated by impulsive behaviors: overeating or substance abuse; suicide attempts; intentional self-injury. (The methods of self-harm that borderlines choose can be gruesomely creative. One psychologist told me of a woman who used fingernail clippers to pull off slivers of her skin."
No one knows exactly what causes BPD, but the familiar nature-nurture combination of genetic and environmental misfortune is the likely culprit. Linehan has found that some borderline individuals come from homes where they were abused, some from stifling families in which children were told to go to their room if they had to cry, and some from normal families that buckled under the stress of an economic or health-care crisis and failed to provide kids with adequate validation and emotional coaching. "The child does not learn how to understand, label, regulate or tolerate emotional responses, and instead learns to oscillate between emotional inhibition and extreme emotional lability," Linehan and her colleagues write in a paper to be published in a leading journal, Psychological Bulletin.
Those with borderline disorder usually appear as criminals in the media. In the past decade, hundreds of stories in major newspapers have recounted violent crimes committed by those said to have the disorder. A typical example from last year was the lurid tale of an Ontario man labeled borderline who used a screwdriver to gouge out his wife's right eye. (She lived; he got 14 years."
There are several theories about why the number of borderline diagnoses may be rising. A parsimonious explanation is that because of advances in treating common mood problems like short-term depression, more health-care resources are available to identify difficult disorders like BPD. Another explanation is hopeful: BPD treatment has improved dramatically in the past few years. Until recently, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder was seen as a "death sentence," as Dr. Kenneth Silk of the University of Michigan wrote in the April 2008 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Clinicians often avoided naming the illness and instead told patients they had a less stigmatizing disorder.
Therapeutic advances have changed the landscape. Since 1991, as Dr. Joel Paris points out in his 2008 book, Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, researchers have conducted at least 17 randomized trials of various psychotherapies for borderline illness, and most have shown encouraging results. According to a big Harvard project called the McLean Study of Adult Development, 88% of those who received a diagnosis of BPD no longer meet the criteria for the disorder a decade after starting treatment. Most show some improvement within a year.
Still, the rise in borderline diagnoses may illustrate something about our particular historical moment. Culturally speaking, every age has its signature crack-up illness. In the 1950s, an era of postwar trauma, nuclear fear and the self-medicating three-martini lunch, it was anxiety. (In 1956, 1 in 50 Americans was regularly taking mood-numbing tranquilizers like Miltown — a chemical blunderbuss compared with today's sleep aids and antianxiety meds.) During the '60s and '70s, an age of suspicion and Watergate, schizophrenics of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest sort captured the imagination — mental patients as paranoid heroes. Many mental institutions were emptied at the end of this period. In the '90s, after serotonin-manipulating drugs were released and so many patients were listening to Prozac, thousands of news stories suggested, incorrectly, that the problem of chronic depression had been finally solved. Whether driven by scary headlines, popular movies or just pharmacological faddishness, the decade and the disorder do tend to find each other.
So, is borderline the illness of our age? When so many of us are clawing to keep homes and paychecks, might we have become more sensitized to other kinds of desperation? In a world so uncertain, maybe it's natural to lose one's emotional skin. It's too soon to tell if that's the case, but BPD does have at least one thing in common with the recession. As Dr. Allen Frances, a former chair of the Duke psychiatry department, has written, "Everyone talks about [BPD], but it usually seems that no one knows quite what to do about it."
Inside the Mind
To have coffee with Lily (a pseudonym), you wouldn't get much sense of how she has suffered. She is 40 but could pass for 30. She has blue eyes and long blond hair that falls across her shoulders in slightly curly tendrils. On the December day we met at a diner outside Seattle, she wore a pink wool cap pulled down tight and an Adidas jumper zipped all the way. She was friendly but not terribly expressive, and she carried an aura of self-protection.
At one point in the late '90s, Lily was taking five drugs that doctors had prescribed: three antidepressants, an antianxiety medication and a sleeping pill. Borderline patients are often overmedicated — partly because therapists see them as difficult — but for Lily, as for most borderlines, the meds did little. "Drug treatment for BPD is much less impressive than most people think," Paris writes in Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder.
As a teenager, Lily felt little self-confidence. "Junior high and high school just sucks, right?" she said, laughing. "But I had a propensity to take it a little more seriously." With the help of therapy, she made it through high school and college, but in her late 20s, she became dissatisfied with her job selling specialty equipment. One October day, as she headed out for a mountain-biking trip, she looked at the dun sky and had the feeling that something was wrong. Bleakness massed around her quickly, much faster than it had when she was younger. Soon, nothing gave Lily much joy.
She recalled a talk show in which girls had discussed cutting themselves as a release, a way to relieve depression. "I was so numb," she said. "I just wanted to feel something — anything." So she took a knife from the kitchen and cut deeply into her left arm.
If Lily had a hard time figuring out what was behind such dark emotions, she was in good company. When a psychoanalyst named Adolph Stern coined the term borderline in the 1930s, borderline patients were said to be those between Freud's two big clusters: psychosis and neurosis. Borderlines, Stern wrote rather poetically, exhibit "psychic bleeding — paralysis in the face of crises." Later, in the 1940s, Dr. Helene Deutsch said borderlines experience "inner emptiness, which the patient seeks to remedy by attaching himself or herself to one after another social or religious group." By 1968, when Basic Books published the groundbreaking monograph The Borderline Syndrome, the No. 1 characteristic of borderline patients was said to be, simply, anger.
Eventually, borderlines became pretty much anything a therapist said they were. Says Dr. Kenneth Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness: "If you hated the patient — if the patient was pissing you off — you would bandy this term about: 'Oh, you're just a borderline.' It was a diagnosis that was a wastebasket of hostility."
It was Linehan who changed all that. In the early 1990s, she became the first researcher to conduct a randomized study on the treatment of borderline personality disorder. The trial — which showed that a treatment she created called "dialectical behavior therapy" significantly reduced borderlines' tendency to hurt themselves as well as the number of days they spent as inpatients — astonished a field that had come to see borderlines as hopeless.
Dialectical behavior therapy is so named because at its heart lies the requirement that both patients and therapists find synthesis in various contradictions, or dialectics. For instance, therapists must accept patients just as they are (angry, confrontational, hurting) within the context of trying to teach them how to change. Patients must end the borderline propensity for black-and-white thinking, while realizing that some behaviors are right and some are simply wrong. "The patient's first dilemma," Linehan wrote in her 558-page masterwork, 1993's Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, "has to do with whom to blame for her predicament. Is she evil, the cause of her own troubles? Or, are other people in the environment or fate to blame? ... Is the patient really vulnerable and unable to control her own behavior ...? Or is she bad, able to control her reactions but unwilling to do so ...? What the borderline individual seems unable to do is to hold both of these contradictory positions in mind."
Linehan's achievement was to realize that borderlines are, in fact, on the border between various dualities — dualities that they have to learn to accept and reconcile in order to change their lives. That's easy to say but seems impossible to do — until you see it work.
A Life Redeemed
After she cut herself, Lily was horrified. In a panic, she called her father, who took her to the hospital. When she was released, she and her parents redoubled their efforts to find her good psychiatric treatment. Through a friend at the University of Washington, they heard about Linehan and contacted her Behavioral Research & Therapy Clinics, which are housed in a homey little annex on the UW campus, where you might find little foil-wrapped chocolates next to the coffee and tea.
Linehan, who grew up in Tulsa, Okla., and spent several years as a nun before becoming a psychologist, embodies several dialectical contradictions: a nun who has never lived in a convent; a careful scientist whose most engaging feature is her wry irreverence; a 65-year-old who has a maternal steeliness but was never a mother. It doesn't pay to underestimate Marsha Linehan. In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder, she writes, "If the patient says, 'I am going to kill myself,' the therapist might reply, 'I thought you agreed not to drop out of therapy.' "
In one intense session a few years ago, a patient told Linehan that her work stress was going to lead her to suicide. The patient said Linehan could never understand this stress because she was a successful psychologist. Suicidal borderline patients often confront and alienate therapists in this fashion; for many years, this kind of confrontation was seen as a defining characteristic of the disorder. Linehan believes that borderlines are hurting, not manipulating, but that doesn't mean she indulges them. In this particular confrontation, Linehan responded, "I do understand. I live with a similar amount of stress ... You can just imagine how stressful it is for me to have a patient constantly threatening to kill herself. Both of us have to worry about being fired!"
Such in-your-face tactics were highly controversial when Linehan started out. Other mental-health professionals accused her in public meetings of being heartless, even unethical. But her therapy has saved so many lives and worked so well in randomized trials that few criticize her today. For Lily, who calls Linehan's therapy "Zen philosophy meets tough love," Linehan was the first therapist to understand that managing Lily's illness would require Lily to take a new kind of responsibility — a willingness to grow the emotional skin she never had.
In the beginning, Lily resisted Linehan's assistance. She felt no one could truly understand the depths of her pain. But Linehan was the first therapist who responded to Lily with more than just endless psychoanalysis and pills. Instead, Linehan taught her practical methods of getting by day-to-day. Once, just after she started with Linehan, Lily locked herself in her parents' bathroom and swallowed six or seven antidepressants in a half-hearted suicide attempt. Her father broke the door down; her mother called the police. Lily never lost consciousness, but the cops said she had to go to the hospital anyway. Linehan advised Lily's parents not to accompany her. She also told them they needed to get Lily to work the next day. Lily learned that she wouldn't be cosseted.
Linehan also taught Lily various skills to regulate her emotions. Among the most important is one Linehan calls the "wise mind" — a kind of calm, Zen state that Linehan insists even the most debilitated patients can achieve. "Generally," she writes, "I have patients follow their breath ... and try to let their focus settle into their physical center, at the bottom of their inhalation. That very centered point is wise mind." Lily remembers this sensation clearly; she came to feel that her dark moods had a physical location in her body — her solar plexus — and when she focused on it, she could deactivate a destructive emotion.
Another skill Linehan taught Lily (and many others, via a popular DVD called Opposite Action) was an anti-anger technique for social situations: "Don't make the situation worse," Linehan counsels on the DVD. "And if possible, be a little tiny bit on the kind side. O.K.?"
If some of this sounds like advice you heard in kindergarten, it should. Remember that borderlines have never learned to regulate their emotions. It's important to note that Linehan doesn't just practice tough love with her patients; she also tells them she knows they are hurting and doing the best they can. She emphasizes that she believes in them even though many therapists have tossed them aside. "Clients cannot fail," she says. "But both treatment and a therapist can fail." Both compassion and irreverence, both validation and tough love — these are the dialectics at the heart of Linehan's approach.
One criticism of Linehan's Zen-derived method is that for some patients, it seems too foreign, too removed from Western experience. Linehan knows her therapy works for most people, but that doesn't mean she's unwilling to list its faults. "It takes too long. There are too many components. It takes too much training for therapists," she says.
Such shortcomings have not dissuaded other therapists from learning Linehan's techniques. Some 10,000 of them have been trained in dialectical behavior therapy, and Linehan, to her dismay, has become something of a cult figure. "Cults in psychology hurt patients," she says. "People should try whatever works, not my therapy because it has my name on it."
Lily, for one, is glad that it's the therapy she did try. One of her favorite films used to be James Mangold's 1999 adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, in which Winona Ryder plays a real-life borderline author. When Ryder's character learns she has received a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, she indignantly asks, "Borderline between what and what?" It's a question that weighed on Lily for years and one that many of us may start asking if borderline diagnoses continue to increase. But today Lily is able to laugh about the film because she knows, finally, that the answer doesn't really matter. The key is not defining that uncertain borderline but learning to be happy there.
Source: Time Magazine
The United States of Amerijuana
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Nov. 11, 2010
The United States of Amerijuana
By Andrew Ferguson / Colorado Springs
I've always been passionate about food," says Jenelise Robinson. "And I've always been passionate about marijuana and the things it can do for the world."
The Denver woman is 35 but looks 20, with heavy loop earrings distending her lobes and an enormous bracelet to match. From her clavicles southward, her body is a riot of tattoos—the usual skulls and anchors as well as a large circle with a squiggle inside it on her right arm. (When a visitor points quizzically to the squiggle, she replies politely, "It's a baby in a brain," though the tone of her voice says, "Like, duh.") We shouldn't be misled by the biker look or the faux-'60s talk of changing the world. Robinson is all business—a consummate tradeswoman. In the past 16 months she has found a way to combine her passions for food and pot and make the combination pay, as founder, owner and head baker of Nancy B's Edible Medicine, one of the most successful start-ups in Colorado's newest "industry": medical marijuana.
Robinson's muffins and Rice Krispies squares are getting raves. "I have a very high tolerance," said one food critic in the Denver Chronicle, a medical-marijuana blog, "and a 2-dose lemon bar will put me on my ass." "I loved the buzz, which lasted 8 hours," wrote another. "Very functional and social." The growth of Robinson's business has come with the explosion in the number of Colorado's medical-marijuana dispensaries, or centers. Coloradans who are recommended by a doctor and approved by the state go to the centers to buy their pot, either in traditional bud form or as an "infused product" like Robinson's lemon bars, which are 100% organic and laced with a marijuana concentrate. Her success is reflected in the Mile High Macaroons and Cannabis Cups stacked in the new commissary-style kitchen she's rented in the gentrifying neighborhood of City Park West in Denver.
Even with a decent supply of high-grade pot in her walk-in freezer, Robinson can scarcely keep up with demand. She and her two employees (a third is soon to be hired) work six days a week to refine her menu, revise recipes, taste-test hash oil and manage inventory—and still squeeze in time every day to medicate.
"For my ADD," she says. "And some shoulder pain."
Medicate? The medical-marijuana industry relies heavily on such genteel euphemisms. To medicate is to smoke pot, and no one in the industry calls pot pot anymore; it's medicine now. Dealers are called caregivers, and the people who buy their dope—medicine, medicine—are patients. There's no irony here, no winks or nudges to signal that someone's leg is being pulled. "After work," says a counter clerk, or budtender, at Briargate Wellness Center, an upscale dispensary serving the tony north side of Colorado Springs, "I'll just go home, kick back, take out the bong and medicate."
The euphemisms are an important element in the larger movement to bring marijuana use out from the shadows, as advocates say, so it can take its place innocently on Americans' nearly infinite menu of lifestyle preferences, from yachting to survivalism to macrobiotic cooking. So far, the strategy is working. Colorado and 13 other states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalized medical marijuana in the past 14 years. More than a dozen other states are considering the idea. Overnight, dispensaries have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities; billboards touting one outlet's pot over its rivals' are plastered all over Los Angeles. In some parts of California—where marijuana is the biggest cash crop, with total sales of $14 billion annually—medical pot has become such an established part of the commercial base that cities are moving toward taxing it.
It's not clear that even political setbacks discourage, much less stop, the mainstreaming of marijuana. Anti-pot forces cheered on Nov. 2 when voters in four states apparently rejected pro-pot ballot initiatives—including California's Prop 19, which would have legalized possession of an ounce (28 g) of pot or less. But by Election Day, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature had already rendered Prop 19 moot. A month earlier, he signed a bill that reduced possession of up to an ounce from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. By Jan. 1, 2011, jaywalkers may have more to fear from California cops than potheads do.
