StatusNet, the open-source microblogging service that serves as the foundation for identi.ca, just announced the launch of the public beta of its StatusNet Cloud Service. Thanks to this, you can now easily host your own Twitter-like community for your blog, club or company.

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Getting Started

To get started, just head over to status.net, sign up for a free account. You can choose between a single user account (good for bloggers and brands), a private network for your company or a public community site. After that, you can customize your site with your own logo and colors. You can also set the character limit for status updates from your users.

Connect to Twitter

Just running your own microblogging network isn't too exciting unless you are running an internal site for your business, but you can easily connect your Twitter account to your StatusNet site, so that every update from your personal site gets syndicated to your Twitter stream as well. Sending local StatusNet @replies to Twitter is optional.

StatusNet in the Enterprise

StatusNet also offers paid enterprise solutions, with costs ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per year depending on the features and level of service the customer expects. Our Own Alex Williams just took a closer look at the service's future in the enterprise last week and argued that it "has the features that the enterprise customer wants and it has a strong developer community."

As of now, StatusNet's free offering can't quite replace Yammer or similar products in a business setting, but if you always wanted to set up your own Twitter-like environment, StatusNet now makes it as easy as choosing a URL.

Does the world need more than one Twitter? How about 10,000 of them? That is how many sites are running on the hosted version of StatusNet, which went into private beta at our Realtime CrunchUp last November. Today, StatusNet is opening up its hosted service to all comers in a public beta.

You can think about StatusNet as the WordPress of microblogging. StatusNet is open-source software which can either be downloaded and run on your own enterprise servers or now on StatusNet's hosted servers. Basic service is free, with plans to charge for premium levels down the line. The premium versions will be ad-free, support unlimited users, larger file sizes, your own domain and design, Facebook and Twitter integration, and XMPP feeds.

CEO Evan Prodromou describes the various ways StatusNet can be used: as an open-source microblogging server akin to WordPress, as the basis for an online community (ning.com for microblogging); for enterprise (Open Source Yammer), or for a single user to own their social media presence (your own ping.fm). One of the cooler features of StatusNet is OStatus, which lets you follow people on different social networks all from within your hosted microblogging enevironment.

The largest site hosted on StatusNet is the company's own identi.ca, but StatusNet will also be hosting microblogging sites for ABC News, Shit My Dad Says (not live yet at the time of this posting), the Twit Army, Kirsty Ally's weight loss community Phitter, Germany's Bleeper, and Today's Mama. All together, there are more than 1 million registered users across all 10,000 StatusNet sites.

Shit My Dad Says has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and a TV pilot in the works starring William Shatner. He will use StatusNet to push his updates to Twitter while controlling the advertising. ABC News plans to use StatusNet as a central dashboard to push out its headlines and updates to different social networks. Update: Apparently, ABC News changed its mind and won't be using the service now.

StausNet is based in Montreal and raised $1 million in seed capital last year.

Does the world need more than one Twitter? How about 10,000 of them? That is how many sites are running on the hosted version of StatusNet, which went into private beta at our Realtime CrunchUp last November. Today, StatusNet is opening up its hosted service to all comers in a public beta.

You can think about StatusNet as the WordPress of microblogging. StatusNet is open-source software which can either be downloaded and run on your own enterprise servers or now on StatusNet's hosted servers. Basic service is free, with plans to charge for premium levels down the line. The premium versions will be ad-free, support unlimited users, larger file sizes, your own domain and design, Facebook and Twitter integration, and XMPP feeds.

CEO Evan Prodromou describes the various ways StatusNet can be used: as an open-source microblogging server akin to WordPress, as the basis for an online community (ning.com for microblogging); for enterprise (Open Source Yammer), or for a single user to own their social media presence (your own ping.fm). One of the cooler features of StatusNet is OStatus, which lets you follow people on different social networks all from within your hosted microblogging enevironment.

The largest site hosted on StatusNet is the company's own identi.ca, but StatusNet will also be hosting microblogging sites for ABC News, Shit My Dad Says (both not live yet at the time of this posting), the Twit Army, Kirsty Ally's weight loss community Phitter, Germany's Bleeper, and Today's Mama. All together, there are more than 1 million registered users across all 10,000 StatusNet sites.

Shit My Dad Says has 1.2 million followers on Twitter and a TV pilot in the works starring William Shatner. He will use StatusNet to push his updates to Twitter while controlling the advertising. ABC News plans to use StatusNet as a central dashboard to push out its headlines and updates to different social networks.

StausNet is based in Montreal and raised $1 million in seed capital last year.

Bake a Referral Engine Into Your Business Model

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

This post is a special Make a Referral Week guest post featuring education on the subject of referrals and word of mouth marketing and making 1000 referrals to 1000 small businesses check it out at Make a Referral Week 2010

Have you ever squirmed when a seasoned businessperson asked you what sets you apart from your competition? or what are you truly great at, that no one else in your market can do better than you?

You are not alone.

Many new entrepreneurs get uncomfortable with the notion that they have to be an expert in their field to have a successful business. This is because they think that they have to know every last thing about the market in order to be considered an expert.

Here is the good news: one of your unique differentiators can be your ability to refer your clients to fantastic people who compliment your work. You don't have to know everything. You just have to know people who do.

I have designed my business this way. I feel exceptionally competent helping corporate employees figure out which business to start. I can wrestle their snarling fears with confidence. I can help them with branding and marketing plans, and teach them how to grow their network using social media.
But if they ask what kind of business structure will protect their assets, I draw a blank. That is why I have tax attorney and business process guru Kyle Durand on speed dial. If they are creating a new software product and want to know how to wade through IP laws and trademarks, I send them to Jill Hubbard Bowman.

If they have no idea which shopping cart to use on their website, I send them to research maven Crystal Williams, otherwise known as Big Bright Bulb.

If they want killer branding design with great copy, I send them to Reese and Kelly Parkinson.

If they know what to do but get paralyzed by procrastination, overwhelm and creative blocks, I send them to Charlie Gilkey.

If they decide they don't want to start a business after all and want to get a job, I send them to the best career coach I know, Michele Woodward.

And if they are incredibly difficult to work with, I send them to John Jantsch. (Just kidding John! J)

Knowing I have world-class business partners who will not only deliver excellent service to my clients but will also be fun and easy to work with allows me sell my strengths and refer the rest. My clients are happy, I am happy, and my circle of partners is happy. Our combined networks generate lots of new business, and many opportunities to collaborate on programs, products and services.

How can you bake a great referral network into your business model?

• Define the problem your clients are trying to solve. Are they trying to start a business? Make more money? Simplify their life? Build a product?
  Break down all the knowledge and support they will need to solve the problem. Think about which tools they may need, which decisions they have to make and what skills and competencies they require.
• Identify your strengths. As you examine all that's needed to solve their problem, think about what you love to do, what interests you, and where people say you excel.
• Structure your services around your strengths. If you love doing big picture strategy and get bored with implementation, don't offer that service. By focusing only on what you do best, you will set yourself apart from so many others who struggle to provide everything to everyone.
• Identify ethical, competent people who are great at solving the rest of the problem. Use your personal networks, social networks and research to find excellent referral partners. Watch closely the first few times you send a client their way. Make sure they deliver great results and make your clients happy. After awhile, you will send them business with your eyes closed. And they will do the same for you.

Baking referrals into your business model will not only grow your business, it will make your brand shine. As Miguel de Cervantes said in Don Quixote:
Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are.

Pamela Slim is a business coach and author of the award-winning book Escape from Cubicle Nation. Find her at www.escapefromcubiclenation.com and follow her on Twitter @pamslim

Since more than 30,000 people are coming here to Austin for South by Southwest, I figured I'd offer up a list of local companies that members of the digerati should take the time to meet while they're in town. Austin has a ton of startups, but I tried to highlight the ones doing things that Austinites do well (such as enterprise social media efforts and hardware) as well as those I think are about to break out and become bigger.

A note to those folks following the manufactured Foursquare-Gowalla smackdown: Gowalla is not listed because most people have already met with Josh Williams, Gowalla's founder, and I wanted to save room for some unknown Austinites.

1. Gendai Games This is the company behind GameSalad, a platform that anyone can use to build iPhone games. Its software could become to App Store game development what Microsoft's Frontpage software was for creating web sites without having to know HTML. One local tech watcher says he thinks that Gendai's platform could be Apple's answer to Flash.
2. Smooth-Stone I write about this company all the time because I'm intrigued by its plan to use ARM-based chips in servers as a way to conserve energy and match the processing power to the workload required by web-scale companies.
3. Plerts A stealthy startup doing some form of personal alerts on the iPhone. I'm hoping the company will launch at SXSW.
4. Whurleyvision William Hurley, better known as Whurley, is an Austin tech celebrity, but visit his R&D firm to discuss the future of augmented reality and his rather passionate call for better AR hardware.
5. ATX Innovation These are the developers behind the TabbedOut app, which connects with a bar's payment system and allows you to track and then settle your bar tab with one click. Having waited around for more than 20 minutes for my tab on many occasions, I'm loving this. The app is free and users pay a 99-cent fee on each transaction. It's available for iPhones, and is being tested right now in several Austin bars and restaurants.
6. Infochimps I love this startup because I love anything that makes access to data easier. Infochimps aggregates and then licenses data sets in formats that folks can then use to create new apps, demographic models or whatever; public data sets are free and private ones (or ones that Infochimps has scrubbed) cost money. Anyone can submit a data set.
7. AreYouWatchingThis.com If you've ever blown off a football game after the first quarter and later found out that your team rebounded in the fourth to win in an upset, you need RUWT. This 3-year-old startup has built a bot that factors in items such as games going into overtime, when talented teams are unexpectedly losing and other indications of an exciting match-up, and then sends out an alert via text or email so that true sports fans never miss out.
8. LugIron This company founded by ex-Cisco guys wants to be the middleware between social media and enterprise customer relationship management or business intelligence software. The goal is to provide software that can correlate information from Twitter or Facebook to how it affects your business.
9. Appozite This two-man (actually one man and one woman) startup is behind @cheaptweet, which has 22,000 followers and scours Twitter for savings. If you don't meet with them, at least follow them so you can score some savings.
10. OtherInbox Email isn't going away, but it is becoming increasingly cumbersome. OtherInbox allows users to organize their email, automatically routing messages that come via Facebook or iTunes receipts into folders that you can ignore until you have space time. The endgame is to grab relevant information from your inbox and surface it easily, but we're not there yet.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Igor Bespamnatyov

It was just about a year and a half ago now that we were hearing the bells toll for Internet radio service Pandora, but, as evidenced in today's New York Times profile of the decade old stalwart, the service seems to be going nowhere but up.

While Pandora "has been on the verge of death, struggling to find investors and battling record labels over royalties," according to the Times' profile, a recent move by Warner Music may help to put one Internet radio station above the rest.

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The Times' profile tracks the full life and times of one of our favorite Internet radio stations, describing the many reasons Pandora experienced its first profitable quarter in 2009 and looks to become even more profitable. But it might have missed out on one reason - Pandora will have the music that other free players won't.

As Tom Conrad, CTO for Pandora, told us last month when Warner announced it would pull all of its licensed content from streaming music services, "Pandora operates under a different licensing structure and won't be impacted by Warner's apparent decision with respect to free, on-demand services." This could be huge in keeping Pandora on track to break $100 million in revenue this year, as predicted by William Blair, a digital media analyst, in the Times article.

The Times compares Pandora with other services, such as Slacker Radio, noting that Pandora has one third as many songs but three times as many listeners. We can't help but wonder if the absence of Warner's discography might further imbalance this scenario in Pandora's favor.

Update: Slacker Radio has informed us that they too will carry Warner Music titles. This is from a note from a member of Slacker Radio's PR team:

Slacker has and has had since day 1 voluntary licenses with all major labels and 100's of Indie labels. Slacker negotiated deals and then built a business around those rates. We have good relationships with Warner and voluntary licenses with them. We do offer and will continue to offer music from Warner.

According to last month's article in the BBC, however, services like Spotify and Last.fm could be in trouble of losing a large portion of their music library.

While the sheer number of songs is obviously not the deciding factor here, it could be a big one. With control over artists from Frank Sinatra to the Bee Gees to Puff Daddy, Warner's music catalog could be the distinction between life or death for any online streaming music service. And now, with deals with automakers and consumer electronic manufacturers, it looks like Pandora is here to stay.

And as the Times points out, with last month's hiring of CFO Steve Cakebread, the company looks poised to go public in 2010. In the meantime, we wonder what will come of the competition when Warner music officially pulls the plug and leaves them without a "Stairway to Heaven".

Do you remember good old everyday comics? Not manga, nor the kind of stuff people treasure in polythene wrappers and pay a million dollars for. The stuff you touch and read and laugh at and with. At home, we were brought up on a rich diet of comics; I must have read my first comic book around 1962, and for sure I was reading comics regularly all the way to 1975.

Our reading was fairly eclectic and wide-ranging, despite being drawn solely from the US, the UK and India. Children's comics were mainly from the US: Sugar and Spike and Fox and the Crow were early favourites, as was Dennis the Menace (the Hank Ketcham version rather than the UK Beano version, which, amazingly, made its unrelated debut just three days after the Ketcham version).

Dagwood and Blondie. Sad Sack. Beetle Bailey. The Archie series. Superman, Batman, Spiderman and the rest of the superhero class. The whole Walt Disney thing. Yup, we read them all.

We didn't spend much time across the pond as it were, that was reserved for the hard stuff. Books. So we read Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton and Frank Richards and Anthony Buckeridge till the cows came home, and topped them off with PG Wodehouse and PG Wodehouse and PG Wodehouse as soon as our hands were big enough to hold his books properly. From what I can remember, the primary UK comics we read were the Beano and the Dandy, along with Commando series War comics.

And then of course we had MAD Magazine. What would we have done without MAD? Alfred E Neuman and his crazy gang kept us going during hard times; I have particular and deeply thankful memories of reading Sergio Aragones and Don Martin, on days when everything looked bleak and black and blecch. And there were a few of those.

The only Indian comics I remember reading, in English, were the Phantom series, the Ghost Who Walks, and the Mandrake series. [It was only some time later that I found out that the original Lee Falk series was set in some place called Bengali, and where there were pigmy people called Bandars. This would obviously not do in Bengal, where I was born and raised, and where the native was called a Bengali, and where "bandar" meant "monkey". So, magically, the Indian version of the comic was set somewhere called Denkali, if I remember correctly. Both Phantom as well as Mandrake the Magician were from the same Indrajal comics stable.]

And of course we had the past, represented by the Flintstones .

.and the future, represented by the Jetsons:

Were you one of those people who sincerely believed that we would be flying around in bubble cars by the turn of the 21st century? I was. As a child I really thought it would happen.

And, after thirty years of commuting, I still fervently wish for a solution. Sometimes I think that the concept of the suburb did more to destroy the fabric of society than any single other invention; to my way of thinking, only wars have inflicted more visible damage on society.

I hate commuting. With a passion. I hate the idea that people should travel large distances to work and large distances back, every day, like lemmings. The only people who could possibly gain from that are in the transportation, fuel and insurance industries. Enough said.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Teleportation.

Take a look at this extract from the Wikipedia article:

One means of teleportation proposed in fiction (e.g., The Fly, Star Trek) is the transmission of data which is used to precisely reconstruct an object or organism at its destination. However, it would be impossible to travel from one point to another instantaneously; faster than light travel, as of today, is believed to be most likely impossible. The use of this form of teleportation as a means of transport for humans would have considerable unresolved technical issues, such as recording the human body with sufficient accuracy to allow reproduction elsewhere (i.e., because of the uncertainty principle).

There's also the philosophical issue of whether destroying a human in one place and recreating a copy elsewhere would provide a sufficient experience of continuity of existence. The reassembled human might be considered a different sentience with the same memories as the original, as could be easily proved by constructing not just one, but several copies of the original and interrogating each as to the perceived uniqueness of each. Each copy constructed using merely descriptive data, but not matter, transmitted from the origin and new matter already at the destination point would consider itself to be the true continuation of the original and yet this could not logically be true; moreover, because each copy constructed via this data-only method would be made of new matter that already existed at the destination, there would be no way, even in principle, of distinguishing the original from the copies.

Interesting. So what about things that are not human?

I think we're at a stage where we already have virtual teleportation of digital objects. In the digital world, when we take a piece of text or still image or moving image or music, and we move it across the ether, what we're doing is tantamount to disassembling the digital object at one end of a pipe and reassembling it at the other end. Now this is fine as far as purely digital objects are concerned: it's the reason why Kevin Kelly called the internet a copy machine, why Hollywood and Universal Music want to own the internet and make it work according to their rules, why downloaders seem to get treated worse than modern-day war criminals. It appears easier to go to war hunting for things that don't exist than it is to go to peace attempting to change hopelessly outdated intellectual property law.

Over the past few years, this virtual teleportation (where digital objects get disassembled and reassembled at two ends of a fast and fat pipe) has shown the capacity to make considerable inroads into the physical world.

We already have the ability to take decent photographs, store them in the cloud and print them off at home, at the edge.

We already have the ability to order books via the web and then to print the books off at home: here's the espresso book machine:

We already have the ability to make physical CDs and DVDs at home, and to print off the artwork.

And then we have the gift that keeps on giving: 3D printers are already here, and slowly getting better: take a look at Reprap:

When you have the ability to express something mathematically, and when you have the ability for the ingredients for that something to be drawn from a standardised pool, then there is no reason why the reassembly of physical things cannot take place at the edge: at home, at work, wherever. Using further generations of toolkits like Arduino, this will happen. [Incidentally, we ran a cloud services workshop for the Innovate and Design leadership team a few days ago, where everyone worked with arduinos. The whole thing was set up, supported and stage-managed by Alex and her team at tinker_it. Thank you Alex, thank you tinker_it.]