Medical marijuana has helped make all this possible. In a short time, pot has gone from being a prohibited substance to one that is, in many places, widely available if you have an ache or a pain and the patience to fuss with a few forms. This did not take place by accident. In fact, medical marijuana's emergence has many of the attributes of a product rollout. As with any hot commodity, dope is now accorded the same awed regard in some Colorado retail establishments as fine wine, dark chocolate and artisanal cheese. Only now it takes place under the cover of medical care, wellness and pain management. And so what is emerging in many places is a strange, bipolar set of rules: dope is forbidden for everyone but totally O.K. for anyone who is willing to claim a chronic muscle spasm. Does anyone take such farcical distinctions seriously? And can a backlash be far behind?
Legalization via the Clinic Door
George Soros, the jillionaire currency trader and patron of countless liberal organizations, began funding pro-legalization groups in the early 1990s, with instructions that they redirect their energies toward "winnable" issues like medical marijuana. It was a savvy tactic. Even when polls showed strong resistance to making pot legal, large majorities of Americans supported making it available to patients for pain relief. "If we get medical access, we're going to get legalization eventually," activist Richard Cowan said in 1993. "The cat will be out of the bag." Colorado is a good test of whether that seemingly inexorable trajectory will remain plausible or prove a pipe dream.
Along the regulatory spectrum that stretches from distinctly mellow L.A. to schoolmarmish New Mexico, Colorado sits somewhere near the middle. In 2000, Colorado voters approved an amendment to the state constitution to legalize the possession of marijuana for patients suffering from "debilitating medical conditions": cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis, along with more nebulous symptoms like "severe nausea" and "severe pain." Voters supported Amendment 20, 54% to 46%.
The implementation was based on what is called a caregiver model. Each patient, on the recommendation of a doctor, could designate a friend or neighbor to grow up to six plants for the patient's use, and each of these caregivers could provide for no more than five patients. Both patient and caregiver would register with the state. The idea was to prevent profiteering, and from 2000 to 2007, roughly 2,000 patients signed up. "The system worked pretty well," says Don Quick, state district attorney for two counties in central Colorado. "Nobody really had a problem with it."
But in 2007, a pro-pot group called Sensible Colorado sued the state health department, and a state court ruled the five-patient limit unconstitutional. "That opened the floodgates," says Brian Vicente, the group's executive director. "A caregiver could have 50 patients if they wanted. And if you had 50 patients, why not open a shop?" Over the next two years, more than 1,000 dispensaries sprang up to serve the more than 100,000 Coloradans who had suddenly discovered their need for medicinal marijuana and applied for a patient card. As Jon Stewart noted, what had been considered the healthiest state in the country rapidly became one of the sickest.
And the economics changed overnight. Patients might spend $500 a year growing six plants on their own. By contrast, dispensaries routinely charge $350 to $500 for 1 oz. of pot. With patients limited by law to possession of no more than 2 oz., they could easily drop $5,000 a year on treatment. "A good-size dispensary will have a few hundred regular customers," Quick says. "You can do the math."
One who did the math was Joe DiFabio, who fits the mold of the hardy American entrepreneur—if the hardy American entrepreneur sold pot for a living. Now in his late 20s, DiFabio ran a construction company and worked in sales before a friend suggested he open a dispensary. He is also a patient, for back pain—nearly everyone who works in the industry medicates—and he had become disenchanted with the dispensaries he'd seen: stoned budtenders, sloppy service, subpar medicine. "They just weren't well kept up," he says. "Kind of dirty."
His business plan was to offer an alternative for the well-heeled professionals in northern Colorado Springs. "I wanted to have the very best medicine at the lowest prices in town," he says, in "a safe, discreet, professional environment." Briargate Wellness Center opened earlier this year, and the plan seems to be working. On a recent weekday afternoon, the three cars in Briargate's parking lot were a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a BMW. DiFabio greets customers in a pressed oxford shirt, trim khakis and polished loafers. The place is painted in pale pastels, and back issues of Golf Digest are fanned out on a slate table. The flat-screen TV plays the A&E channel.
"It's way more work than I expected," he says. "Everyone thinks you get rich on the first day. I'm $45,000 in debt." Beyond the waiting room, the medicine sits carefully displayed on a shelf in little vials labeled with venerable names from a distant, less businesslike era: Mowie Wowie, Couchlock, Atomic Haze—more than 20 varieties in all. There are boxes of rolling papers and massed ranks of bongs and vaporizers, a recent innovation that theoretically allows the patient to inhale pot fumes without burning the weed. Pipes made of colorful blown glass have replaced the old metal pipes familiar to an earlier generation of dopers. Marijuana-infused salsa and chips—"they work phenomenally," DiFabio says—are waiting to be washed down with a bottle of Dixie Elixir medicated soda, in your choice of grape, strawberry or orange. Lollipops are in high demand, and gummy bears fly off the shelves. DiFabio's biggest complaints nowadays would warm the heart of a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist. "The regulations," he says, "are just over the top." His application for a dispensary license ran to 1,400 pages, with attachments.
Modern liberalism has always maintained a tension between its libertine and bureaucratic impulses, and in medical marijuana the contradictions collide: the government will let you get as high as you want, but only if you fill out a form first. Would-be patients must obtain a recommendation from a doctor and mail a notarized application and a check for $90 to the state department of health. If they can prove to a budtender that they've applied for a card, they're eligible to buy medicine after 35 days. The card arrives in the mail eventually; the backlog at the health department is nine months and getting longer. For dispensary owners and their suppliers—growers and infused-product makers like Robinson—the regulations seem to never end. Alarmed by the sudden efflorescence of dispensaries and customers, the Colorado legislature this summer placed the industry under the regulatory oversight of an official of the state revenue department. Though he's a former cop who busted pot smokers in the 1980s, Matt Cook says he approaches his work with pristine disinterestedness. "The way I see it," he says, "I regulate widgets. Whatever there is to regulate, that's fine with me."
Cook has prepared 92 pages of proposed regulations modeled on the rules that govern casinos. Dispensary-license fees now run as high as $18,000. Budtenders and owners face strict residency requirements, and anyone with a felony drug conviction is barred from the industry for life. Owners will soon be required to place video cameras throughout their cultivation sites and dispensaries so regulators can log on to the Internet and trace the movement of every marijuana bud from the moment its seeds are planted to the point of sale. The video will be transmitted to a website accessible to regulators round the clock. The regulators dictate where the cameras must be placed and at what angle. DiFabio is particularly irked by a proposal to monitor his marijuana scales by linking them to the Web. "We've paid our fees," he says. "Why do they have to watch us every second?"
Only in a state where marijuana is almost legal can you find so many Obama voters complaining about Big Government.
High? What High?
A few facts in particular drove the legislature to tighten the regs this summer. Even Inspector Clouseau might have begun to suspect there was more to the industry than medicating the terminally ill. No one doubts that medical marijuana has brought relief to the state's cancer patients, AIDS sufferers and MS victims. But these aren't the customers the industry is really serving. At the beginning of this year, Colorado health department records show that only 2% of registered patients had cancer; 1% had HIV/AIDS. There were 94% who suffered "severe pain"—a catchall condition that can be entirely subjective and difficult for a doctor to measure or verify. Statewide, more than 70% of doctor recommendations were written by fewer than 15 physicians. Three out of four patients are men under 40. This patient profile—young males complaining of chronic pain—has been roughly the same in other medical-marijuana states like Montana and California.
A couple of weekday afternoons spent at several Colorado dispensaries confirms the picture the numbers paint. Nearly all the patients were male, a large majority in their 20s and 30s. Figures from other states, though less comprehensive, match Colorado's. Brian Vicente shrugs off the numbers. Young men are more likely to work the kind of jobs that result in chronic pain, he says. "All this really shows is that pain is more prevalent in society than AIDS and cancer."
Pot affects different people differently—"We're all our own walking chemistry experiments," Robinson likes to say—and for many patients, smoking it or eating it will quickly relieve pain, nausea and muscle spasms associated with chemotherapy and MS. Studies have demonstrated beyond quibble that marijuana has some effectiveness in mitigating severe pain. Unfortunately, only clinical tests can show which of marijuana's 108 active compounds cause which of its many effects, and because the balance of compounds shifts from plant to plant, dosage is nearly impossible to control when the medicine is consumed in its botanical state.
Even activists now concede that marijuana is addictive for 10% of regular users—making it less addictive than alcohol (15%) and much less addictive than cigarettes (32%), which are, they point out, perfectly legal. Marijuana unquestionably causes cognitive impairment; nobody would smoke it for fun otherwise. Loss of memory and a decline in decisionmaking ability are the most pronounced effects, data confirmed anecdotally and by Cheech and Chong movies. How long the impairment lasts—whether a month or a lifetime—and to what degree are open questions. Use of marijuana has been linked clinically to the onset of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia; the link is especially strong in younger users and stronger still in young men with a predisposition to mental illness.
At the same time, budtenders and dispensary owners alike extol pot's bounteous ability to heal in language that is part Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, part Whole Earth Catalog. Forget migraines and insomnia, back pain and lack of appetite: pot is routinely sold as a cure for irritable-bowel syndrome, Tourette's, muscular dystrophy, herpes, diabetes, gonorrhea, bulimia, eczema and—oddly enough—both obesity and weight loss. Andrew Weil, the alternative-medicine doctor and holistic-healing guru, suggests marijuana might cure cancer.
And what, a layperson might impolitely ask, about the buzz? Hearing tales of pot's medicinal powers, you would think it was the last thing on anybody's mind. Budtenders will even use air quotes when they speak the word high to nonpatients, as though the stoner effects were an elaborate urban myth. Yet among patients, it's often hard to disentangle the curative and palliative functions of marijuana from the desire to get, if you'll forgive the expression, high. Typical are these patient testimonials from a website run by Montana Caregivers Network: the RomSpice variety, says one satisfied customer, "is the strongest body high I've ever felt. It literally makes my whole body feel numb and tingly. I give it a 12 out of 10 for pain." About AK-47, another testifies, "A more 'active' high, pretty decent munchie factor after a few minutes and a very pleasant mental haze. Pain relief is definitely also a good plus with this one." Here the recreational and medicinal are so balled up that one begins to look like an excuse for the other. Nobody would dare talk this way about Percocet.
That's what worries Christian Thurstone, a psychiatrist for adolescents who runs a drug-treatment program in Denver. He cites the confluence of two trends among the city's young. "There's an increase in the availability of marijuana," he says, "at the same time that we're seeing a decrease in the perceived harmfulness of marijuana." His program has seen a marked increase in patient referrals for marijuana use at his clinic, where all patients are under 18.
"We've started hearing things we hadn't heard before," he says. "They're telling us that marijuana isn't a drug, that it's a medicine. They even call it medicine."
To register as a medical-marijuana patient, a minor must submit the notarized signatures of both parents to the Colorado board of health. Even so, Thurstone says, when he collected data on 55 juvenile marijuana patients, he found that 60% of them had gotten their pot from a patient with a medical-marijuana card. "This age is a crucial developmental window for these teenagers, particularly young males," he says. He cites studies that suggest marijuana use in adolescence doubles the risk of schizophrenia in later life. "The human costs are potentially huge." Meanwhile, a national survey on drug use and health reports that the percentage of kids under 17 using marijuana has been rising—from 6.7% in 2008 to 7.3% last year.
The Backlash Cometh
For all its success, there are signs that the advance of the medical-marijuana movement is not inevitable. The narrow losses for initiatives in South Dakota and, apparently, Arizona, despite lavish funding on their behalf, were discouraging to advocates, who are ordinarily quite cheerful—no surprise there—and upbeat about the prospects for their cause. The Los Angeles city council recently moved to reduce the number of local dispensaries from an estimated 1,000 to roughly 200. The New Jersey legislature passed a medical-dope law in January far more stringent than the one activists hoped for. Only terminally ill patients or those with cancer or ALS will be permitted to buy marijuana from a handful of state-sponsored clinics. New Mexico's law, passed in 2007, will prohibit the private cultivation of marijuana, which will be available only through the state government's own "cannabis-production facilities."
Meanwhile, at the federal level, it's still 1985. Marijuana retains its status as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, the legal equivalent of heroin and LSD, with "a high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use." That designation sharply limits the medical research that can be done with marijuana, setting up a flawless bureaucratic catch-22: pot is listed as Schedule 1 because science hasn't found an accepted medical use for it, but science can't find a medical use for it because it's listed as Schedule 1. Either Congress or the Drug Enforcement Administration could change the designation, but the DEA shows no signs of budging, and when Representative Barney Frank introduced a bill two years ago to reclassify marijuana for medical research, he gathered all of four original co-sponsors.
The high hopes that advocates once had for the Obama Administration have faded too. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to de-emphasize federal prosecution of medical-marijuana violations, and Attorney General Eric Holder formalized the policy with a memo to U.S. Attorneys in September 2009.
But it was a short honeymoon. Last January, Obama stunned the movement by reappointing George W. Bush's DEA acting administrator, Michele Leonhardt, who has an uncompromising approach to marijuana. This year, the DEA has made a series of raids on medical-marijuana facilities in Nevada, Michigan and California, claiming the operations were simply fronts for conventional drug dealing. When a federal survey last month showed a surge in pot smoking among young people, Obama's drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, was quick to finger medical-marijuana laws as the culprit. "I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to young people," Kerlikowske said. For the marijuana movement, the Obama era has been all hope and no change.
If nothing else, technology may make medical marijuana obsolete. Mark A.R. Kleiman, a specialist in drug policy at UCLA, says it's inevitable that some form of measurable, dosable medical marijuana will be made available in the next few years, a medicine that comes not in plant form but in a spray or an inhaler. "And that will do away with the argument for medical marijuana as we know it," he says. Already Canada and the U.K. have approved the use of Sativex, a cannibis-based spray for the nose and mouth that was developed by GW Pharmaceuticals, and it's in late-stage testing in the U.S. Sativex has been effective for pain from MS spasms and cancer treatment without causing the marijuana high. The moment Sativex goes on the market, the need for medical dispensaries, caregivers and growers—and all the confusions and prevarications that attend them—disappears.
There's a rough justice here: the disingenuousness of the push for medical marijuana—billed as a compassionate reform and used as a tactic toward full legalization—was always its Achilles' heel. Up to now, most states have approached medical marijuana with a series of evasions. Doctors rely on a patient's report of pain to recommend it, dispensaries rely on the word of doctors to sell it, regulators rely on legislators to determine who can provide it, and legislators fall back on public opinion, which is ill suited to making careful and informed decisions about pharmacology. And no one takes direct responsibility. None dare call it legalization.
There is another way to go about it.
"If we want to legalize marijuana," said Thurstone, "then let's legalize marijuana and call it a day. Let's not sneak it in the back door, dragging the medical system into it."
Here, at least, Thurstone finds an unexpected ally in Jenelise Robinson. Going through boxes of her new Puff Potion medicated soda ($6 a bottle wholesale), she reflects on the oddity of the culture that medical marijuana has created in her state. "It seems silly, doesn't it?" she says. "If there's someone who's been smoking for a long time, medicating, and this is what they like to do and this is what works for them, then why can't they just do it? Why make them go to the doctor and register? Why force them to lie about it?"
Source: Time Magazine
Nov. 11, 2010
The United States of Amerijuana
By Andrew Ferguson / Colorado Springs
I've always been passionate about food," says Jenelise Robinson. "And I've always been passionate about marijuana and the things it can do for the world."
The Denver woman is 35 but looks 20, with heavy loop earrings distending her lobes and an enormous bracelet to match. From her clavicles southward, her body is a riot of tattoos—the usual skulls and anchors as well as a large circle with a squiggle inside it on her right arm. (When a visitor points quizzically to the squiggle, she replies politely, "It's a baby in a brain," though the tone of her voice says, "Like, duh.") We shouldn't be misled by the biker look or the faux-'60s talk of changing the world. Robinson is all business—a consummate tradeswoman. In the past 16 months she has found a way to combine her passions for food and pot and make the combination pay, as founder, owner and head baker of Nancy B's Edible Medicine, one of the most successful start-ups in Colorado's newest "industry": medical marijuana.
Robinson's muffins and Rice Krispies squares are getting raves. "I have a very high tolerance," said one food critic in the Denver Chronicle, a medical-marijuana blog, "and a 2-dose lemon bar will put me on my ass." "I loved the buzz, which lasted 8 hours," wrote another. "Very functional and social." The growth of Robinson's business has come with the explosion in the number of Colorado's medical-marijuana dispensaries, or centers. Coloradans who are recommended by a doctor and approved by the state go to the centers to buy their pot, either in traditional bud form or as an "infused product" like Robinson's lemon bars, which are 100% organic and laced with a marijuana concentrate. Her success is reflected in the Mile High Macaroons and Cannabis Cups stacked in the new commissary-style kitchen she's rented in the gentrifying neighborhood of City Park West in Denver.
Even with a decent supply of high-grade pot in her walk-in freezer, Robinson can scarcely keep up with demand. She and her two employees (a third is soon to be hired) work six days a week to refine her menu, revise recipes, taste-test hash oil and manage inventory—and still squeeze in time every day to medicate.
"For my ADD," she says. "And some shoulder pain."
Medicate? The medical-marijuana industry relies heavily on such genteel euphemisms. To medicate is to smoke pot, and no one in the industry calls pot pot anymore; it's medicine now. Dealers are called caregivers, and the people who buy their dope—medicine, medicine—are patients. There's no irony here, no winks or nudges to signal that someone's leg is being pulled. "After work," says a counter clerk, or budtender, at Briargate Wellness Center, an upscale dispensary serving the tony north side of Colorado Springs, "I'll just go home, kick back, take out the bong and medicate."
The euphemisms are an important element in the larger movement to bring marijuana use out from the shadows, as advocates say, so it can take its place innocently on Americans' nearly infinite menu of lifestyle preferences, from yachting to survivalism to macrobiotic cooking. So far, the strategy is working. Colorado and 13 other states, along with the District of Columbia, have legalized medical marijuana in the past 14 years. More than a dozen other states are considering the idea. Overnight, dispensaries have sprung up in hundreds of towns and cities; billboards touting one outlet's pot over its rivals' are plastered all over Los Angeles. In some parts of California—where marijuana is the biggest cash crop, with total sales of $14 billion annually—medical pot has become such an established part of the commercial base that cities are moving toward taxing it.
It's not clear that even political setbacks discourage, much less stop, the mainstreaming of marijuana. Anti-pot forces cheered on Nov. 2 when voters in four states apparently rejected pro-pot ballot initiatives—including California's Prop 19, which would have legalized possession of an ounce (28 g) of pot or less. But by Election Day, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the state legislature had already rendered Prop 19 moot. A month earlier, he signed a bill that reduced possession of up to an ounce from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. By Jan. 1, 2011, jaywalkers may have more to fear from California cops than potheads do.
Medical marijuana has helped make all this possible. In a short time, pot has gone from being a prohibited substance to one that is, in many places, widely available if you have an ache or a pain and the patience to fuss with a few forms. This did not take place by accident. In fact, medical marijuana's emergence has many of the attributes of a product rollout. As with any hot commodity, dope is now accorded the same awed regard in some Colorado retail establishments as fine wine, dark chocolate and artisanal cheese. Only now it takes place under the cover of medical care, wellness and pain management. And so what is emerging in many places is a strange, bipolar set of rules: dope is forbidden for everyone but totally O.K. for anyone who is willing to claim a chronic muscle spasm. Does anyone take such farcical distinctions seriously? And can a backlash be far behind?
Legalization via the Clinic Door
George Soros, the jillionaire currency trader and patron of countless liberal organizations, began funding pro-legalization groups in the early 1990s, with instructions that they redirect their energies toward "winnable" issues like medical marijuana. It was a savvy tactic. Even when polls showed strong resistance to making pot legal, large majorities of Americans supported making it available to patients for pain relief. "If we get medical access, we're going to get legalization eventually," activist Richard Cowan said in 1993. "The cat will be out of the bag." Colorado is a good test of whether that seemingly inexorable trajectory will remain plausible or prove a pipe dream.
Along the regulatory spectrum that stretches from distinctly mellow L.A. to schoolmarmish New Mexico, Colorado sits somewhere near the middle. In 2000, Colorado voters approved an amendment to the state constitution to legalize the possession of marijuana for patients suffering from "debilitating medical conditions": cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and multiple sclerosis, along with more nebulous symptoms like "severe nausea" and "severe pain." Voters supported Amendment 20, 54% to 46%.
The implementation was based on what is called a caregiver model. Each patient, on the recommendation of a doctor, could designate a friend or neighbor to grow up to six plants for the patient's use, and each of these caregivers could provide for no more than five patients. Both patient and caregiver would register with the state. The idea was to prevent profiteering, and from 2000 to 2007, roughly 2,000 patients signed up. "The system worked pretty well," says Don Quick, state district attorney for two counties in central Colorado. "Nobody really had a problem with it."
But in 2007, a pro-pot group called Sensible Colorado sued the state health department, and a state court ruled the five-patient limit unconstitutional. "That opened the floodgates," says Brian Vicente, the group's executive director. "A caregiver could have 50 patients if they wanted. And if you had 50 patients, why not open a shop?" Over the next two years, more than 1,000 dispensaries sprang up to serve the more than 100,000 Coloradans who had suddenly discovered their need for medicinal marijuana and applied for a patient card. As Jon Stewart noted, what had been considered the healthiest state in the country rapidly became one of the sickest.
And the economics changed overnight. Patients might spend $500 a year growing six plants on their own. By contrast, dispensaries routinely charge $350 to $500 for 1 oz. of pot. With patients limited by law to possession of no more than 2 oz., they could easily drop $5,000 a year on treatment. "A good-size dispensary will have a few hundred regular customers," Quick says. "You can do the math."
One who did the math was Joe DiFabio, who fits the mold of the hardy American entrepreneur—if the hardy American entrepreneur sold pot for a living. Now in his late 20s, DiFabio ran a construction company and worked in sales before a friend suggested he open a dispensary. He is also a patient, for back pain—nearly everyone who works in the industry medicates—and he had become disenchanted with the dispensaries he'd seen: stoned budtenders, sloppy service, subpar medicine. "They just weren't well kept up," he says. "Kind of dirty."
His business plan was to offer an alternative for the well-heeled professionals in northern Colorado Springs. "I wanted to have the very best medicine at the lowest prices in town," he says, in "a safe, discreet, professional environment." Briargate Wellness Center opened earlier this year, and the plan seems to be working. On a recent weekday afternoon, the three cars in Briargate's parking lot were a Jaguar, a Mercedes and a BMW. DiFabio greets customers in a pressed oxford shirt, trim khakis and polished loafers. The place is painted in pale pastels, and back issues of Golf Digest are fanned out on a slate table. The flat-screen TV plays the A&E channel.
"It's way more work than I expected," he says. "Everyone thinks you get rich on the first day. I'm $45,000 in debt." Beyond the waiting room, the medicine sits carefully displayed on a shelf in little vials labeled with venerable names from a distant, less businesslike era: Mowie Wowie, Couchlock, Atomic Haze—more than 20 varieties in all. There are boxes of rolling papers and massed ranks of bongs and vaporizers, a recent innovation that theoretically allows the patient to inhale pot fumes without burning the weed. Pipes made of colorful blown glass have replaced the old metal pipes familiar to an earlier generation of dopers. Marijuana-infused salsa and chips—"they work phenomenally," DiFabio says—are waiting to be washed down with a bottle of Dixie Elixir medicated soda, in your choice of grape, strawberry or orange. Lollipops are in high demand, and gummy bears fly off the shelves. DiFabio's biggest complaints nowadays would warm the heart of a U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist. "The regulations," he says, "are just over the top." His application for a dispensary license ran to 1,400 pages, with attachments.
Modern liberalism has always maintained a tension between its libertine and bureaucratic impulses, and in medical marijuana the contradictions collide: the government will let you get as high as you want, but only if you fill out a form first. Would-be patients must obtain a recommendation from a doctor and mail a notarized application and a check for $90 to the state department of health. If they can prove to a budtender that they've applied for a card, they're eligible to buy medicine after 35 days. The card arrives in the mail eventually; the backlog at the health department is nine months and getting longer. For dispensary owners and their suppliers—growers and infused-product makers like Robinson—the regulations seem to never end. Alarmed by the sudden efflorescence of dispensaries and customers, the Colorado legislature this summer placed the industry under the regulatory oversight of an official of the state revenue department. Though he's a former cop who busted pot smokers in the 1980s, Matt Cook says he approaches his work with pristine disinterestedness. "The way I see it," he says, "I regulate widgets. Whatever there is to regulate, that's fine with me."
Cook has prepared 92 pages of proposed regulations modeled on the rules that govern casinos. Dispensary-license fees now run as high as $18,000. Budtenders and owners face strict residency requirements, and anyone with a felony drug conviction is barred from the industry for life. Owners will soon be required to place video cameras throughout their cultivation sites and dispensaries so regulators can log on to the Internet and trace the movement of every marijuana bud from the moment its seeds are planted to the point of sale. The video will be transmitted to a website accessible to regulators round the clock. The regulators dictate where the cameras must be placed and at what angle. DiFabio is particularly irked by a proposal to monitor his marijuana scales by linking them to the Web. "We've paid our fees," he says. "Why do they have to watch us every second?"
Only in a state where marijuana is almost legal can you find so many Obama voters complaining about Big Government.
High? What High?
A few facts in particular drove the legislature to tighten the regs this summer. Even Inspector Clouseau might have begun to suspect there was more to the industry than medicating the terminally ill. No one doubts that medical marijuana has brought relief to the state's cancer patients, AIDS sufferers and MS victims. But these aren't the customers the industry is really serving. At the beginning of this year, Colorado health department records show that only 2% of registered patients had cancer; 1% had HIV/AIDS. There were 94% who suffered "severe pain"—a catchall condition that can be entirely subjective and difficult for a doctor to measure or verify. Statewide, more than 70% of doctor recommendations were written by fewer than 15 physicians. Three out of four patients are men under 40. This patient profile—young males complaining of chronic pain—has been roughly the same in other medical-marijuana states like Montana and California.
A couple of weekday afternoons spent at several Colorado dispensaries confirms the picture the numbers paint. Nearly all the patients were male, a large majority in their 20s and 30s. Figures from other states, though less comprehensive, match Colorado's. Brian Vicente shrugs off the numbers. Young men are more likely to work the kind of jobs that result in chronic pain, he says. "All this really shows is that pain is more prevalent in society than AIDS and cancer."
Pot affects different people differently—"We're all our own walking chemistry experiments," Robinson likes to say—and for many patients, smoking it or eating it will quickly relieve pain, nausea and muscle spasms associated with chemotherapy and MS. Studies have demonstrated beyond quibble that marijuana has some effectiveness in mitigating severe pain. Unfortunately, only clinical tests can show which of marijuana's 108 active compounds cause which of its many effects, and because the balance of compounds shifts from plant to plant, dosage is nearly impossible to control when the medicine is consumed in its botanical state.
Even activists now concede that marijuana is addictive for 10% of regular users—making it less addictive than alcohol (15%) and much less addictive than cigarettes (32%), which are, they point out, perfectly legal. Marijuana unquestionably causes cognitive impairment; nobody would smoke it for fun otherwise. Loss of memory and a decline in decisionmaking ability are the most pronounced effects, data confirmed anecdotally and by Cheech and Chong movies. How long the impairment lasts—whether a month or a lifetime—and to what degree are open questions. Use of marijuana has been linked clinically to the onset of depression, anxiety and schizophrenia; the link is especially strong in younger users and stronger still in young men with a predisposition to mental illness.
At the same time, budtenders and dispensary owners alike extol pot's bounteous ability to heal in language that is part Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, part Whole Earth Catalog. Forget migraines and insomnia, back pain and lack of appetite: pot is routinely sold as a cure for irritable-bowel syndrome, Tourette's, muscular dystrophy, herpes, diabetes, gonorrhea, bulimia, eczema and—oddly enough—both obesity and weight loss. Andrew Weil, the alternative-medicine doctor and holistic-healing guru, suggests marijuana might cure cancer.
And what, a layperson might impolitely ask, about the buzz? Hearing tales of pot's medicinal powers, you would think it was the last thing on anybody's mind. Budtenders will even use air quotes when they speak the word high to nonpatients, as though the stoner effects were an elaborate urban myth. Yet among patients, it's often hard to disentangle the curative and palliative functions of marijuana from the desire to get, if you'll forgive the expression, high. Typical are these patient testimonials from a website run by Montana Caregivers Network: the RomSpice variety, says one satisfied customer, "is the strongest body high I've ever felt. It literally makes my whole body feel numb and tingly. I give it a 12 out of 10 for pain." About AK-47, another testifies, "A more 'active' high, pretty decent munchie factor after a few minutes and a very pleasant mental haze. Pain relief is definitely also a good plus with this one." Here the recreational and medicinal are so balled up that one begins to look like an excuse for the other. Nobody would dare talk this way about Percocet.
That's what worries Christian Thurstone, a psychiatrist for adolescents who runs a drug-treatment program in Denver. He cites the confluence of two trends among the city's young. "There's an increase in the availability of marijuana," he says, "at the same time that we're seeing a decrease in the perceived harmfulness of marijuana." His program has seen a marked increase in patient referrals for marijuana use at his clinic, where all patients are under 18.
"We've started hearing things we hadn't heard before," he says. "They're telling us that marijuana isn't a drug, that it's a medicine. They even call it medicine."