Soon we will be in a place where the instructions emanate from one end of a pipe, and where standardised components get assembled at the other end. Like feeding in a recipe at one end and having the cooking done at the other end. As long as the components are addressable and accessible and standardised, this is already possible. Soon we will be in a place where remote tailoring is commonplace, where the instructions are fed down a pipe to a machine and standardised inputs in the home, in order to produce clothes at the edge. [How nice to see that the paper is imagined and written by a Calcuttan].

We're long past the point where all we could do is to query, maintain and repair things digital remotely. The pipes are getting fatter and faster. The devices at the edge are becoming more powerful. There is greater standardisation of input materials. There is a growing ability to express the workings of markets in mathematical models, to simulate the workings of markets via abstractions. [This, I understand, is part of what Salim Ismail and friends are focusing on at the Singularity University].

There was a time when people could build machines, when people could take machines apart and when people could rebuild them. Cars. Radios. Planes. Boats. Amplifiers and turntables. And yes, computers.

There was a time when people designed and built machines that built machines.

You know something? I have this gnawing sense of unease when I write this. I begin to think about something that unnerves me, that unsettles me. And that is this:

when people were heavily involved in the making of things, the things stayed made.

Building things to last is a builder's instinct. Building things for planned obsolescence is not a builder's instinct. We need to stop this cycle of constant build-waste-replace-waste. The world is too much with us.

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
          Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
          Little we see in Nature that is ours;
          We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
          The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
          The winds that will be howling at all hours,
          And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
          For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
          It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
          A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
          So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
          Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
          Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
          Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

One of my favourite Wordsworth sonnets. Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours. Such powerful words, stated simply.

Human beings love to make things. And that love has been denied for a while, as we moved headlong into more and more efficient manufacture of more and more obsolescence and more and more waste. This is no longer tenable, we have to take our stewardship of the earth's assets more seriously. And the move to a digital world will help us get there. [I know, I know, the cloud consumes energy. Computers consume scarce raw materials. But these things can be solved.]

I think this human instinct to make things is what drives people like Tim O'Reilly and Dale Dougherty over at Make Magazine, a fantastic read. I think this human instinct is what Cory Doctorow fictionalised so well in Makers. I think this human instinct is what Larry Lessig described so well in Remix.

Taken from the Makers site: Ben O'Steen got his maker on by printing out the entire text of Makers on a cash-register receipt, using a till printer.

Building things is a human instinct.

Taking things apart is a human instinct.

Rebuilding things is a human instinct.

Doing all this in a way that makes the built things last is a human instinct.

When you see battles about copyright and patent, when you see battles about downloads and DRM, when you see battles about net neutrality, don't assume that the battles are about them, the pinko lefty tree-hugger criminals.

The battles are about you. And your right to build things and unbuild them and rebuild them. The right of your children to build things and unbuild them and rebuild them.

The battles are about the generations that will follow you and me. And their rights to follow their human instincts.

Instincts that are much closer to stewardship and conservation than those of the moguls of Mammon. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The internet was not designed to become an exclusive distribution mechanism for Hollywood and Universal Music. There is a lot of value still to be obtained from the internet and from the web, in terms of health, education and welfare. And it is our duty to see that value emerge.

So go read Make magazine, visit the web site. Buy Makers, or read it for free. Understand the cultural and creative implications of Remix. Do something.

We all need to become better stewards of what we have on earth, so that others may enjoy some of it. The maker culture is a critical component of this.

A coda. Thank you Jimmy Wales, from the bottom of my heart. This post would have been so much harder to write if Wikipedia didn't exist. Thanks, Jimbo!

Instant access to burritos bigger than your head is the clear selling point of Chipotle's iPhone app (iTunes link). But if we put culinary convenience aside, the app itself is an interesting mix of simple design, e-commerce functionality and location tools.

I've been digging into the app for a while (digging does not equal "eating," in case you're wondering), and I found three aspects to the app that could prove instructive for developers and businesses pursuing their own mobile paths.

1. Centralization

I asked, repeatedly and from a variety of angles, for revenue information related to the app -- direct sales, percentage of total sales, etc. Chris Arnold, Chipotle spokesperson, politely declined to answer the money questions. The closest I could get was the total number of app downloads, which is currently at 600,000. And since Chipotle has around 1,000 restaurants, that's considerable overlap.

Arnold did open up about the app's integration into Chipotle's ordering and payment processes. What I found most notable in this regard is the oddly detrimental role of franchises. The Chipotle app represents a case where corporate centralization led to a relatively painless product roll-out.

Here's why: Chipotle owns all its restaurants, and Arnold credits this with allowing the iPhone app to mesh well -- and quickly -- with existing systems. "It can be hard to get all of your franchisees to participate in a new program like that, particularly if investments in technology or other infrastructure are necessary," Arnold wrote in an email. Centralization ensures the Chipotle app works at all of the company's restaurants.

Chipotle also benefitted from a pre-existing online ordering system. "If you don't have that infrastructure in place when you start your work on an iPhone app, you're going to be in trouble," said Pervasent's Stuart Williams, CEO of the development shop that handled the Chipotle app's programming. "It's certainly the case that mobile ordering follows in the footsteps of a decent web order."

2. Defining the use case

Chipotle and its development partners constructed the app with a particular customer in mind: a young, urban professional who needs to grab lunch on the go. That's not to say customers outside this very specific example are irrelevant; non-hipsters can benefit from the app as well. But this defined use case proved important during the development process because it led to functionality and conclusions. Here's two examples:

• Young professionals and iPhones go hand-in-hand, so the justification for creating the app is built in. It doesn't make sense to develop an iPhone app -- or any mobile app for that matter -- if your customers don't rely on app-friendly phones.
• Since lunch is the primary meal in this use case, that means the customer is probably visiting a Chipotle restaurant near his/her office over and over again. As such, the app asks for and remembers location on the first launch, but subsequent location look-ups have to be initiated manually. This isn't a "road warrior" app that automatically discovers nearby restaurants. It's about defined, ongoing convenience.

3. Limited options

One final observation ...

It would be tough to create a simple, easy-to-use mobile app that encapsulates the breadth of meals and ingredient variations at restaurants with long menus. A website can tackle this task, that's for sure, but the mobile experience carries unique usability issues. Something as simple as going back and forth between screens can get real clunky, real fast on a small device. Chipotle's menu, on the other hand, works well in the app world because it's uniform and limited.

"The app is designed very much around their menu," said Williams. "It's not like you could take this app and service a white tablecloth restaurant. Or even service a Subway. A really well-designed app for Subway would work different than a really well-designed app for Chipotle."

Words, Words
By William Mahrt

Words make a difference. Even though two words are identical in basic meaning, their connotations may suggest that one is much more appropriate than the other. When it comes to music and liturgy, the connotations of some commonly-used words point to a mistaken ecclesiology. This was an issue in the discussions of Music in Catholic Worship and Sing to the Lord. The former document represented an anthropocentric view of the church and her liturgy, while the latter, while far from perfect, yet included a much more theocentric view. I would suggest that if musicians and liturgists would consistently use the more appropriate terms, a change in attitude might gradually be effected.

Take, for example, two words: assembly and congregation. Congregation was used before the council, but has largely been replaced by assembly. Etymologically there are subtle differences. Assembly derives from ad + simul, a coming together, making similar. Congregation comes from con + grex (flock), a gathering together in a flock. Some would object to calling the people in church a flock, as in a flock of sheep, who are simply herded around without exercising their own independent judgment. But I would suggest that the difference between the two terms is more functional: assembly implies bringing people together without distinction, being made similar; congregation implies being brought together under the guidance of a shepherd. That shepherd, as we know, is Christ, who is represented liturgically by the priest, who acts in persona Christi, who leads in the place of Christ himself. Moreover, in the use of the English language, congregation is specifically religious, while assembly is not. In my recollection, assembly was something we had in elementary school, where all the classes gathered in the auditorium, either for some extraordinary entertainment or for some stern exhortation in the face of a looming problem of behavior. It was a noisy affair, but it had the benefit of interrupting the normal schedule of classes, which, even for those who loved school, was a pleasant break in the routine; there was certainly nothing sacred to it. In modern church usage, assembly sometimes includes everyone in the liturgy, priests, ministers and people, emphasizing their similarity, while congregation retains the distinction of people from clergy. I would suggest, then, that congregation better represents the Catholic view of the hierarchical nature of the church, and that assembly represents the anthropocentric view of focusing only upon the people. This stands in striking contrast to a Christocentric view of the liturgy, in which the focus is upon the action of Christ, which subsumes priest and congregation without erasing the distinction between them.

There is a consequent term that follows from the de-emphasis upon the distinction of the ordained from the congregation: the president of the liturgical assembly or more commonly presider, as opposed to celebrant. A president is a member of a group, elected by the group as one of them to preside for a time. The notion of a minister, elected by the congregation out of the congregation is characteristically Protestant, and stands in striking contrast to the Catholic notion of priesthood, whose vocation is principally from God, and whose appointment is from the hierarchy of the church. Some will say to single out the priest as celebrant is to deny the fact that the congregation celebrates the Mass, too. That objection can be answered by using the term priest itself, though celebrant is the traditional term. Either is preferable to presider, which has the connotation of being temporary and provisional and not particularly sacramental.