To register as a medical-marijuana patient, a minor must submit the notarized signatures of both parents to the Colorado board of health. Even so, Thurstone says, when he collected data on 55 juvenile marijuana patients, he found that 60% of them had gotten their pot from a patient with a medical-marijuana card. "This age is a crucial developmental window for these teenagers, particularly young males," he says. He cites studies that suggest marijuana use in adolescence doubles the risk of schizophrenia in later life. "The human costs are potentially huge." Meanwhile, a national survey on drug use and health reports that the percentage of kids under 17 using marijuana has been rising—from 6.7% in 2008 to 7.3% last year.
The Backlash Cometh
For all its success, there are signs that the advance of the medical-marijuana movement is not inevitable. The narrow losses for initiatives in South Dakota and, apparently, Arizona, despite lavish funding on their behalf, were discouraging to advocates, who are ordinarily quite cheerful—no surprise there—and upbeat about the prospects for their cause. The Los Angeles city council recently moved to reduce the number of local dispensaries from an estimated 1,000 to roughly 200. The New Jersey legislature passed a medical-dope law in January far more stringent than the one activists hoped for. Only terminally ill patients or those with cancer or ALS will be permitted to buy marijuana from a handful of state-sponsored clinics. New Mexico's law, passed in 2007, will prohibit the private cultivation of marijuana, which will be available only through the state government's own "cannabis-production facilities."
Meanwhile, at the federal level, it's still 1985. Marijuana retains its status as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, the legal equivalent of heroin and LSD, with "a high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use." That designation sharply limits the medical research that can be done with marijuana, setting up a flawless bureaucratic catch-22: pot is listed as Schedule 1 because science hasn't found an accepted medical use for it, but science can't find a medical use for it because it's listed as Schedule 1. Either Congress or the Drug Enforcement Administration could change the designation, but the DEA shows no signs of budging, and when Representative Barney Frank introduced a bill two years ago to reclassify marijuana for medical research, he gathered all of four original co-sponsors.
The high hopes that advocates once had for the Obama Administration have faded too. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to de-emphasize federal prosecution of medical-marijuana violations, and Attorney General Eric Holder formalized the policy with a memo to U.S. Attorneys in September 2009.
But it was a short honeymoon. Last January, Obama stunned the movement by reappointing George W. Bush's DEA acting administrator, Michele Leonhardt, who has an uncompromising approach to marijuana. This year, the DEA has made a series of raids on medical-marijuana facilities in Nevada, Michigan and California, claiming the operations were simply fronts for conventional drug dealing. When a federal survey last month showed a surge in pot smoking among young people, Obama's drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, was quick to finger medical-marijuana laws as the culprit. "I think all of the attention and the focus of calling marijuana medicine has sent the absolute wrong message to young people," Kerlikowske said. For the marijuana movement, the Obama era has been all hope and no change.
If nothing else, technology may make medical marijuana obsolete. Mark A.R. Kleiman, a specialist in drug policy at UCLA, says it's inevitable that some form of measurable, dosable medical marijuana will be made available in the next few years, a medicine that comes not in plant form but in a spray or an inhaler. "And that will do away with the argument for medical marijuana as we know it," he says. Already Canada and the U.K. have approved the use of Sativex, a cannibis-based spray for the nose and mouth that was developed by GW Pharmaceuticals, and it's in late-stage testing in the U.S. Sativex has been effective for pain from MS spasms and cancer treatment without causing the marijuana high. The moment Sativex goes on the market, the need for medical dispensaries, caregivers and growers—and all the confusions and prevarications that attend them—disappears.
There's a rough justice here: the disingenuousness of the push for medical marijuana—billed as a compassionate reform and used as a tactic toward full legalization—was always its Achilles' heel. Up to now, most states have approached medical marijuana with a series of evasions. Doctors rely on a patient's report of pain to recommend it, dispensaries rely on the word of doctors to sell it, regulators rely on legislators to determine who can provide it, and legislators fall back on public opinion, which is ill suited to making careful and informed decisions about pharmacology. And no one takes direct responsibility. None dare call it legalization.
There is another way to go about it.
"If we want to legalize marijuana," said Thurstone, "then let's legalize marijuana and call it a day. Let's not sneak it in the back door, dragging the medical system into it."
Here, at least, Thurstone finds an unexpected ally in Jenelise Robinson. Going through boxes of her new Puff Potion medicated soda ($6 a bottle wholesale), she reflects on the oddity of the culture that medical marijuana has created in her state. "It seems silly, doesn't it?" she says. "If there's someone who's been smoking for a long time, medicating, and this is what they like to do and this is what works for them, then why can't they just do it? Why make them go to the doctor and register? Why force them to lie about it?"
Source: Time Magazine
INTAFF-On the Farm of Gaddafi's Son: Lions and Tigers and Bombs, Oh My!
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Aug. 31, 2011
On the Farm of Gaddafi's Son: Lions and Tigers and Bombs, Oh My!
By Abigail Hauslohner/ Tripoli
No one seems particularly sure of where the tigers are. Or the lions, or the gazelles, or any of a long list of animals that the rebels say Saif al-Islam Gaddafi reportedly had in his personal zoo. But the cages are there: big, grassy, outdoor enclosures with rocky outcroppings to climb on, and very high walls. The doors are wide open.
"The animals were moved," says one rebel, uncertainly. Another claims they're residing in different cages, in another part of the sprawling and tightly secured, farm on Tripoli's outskirts. There are two peacocks wandering around leisurely and unharmed, which suggests that the big cats might be long gone. Unless, of course, there used to be more peacocks. (See pictures of the fall of Tripoli.)
The farm belonged to Col. Muammar Gaddafi's heir apparent and is one of a growing number of Gaddafi family properties in and around Tripoli that the "Free Libyans" have broken into to explore in recent days, since rebel fighters took control of the capital last week. Some contain bizarre furniture — like golden mermaid couch in the opulent home of Gaddafi's daughter Aisha. His son Saadi kept a set of cages that may have been reserved for misbehaving friends, rather than wildlife. And another son, Mutassim, kept his underground bathrooms outfitted with modernist metal bidets. Ouch.
But unlike the homes of his father and siblings, Saif's farm seems to hold more treasures — and hints of excess — outdoors than it does within. That's because the Moroccan-inspired mansion — which had been equipped with a Moroccan chef — was smashed to pieces by a NATO air strike last Thursday. The missile failed to kill a single Gaddafi, instead collapsing Saif's mansion on two men and a child who had come to visit after hearing the place was abandoned. "The chef here left last Monday, so why was NATO bombing it?" asked Hassan Mohamed al-Ghebli, who had arrived with a team of volunteers and a bulldozer to remove the bodies, one of whom was his brother, a neighbor of the Moroccan chef.
Another house on the property has been thoroughly looted. Furniture too heavy to be carried away has been smashed. Rebels in gun trucks bump enthusiastically over the roads that wind through acres of grape vines and fruit orchards, vegetable and corn plots, eager to find more secrets. The farm covers a predictable subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers, the kind of thing that almost every Gaddafi lair was equipped with. (See pictures from inside the tents of Muammar Gaddafi.)
But the part that seems to have eluded even NATO are the bunkers: outside, above ground, and packed with the materials of war. There are at least 10 semi-cylindrical warehouses set covertly in the grassy hills on a corner of Saif al-Islam's property. And their contents make it clear that when Saif promised in February that the Gaddafi regime would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet" he was very much supplied to do so.
The bunkers are stocked with thousands of new military uniforms, sleeping bags, flak vests, and gas masks — enough to outfit a brigade. Air strikes have torn through some of the bunkers, scattering fatigue outfits and shredding the metal roofs, each of which had been carefully camouflaged by dirt and flora to look like a natural hill.
But there are also bunkers full of untouched ammunition and Kalashnikov rifle clips, with bullets in every size, an armored personnel carrier, and generators for the troops. And in a ditch — out in the open air, but still live and ready to use — are the bombs. (Read "Exclusive: Gaddafi's Son Saif Talks of Victory and Reform.")
Hundreds are marked M120: an Israeli-made mortar system used by the armed forces of Libya's neighbor, Egypt. There are boxes of rockets that were shipped to Tripoli from Ramenskove, a town southeast of Moscow. And there are rocket launcher systems, explosives, and empty boxes marked for large caliber bullets.
Of course the only thing missing from the war arsenal is the eccentric owner, now on the run. Maybe the pet tigers should have been a warning. But the man who the West once thought would bring development and modernity — and international respectability — to Libya, is the one Libyans now fear could help lead an insurgency in the wake of the apparent fall of his clan — if he isn't caught.
Ali Tarhoni, who serves as the Finance and Oil Minister on the rebel's National Transitional Council, told reporters on Tuesday that the NTC knows where Col. Gaddafi is hiding, and that capture is imminent. He didn't give specifics. The NTC may very well have the family's hideout pinpointed. But that boast may be as certain as the rebels conviction that Saif's missing tigers are... somewhere. Either way, Gaddafi and his heir apparent are still missing. But the bombs on the farm leave little doubt of what they were capable of doing.
Source: Time magazine
Aug. 31, 2011
On the Farm of Gaddafi's Son: Lions and Tigers and Bombs, Oh My!
By Abigail Hauslohner/ Tripoli
No one seems particularly sure of where the tigers are. Or the lions, or the gazelles, or any of a long list of animals that the rebels say Saif al-Islam Gaddafi reportedly had in his personal zoo. But the cages are there: big, grassy, outdoor enclosures with rocky outcroppings to climb on, and very high walls. The doors are wide open.
"The animals were moved," says one rebel, uncertainly. Another claims they're residing in different cages, in another part of the sprawling and tightly secured, farm on Tripoli's outskirts. There are two peacocks wandering around leisurely and unharmed, which suggests that the big cats might be long gone. Unless, of course, there used to be more peacocks. (See pictures of the fall of Tripoli.)
The farm belonged to Col. Muammar Gaddafi's heir apparent and is one of a growing number of Gaddafi family properties in and around Tripoli that the "Free Libyans" have broken into to explore in recent days, since rebel fighters took control of the capital last week. Some contain bizarre furniture — like golden mermaid couch in the opulent home of Gaddafi's daughter Aisha. His son Saadi kept a set of cages that may have been reserved for misbehaving friends, rather than wildlife. And another son, Mutassim, kept his underground bathrooms outfitted with modernist metal bidets. Ouch.
But unlike the homes of his father and siblings, Saif's farm seems to hold more treasures — and hints of excess — outdoors than it does within. That's because the Moroccan-inspired mansion — which had been equipped with a Moroccan chef — was smashed to pieces by a NATO air strike last Thursday. The missile failed to kill a single Gaddafi, instead collapsing Saif's mansion on two men and a child who had come to visit after hearing the place was abandoned. "The chef here left last Monday, so why was NATO bombing it?" asked Hassan Mohamed al-Ghebli, who had arrived with a team of volunteers and a bulldozer to remove the bodies, one of whom was his brother, a neighbor of the Moroccan chef.
Another house on the property has been thoroughly looted. Furniture too heavy to be carried away has been smashed. Rebels in gun trucks bump enthusiastically over the roads that wind through acres of grape vines and fruit orchards, vegetable and corn plots, eager to find more secrets. The farm covers a predictable subterranean network of tunnels and bunkers, the kind of thing that almost every Gaddafi lair was equipped with. (See pictures from inside the tents of Muammar Gaddafi.)
But the part that seems to have eluded even NATO are the bunkers: outside, above ground, and packed with the materials of war. There are at least 10 semi-cylindrical warehouses set covertly in the grassy hills on a corner of Saif al-Islam's property. And their contents make it clear that when Saif promised in February that the Gaddafi regime would "fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet" he was very much supplied to do so.
The bunkers are stocked with thousands of new military uniforms, sleeping bags, flak vests, and gas masks — enough to outfit a brigade. Air strikes have torn through some of the bunkers, scattering fatigue outfits and shredding the metal roofs, each of which had been carefully camouflaged by dirt and flora to look like a natural hill.
But there are also bunkers full of untouched ammunition and Kalashnikov rifle clips, with bullets in every size, an armored personnel carrier, and generators for the troops. And in a ditch — out in the open air, but still live and ready to use — are the bombs. (Read "Exclusive: Gaddafi's Son Saif Talks of Victory and Reform.")
Hundreds are marked M120: an Israeli-made mortar system used by the armed forces of Libya's neighbor, Egypt. There are boxes of rockets that were shipped to Tripoli from Ramenskove, a town southeast of Moscow. And there are rocket launcher systems, explosives, and empty boxes marked for large caliber bullets.
Of course the only thing missing from the war arsenal is the eccentric owner, now on the run. Maybe the pet tigers should have been a warning. But the man who the West once thought would bring development and modernity — and international respectability — to Libya, is the one Libyans now fear could help lead an insurgency in the wake of the apparent fall of his clan — if he isn't caught.
Ali Tarhoni, who serves as the Finance and Oil Minister on the rebel's National Transitional Council, told reporters on Tuesday that the NTC knows where Col. Gaddafi is hiding, and that capture is imminent. He didn't give specifics. The NTC may very well have the family's hideout pinpointed. But that boast may be as certain as the rebels conviction that Saif's missing tigers are... somewhere. Either way, Gaddafi and his heir apparent are still missing. But the bombs on the farm leave little doubt of what they were capable of doing.
Source: Time magazine
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Best-Kept Job-Interview Secret
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The Best-Kept Job-Interview Secret
By Kelly Eggers
You straighten your tie and check your teeth for lettuce before the big interview with your potential boss, but there's another interview you should be prepared for -- that with the company's receptionist. He or she is the first person you meet when you arrive at a prospective employer and the last person you see before you leave. Here are ten things receptionists would tell you if they could.
1. "I'm often underestimated."
Whether it involves visiting a doctor's office, hitting the local fitness center or just heading off to work, there's nary a day many folks won't find themselves interacting with an office receptionist. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports there are more than 1 million receptionists in the U.S., and though the recession knocked more than 45,000 of them out of work between 2008 and 2009, it seems they've begun to get their groove back: The sector is expected to grow by about 15 percent through 2018. While visitors often regard receptionists as mere support staff, it's a mistake to disregard them, considering their position as an office point person. They're "the keepers of information in an office and, because of that, are in positions of power," says Hali Chambers, a former medical receptionist in West Virginia who now works in sales. And since many recession-affected offices also have staff wearing multiple hats, the receptionist you meet could be something closer to a hiring manager. All good reasons to "be polite and professional at all times to whomever is at the desk," says Crystal Brown-Tatum, a former corporate receptionist in Texas.
2. "It's my job not to put you through."
In today's world, office receptionists often serve more as a buffer to busy professionals than as a conduit. In keeping, many uphold company policies that prevent them from putting callers through directly or sharing additional contact information, like in-house e-mail and cell phone numbers. "If the boss doesn't want to be bothered with minute, unimportant information, then I'll get chewed out if I try to transfer the call," says Linda Avalos, a veteran receptionist who has worked in a variety of settings in California. Instead, callers may be encouraged to leave a voice-mail message with little assurance they'll hear back. Looking for a way out of phone tag limbo? Ask the receptionist to send an e-mail to the boss on your behalf, for example. However begrudgingly he or she agrees to do it, it might well be your ticket to a response.
3. "I don't actually work here."
In the wake of the recession, many companies, particularly smaller ones, have begun outsourcing front-office staff to save money. How does it work? Ruby Receptionists, a firm that provides receptionists who work out of its Portland, Ore., office to more than 1,100 companies around the country, trains staff to meet the specific needs of clients: how they'd like calls about job openings and sales pitches handled, for example. But the system doesn't always work seamlessly. There always seems to be "certain information we don't have," says Ruby CEO Jill Nelson. Nevertheless, off-site reception has become a booming business; Bill Grodnik, president and CEO of Davinci Virtual Office Solutions, estimates that of his firm's more than 8,000 clients, 75 percent use its virtual reception services. And while there are only two or three big players in the "virtual reception" industry, Nelson says the field is teeming with smaller, regional outfits. That means the chances of calling an office down the block and speaking with a receptionist miles away are probably greater than you think. Want to know whom you're dealing with -- and where they're located? "People don't necessarily know we're off-site," says Nelson. "But if they ask, we tell them."
4. "I'm not your personal assistant."
If you think the receptionist in the office where you work has it easy, think again. He or she probably has a laundry list that needs tackling on any given day, and it doesn't necessarily include helping you close a sale or pick up your kids from school. That goes for outside visitors as well; people often come into an office expecting the receptionist to leap to their assistance, finding them a satellite location's phone number, for instance, or providing a rundown of the company's business and personnel. "People come in asking for answers to questions that could be answered with a Google search," says Chambers. For the best results, be courteous -- and brief. "There is a lot of demand on [receptionists'] attention, so the more concise you can be, the better."
5. "I may tell a fib or two..."
It happens all the time: You arrive for an appointment at, say, the doctor's office, and are told it'll be "just a few minutes." But half an hour later, you're still waiting. What gives? "We had one very annoying doctor who was chronically late," says Chambers, the medical receptionist. His lateness drove her -- not to mention his patients -- up the wall. "We were constantly apologizing," she says. The fact is, receptionists are restricted from sharing much information about how things run behind the scenes. "I can't tell you that our decision-making process takes time," says Maria Santos, a receptionist for a banking-software-development firm in
Dubai, so when "I tell you that I'll let you know in one or two weeks, chances are, you'll be waiting for one or two months." Asking some gently probing questions, like whether this is a busy time or where you are in the queue, can help you get a clearer picture of reality.
6. "...but don't even try to lie to me."
Depending on the office, receptionists might interact with anywhere from 20 to 200 people a day -- meaning a seasoned pro has heard every trick in the book and has a well-tuned ear for those trying to outsmart the system in some way, whether it's an aggressive approach to getting
put through to the boss or finagling a meeting with inflated credentials. Generally speaking, receptionists want to help, but only if the caller
or visitor comes across as honest and their behavior seems aboveboard. In other words, don't call and say you represent a bank interested in the company's product when the name of the firm you work for is obviously an event organizer's, says Santos. "If you lie," she says, "you won't get anywhere near the boss."
7. "I'm reading you like a book."
Receptionists are often the eyes and ears of an office. It's part of their job to know who's coming and going and to form impressions of visitors by careful observation. That's important to keep in mind, especially for those on a job interview, a sales call or any other matter in which one's conduct and social skills count for something. A word to the wise while waiting: Show a little respect and common sense. Striking up a conversation with a busy receptionist won't score you any points, for example, and neither will chatting loudly on your cell. "Receptionists will be asked, and they'll report back the time someone got there and what they did while they were waiting," says Emily Allen, manager of communications and publications for the International Association of Administrative Professionals. It's best to behave as though every move you make is being monitored, because it probably is, she says.
8. "You really don't want to work here."
Any receptionist worth his salt knows that sharing war stories about the office is inappropriate, especially with a job candidate digging for a little insider information. Not only is it unprofessional to disclose disdain for the job, for coworkers or for the work environment, but it might also be a violation of company policy. Furthermore, it's not the responsibility of a receptionist to do due diligence for those going through the interview process. Out of respect for the company, says Santos, when job candidates pump her for details about office politics, she keeps her opinions to herself, preferring to let people "discover and decide for themselves."
9. "The doctor will never be available when you want."
Especially in big, busy medical practices, making an appointment to see the doctor can feel nearly impossible. It might seem like the receptionists are being difficult when they tell you to call months in advance, but there are a lot of variables in play. For starters, doctors often like to set aside specific times for certain kinds of appointments. For example, says Ellen Huxtable, a seasoned former receptionist from Illinois, certain types of appointments, like those that require fasting in advance, are often scheduled for highly coveted morning hours. And certain portions of the weekly schedule may be reserved strictly for physicals or even for sales calls from pharmaceutical reps and other vendors. The idea is "to consolidate these visits," says Huxtable. Which may explain why you can never seem to get a Thursday afternoon appointment with your general practitioner. Receptionists suggest having a few options in mind on different days of the week, especially when scheduling an initial appointment.
10. "Be careful what you wish for."
While many receptionists say they tend to play by the rules and let visitors navigate office personnel and politics on their own, a few admit to softening a bit toward the occasional courteous guest who is clearly nervous about a meeting. They probably won't provide much backstory on any impending conflict or the clashing ambitions involved, but they might be persuaded to share a word of caution now and again. "A receptionist is not going to be a fountain of information," says Daryl Pigat, a metro market manager at staffing firm Robert Half International, "but they may give a couple of pointers." Then again, visitors may not even want to hear what the receptionist has to say. "It's not in anyone's best interest to tell someone that the person they're meeting with is going to be combative or tough," says Pigat.
Source: SmartMoney.com.
The Best-Kept Job-Interview Secret
By Kelly Eggers
You straighten your tie and check your teeth for lettuce before the big interview with your potential boss, but there's another interview you should be prepared for -- that with the company's receptionist. He or she is the first person you meet when you arrive at a prospective employer and the last person you see before you leave. Here are ten things receptionists would tell you if they could.
1. "I'm often underestimated."
Whether it involves visiting a doctor's office, hitting the local fitness center or just heading off to work, there's nary a day many folks won't find themselves interacting with an office receptionist. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports there are more than 1 million receptionists in the U.S., and though the recession knocked more than 45,000 of them out of work between 2008 and 2009, it seems they've begun to get their groove back: The sector is expected to grow by about 15 percent through 2018. While visitors often regard receptionists as mere support staff, it's a mistake to disregard them, considering their position as an office point person. They're "the keepers of information in an office and, because of that, are in positions of power," says Hali Chambers, a former medical receptionist in West Virginia who now works in sales. And since many recession-affected offices also have staff wearing multiple hats, the receptionist you meet could be something closer to a hiring manager. All good reasons to "be polite and professional at all times to whomever is at the desk," says Crystal Brown-Tatum, a former corporate receptionist in Texas.
2. "It's my job not to put you through."
In today's world, office receptionists often serve more as a buffer to busy professionals than as a conduit. In keeping, many uphold company policies that prevent them from putting callers through directly or sharing additional contact information, like in-house e-mail and cell phone numbers. "If the boss doesn't want to be bothered with minute, unimportant information, then I'll get chewed out if I try to transfer the call," says Linda Avalos, a veteran receptionist who has worked in a variety of settings in California. Instead, callers may be encouraged to leave a voice-mail message with little assurance they'll hear back. Looking for a way out of phone tag limbo? Ask the receptionist to send an e-mail to the boss on your behalf, for example. However begrudgingly he or she agrees to do it, it might well be your ticket to a response.
3. "I don't actually work here."
In the wake of the recession, many companies, particularly smaller ones, have begun outsourcing front-office staff to save money. How does it work? Ruby Receptionists, a firm that provides receptionists who work out of its Portland, Ore., office to more than 1,100 companies around the country, trains staff to meet the specific needs of clients: how they'd like calls about job openings and sales pitches handled, for example. But the system doesn't always work seamlessly. There always seems to be "certain information we don't have," says Ruby CEO Jill Nelson. Nevertheless, off-site reception has become a booming business; Bill Grodnik, president and CEO of Davinci Virtual Office Solutions, estimates that of his firm's more than 8,000 clients, 75 percent use its virtual reception services. And while there are only two or three big players in the "virtual reception" industry, Nelson says the field is teeming with smaller, regional outfits. That means the chances of calling an office down the block and speaking with a receptionist miles away are probably greater than you think. Want to know whom you're dealing with -- and where they're located? "People don't necessarily know we're off-site," says Nelson. "But if they ask, we tell them."
4. "I'm not your personal assistant."
If you think the receptionist in the office where you work has it easy, think again. He or she probably has a laundry list that needs tackling on any given day, and it doesn't necessarily include helping you close a sale or pick up your kids from school. That goes for outside visitors as well; people often come into an office expecting the receptionist to leap to their assistance, finding them a satellite location's phone number, for instance, or providing a rundown of the company's business and personnel. "People come in asking for answers to questions that could be answered with a Google search," says Chambers. For the best results, be courteous -- and brief. "There is a lot of demand on [receptionists'] attention, so the more concise you can be, the better."
5. "I may tell a fib or two..."
It happens all the time: You arrive for an appointment at, say, the doctor's office, and are told it'll be "just a few minutes." But half an hour later, you're still waiting. What gives? "We had one very annoying doctor who was chronically late," says Chambers, the medical receptionist. His lateness drove her -- not to mention his patients -- up the wall. "We were constantly apologizing," she says. The fact is, receptionists are restricted from sharing much information about how things run behind the scenes. "I can't tell you that our decision-making process takes time," says Maria Santos, a receptionist for a banking-software-development firm in
Dubai, so when "I tell you that I'll let you know in one or two weeks, chances are, you'll be waiting for one or two months." Asking some gently probing questions, like whether this is a busy time or where you are in the queue, can help you get a clearer picture of reality.
6. "...but don't even try to lie to me."
Depending on the office, receptionists might interact with anywhere from 20 to 200 people a day -- meaning a seasoned pro has heard every trick in the book and has a well-tuned ear for those trying to outsmart the system in some way, whether it's an aggressive approach to getting
put through to the boss or finagling a meeting with inflated credentials. Generally speaking, receptionists want to help, but only if the caller
or visitor comes across as honest and their behavior seems aboveboard. In other words, don't call and say you represent a bank interested in the company's product when the name of the firm you work for is obviously an event organizer's, says Santos. "If you lie," she says, "you won't get anywhere near the boss."
7. "I'm reading you like a book."
Receptionists are often the eyes and ears of an office. It's part of their job to know who's coming and going and to form impressions of visitors by careful observation. That's important to keep in mind, especially for those on a job interview, a sales call or any other matter in which one's conduct and social skills count for something. A word to the wise while waiting: Show a little respect and common sense. Striking up a conversation with a busy receptionist won't score you any points, for example, and neither will chatting loudly on your cell. "Receptionists will be asked, and they'll report back the time someone got there and what they did while they were waiting," says Emily Allen, manager of communications and publications for the International Association of Administrative Professionals. It's best to behave as though every move you make is being monitored, because it probably is, she says.
8. "You really don't want to work here."
Any receptionist worth his salt knows that sharing war stories about the office is inappropriate, especially with a job candidate digging for a little insider information. Not only is it unprofessional to disclose disdain for the job, for coworkers or for the work environment, but it might also be a violation of company policy. Furthermore, it's not the responsibility of a receptionist to do due diligence for those going through the interview process. Out of respect for the company, says Santos, when job candidates pump her for details about office politics, she keeps her opinions to herself, preferring to let people "discover and decide for themselves."
9. "The doctor will never be available when you want."
Especially in big, busy medical practices, making an appointment to see the doctor can feel nearly impossible. It might seem like the receptionists are being difficult when they tell you to call months in advance, but there are a lot of variables in play. For starters, doctors often like to set aside specific times for certain kinds of appointments. For example, says Ellen Huxtable, a seasoned former receptionist from Illinois, certain types of appointments, like those that require fasting in advance, are often scheduled for highly coveted morning hours. And certain portions of the weekly schedule may be reserved strictly for physicals or even for sales calls from pharmaceutical reps and other vendors. The idea is "to consolidate these visits," says Huxtable. Which may explain why you can never seem to get a Thursday afternoon appointment with your general practitioner. Receptionists suggest having a few options in mind on different days of the week, especially when scheduling an initial appointment.
10. "Be careful what you wish for."
While many receptionists say they tend to play by the rules and let visitors navigate office personnel and politics on their own, a few admit to softening a bit toward the occasional courteous guest who is clearly nervous about a meeting. They probably won't provide much backstory on any impending conflict or the clashing ambitions involved, but they might be persuaded to share a word of caution now and again. "A receptionist is not going to be a fountain of information," says Daryl Pigat, a metro market manager at staffing firm Robert Half International, "but they may give a couple of pointers." Then again, visitors may not even want to hear what the receptionist has to say. "It's not in anyone's best interest to tell someone that the person they're meeting with is going to be combative or tough," says Pigat.
Source: SmartMoney.com.
Seven Tips on Navigating Sticky Workplace Conversations
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Seven Tips on Navigating Sticky Workplace Conversations
By Kelly Eggers
No matter how you might try to avoid them, at some point in your career you will need to have difficult conversations with your boss. It might be asking for a raise, delivering bad news or explaining you can't get all of your assignments completed. How you handle these conversations can make the difference between a positive or negative outcome.
Jodi Glickman, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and founder of Great on the Job LLC, has written a new book, Great on the Job, which delves into how to have an effective communication strategy at work. She provides step-by-step guidelines on handling tricky situations.
"Your success has almost everything to do with your day-to-day interactions," says Glickman.
FINS talked with Glickman about how to communicate with your boss to reinforce the idea that you're an invaluable asset to the team, regardless of what bad news you're conveying. Here are recommendations on how to handle seven typical sticky situations.
When You're Trying to Start a Conversation
Make sure first that the person you're speaking to is ready to listen by asking if they have a few minutes to talk, says Glickman. "Everyone has been on the receiving end of a phone call or a knock at the door where the person doesn't ask you if you have time to speak," says Glickman.
Not only is it rude, she says, but it indicates that you don't value their time as much as you value your own. After you've introduced yourself and briefly indicated the purpose of your call, ask: Do you have a minute to speak? "It's polite and courteous, but it's also a good business decision," she says. "There's nothing worse than if the person you're talking to is saying to themselves 'I don't have time for this conversation.'"
When You're Trying to End a Conversation
Just as important as setting a positive tone at the beginning of a conversation is ending it in a way that invites another discussion, Glickman says. "You always want to be planting the seed for next steps," she says, rather than awkwardly parting ways with no indication of when they'll hear from you again.
The best goodbyes consist of a "thanks" and some indication of forward momentum: when you plan to follow up, offering to pass along relevant information, or letting them know you'll keep them posted on the status of an assignment. "Notice in life that when there's no forward momentum, there's a sense of 'where do we go from here?'," she says.