If the liturgy should be Christocentric, then Christ should be the focus of attention, not the congregation. The question of orientation is addressed very well in this issue by Msgr. Guido Marini, Papal Master of Ceremonies, who reports two solutions, clearly endorsed by Pope Benedict: facing east, or facing the crucifix. The eastward direction places the priest at the head of the congregation, with all facing the same direction, making it clear that the action is addressing God. If that is not possible, the usage of the early church of having a large image of Christ in the apse of the church, which is faced when facing east, is approximated by placing a crucifix on the altar which serves the priest as a focal point for his celebration of the Mass.

It is not widely known that the stance facing the people is not required by the liturgy; all that is required is that in constructing new churches, altars be built so that it is possible to celebrate the Mass facing the people. This, of course, should mean that it should remain possible to celebrate ad orientem as well, something not always observed in the construction of new churches.

There are two different Latin terms for the stance facing the people, versus ad populum, and coram populo. We know versus from its legal usage in expressing an adversarial relationship, as in Brown versus Board of Education, clearly not the kind of relation to be expressed concerning the priest and the people. Etymologically, it stems from verso, I turn, so it says turned to the people. This is in fact used in the Latin missal, even the new edition of 2002; there it substantiates the ad orientem stance: at certain points the missal directs the priest, versus ad populum, turned toward the people, to address of the congregation, such as at orate, fratres; or at communion, conversus ad populum. Such rubrics clearly express the normal stance of the priest as facing the altar, suggesting a new term facing God. This is an important distinction, since the popular media insist on describing the stance of the priest in the old rite as turning his back to the people, consistently overlooking the fact that both priest and people face God.

Coram populo, on the other hand, with its use of the dative, suggests a less direct relation; the priest is not facing the people in the sense of directly addressing the people, but celebrating the Mass, before the people. I remember the first years after the council, when priests began to celebrate coram populo, seeing the priest begin the Canon of the Mass by incongruously looking the congregation in the eye while saying We come to you Father. The whole direction of the Eucharistic prayer is to the Father in renewing Christ's sacrifice, and must bring the congregation into the act of offering up as the direction of prayer. Too direct address of the congregation by the priest runs the risk of both priest and people overlooking the necessarily transcendent object of the dialogue.

Other terms indirectly express an anthropocentricism. One names the entrance hymn a gathering song, often including its function as greeting the priest. The introit of the Mass is the procession of the clergy into the church processing to the focal point of the liturgy, the altar, and marking the altar as a sacred pace by incensing it. The music of the introit is to accompany that action and to establish the sacred character of the whole liturgy which is to take place. It is not about the congregation, but about the Mass; the congregation has already gathered, and it need not greet the priest yet; this takes place after the introit, when the priest greets the congregation, The Lord be with you, and the congregation responds.

To call it a song is also a misnomer; it is true that song is a translation of cantus, but in English usage, there is quite a difference between song and chant. Song implies the kind of pseudo-pop music that pervades our churches, and which has no particular musical characteristics which identify it as being for the introit. Chant, for the introit, means that this chant is only sung for the entrance of the priest and only on that day, that it is proper. The loss of the Propers of the Mass and of the great repertory of proper chants is one of the negative results of the council that is only now beginning to be remedied by the revival of chant scholas and the introduction of English propers, whose purpose ultimately will be to lay the ground for the revival of the singing of the Latin propers.

Another misnomer is opening prayer. This is properly called a collect, which means the closing prayer of a liturgical action, collecting the prayers and intentions of that rite in a general summarizing prayer. Thus the collect at the beginning of the Mass concludes the entrance rite as a whole, just as the prayer over the offerings concludes the offertory rite, and the postcommunion prayer concludes the communion. The Latin collects of the Roman Mass are models of concise statement and little schools of prayer all in themselves; we rarely hear them, though, because their present English translations are banal, and longer alternative prayers have been provided, leading most celebrants understandably to chose the seemingly more interesting prayers, overlooking the classic Roman collects.

A similar misnomer is the Prayer over the gifts. The Latin is oratio super oblata, and oblata is better translated as offerings, being etymologically linked to offero, I offer. It has always seemed to me a bit presumptuous to call the bread and wine offered in preparation for the Holy Eucharist gifts. The real gift is what is made of them, the Body and Blood of the Lord, his gift to us. Our humble offerings are but natural elements offered in preparation for the Eucharist; they do not give the Lord anything he needs or wants, but rather are symbols of our offering of ourselves to be incorporated into his Mystical Body, by his action, not ours.

Why address these matters in a journal about sacred music? Because music is an essential element of the liturgy, making substantial contributions to its sacredness and beauty. The words discussed above are off the mark precisely because they contribute more secular connotations, which militate against the sacredness of the liturgy and are thus out of consonance with its music. So let us always choose the more sacred term, that the underlying notion of the sacredness of the liturgy will be properly expressed and thus be consonant with the same purposes of the music.

1) Antilla, Mumbai
Price - $1 billion

The gizmo-filled posh pad, named Antilla, is a 27-story, 40,000 sq/ft tower that belongs to the head of Mumbai-based petrochemical giant Reliance Industries. The building will stand 570-ft tall above the ground and will have 400,000 sq. ft. of interior space. The home has six stories of parking space alone after which the living quarters with nine elevators and a host of storage rooms and lounges begin. Mostly glass, it has a staff of 600 servants, but at the rate this palatial home is getting blinged out, we won't be entirely surprised if the number increased by a couple of hundreds more!

Check out the image gallery below:

2) Villa Leopolda, Cote D'Azur, France
Price - $506 million

Situated on the French Riviera and built on 29,000 square feet of interior space that opens to manicured lawns and a swimming pool, it also has 11 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms. The villa is not only known to have the best sea views in the south of France, but it also sits on 10 acres of immaculate grounds that run right down to the resort of Villefranche. Originally built for Belgian king Leopold's mistresses, this house has been a den of big shots like late banking magnate Edmund Safra, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Fiat tycoon Gianni Agnelli.

3) The Penthouse, London
Price - $200 million

The most expensive flat in the world, at 6,000 per sq/ft sits atop the 82 other apartments at the famous Number One Hyde Park address. Guarded by the SAS, with special features such a panic rooms, bulletproof windows, iris scanners and even a secret tunnel to the nearby Mandarin Hotel, the apartment is the biggest of all the luxury flats in the ambitious One Hyde Park. The building boasts communal spas, squash courts and even wine tasting rooms! This plush apartment will have 24-hour room service despite the floor to ceiling refrigerators.

4) Fairfield Pond, The Hamptons
Price - $170 million

Fair Field, the Ira Rennert Estate, is named after Fairfield Pond, which is adjacent to the property. Located on 63 acres, the main home consists of 66,000 square feet, with additional outbuildings bringing the total living space to over 100,000 square feet. Italianate in design, there are 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, squash and tennis courts and numerous other amenities.

5) Hearst Mansion, Beverly Hills
Price - $165 million

This prestigious Beverly Hills mansion, which was once home of the US newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, has 6 separate residences, 3 swimming pools, eight fireplaces, a tennis court, a nightclub and 29 bedrooms, all spread across over 6 acres of land in a famed Beverly Hills environ called the Platinum Triangle. The nationally recognized home was then bought by lawyer and investor Leonard Ross in 1976, who wants a lifestyle change. Buying this would make you the owner of most expensive real estate in the US and moreover, you would become the next door neighbor to Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes and David and Victoria Beckham.

6) Franchuk Villa, Kensington
Price - $161 million

This six-story property in Belgravia, central London, has 20-foot ceilings, luxurious fixtures and more than 21,000 square feet of living space. Along with Candy Spelling's Holmby Hills mansion, this white-stucco-fronted house at No. 10 Belgrave Square, owned by Lebanese developer Musa Salem, is now the most expensive home on the market in the world. Mr. Salem bought this property many years back on a long lease from the Grosvenor Estate, with a condition to restore the house to full Victorian glory. The lavish amenities include an indoor swimming pool in the basement, a gym, a home theater, a garage room, a news house and much more.

7) The Pinnacle, Montana
Price - $155 million

This luxury ski-lodge is to be the largest property in the exclusive billionaires-only private ski and golf community, Yellowstone Club. Naturally then, it will be the home of the owners of this elite group, Tim and Edra Blixseth. While not considered big compared to others on this list with only 10 bedrooms, this home will include heated flooring throughout the house that stretches all the way to the heated driveway, as well as fireplaces in all bathrooms, a huge wine cellar, an indoor/outdoor pool, gym and massage room.

8) The Manor, Los Angeles
Price - $150 million

This French chateau-style mansion was built in 1991, has 5,248 square meters of space on more than 4.6 acres and is also the largest private home in Los Angeles County. The main Spelling house is located at the end of a long driveway and is protected by a security system. Other luxurious amenities include a bowling alley, a gift-wrapping room, a humidity-controlled silver storage room, tennis courts, two swimming pools, barber shop and beauty salon on attic, a spa, an 18th Century-style garden, rooftop garden, a citrus orchard and a parking space for over 100 cars. The screening room is also one of the major highlights, where a projector emerges from the floor at the click of a button as shades cover the windows.