When You Want to Pass on a Project
When you've got a long to-do list or are simply frustrated with work, there are ways to effectively communicate that with your boss. The key concept here is ditching "no, thanks" language in favor of "sure, but also" statements. Glickman calls it redirecting -- you're happy to take on the assigned task, but you're interested in working on something new and different in the future.
"It probably won't happen immediately, and it's not an 'either-or' scenario -- it's an 'and,'" she says. But if you've got your eyes on an overseas assignment or presence at a client meeting as you sit behind a mountain of data-entry and memo requests, tell your boss that you don't mind the busy work if you get to do the more exciting stuff, too.
When You're Trying to Provide a Quick Update
The times and places you choose to communicate are just as important as the content of your messages. "You might think it's okay to go to your boss every time you have a question," says Glickman, but it's better to ask first if that's their preference before you inundate them with one-line e-mails throughout the day.
"Find out how your boss wants to be communicated with, and then do it," she says. "Do they want you to call with questions as you have them, or would they rather you bundle them up and reach out to them once a day with everything you need them to weigh in on?"
Forward momentum is as important here as it is during goodbyes. "If you go and tell your boss that you've completed a project, they will ask you what's next," she says. "Think about those next steps first so your boss doesn't have to."
When You Have to Explain Something Complicated
The general sharing of information in the workplace is like an omelet, says Glickman. "When you give someone an update, you shouldn't start by telling them about the eggs and cheese or butter and milk," she writes. Instead, you want to "lead with the punchline." Start with the point -- that is, the fact that you have just finished making the most fabulous, delicious omelet -- and then hone in on the details of how you made it and what you put in it, rather than building up suspense and anticipation.
She says that the same rules apply to your personal elevator pitch. "It's all about your destination -- where you're going, what you're excited about now -- not about where you came from and where you've been," Glickman explains. "People are going to be more interested in what you do now and what you want to do going forward before you tell them where you came from. It inverts the order in which most people talk about themselves," she says, but it helps connect the dots between the old and the new much more effectively.
When You're Raising an Issue
Your communication style can make or break people's perception of your ability to manage a crisis or bring attention to a potential issue. "If there's a problem, you have to highlight it as soon as it arises," she says. "Don't hide behind bad news." Glickman says it's about pinpointing the issue, explaining how it might have happened or why it's about to go wrong, and proposing a reasoned solution.
Many people's first instinct when there's a problem is to wait until it surfaces to others to avoid being the bearer of bad news. Glickman says that's the wrong way to think about it. "Transparency is valuable," she says, "but it goes beyond just being honest. It's also being forthright and a person who shares information proactively."
When You Don't Know the Answer
No one knows how to do absolutely everything. When you don't know something, the best way to deal with it, says Glickman, is to be enthusiastic despite bewilderment. "Enthusiasm goes a long way in the face of an 'I don't know,'" says Glickman.
Ask for help intelligently. Follow up a "This sounds like a great assignment, I'd love to help," with a request for an example, a contact recommendation, or a template, Glickman suggests. "If they don't have any guidance, tell them you'll spend some time thinking about it, and you'll come back to them to find out what they think about the direction you're taking," she says. "You want to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing."
In today's economy, being the hardest worker or the most educated in your group isn't a sure-fire guarantee that you'll be scaling the corporate ladder briskly. Business is inherently personal, and if you want to come out on top, you need to not only be good at doing your job, you need to be good at telling people about it.
Seven Tips on Navigating Sticky Workplace Conversations
By Kelly Eggers
No matter how you might try to avoid them, at some point in your career you will need to have difficult conversations with your boss. It might be asking for a raise, delivering bad news or explaining you can't get all of your assignments completed. How you handle these conversations can make the difference between a positive or negative outcome.
Jodi Glickman, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker and founder of Great on the Job LLC, has written a new book, Great on the Job, which delves into how to have an effective communication strategy at work. She provides step-by-step guidelines on handling tricky situations.
"Your success has almost everything to do with your day-to-day interactions," says Glickman.
FINS talked with Glickman about how to communicate with your boss to reinforce the idea that you're an invaluable asset to the team, regardless of what bad news you're conveying. Here are recommendations on how to handle seven typical sticky situations.
When You're Trying to Start a Conversation
Make sure first that the person you're speaking to is ready to listen by asking if they have a few minutes to talk, says Glickman. "Everyone has been on the receiving end of a phone call or a knock at the door where the person doesn't ask you if you have time to speak," says Glickman.
Not only is it rude, she says, but it indicates that you don't value their time as much as you value your own. After you've introduced yourself and briefly indicated the purpose of your call, ask: Do you have a minute to speak? "It's polite and courteous, but it's also a good business decision," she says. "There's nothing worse than if the person you're talking to is saying to themselves 'I don't have time for this conversation.'"
When You're Trying to End a Conversation
Just as important as setting a positive tone at the beginning of a conversation is ending it in a way that invites another discussion, Glickman says. "You always want to be planting the seed for next steps," she says, rather than awkwardly parting ways with no indication of when they'll hear from you again.
The best goodbyes consist of a "thanks" and some indication of forward momentum: when you plan to follow up, offering to pass along relevant information, or letting them know you'll keep them posted on the status of an assignment. "Notice in life that when there's no forward momentum, there's a sense of 'where do we go from here?'," she says.
When You Want to Pass on a Project
When you've got a long to-do list or are simply frustrated with work, there are ways to effectively communicate that with your boss. The key concept here is ditching "no, thanks" language in favor of "sure, but also" statements. Glickman calls it redirecting -- you're happy to take on the assigned task, but you're interested in working on something new and different in the future.
"It probably won't happen immediately, and it's not an 'either-or' scenario -- it's an 'and,'" she says. But if you've got your eyes on an overseas assignment or presence at a client meeting as you sit behind a mountain of data-entry and memo requests, tell your boss that you don't mind the busy work if you get to do the more exciting stuff, too.
When You're Trying to Provide a Quick Update
The times and places you choose to communicate are just as important as the content of your messages. "You might think it's okay to go to your boss every time you have a question," says Glickman, but it's better to ask first if that's their preference before you inundate them with one-line e-mails throughout the day.
"Find out how your boss wants to be communicated with, and then do it," she says. "Do they want you to call with questions as you have them, or would they rather you bundle them up and reach out to them once a day with everything you need them to weigh in on?"
Forward momentum is as important here as it is during goodbyes. "If you go and tell your boss that you've completed a project, they will ask you what's next," she says. "Think about those next steps first so your boss doesn't have to."
When You Have to Explain Something Complicated
The general sharing of information in the workplace is like an omelet, says Glickman. "When you give someone an update, you shouldn't start by telling them about the eggs and cheese or butter and milk," she writes. Instead, you want to "lead with the punchline." Start with the point -- that is, the fact that you have just finished making the most fabulous, delicious omelet -- and then hone in on the details of how you made it and what you put in it, rather than building up suspense and anticipation.
She says that the same rules apply to your personal elevator pitch. "It's all about your destination -- where you're going, what you're excited about now -- not about where you came from and where you've been," Glickman explains. "People are going to be more interested in what you do now and what you want to do going forward before you tell them where you came from. It inverts the order in which most people talk about themselves," she says, but it helps connect the dots between the old and the new much more effectively.
When You're Raising an Issue
Your communication style can make or break people's perception of your ability to manage a crisis or bring attention to a potential issue. "If there's a problem, you have to highlight it as soon as it arises," she says. "Don't hide behind bad news." Glickman says it's about pinpointing the issue, explaining how it might have happened or why it's about to go wrong, and proposing a reasoned solution.
Many people's first instinct when there's a problem is to wait until it surfaces to others to avoid being the bearer of bad news. Glickman says that's the wrong way to think about it. "Transparency is valuable," she says, "but it goes beyond just being honest. It's also being forthright and a person who shares information proactively."
When You Don't Know the Answer
No one knows how to do absolutely everything. When you don't know something, the best way to deal with it, says Glickman, is to be enthusiastic despite bewilderment. "Enthusiasm goes a long way in the face of an 'I don't know,'" says Glickman.
Ask for help intelligently. Follow up a "This sounds like a great assignment, I'd love to help," with a request for an example, a contact recommendation, or a template, Glickman suggests. "If they don't have any guidance, tell them you'll spend some time thinking about it, and you'll come back to them to find out what they think about the direction you're taking," she says. "You want to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing."
In today's economy, being the hardest worker or the most educated in your group isn't a sure-fire guarantee that you'll be scaling the corporate ladder briskly. Business is inherently personal, and if you want to come out on top, you need to not only be good at doing your job, you need to be good at telling people about it.
MKTG-25 Words You Might Not Know Are Trademarked
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
25 Words You Might Not Know Are Trademarked
by Lauren Harrell - July 14, 2011 -
Many of the items we use every day, like zippers and escalators, were once brand names. Even heroin, which no one should use any day, was a brand name. Here are some trademarked names that are often used as generic terms today.
1. You might think you’re riding around on a Jet Ski, but if it’s not made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, it’s just a personal watercraft.
2. Bubble Wrap is probably the greatest contribution made to our society by Sealed Air Corporation, which they rightly trademarked.
3. The term Onesies, referring to infant bodysuits, is owned by Gerber Childrenswear. According to their website, the trademark is aggressively enforced. (Twosies and Funzies also belong to Gerber.)
4. Jacuzzi is not only brand of hot tubs and bathtubs; they also make mattresses and toilets.
5. The Crockpot, a brand name for the slow cooker, was originally developed as a beanery appliance.
6. Fluffernutter is a registered trademark of the makers of Marshmallow Fluff, Durkee-Mower, Inc.
7, 8 & 9. Frisbee is currently owned by WHAM-O, but a legal battle to make this word and several others generic is underway. In 2010, Manley Toys Ltd. challenged WHAM-O, arguing that the terms Frisbee, Hula Hoop and Slip’n Slide have already become generic in the public lexicon. Personally, I think Ultimate Flying Disc sounds cooler than Ultimate Frisbee anyway.
10. Chapstick is a brand name of lip balm produced by Pfizer. In the event that you find yourself enjoying this product too much, websites dedicated to helping Chapstick addicts are available.
11. The perfect time to remind a friend or family member that Kleenex is a brand name for a tissue is right when they are desperately begging you to hand them one.
12. Ping-Pong was trademarked in 1901 as a brand of table tennis products named for the sound the ball makes when it hits the table.
13. On their website, Microsoft suggests that unless you are using their software, your PowerPoint is a “presentation graphics program.”
14. When Q-tips were originally released, they were called Baby Gays. The name was changed to Q-tips—the “Q” standing for quality—in 1926. Although they have changed hands several times since then, Unilever owns the brand today.
15. Two hockey-player brothers designed Rollerblade inline skates from a pair of old roller skates in 1979. They were the only brand of inline skates until the mid-eighties, when several other companies emerged.
16. According to legend, Scotch tape earned its name when a frustrated customer told a 3M scientist to “take it back to your Scotch bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it.” Today, Scotch “Magic Tape” is only manufactured in one place in the world: Hutchinson, Minn.
17. The permanent marker was invented in 1956, but the Sharpie wasn’t introduced until 1964. Today, the products are almost synonymous with one another.
18. In 1899, Pearle Wait sold his recipe for Jell-O to Orator Woodward for $450. In 1902, sales for the product were around $250,000. Today, the gelatin dessert is owned by Kraft.
19. Tupperware is a brand that got its name from its creator, Earle Silas Tupper.
20. George de Mastreal invented Velcro when he discovered that burrs stuck to matted dog fur. Today, it is the world’s most prominent brand of hook and loop fasteners.
21. Weed Eater is owned by Husqvarna Outdoor Products.
22. Don’t ask BIC what’s in their line of correction fluid. The exact ingredients of Wite-out are confidential.
23. Johnson & Johnson manufactured gauze and adhesive tape separately until Earle Dickinson had the idea to combine them to create Band-Aids for his accident-prone wife.
24. The Zamboni is an ice resurfacer named after its inventor, Frank Zamboni.
25. TASER is a trademark of TASER International, and shouldn’t technically be used as a verb. To be fair, “Don’t hit me with that electroshock weapon, bro!” is probably hard to shout under duress. Bonus fact: TASER is an acronym. It stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”
25 Words You Might Not Know Are Trademarked
by Lauren Harrell - July 14, 2011 -
Many of the items we use every day, like zippers and escalators, were once brand names. Even heroin, which no one should use any day, was a brand name. Here are some trademarked names that are often used as generic terms today.
1. You might think you’re riding around on a Jet Ski, but if it’s not made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, it’s just a personal watercraft.
2. Bubble Wrap is probably the greatest contribution made to our society by Sealed Air Corporation, which they rightly trademarked.
3. The term Onesies, referring to infant bodysuits, is owned by Gerber Childrenswear. According to their website, the trademark is aggressively enforced. (Twosies and Funzies also belong to Gerber.)
4. Jacuzzi is not only brand of hot tubs and bathtubs; they also make mattresses and toilets.
5. The Crockpot, a brand name for the slow cooker, was originally developed as a beanery appliance.
6. Fluffernutter is a registered trademark of the makers of Marshmallow Fluff, Durkee-Mower, Inc.
7, 8 & 9. Frisbee is currently owned by WHAM-O, but a legal battle to make this word and several others generic is underway. In 2010, Manley Toys Ltd. challenged WHAM-O, arguing that the terms Frisbee, Hula Hoop and Slip’n Slide have already become generic in the public lexicon. Personally, I think Ultimate Flying Disc sounds cooler than Ultimate Frisbee anyway.
10. Chapstick is a brand name of lip balm produced by Pfizer. In the event that you find yourself enjoying this product too much, websites dedicated to helping Chapstick addicts are available.
11. The perfect time to remind a friend or family member that Kleenex is a brand name for a tissue is right when they are desperately begging you to hand them one.
12. Ping-Pong was trademarked in 1901 as a brand of table tennis products named for the sound the ball makes when it hits the table.
13. On their website, Microsoft suggests that unless you are using their software, your PowerPoint is a “presentation graphics program.”
14. When Q-tips were originally released, they were called Baby Gays. The name was changed to Q-tips—the “Q” standing for quality—in 1926. Although they have changed hands several times since then, Unilever owns the brand today.
15. Two hockey-player brothers designed Rollerblade inline skates from a pair of old roller skates in 1979. They were the only brand of inline skates until the mid-eighties, when several other companies emerged.
16. According to legend, Scotch tape earned its name when a frustrated customer told a 3M scientist to “take it back to your Scotch bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it.” Today, Scotch “Magic Tape” is only manufactured in one place in the world: Hutchinson, Minn.
17. The permanent marker was invented in 1956, but the Sharpie wasn’t introduced until 1964. Today, the products are almost synonymous with one another.
18. In 1899, Pearle Wait sold his recipe for Jell-O to Orator Woodward for $450. In 1902, sales for the product were around $250,000. Today, the gelatin dessert is owned by Kraft.
19. Tupperware is a brand that got its name from its creator, Earle Silas Tupper.
20. George de Mastreal invented Velcro when he discovered that burrs stuck to matted dog fur. Today, it is the world’s most prominent brand of hook and loop fasteners.