9) Updown Court, Windlesham, Surrey
Price - $139 million

Built on a huge 58-acre estate amid the lavish surroundings of Windlesham, this massive structure features 103 rooms plus everything that can be described as magnificence and richness to the core. The uptown court offers a bowling alley and a private cinema for your recreation, stables if you love horses and squash and tennis courts to hit some shots when you want to relax. Apart from this, a heated marble driveway awaits you every morning together with a parking space big enough to accommodate eight limousines.

10) Dracula's Castle, Romania
Price - $135 million

Built on 200 ft. tall rock, the castle has 57 inviting rooms, courtyard and underground passages. It is said that Prince Vlad the Impaler, the ferocious warlord who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula character, lived in this castle for one night in 1400s. Digging a bit deep into the past, the Bran castle is believed to be originally built as a stronghold by the Teutonic Knights in 1212. From 1920 to 1948, the castle became the residence of royal family. Presently, the historical castle is operating as a museum of medieval arts and about 450,000 people visit the castle every year. And yes, do remember that you will be greeted by bats flying around the ramparts at twilight.

Via: Times Business

Shared by raganesh
This sends a shiver down my spine; especially the Ice Pick Lobotomy.

Cabinet-card portrait of Phineas Gage, shown holding the tamping iron which injured him. From the Gage family of Texas collection.

Even if you're not a neurologist or a psychotherapist, you may have heard of Phineas Gage. When a guy survives being impaled with a three-foot iron rod in the skull, he tends to gain a certain notoriety. What makes Gage's case interesting isn't the fact that he survived, it's how he changed after his accident.

A HOLE IN ONE

Phineas Gage considered himself a lucky man. At the age of 25, he had a responsible, well-paid job as construction foreman for Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont. On September 13, 1848, as Gage was packing a load of explosives into the ground, the charge exploded without warning. The iron rod he was using to tamp the explosives into the earth flew into the air with the force and speed of a rocket, hitting Phineas Gage directly in the head. The 3'7" rod (109 cm), which weighed 13 pounds (6 kg), entered his left cheek, careened straight through his skull and brain, and emerged out of the top of his head like a yard-long bullet.

SURVIVOR

They loaded him into an ox cart and took him - still conscious - to a hotel where some local doctors treated him. They never expected him to live; he was bleeding horribly and blind in his left eye. Yet, Gage was still able to walk, talk, even to work. He returned home just ten weeks after his accident. However, Gage wasn't unscathed, not by any means. The iron bar that had practically destroyed the front left lobe of his brain had irrevocably changed his personality.

I FEEL LIKE A NEW MAN

A few months after the accident he was feeling well enough to return to work, but his old boss wouldn't hire him back at the same position because - even though Gage was almost back to normal physically, emotionally, and mentally - he was a changed man. Before his accident he'd been efficient, capable, kind, and polite; now he was foul-mouthed, rude, and easily annoyed.

A FREAK, ALIVE OR DEAD

Gage never worked as foreman again. He drove coaches and cared for horses in New Hampshire and in Chile. He exhibited himself (and the rod) as a curiosity at P.T. Barnum's Museum in New York. All in all, he lived 13 years after his dreadful accident and died in 1860 after a series of epileptic seizures.

Gage's skull (and the rod) are now on display at Harvard Medical School, where they've been studied intensively over the years by neuroscientists.

FIRST THE GOOD STUFF

Gage's abrupt personality changes clues neurologists in to the fact that certain portions of the brain corresponded with personality functions. And in fact, Gage's case made the very first brain tumor removal operation possible in 1885. After studying what had happened to Gage, the operating physician concluded that lesions or tumors located in the frontal lobes of the brain didn't affect the brain's ability to take in sense information. Nor did they have an impact on physical movements or speech. However, such localized lesions or tumors did produce highly characteristic and unusual personality changes like Gage's.

In 1894, that same surgeon removed a tumor from a patient's left frontal lobe. The patient had complained his thinking was becoming increasingly slow and dull. Seeing the similarities between this patient's mental faculties and Gage's, the doctor successfully removed the tumor that lay, just as he expected, in the left frontal lobes of the brain.

THE BIRTH OF THE LOBOTOMY

Gage's case put scientists on alert. Now they knew that certain areas of the brain were responsible for certain functions. In 1890, after a German scientist discovered that dogs were tamer and calmer after their temporal lobe was removed, the attending doctor at a Swiss insane asylum began to perform lobotomies on his patients - six in 1892. The patients who had been hard to handle, restless, and even violent, seemed much calmer after their surgeries. Lobotomies fell out of favor for a time, but were revived in the 1930s. Suddenly, a sort of lobotomy frenzy overtook the American psychiatric world.

THE ICE PICK TRICK

Along came enterprising physician and neurologist Walter Freeman, a.k.a. the Lobotomy King, who performed over 3,000 lobotomies from the 1930s to the 1960s. Impatient with the slowness of other brain surgery methods, Freeman even created the superquick ice pick lobotomy. Instead of surgically opening a hole in the patient's head, he put his patients under local anesthesia and plunged an ice pick through the skull and into the brain. Once in, Freeman would swing the ice pick swiftly back and forth, severing the prefrontal lobe. An ice pick lobotomy took only a few minutes. The lobotomy-happy Freeman would set up production lines at mental hospitals, operating on as many as ten patients in a single afternoon.

EVERBODY'S DOING IT

Lobotomies were the psychiatric cure-all of choice in the 1940s and 1950s. They were used not just on uncontrollable patients, but homosexuals, political radicals, troublesome" personalities, and other so-called undesirables who veered from established norms. Even amateur surgeons got into the act; they performed hundreds of lobotomies without first performing psychiatric evaluations. Joseph Kennedy ordered a lobotomy on his difficult" daughter Rosemary in 1941 without consulting anyone else in the family. Playwright Tennessee Williams was devastated to find in 1937 that his schizophrenic sister Rose Williams had been lobotomized, altering her personality utterly and permanently. The movie, Frances, is a true story of fiercely independent actress Frances Farmer (as played by Jessica Lange), who, after her lobotomy is a tragic picture of blandness.

LOBOTOMY TODAY?

Lobotomies are now outlawed in most countries, although they're still occasionally performed to control violent behavior in Japan, Australia, Sweden, and India.

Even though Phineas Gage needed that 1848 accident like a, well, like a hole in the head, his case revolutionized brain surgery - in good ways and bad.

__________

The article above is reprinted with permission from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges Into the Universe.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!

Music always seemed like a natural place to continue my investigation of the performing arts and sketching. I've played the saxophone since I was ten years old and I love jazz. But after some false starts, I'm not sure it's the best way to explore the act of sketching. Improvisation in musical performance is based on extensive practice and a deep understanding of the nature of music. As a sketching technique it's inexpensive, plentiful and disposable, all important qualities, but it isn't quick or timely and there just isn't much for service designers to glean beyond the importance of the work ethic.

For a while I abandoned music and explored other facets of sketching, but then I stumbled across information about how Mozart and Beethoven approached composition. I realized that there might be something for service designers to learn from classical music rather than jazz.

Contemporaries of Mozart held the romantic notion that he composed automatically, intuitively, and without conscious effort. They saw the writing as a simple mechanical process that channeled the music from his head onto paper, ready for the symphony. But over three-hundred sketches and drafts have survived to the present day to cast light on Mozart's compositional approach.

The historian Ulrich Konrad has written extensively on these techniques in Mozart's Sketches [PDF 1.1MB]:

Mozart noted down his sketches almost exclusively on separate sheets of paper, using ink. He had no use for sketchbooks and almost never sketched in pencil. [...] The reliable report that Mozart also used a wax tablet or slate when producing his sketches is one we should do well to bear in mind, for, even if it does not extend our knowledge of the sketches themselves, it reminds us that sketches could be erased after they had been written down. If Mozart worked in this way, it means that he had little sense of any need to keep a sheet of paper once it was filled with sketches.

This suggests that the sketches were tools for thought, rather than a conscious effort to document ideas. Konrad categorizes the sketches into four major types, all written in a special handwriting Mozart kept for private use:

• Sammelbltter pages containing a variety of apparently related sketches for possible later use.
• Werkbltter pages with sketches for a single identifiable work in progress.
• Zufallsbltter pages with diverse and apparently unrelated sketches not connected with identifiable work in progress or a specific finished work.
• Skizzenpartituren more or less completed scores but written in Mozart's private hand.

According to Konrad, these sketches rarely represent the final form of a theme but indicate various levels of development in the creative process. Far from a straightforward transcription of Mozart's musical genius, scholars have followed the development of ideas from barely decipherable individual notes and snippits to several bars of a rough melody to completely fixed passages with several parts in a rough score. The sketches are a means for developing these ideas, not simply recording them.

Service designers can learn from this approach. First of all, sketching works at several scales and at several different points in the design process. A sketch could encompass something as small as a moment concept or an individual touchpoint, all the way up to a complex service encounter. Designers should always be prepared to capture ideas, and that means never being without a notebook and something to write with. If we were to follow Mozart's example, service designers would keep one notebook for raw, incohate sketches and a second for more developed versions of those ideas. For me the front and back halves of a Moleskine notebook might serve the purpose.

Designers should also consider keeping a larger notebook for more refined sketches as threads make their way from the smaller notebooks. For example, Mozart often focused on the formative lines of one particular voice or instrument in the larger composition. These sketches-in-extract were designed to explore a particularly striking musical element the harmony or a counterpoint for example. For me this recalls Twyla Tharp's focus on the spine of a choreographic performance; the central motivating element behind her compositions.

We can follow this idea into the work of Ludwig van Beethoven who sketched more than any other major composer. His sketches mainly consist of simple melodic lines, or feature them prominently. The composer sang or hummed as he took his daily walks and sketched on loose pieces of paper.

In Beethoven's Compositional Process, William Kinderman classifies these sketches into four major types:

1. Movement plans Beethoven's overviews of entire works or movements, in outline. Incipits of movements often appear, sometimes connected by words showing briefly what the intended order of sections or movements is to be.
2. Continuity drafts Single-stave drafts for entire sections of works, for example, expositions, development sections, or codas. The obvious purpose of such drafts is to lay out the material of a section over a large formal span and to work out both the continuity of the content and the length and proportions of its subsections.
3. Sketches of intermediate length Sketches serving a variety of elaborative purposes. Sometimes these supplement continuity drafts; sometimes they are independent entries designed to try out solutions to a multitude of types of compositional problems.
4. Small-scale sketches Either for works in progress or those to be worked out in the future, for example, motifs, fragments, jottings, concept sketches, and similar entries. Some of these entries may turn out to supplement other sketches and even composing scores or autographs representing fairly late stages of a given work.

What interests me about Beethoven's sketches are the larger scale explorations of movement plans and continuity drafts. As Kinderman puts it, in many cases, the apparent purpose of sketchbook entries is to work out the larger proportions of a given section, its thematic and motivic content, its harmonic direction, and its larger phrase rhythms. Here the compositions are being sketched at a macro level. This goes far beyond sketching moment concepts or touchpoints. Beethoven shows the potential for sketching entire ecosystems.

Later in this series I'll explain some sketching techniques that service designers can adopt to do exactly that.

By CAREEREALISM-Approved Expert, G.L. Hoffman

To a large measure, your likeability will lead to success or failure. It often trumps skill levels in surveys of HR people who are asked to name the most important characteristic of job candidates and employees. Other than don't be an jerk, what can you do to increase your own likeability? Is it really possible to change? Or, do you believe your likeability has been set by some cosmic forces, and if people don't like you as you are, so what? BTW, being rich or good looking is not on the list.

Here are 10 characteristics of likeable people, who can pass the no-jerk test, or the always reliable would-you-fly-across-the-country-with-them test.

Number 1. No Left Turns.

Years ago, someone wrote about his 90-year-old parents' Secret to a Long Life. He thought they would reveal the secret as eating right, exercise and wine with dinner. But their answer? No left turns, said the old man.

When he asked why left turns? his parents said they read more elderly people die from car accidents than heart attacks. Old people often turn in front of oncoming traffic and with their deteriorating depth perception, accidents happen. So, they resolved to never make left turns again. They make three right turns to get them going the right way. Some days, they would lose count and have to make seven right turns. If they lost track again, they just went home, they said. After all, they reasoned, there wasn't that big of a rush to get there anyway.

Such a simple solution to a big problem: No left turns.

Same thing with how to make yourself more likeable. There is one simple thing, every likeable person hasa positive attitude. But we all have positive attitudes; especially during good times. It is easy to have a positive attitude then.

What's more differentiating and difficult is how to have a positive, optimistic attitude when things are not going so well. If you can conjure up a positive attitude when things are bad, people will be drawn to you.

Here are some tips for you to help you develop your own positive attitude.

First, develop the skill of self serving illusions. When suffering from negativity, think about something good that has happened to you recently in a similar situation. Chances are, you were able to solve it. Get good at drawing on these success stories in your mind. We all need to remember these little jolts of optimism and positive energy. The more you do it, the better you will get at it.

Next, realize you can control your thoughts. Most of the negative people you encounter choose to be that way. I have never seen a birth announcement that says Mary and Bill Jones had a beautiful, but negative, baby daughter last night at 10:52 pm. We learn negativity, and it can be unlearned. Distract yourself from it, think about other things, and move on. Don't dwell on it. After all, 'stinkin thinkin' decreases your creativity (scientifically proven!) and hampers your ability to solve the issue. Like my friend Roger Larson used to say, the more you stir it, the more it stinks.

Lastly, positive people know most setbacks can be attributed to external causes which can be challenged, fixed or changed, not them. Negative people tend to think these are self afflicted, deserved, and permanent wounds.

I understand becoming positive is a life changing process for people, and it is not quite as easy as this. There are books and books about this subject.

But again, no left turns. Some times the solutions are easier than you think.

Set a goal for yourself. A simple goaltry to be positive for 30 days. Think about it and act upon it. Nothing can be more worthwhile. Can you imagine how powerful this one little change might make in YOUR life?

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. [Albert Schweitzer]

Number 2. Be Engaged, Passionate.

Every strength taken to excess is a weakness. Which is basically why some philosophers and parents counsel moderation: don't get too high or too low. Don't expect too much, don't go overboard.

Let me explain that first sentence a bit better. I had a boss once who was very articulate. He was actually a college national debate champion. Speaking well was a definite strength, he could literally mesmerize an audience. My boss was no cult leader, but being so good at debate, he could literally win almost any argument inside the company. One time we were figuring out a clever way to announce an event to our 100 sales people across the country.

He said, Here's what we do, let's get 100 homing pigeons, tie the note to their leg, and send them out to their homes. Can you just imagine the impact it will have to have a carrier pigeon delivering our sales meeting notice? After looking around the room to see who would be the first one to throw cold water on this idea, I said, I don't think carrier pigeons work that way, map reading is not one of their skills. But, he was such a good debater, he wanted to go on and convince me that indeed it would be possible. Strength to excess.

But we do like people who are engaged in life, who have that sparkle in their eyes when they talk about what they do. The more passionate you are, the better. Just don't go all Jim Jones on us.

It is easy to find passion. You can have passion about your kids, your hobbies, your convictions. The more engaged you are, the more interesting you are, and the more we want to be around you.

If you are one of those who keep looking for that one job where you can have passion, you might be wasting your time. Every job deserves your passion. I believe every job has something about it that should make you proud of it or the company, if you give it a chance. Sometimes it takes a willingness to commit to showing passion before you feel it.

Once at a family gathering, I asked a younger relative about his job. Talk about showing passion, he said, Can I tell you why I have the most exciting job in the world? What a great line! And he believed it, too. He worked in a feedlot, by the way. And literally shoveled manure all day. He loved what he did, and more to the point, he was unconcerned with my preconceived ideas about HIS job.

If you are like me, you want to be around people like that, instead of the people who are always searching for that one, stimulating job that gives them passion. You give passion, you don't take it.

Sure, you can go overboard with the passion stuff. But I will still like you.

Number 3. Be of Good Humor.

This is so easy to do, but we often get all wrapped around the axle of professionalism. We lose sight of the fact we all love to laugh. Those people who make us laugh are the ones we want to hang with.

I have written before about the power of smiling. I am amazed at how serious people can be inside a business. For Cripes' sake, smile a little.

Someone recently told me his work environment was different, it was old school, very professional and extremely serious. So serious that people didn't greet each other in the hallway, even. I told him chances were good the people wanted it to be more interesting and fun. And he should lead the way. Changing the culture takes one person at the lowest level to get it all started. Company CEO's don't change the culture even though they take credit for it, people do.

Here are a few baby boomer tips to practice improving your humor. Watch The Office, Boston Legal, and Jon Stewart. And then talk about it the very next day with someone at work. Example: What was your favorite Denny Crane line? My favorite? James Spader's character was describing the new hot girl and commenting on her beautiful neck. Denny, he said, you should see her neck. Slight pause for effect, he repeats for emphasis, her neck. Then the Denny Crain (William Shatner) line, she has two necks?

Generally speaking, most of us already have good humor. We laugh with our friends. Simply, use it more, even look for ways to use it more. Tell a joke, however badly, then laugh at yourself, if it is THAT bad.

The world is serious enough without all of us contributing even more. I choose to like people who are of good humor.

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Number 4. Assume Goodwill.

First, an assume-goodwill story. Years ago, I managed distribution centers for my company. There were twelve of these centers spread across the U.S., and my job, circa 1980, was to make sure they served our distributors with timely and positive service. Service had gotten so bad it was all the distributors/dealers would yell about, not how much more they could sell, but how terrible our service was. For those of you familiar with third party sales channels, when your distributors are upsetand angry, it gets ugly fast.

So, I got the job of fixing them. I had zero warehouse, inventory, or operational-type experience. Zilch. I was told the DC managers were so bad, so non-customer service oriented, that I should just start over. I had free rein to do so.