21. Weed Eater is owned by Husqvarna Outdoor Products.
22. Don’t ask BIC what’s in their line of correction fluid. The exact ingredients of Wite-out are confidential.
23. Johnson & Johnson manufactured gauze and adhesive tape separately until Earle Dickinson had the idea to combine them to create Band-Aids for his accident-prone wife.
24. The Zamboni is an ice resurfacer named after its inventor, Frank Zamboni.
25. TASER is a trademark of TASER International, and shouldn’t technically be used as a verb. To be fair, “Don’t hit me with that electroshock weapon, bro!” is probably hard to shout under duress. Bonus fact: TASER is an acronym. It stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle.”
22 fascinating and bizarre college classes offered this semester
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
22 fascinating and bizarre college classes offered this semester
1. Sociology of Fame and Lady Gaga
University of South Carolina
No, you won't get extra credit for wearing sirloin to class. As the syllabus warns, "This is not a course in Lady Gaga but in sociology; and it is not a course about Lady Gaga as much as about the culture of the fame as exemplified by the career of Lady Gaga. There will be no PowerPoint presentations in this class nor any music or videos."
2. Wordplay: A Wry Plod from Babel to Scrabble
Princeton University
Obsessed with Words With Friends? If you're at Princeton, you'll almost certainly enjoy this class, where students will "challenge one another to games of Scrabble and Boggle, and enjoy the 'Princeton dimension' of the whole enterprise."
3. "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing
Belmont University
Not only does it have an amazing name, "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" has the best course description I've ever read:
"Oh, look, a Chicken"....This course will pursue ways of knowing through embracing [little ants, carrying a morsel of food across the table] what it means to be a distracted [I could sure enjoy a peanut butter sandwich right now] learner as well as [OMG--I get to go to the beach this summer] developing an awareness [I need to trim my fingernails] of one's senses. The instructor teaches in the school of music, [do I hear water dripping?] so there will be an element related to that woven [spiders are amazing] into the course. [oh, it's the fish tank behind me] Those registering for this section may even learn to juggle [I'll be right down, I just have to finish this...what was I working on?].
4. Things That Go Bump in the Night
Hampshire College
Great course title, and fascinating topic. It looks at "experimental topics in the philosophy of mind," including phantom limb phenomena, ambiguous figures and "split-brain syndrome," when the two brain hemispheres seem to be occupied by two independent consciousnesses.
5. Theory and History of Video GamesSwarthmore
"Historical, cultural and formal perspectives on video games, tracing their emergence as new medium, big business, and social force." If this means playing Halo and Mario Kart in class, I'm sure it'll be a big hit. (It must be -- registration for the class is already closed.)
6. Fly Fishing
Montana State
And if fly fishing doesn't trip your trigger, you can also earn a credit for pocket billiards, bowling fundamentals, or Skiing, Snowboarding and Telemarking.
7. Physics for Future Presidents
UC Berkeley
Planning to fill Obama's shoes one days? Then you better check out this course, which will make you well-versed in topics like spy satellites, medical imaging, nuclear weapons and energy conservation.
8. Zombies in Popular Media
Columbia College Chicago
Capitalizing on the current zombie trend? Maybe, but it still sounds like fun:
"This course explores the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur discussion and exploration of the figures many incarnations. Daily assignments focus on reflection and commentary, while final projects foster thoughtful connections between student disciplines and the figure of the zombie."
9. Cyborg Anthropology
Lewis & Clark College
Finally, you'll know what Skynet knows. OK, not quite -- it's actually about "Cultural practices surrounding the production and consumption of technoscientific and biomedical knowledge," but "Representation of science and technology in popular culture" all but guarantees a viewing of at least one of the Terminators.
10. Popular Flops: Bad Movies
Tufts
I have a feeling this seminar will be a blockbuster, even if they are looking at some of the biggest flops to grace the silver screen. Sounding equally interesting is "Are You There God? It's Me, Gossip Girl."
11. Philosophy and The Wire
Georgetown
Philosophy and Star Trek has been around for a while, but The Wire is a more recent addition to college courses inspired by the small screen. As in the Lady Gaga course, the college is careful to mention that the class isn't actually about the show:
"The class is not about The Wire; instead, the class will use The Wire as an environment for philosophical work, a dramatic and shared vehicle for scratching beneath the surface of the everyday concept of responsibility to find questions we hadn't thought to ask and to begin to answer them."
12. Tightwaddery, or the Good Life on a Dollar a Day
Alfred University
Is it really possible to live on a buck a day? This honors seminar at Alfred doesn't presume to say that you should be shopping at the 99 cent store, but rather asks the question that Socrates once asked: "What is the good life for a human being?"
13. Biology of Jurassic Park
Hood College
From the syllabus: "Even though they are extinct, dinosaurs can serve as models to understand many biological principles, including patterns of biodiversity, evolution, extinction, community ecology, homeostasis and behavior. To understand these principles, we will answer questions such as: How many species of dinosaurs were there? Are birds really dinosaurs? Did dinosaurs show parental care?"
The real question, I think, is whether velociraptors can be brought back to life and exhibited in an amusement park.
14. Joy of Garbage
Santa Clara University
What would have happened to Woody and the Toy Story 3 gang if they hadn't escaped that incinerator by the skin of their teeth? That's what Santa Clara University wants you to know. Your unwanted junk is recycled, burned, reused, shipped abroad or dumped on minority communities.
15. Disney Feature: Then and Now
UCLA
"Evaluation of why Disney's animated features have dominated until recently and ramifications of this dominance on animation and society." Do you suppose it includes field trips to nearby Disneyland or Disney Studios? I'm guessing not.
16. How to Watch Television
Montclair State
Has that big screen in your living room always perplexed you? Flummoxed by the little rectangle that seems to control its every image and sound? Sorry to say, this class isn't going to help. Despite its title, "How to Watch Television" is really about analyzing the medium and evaluating TV's impact on our lives.
17. Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond
University of Texas at Austin
The class explores the Star Trek language and Esperanto, among others. I'm willing to bet there's a bit of Elvish thrown in there, too.
18. The Phallus
Occidental College
I feel like this one speaks for itself, but just in case you need it spelled out for you, here's an excerpt from the syllabus: Topics include the signification of the phallus, the relation of the phallus to masculinity, femininity, genital organs and the fetish, the whiteness of the phallus, and the lesbian phallus.
19. The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur
University of Washington
Though Tupac has been gone for nearly 15 years, he lives on at U-Dub. The course "explores the philosophical, historical and literary influences of the late rapper and activist, Tupac Shakur."
20. The American Vacation
University of Iowa
Sounds like a breezy look at the Hamptons, Disneyland and Route 66, doesn't it? Not quite. Students will focus on "Social history of vacations; cultural significance of contemporary patterns; [and] how experiences and meanings are shaped by race, class, gender."
21. California Culture
San Francisco State
Are California Gurls really undeniable? You probably won't find confirmation of Katy Perry's lyrics in this course. It's more about the state as a "flawed paradise" and addresses the Golden State's function in Pacific relations. You'll also examine the "dynamics of California society and culture in recent times."
22. Goldberg's Canon: Makin' Whoopi
Bates College If you're at Bates and a big fan of The View or Sister Act (or Eddie), this is a nice way to round out your schedule.
Source: MentalFloss.com
22 fascinating and bizarre college classes offered this semester
1. Sociology of Fame and Lady Gaga
University of South Carolina
No, you won't get extra credit for wearing sirloin to class. As the syllabus warns, "This is not a course in Lady Gaga but in sociology; and it is not a course about Lady Gaga as much as about the culture of the fame as exemplified by the career of Lady Gaga. There will be no PowerPoint presentations in this class nor any music or videos."
2. Wordplay: A Wry Plod from Babel to Scrabble
Princeton University
Obsessed with Words With Friends? If you're at Princeton, you'll almost certainly enjoy this class, where students will "challenge one another to games of Scrabble and Boggle, and enjoy the 'Princeton dimension' of the whole enterprise."
3. "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing
Belmont University
Not only does it have an amazing name, "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" has the best course description I've ever read:
"Oh, look, a Chicken"....This course will pursue ways of knowing through embracing [little ants, carrying a morsel of food across the table] what it means to be a distracted [I could sure enjoy a peanut butter sandwich right now] learner as well as [OMG--I get to go to the beach this summer] developing an awareness [I need to trim my fingernails] of one's senses. The instructor teaches in the school of music, [do I hear water dripping?] so there will be an element related to that woven [spiders are amazing] into the course. [oh, it's the fish tank behind me] Those registering for this section may even learn to juggle [I'll be right down, I just have to finish this...what was I working on?].
4. Things That Go Bump in the Night
Hampshire College
Great course title, and fascinating topic. It looks at "experimental topics in the philosophy of mind," including phantom limb phenomena, ambiguous figures and "split-brain syndrome," when the two brain hemispheres seem to be occupied by two independent consciousnesses.
5. Theory and History of Video GamesSwarthmore
"Historical, cultural and formal perspectives on video games, tracing their emergence as new medium, big business, and social force." If this means playing Halo and Mario Kart in class, I'm sure it'll be a big hit. (It must be -- registration for the class is already closed.)
6. Fly Fishing
Montana State
And if fly fishing doesn't trip your trigger, you can also earn a credit for pocket billiards, bowling fundamentals, or Skiing, Snowboarding and Telemarking.
7. Physics for Future Presidents
UC Berkeley
Planning to fill Obama's shoes one days? Then you better check out this course, which will make you well-versed in topics like spy satellites, medical imaging, nuclear weapons and energy conservation.
8. Zombies in Popular Media
Columbia College Chicago
Capitalizing on the current zombie trend? Maybe, but it still sounds like fun:
"This course explores the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur discussion and exploration of the figures many incarnations. Daily assignments focus on reflection and commentary, while final projects foster thoughtful connections between student disciplines and the figure of the zombie."
9. Cyborg Anthropology
Lewis & Clark College
Finally, you'll know what Skynet knows. OK, not quite -- it's actually about "Cultural practices surrounding the production and consumption of technoscientific and biomedical knowledge," but "Representation of science and technology in popular culture" all but guarantees a viewing of at least one of the Terminators.
10. Popular Flops: Bad Movies
Tufts
I have a feeling this seminar will be a blockbuster, even if they are looking at some of the biggest flops to grace the silver screen. Sounding equally interesting is "Are You There God? It's Me, Gossip Girl."
11. Philosophy and The Wire
Georgetown
Philosophy and Star Trek has been around for a while, but The Wire is a more recent addition to college courses inspired by the small screen. As in the Lady Gaga course, the college is careful to mention that the class isn't actually about the show:
"The class is not about The Wire; instead, the class will use The Wire as an environment for philosophical work, a dramatic and shared vehicle for scratching beneath the surface of the everyday concept of responsibility to find questions we hadn't thought to ask and to begin to answer them."
12. Tightwaddery, or the Good Life on a Dollar a Day
Alfred University
Is it really possible to live on a buck a day? This honors seminar at Alfred doesn't presume to say that you should be shopping at the 99 cent store, but rather asks the question that Socrates once asked: "What is the good life for a human being?"
13. Biology of Jurassic Park
Hood College
From the syllabus: "Even though they are extinct, dinosaurs can serve as models to understand many biological principles, including patterns of biodiversity, evolution, extinction, community ecology, homeostasis and behavior. To understand these principles, we will answer questions such as: How many species of dinosaurs were there? Are birds really dinosaurs? Did dinosaurs show parental care?"
The real question, I think, is whether velociraptors can be brought back to life and exhibited in an amusement park.
14. Joy of Garbage
Santa Clara University
What would have happened to Woody and the Toy Story 3 gang if they hadn't escaped that incinerator by the skin of their teeth? That's what Santa Clara University wants you to know. Your unwanted junk is recycled, burned, reused, shipped abroad or dumped on minority communities.
15. Disney Feature: Then and Now
UCLA
"Evaluation of why Disney's animated features have dominated until recently and ramifications of this dominance on animation and society." Do you suppose it includes field trips to nearby Disneyland or Disney Studios? I'm guessing not.
16. How to Watch Television
Montclair State
Has that big screen in your living room always perplexed you? Flummoxed by the little rectangle that seems to control its every image and sound? Sorry to say, this class isn't going to help. Despite its title, "How to Watch Television" is really about analyzing the medium and evaluating TV's impact on our lives.
17. Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond
University of Texas at Austin
The class explores the Star Trek language and Esperanto, among others. I'm willing to bet there's a bit of Elvish thrown in there, too.
18. The Phallus
Occidental College
I feel like this one speaks for itself, but just in case you need it spelled out for you, here's an excerpt from the syllabus: Topics include the signification of the phallus, the relation of the phallus to masculinity, femininity, genital organs and the fetish, the whiteness of the phallus, and the lesbian phallus.
19. The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur
University of Washington
Though Tupac has been gone for nearly 15 years, he lives on at U-Dub. The course "explores the philosophical, historical and literary influences of the late rapper and activist, Tupac Shakur."
20. The American Vacation
University of Iowa
Sounds like a breezy look at the Hamptons, Disneyland and Route 66, doesn't it? Not quite. Students will focus on "Social history of vacations; cultural significance of contemporary patterns; [and] how experiences and meanings are shaped by race, class, gender."
21. California Culture
San Francisco State
Are California Gurls really undeniable? You probably won't find confirmation of Katy Perry's lyrics in this course. It's more about the state as a "flawed paradise" and addresses the Golden State's function in Pacific relations. You'll also examine the "dynamics of California society and culture in recent times."
22. Goldberg's Canon: Makin' Whoopi
Bates College If you're at Bates and a big fan of The View or Sister Act (or Eddie), this is a nice way to round out your schedule.
Source: MentalFloss.com
HHRR-Isn't that illegal? Answering uncomfortable interview questions
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Isn't that illegal? Answering uncomfortable interview questions
(CareerBuilder.com) -- Keeping one's cool when an interview chair turns into a hot seat can be difficult. Here are some examples of zingers thrown at candidates, and how some of them responded:
"My friends and I have been asked several times what we would do if we got pregnant. Our answer: 'I can't have children. I'm infertile.' It always sets the interviewer on his (never asked this by a woman) heels. We decided that in the event that we did get the job and did get pregnant, we would cast it as a 'miracle' -- and just be joyous with everyone about the heavenly news!"
-- Rebecca Raibley, Massachusetts
"I am a proud American but have a slight accent. When they ask me where I was born and I tell them, they say, 'Oops, we just remembered we have no openings currently.' So I've concluded that answering their illegal question will never get me a job, but if I refuse to answer it or tell them it's illegal, that will not get me the job either. Quite a conundrum."
-- Mo Abraham, St. Louis
"I was asked, 'Isn't [my past boss] a jerk?' Obviously, I wanted to take the high road, and I wasn't sure why the interviewer asked that question. So I responded, 'He certainly makes an impression,' and changed the subject. Since no further questions were asked along those lines, I think it was a test -- maybe of quick thinking under pressure, maybe to see if I would dish dirt. Either way, never say anything negative about a past employer."
-- Marilyn Santiesteban, Boston
"An interviewer once asked me to which charities I donated. I was uncomfortable with this question, as it seems quite personal. Donations are often based on personal criteria: health experience, politics, religion and other individual ideologies. I don't believe people should be 'qualified' by the groups of their choice."
-- Lisa Hanock-Jasie, New York
"I was asked in an interview once, 'How do you get along with your mother?' I responded, 'If you're trying to find out whether I can work well for a female boss, you can just ask me that. If you were my friend, I wouldn't mind answering. But since this is an interview, I find that question inappropriate.'"
-- Dez Stephens, Nashville, Tennessee
Reacting
Coming up with a response isn't always easy when the voice inside you is screaming, "Why the heck is he asking me that?" While panic, anger and confusion are typical responses to uncomfortable questions, checking emotions is crucial to getting the interview back on track. The interviewer may be trying to judge your confidence level and how you handle pressure.
Steven Roy Goodman, an educational consultant and career strategist in Washington, D.C., advises his clients to answer inappropriate interview questions by politely saying, "That question makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Would you mind if we talked about how specifically I might be able to work with department X of company Y?"
Candidates who have experienced uncomfortable interview questions on a certain topic may wish to practice suitable responses ahead of time. For instance, if a gap in employment seems to be an issue, be ready to talk about the skills you acquired or the contributions you made as a volunteer during that time.
Unfortunately, some interviewers persist in areas they shouldn't.
"Obvious off-limit topics are family situation, age, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual preference, race or any questions that lead to more knowledge about the candidate through related questions -- such as, 'Will you need to make any special arrangements for family members should you be hired?' or, 'Have you ever missed work for illness or injury?'" says Terry Henley, director of compensation services at Employers Resource Association, a nonprofit serving small and medium-sized businesses in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
In this situation, Henley recommends that candidates say that they aren't comfortable discussing the topic and then think about whether they wish to continue the interview. "If the applicant is certain that the question is illegal, he can tell the interviewer, understanding that it will probably mean that the interview will end soon and not end up in employment." Filing charges with a state or federal agency is an option if a well-qualified candidate feels certain that the only reason he was denied the position was because of being a member of a protected class, but Henley cautions that "the likelihood for success in filing such a claim in these circumstances is low."
While candidates have little to no control over what questions an interviewer chooses to ask, they do have power over something important: their own response. So set the tone that you've come to discuss why you're the best person for the job -- and nothing else.
Isn't that illegal? Answering uncomfortable interview questions
(CareerBuilder.com) -- Keeping one's cool when an interview chair turns into a hot seat can be difficult. Here are some examples of zingers thrown at candidates, and how some of them responded:
"My friends and I have been asked several times what we would do if we got pregnant. Our answer: 'I can't have children. I'm infertile.' It always sets the interviewer on his (never asked this by a woman) heels. We decided that in the event that we did get the job and did get pregnant, we would cast it as a 'miracle' -- and just be joyous with everyone about the heavenly news!"
-- Rebecca Raibley, Massachusetts
"I am a proud American but have a slight accent. When they ask me where I was born and I tell them, they say, 'Oops, we just remembered we have no openings currently.' So I've concluded that answering their illegal question will never get me a job, but if I refuse to answer it or tell them it's illegal, that will not get me the job either. Quite a conundrum."
-- Mo Abraham, St. Louis
"I was asked, 'Isn't [my past boss] a jerk?' Obviously, I wanted to take the high road, and I wasn't sure why the interviewer asked that question. So I responded, 'He certainly makes an impression,' and changed the subject. Since no further questions were asked along those lines, I think it was a test -- maybe of quick thinking under pressure, maybe to see if I would dish dirt. Either way, never say anything negative about a past employer."
-- Marilyn Santiesteban, Boston
"An interviewer once asked me to which charities I donated. I was uncomfortable with this question, as it seems quite personal. Donations are often based on personal criteria: health experience, politics, religion and other individual ideologies. I don't believe people should be 'qualified' by the groups of their choice."
-- Lisa Hanock-Jasie, New York
"I was asked in an interview once, 'How do you get along with your mother?' I responded, 'If you're trying to find out whether I can work well for a female boss, you can just ask me that. If you were my friend, I wouldn't mind answering. But since this is an interview, I find that question inappropriate.'"
-- Dez Stephens, Nashville, Tennessee
Reacting
Coming up with a response isn't always easy when the voice inside you is screaming, "Why the heck is he asking me that?" While panic, anger and confusion are typical responses to uncomfortable questions, checking emotions is crucial to getting the interview back on track. The interviewer may be trying to judge your confidence level and how you handle pressure.
Steven Roy Goodman, an educational consultant and career strategist in Washington, D.C., advises his clients to answer inappropriate interview questions by politely saying, "That question makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Would you mind if we talked about how specifically I might be able to work with department X of company Y?"
Candidates who have experienced uncomfortable interview questions on a certain topic may wish to practice suitable responses ahead of time. For instance, if a gap in employment seems to be an issue, be ready to talk about the skills you acquired or the contributions you made as a volunteer during that time.
Unfortunately, some interviewers persist in areas they shouldn't.
"Obvious off-limit topics are family situation, age, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual preference, race or any questions that lead to more knowledge about the candidate through related questions -- such as, 'Will you need to make any special arrangements for family members should you be hired?' or, 'Have you ever missed work for illness or injury?'" says Terry Henley, director of compensation services at Employers Resource Association, a nonprofit serving small and medium-sized businesses in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.
In this situation, Henley recommends that candidates say that they aren't comfortable discussing the topic and then think about whether they wish to continue the interview. "If the applicant is certain that the question is illegal, he can tell the interviewer, understanding that it will probably mean that the interview will end soon and not end up in employment." Filing charges with a state or federal agency is an option if a well-qualified candidate feels certain that the only reason he was denied the position was because of being a member of a protected class, but Henley cautions that "the likelihood for success in filing such a claim in these circumstances is low."
While candidates have little to no control over what questions an interviewer chooses to ask, they do have power over something important: their own response. So set the tone that you've come to discuss why you're the best person for the job -- and nothing else.
Handwriting through the ages: An abridged history of English script
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Handwriting through the ages: An abridged history of English script
(CNN) -- There are myriad ways to scrawl out the English language: loopy and slanting letters, tight and focused penmanship, and the ever-present chicken scratch, to name only a few.
This was readily apparent when CNN solicited handwriting samples from iReporters as part of the cultural census. Some submitters favored the clean and simple script that denotes years of penmanship practice. Others had messy lettering and sentences tracing defiant diagonal trajectories off their guidelines.
In the era before the printing press, handwriting was a highly specialized and labor-intensive monastic discipline, one undertaken only by those who had committed their lives to the church. Scribes worked painstakingly in a scriptorium, a room connected to a monastery's library where transcribers would spend their entire workday ensconced in one of the many cubiclelike recesses lining the walls. There, they inscribed letter after letter on sheets of parchment for months (or years) at a time -- all to produce a single book or manuscript.
In the opinion of Arnie Sanders, associate professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore, the history of handwriting is a perfect encapsulation of how the collision between the secular and the sacred has informed our literary traditions.
"It's impossible to say how many different styles of handwriting there were," he said. "Each monastery would have its own scriptorium, if it was not extraordinarily poor. They had to reproduce the service books that they were wearing out. Some became specialists in doing this for other monasteries that were not as good at it. It takes a long time to produce manuscript books.
"The leaders of the scriptorium were looking for people who cared enough about books and writing to dedicate their entire lives to the process," he said. "These skills were something that could carry you through your whole life. Once you learned how to do this, you weren't going to ever be sent out into the fields to mow hay or to plow. Books became the labor that you gave to God."
In all three of the Abrahamic faiths -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- handwriting is inexorably connected to religion and the worship of God . The scribe's duties were among the most sacred of religious tasks.
"The real purpose of writing was to propagate the word of God, and to regulate the worship of God," Sanders said. "That's what kept handwriting alive, and why it was taught as a vocation."
Computers and calligraphy: Long-lost twins?
A fitting analogy to the manuscript process is, ironically enough, computer programming. Though the two disciplines are separated by more than a millennium of history, they share fascinating similarities and parallels in their evolution, Sanders said.
"Who programs their own computer any more? In the olden days, when (Steve) Wozniak and (Steve) Jobs were out in the garage doing their thing, everyone had to program their own computer," Sanders said. "That was the scriptorium of the modern era. Now we hire scribes to program for us. Modern computer users are in the 'Dilbert' era. The new scribe is the poor, underpaid and underappreciated programmer who's cranking out Microsoft Word revisions.
"In the early era, while scribes were still working to produce books, before the printing press, you just hired a scribe if you were rich," he continued. "Even people who were literate didn't bother to write their own letters."
Indeed, until the mid-15th century, handwriting remained a specialized vocation mostly reserved for the church and the aristocratic classes. Only specialists could decode the then-standard Gothic script style, because only specialists needed to do so.
Gothic lettering is famous for its complex and ornate style, which can be extremely confusing to the uninitiated. Every serious work of the time, including Geoffrey Chaucer's legendary "Canterbury Tales," employed this script.
Then, as the Renaissance movement began to take root in Europe, Continental Humanist writers began to revive Carolingian lettering, a form of script predating the Gothic style. Continental Humanists sought to apply Renaissance logic and critique to ancient texts, making the writing more digestible and accessible to a wider audience. Their ultimate goal was the "wider distribution of their manuscript works about the pagan classics as well as to challenge Medieval religious orthodoxy," Sanders said.
Carolingian script -- being much simpler, cleaner and easier to read than Gothic -- suited the Continental Humanists' purposes, and was popular enough to become the next step in the evolution of English writing.
And just as with computers, this increased user-friendliness led to a massive proliferation of styles and formats.
"After that last burst of clarity, once literacy spreads beyond professional scribes to ordinary readers like you and me, manuscript writing becomes distorted and stretched out by the very difficult-to-read early modern cursive script of the 15th to 17th century," he said. "This also leads to an explosion of different handwriting styles, the results of which you're seeing today. Look at modern writers' cursive signatures, and you're looking at a late form of this popularized script."
Where the sacred and the secular meet
Indeed, the history of handwriting can be summed up by this constant interplay and between script's religious roots and its secular applications.
"Literally, it's the power to control the pen, and the power to control what the pen perpetuates," Sanders said. "People's interest in this debate about cursive handwriting, typing, texting and other incarnations of the language -- this is proof that these things still have the power to move us. It's the surest evidence you need for the importance of handwriting to the culture."
Handwriting through the ages: An abridged history of English script
(CNN) -- There are myriad ways to scrawl out the English language: loopy and slanting letters, tight and focused penmanship, and the ever-present chicken scratch, to name only a few.
This was readily apparent when CNN solicited handwriting samples from iReporters as part of the cultural census. Some submitters favored the clean and simple script that denotes years of penmanship practice. Others had messy lettering and sentences tracing defiant diagonal trajectories off their guidelines.
In the era before the printing press, handwriting was a highly specialized and labor-intensive monastic discipline, one undertaken only by those who had committed their lives to the church. Scribes worked painstakingly in a scriptorium, a room connected to a monastery's library where transcribers would spend their entire workday ensconced in one of the many cubiclelike recesses lining the walls. There, they inscribed letter after letter on sheets of parchment for months (or years) at a time -- all to produce a single book or manuscript.
In the opinion of Arnie Sanders, associate professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore, the history of handwriting is a perfect encapsulation of how the collision between the secular and the sacred has informed our literary traditions.
"It's impossible to say how many different styles of handwriting there were," he said. "Each monastery would have its own scriptorium, if it was not extraordinarily poor. They had to reproduce the service books that they were wearing out. Some became specialists in doing this for other monasteries that were not as good at it. It takes a long time to produce manuscript books.
"The leaders of the scriptorium were looking for people who cared enough about books and writing to dedicate their entire lives to the process," he said. "These skills were something that could carry you through your whole life. Once you learned how to do this, you weren't going to ever be sent out into the fields to mow hay or to plow. Books became the labor that you gave to God."
In all three of the Abrahamic faiths -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- handwriting is inexorably connected to religion and the worship of God . The scribe's duties were among the most sacred of religious tasks.
"The real purpose of writing was to propagate the word of God, and to regulate the worship of God," Sanders said. "That's what kept handwriting alive, and why it was taught as a vocation."
Computers and calligraphy: Long-lost twins?
A fitting analogy to the manuscript process is, ironically enough, computer programming. Though the two disciplines are separated by more than a millennium of history, they share fascinating similarities and parallels in their evolution, Sanders said.
"Who programs their own computer any more? In the olden days, when (Steve) Wozniak and (Steve) Jobs were out in the garage doing their thing, everyone had to program their own computer," Sanders said. "That was the scriptorium of the modern era. Now we hire scribes to program for us. Modern computer users are in the 'Dilbert' era. The new scribe is the poor, underpaid and underappreciated programmer who's cranking out Microsoft Word revisions.
"In the early era, while scribes were still working to produce books, before the printing press, you just hired a scribe if you were rich," he continued. "Even people who were literate didn't bother to write their own letters."
Indeed, until the mid-15th century, handwriting remained a specialized vocation mostly reserved for the church and the aristocratic classes. Only specialists could decode the then-standard Gothic script style, because only specialists needed to do so.
Gothic lettering is famous for its complex and ornate style, which can be extremely confusing to the uninitiated. Every serious work of the time, including Geoffrey Chaucer's legendary "Canterbury Tales," employed this script.
Then, as the Renaissance movement began to take root in Europe, Continental Humanist writers began to revive Carolingian lettering, a form of script predating the Gothic style. Continental Humanists sought to apply Renaissance logic and critique to ancient texts, making the writing more digestible and accessible to a wider audience. Their ultimate goal was the "wider distribution of their manuscript works about the pagan classics as well as to challenge Medieval religious orthodoxy," Sanders said.
Carolingian script -- being much simpler, cleaner and easier to read than Gothic -- suited the Continental Humanists' purposes, and was popular enough to become the next step in the evolution of English writing.
And just as with computers, this increased user-friendliness led to a massive proliferation of styles and formats.
"After that last burst of clarity, once literacy spreads beyond professional scribes to ordinary readers like you and me, manuscript writing becomes distorted and stretched out by the very difficult-to-read early modern cursive script of the 15th to 17th century," he said. "This also leads to an explosion of different handwriting styles, the results of which you're seeing today. Look at modern writers' cursive signatures, and you're looking at a late form of this popularized script."
Where the sacred and the secular meet
Indeed, the history of handwriting can be summed up by this constant interplay and between script's religious roots and its secular applications.
"Literally, it's the power to control the pen, and the power to control what the pen perpetuates," Sanders said. "People's interest in this debate about cursive handwriting, typing, texting and other incarnations of the language -- this is proof that these things still have the power to move us. It's the surest evidence you need for the importance of handwriting to the culture."
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