Instead, I called a meeting for all the DC managers at the home office. Most had never been to the home office before. They had not drunk the kool-aid yet. They arrived thinking the new guy (me) was about to fire them all. They were scared, defensive and angry, too.

Even though they were uniformly described as malecontents and sloppy representatives of the company, chances were pretty good,I thought, that they had simply been ignored. In short, I believed they wanted to do better but someone had to show them how.

Once they understood I was not going to fire them, I assumed they wanted to fix this common, not-just-them problem, we all buckled down and fixed it within a few months. They even proudly wore the uniforms I strongly suggested they wear while working at the DC. Of course it helped everyone in top management stopped by our meetings IN UNIFORM.

My takeaway lesson was we should always assume goodwill in other people, instead of jumping on some out-of-control, negative, ain't-they-awful bandwagon.

This works in almost all situations. If you are thinking negative thoughts about someone's actions, let your first thought instead be to assume goodwill on their part.

Number 5. We All Like Compliments.

This is a dicey one, because it is very easy to overdo handing out compliments. I' m just saying people who feel comfortable complimenting others and, who give them sincerely, are more likeable. Honestly, I have noticed paying even untrue compliments has a positive impact.

Many people are starved for compliments, and many spend entire lives without hearing something positive or complimentary. Please look for a way to compliment a co-worker or a customer. It is really quite easy.

Obviously, you must do this carefully. Just because you call a pig a horse, doesn't make him one. But there are plenty of ways to compliment on something he just said, compliment on a recent completed project,without saying how you would have improved it.

I believe people like being valued, and a well placed compliment shows them you value them. Other compliment-rich areas include: anything about their kids, their thoughtfulness, their thinking process, their departments, teams, company, their skills, even their voice.

Number 6. Control Your Insecurities.

I know someone who is constantly saying things like, well, it' s not what you are used to, or I know you would never buy this, but it is ok for me,stuff like that.

Maybe he means well, and perhaps is trying to show a bit of humility, but to me, it comes across as being incredibly insecure. Admittedly, we all have a bit of insecurity, it is only normal and natural. But communicating your own insecurity often is a turn off to a lot of people. Therefore, to make yourself more likeable just watch how you communicate yours.

We all do this, I understand. And, thankfully, we have people who are close to us who understand these moody comments and can help assuage our insecurities. But co-workers might be different.

Number 7. The Trick to Listening.

Since grade school, we have been taught, or told, to listen better. Trouble is, this is where most advice ends. So, when we hear listening skills are important in all relationships, we don't really do much differently, other than get a new, Iamintenselylistening-now look on our face.

Good listening is more than that.

Here are some more tips to better listening. Listen, acknowledge and add something of value. One can't simply listen with a vacant look in your eyes, you have to acknowledge what is being said. This is more than uh-huh, uh-huh. Say something back that lets the person know you were actually listening and thinking.

Not too hard, you say? Sure it is, because you will be more concerned about your part of the conversation, than actually listening. The more confident you get and the better you listen, you will find you are worrying less about what you will say, and you will listen harder to what they are saying. After you acknowledge them, you will become a lot more likeable if you add something as long as it is relevant and on topic.

We have known people who apparently listen but have that what-I-am-doing-here vacant look in their eyes. By training yourself to listen, and acknowledge, and then add value, you will be a better listener than 90% of all adults.

By listening better, even if you don't get to say too much in a one-sided conversation, people will think you are quite smart for taking such an active interest in what they are saying.

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Number 8. Flexibility.

This has nothing to do with doing the splits or some yoga move. Peace out.

People who are willing to do new things, consider others' viewpoints, or learn some new skill are generally more interesting and likeable. There are some people who won't try a new restaurant or a new food or a new type of entertainment. We are all different, sure. I don't like opera music on the radio. But if someone invited me to attend a local opera, I would go. Ok, I might not. We all have likes and dislikes.

But the more you are willing to accept change and are viewed as flexible and adaptable, you will be obviously more likeable.

Duh.

Number 9. Manners. Grooming. Language.

Some think having good manners is outdated. Far from it. People with good manners are most definitely likeable, if nothing else, most of us like being around people who have good manners. Just remember what you learned in kindergarten, or what Mom ragged on you about all the time. Say please and thank you, write prompt thank you's, stand up when a woman enters the room, take your ball-cap off indoors, use the right utensil, say excuse me, open doors and let others go first. Better yet, buy a manners book and work hard on improving yours.

I have noticed some people have poor grooming skills. You would think this is an adult type skill, but perhaps no one ever took the time to explain these facts. Wear clean clothes, shower or bathe daily, don't overdo the cologne, brush your teeth. Seriously, how hard is this? If you choose not to do anyone of these things, watch how people avoid you.

Personally, I like people who have good language skills. It's not that I dislike people who have trouble with subjects and verbs, I just notice is all. But even more than using proper grammar, I find myself avoiding people who use toxic language, swearing excessively, showing a temper, complaining or whining. And, gossip. If you are a gossiper, just be aware people will eventually migrate away from you. If you talk about others, the reasoning goes, you will get around to me, and THAT I don't like.

Number 10. Humility is Endearing.

Genuine humility is very appealing to others. The issue is how do you attain it without being false or fake. All of us have known someone who fakes humility, Oh no, I couldn't have hit all those home runs without my hitting coach and his advice, as a way of generating even more compliments for their achievements or actions. This fake humility is transparent and communicates more insecurity than humility.

How can you make yourself more humble? Here a few ideas: Stop comparing yourself to others, old classmates and/or co-workers. Who cares what they are doing, instead of how are you doing on your own path? Next, acknowledge your own faults. Trust me, you are not perfect. There is always someone better, who has more skills than you. Next, defer to others. Sometimes other people have better ideas than you. Review your past, ask yourself how you got to where you think are. Was it as a result of your own natural born charisma? Or perhaps just luck?

Check out G.L.'s FREE webinar tomorrow at 2:00 pm EST: 9 Valuable Lessons Learned From 3 Successful Start-ups (Plus 91 More).

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G.L. Hoffman is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor. Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO. He has been featured in Forbes, FastCompany, the Wall Street Journal and other local business publications and newspapers. Check out his blog here!

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Forming and interacting with Master Data Management teams is interesting because the people tend to come from one of two worlds. While each world is legitimate, the best team will comprise the best of both worlds, if not in experience, at least in perspective.

These worlds I'm talking about are the post-operationally-minded information management professionals and the operational-systems-minded professionals.

On the one hand, MDM does comprise quite a bit of traditional information management - the data modeling, the data quality programs, the data profiling, the data integration - all familiar to builders of data warehousing.

On the other hand, MDM is operational and will interact in real-time, not batch, with other operational systems. MDM will utilize governed workflows to bring together its data and will need to be keenly aware of operational issues and operational data needs. Changing the data so suit analytics is not always best.

While the perspectives are not mutually exclusive, the skill gap to what is needed can be astounding if teams are formed, and therefore opinions of MDM formed, exclusively from one camp or the other. Make sure your MDM program achieves the right balance of skills and focus. Take inventory. This can be done through consulting and education, as well as conscious effort towards balance and achievement in both operational and post-operational issues.

If nothing else, our Sidney Crosby(notes) Golden Roar reader art contest has confirmed one of our long-held suspicions: That every classic image in sports history would be improved by the presence of Norwegian curling pants.

Earlier this week we announced the latest Puck Daddy reader art competition, in which Sid the Kid's iconic Olympic moment -- after scoring the game-winning overtime goal to win the gold medal over the U.S. -- would be properly celebrated by your sick, twisted minds. The results have been startlingly impressive: Of the hundred or so entries sent to the PD inbox, the levels of ingenuity and immaturity may have surpassed any other contest we've held. And the bar is rather high.

For example: Reader "LW3H" and his discovery that "Crosby's apparently spontaneous celebration was revealed to be yet another cold, cynical marketing opportunity" by taking on the form of the Vancouver Winter Olympic logo.

So continues the next great Puck Daddy reader art contest: The Sidney Crosby Golden Roar gallery. Our friend Bangin Panger offers a "clean slate" version of the roar, but there are plenty of other photos out there.

The prizes for this one are being finalized, and we imagine that three winners will be able to choose which ones they'd like to receive for their efforts. We can tell you that one of the prizes will, in fact, be a VIKINGSTAD! shirt from Pucking Hilarious, which is always a good thing to have in your wardrobe. You know, in case of an unscheduled pillaging.

Deadline for submissions will be next Wednesday, March 10, at noon EST. Email your entries to puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com.

And now, the first gallery of entries in our Sidney Crosby Golden Roar reader art contest. Grab the guns and hide the children ...

And here ... we ... go.

We received many, many images of the Pittsburgh Penguins captain in his classic post-goal pose in which the artist simply had -- and please excuse the crass nature of the following description, as it's never our intention to offend mannered sensibilities with uncouth verbiage -- things falling out of his butt.

This effort by Kelly R. was one of the most creative (and publishable!) in that genre. This celebration was going perfectly until Veruca Salt attempted to steal Sidney Crosby, before being jettisoned down the "bad egg" chute with her father.

Puck Buddy Mike S. presents one of the best in the first batch, as Sidney defends the elderly from attacks by 70-pound Dominican pitchers.

There were many readers who found Crosby's guttural roar reminiscent of a legendary warrior. Bangin' Panger captured that in one of the first submissions, in which Crosby fights side by side with Maximus Decimus Meridius for Rome's honor.

Meanwhile, Travis H. presents him in Frank Frazetta's "Moon Men," which makes us hope that the full pulp graphic novel "Sidney Crosby of Mars" could be on its way to Borders.

Often times, we receive complaints that Crosby takes hits on this blog while Alex Ovechkin(notes) is coddled. Puck Buddy and art contest veteran Walter Sobchak attempts to quiet those complaints with this inspired submission. Because, in the end, we all just wanted to see the Russians lose. OK, maybe Dmitry didn't...

Then again, we'll freely admit that a good Sidney Crosby diving joke will always make us giggle, no matter how outdated or immaterial the reference might be in 2010. Thanks to Adam S. for the image.

Croszilla terrorizes cities around the world, via Matt from NY. Over/under on the amount of time before we receive the accompanying Evgeni Malkin(notes)/Mothra mash-up?

Some of you felt that Crosby's roar contorted his face into something rather equine in nature, and Photoshopped it accordingly as readers Paul M. and "false" did.

Just goes to show how far hockey still has to go: A-Rod gets depicted as a minotaur, while Crosby is a braying jackass. Sad, really.

The Muppets make us laugh. So did this lookalike entry from Frank S.

Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And yet still such a MONSTER entry. Thanks to Puck Buddy Mohit.

One of our favorite aspects of the Puck Daddy reader art contests to see how you folks reference previous contests. So we've been inundated with callbacks to Gloating Bruins Fan, which is fine. But not as fine as Crosby as Bob Ross, creating the Bettman "Go For It, Jews" classic through the glory of Microsoft Paint. (Thanks to Jason J.)

(Ed. Note: The Bettman art contest was held in July 2008, and we're honored to say the blog has grown a bit since then. "Go For It, Jews" was one of the most popular submissions we've ever had in a contest; read up on it if you're unaware of it.)

Total suckers from old-school video game references. Like Sid-Man from John B., in which Crosby appears fixed on the ghost wearing Flyers colors ...

... and the obligatory Mortal Kombat callback from Matt K., even if it means the death of our beloved Scorpion ...

... and, perhaps best of all: Sidney Crosby in Rampage, via Josh E., in which Sid and Eric Godard(notes) destroy a city block and eat people.

In which Crosby completes the hat trick: Stanley Cup, gold medal and winner of the Ohio glee club sectionals for William McKinley High School in Lima. (Thanks to Jules.)

And finally ...

Puck Daddy art contest veteran Kyle L. with what many consider to be the clubhouse leader entering the second gallery of the competition. Ingenious, well executed ... and yet demerits for no cigars or booze. So the contest is still wide open, like Sidney after dropping a golden egg.

William Shatner will shill almost anything, and we love him for it. Now he is putting his promotional talents to work for Myouterspace.com, a social network for sci-fi geeks, gamers, animators, writers, and actors. In other words, people who couldn't get into MySpace.

Actually, the site seems less like a social network than a way to crowdsource sci-fi movie and game projects. Depending on your specialty (animation, acting, writing, music) you register on one of six planets. Projects are designated as different starships, which recruit talent from the different planets. Shatner promises to monitor the progress of each crew, although it is not clear what that means or how they will be rewarded. If you are not groaning already at the stretched metaphors, Shatner explains how the whole thing works in this video which I nominate for the sorriest special effects anywhere.

Watching the video, in which Shatner is trapped in a dorky spaceship on a barren moon, I can't help but think that inside he is screaming, Khaaaaan!!

Shared by tamihania
Good post on the role of emotions in the process of thinking.
From the article:"The moral is that emotions influence how we process and pay attention to information, and that different kinds of cognitive tasks benefit from different moods. When we're editing our prose, or playing chess, or working through a math problem, we probably benefit from a little melancholy, since that makes us more attentive to details and mistakes. In contrast, when we're trying to come up with an idea for a novel, or have a hit a dead end with our analytical approach to a problem, then maybe we should take a warm shower and relax. The answer is more likely to arrive when we stop thinking about our problem."
Although one can discuss the generalizations included in the article (each case of bi-polar disorder is as unique as we are - see: comments under the post...) - it's worth to know that our mood highly influences our cognitive abilities... :)

One of the interesting subplots of this new research on the intellectual benefits of sadness - it seems to bolster our attention and make us more analytical - is that it helps illuminate the intertwined relationship of mood and cognition. For decades, we saw the mind as an information processing machine; the brain was just a bloody computer with lipid bi-layer microchips. The problem with this metaphor is that machines don't have feelings, which led us to overlook the role of feelings in shaping how we think.

Here's an experiment I described in the depression article:

Last year Forgas ventured beyond the lab and began conducting studies in a small stationery store in suburban Sydney, Australia. The experiment itself was simple: Forgas placed a variety of trinkets, like toy soldiers, plastic animals and miniature cars, near the checkout counter. As shoppers exited, Forgas tested their memory, asking them to list as many of the items as possible. To control for the effect of mood, Forgas conducted the survey on gray, rainy days -- he accentuated the weather by playing Verdi's "Requiem" -- and on sunny days, using a soundtrack of Gilbert and Sullivan. The results were clear: shoppers in the "low mood" condition remembered nearly four times as many of the trinkets. The wet weather made them sad, and their sadness made them more aware and attentive.

Of course, this doesn't mean people in sunny climates always think worse, or that sadness is always the ideal mental state. While negative moods might promote focused attention and rigorous analysis, there's good evidence that happiness promotes a more freewheeling kind of information processing, which leads to more creative insights. Consider the following problem: I'm going to give you three different words, and you have to come with a single word that can form a compound word or phrase with all three. The three words are: AGE, MILE and SAND.

What's the answer? Look here.* If you solved this problem, the answer probably arrived in a flash of insight, popping abruptly into consciousness. According to Mark Jung Beeman and John Kounios, two scientists who have studied the neuroscience of aha moments, the brain is more likely to solve insights when the mind is relaxed, happy and perhaps a little distracted. (They've found, for instance, that subjects in a positive mood solve approximately 20 percent more insight problems than control subjects.) I wrote about their research in the New Yorker in 2008.

Why does happiness and relaxation make us better at solving remote associate problems? Beeman and Kounios describe the insight process as a delicate mental balancing act. (They've watched hundreds of undergraduates solve these word problems in fMRI machines and while wearing EEG headgear.) At first, the brain needs to control itself, which is why areas involved with executive control, like the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, are activated. The scare resource of attention is lavished on a single problem. But then, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax, to seek out the more remote associations in the right hemisphere that will provide the insight.

And that's why relaxation and happiness are so helpful: these moods make us more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inwards, so that we become better able to eavesdrop on the quiet yet innovative thoughts we often overlook. (That's why so many of my best ideas often come during warm showers.) In contrast, when people are diligently focused (and perhaps a little melancholy), their attention tends to be directed outwards, towards the details of the problem they're trying to solve. While this pattern of attention is necessary when solving problems analytically, it actually prevents us from detecting those unlikely connections that lead to insights and epiphanies. (William James referred to insights as emanating from the peripheral "fringe" of consciousness, which is why they're so easy to ignore when we're staring straight ahead.)

The moral is that emotions influence how we process and pay attention to information, and that different kinds of cognitive tasks benefit from different moods. When we're editing our prose, or playing chess, or working through a math problem, we probably benefit from a little melancholy, since that makes us more attentive to details and mistakes. In contrast, when we're trying to come up with an idea for a novel, or have a hit a dead end with our analytical approach to a problem, then maybe we should take a warm shower and relax. The answer is more likely to arrive when we stop thinking about our problem. (It should also be noted, of course, that the same mental states can be induced with drugs, which is why so many artists experiment with benzedrine, marijuana, etc. They self-medicate to achieve the ideal mental state.)

If you're interested in thinking more about the tangled relationship of mood, cognition and creativity, I'd definitely recommend The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty. It's a fascinating glimpse into the terrors of manic depression, and how an awful, awful mental illness can lead to a surfeit of creative production.

Update: I've received a few emails asking how this research on creative insights squares with the correlation between unipolar/bipolar depression and artistic success, at least as documented by Redfield Jamison and Andreassen. My own hunch is that, while we indulge in romantic myths about poems being generated during daydreams and long walks (see, for instance, Coleridge and Kubla Kahn), the reality of artistic production is far less leisurely. Good art is a relentless grind, requiring an inexhaustible attention to details and mistakes. Perhaps this is why a depressive mindset can be so helpful, and why so many successfful artists suffered from manic depression, in which periods of euphoric free-association are offset by prolonged and horrific states of anguish. But that's all utter speculation.

*Stone: milestone, sandstone, Stone Age.

In June of 2009, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull co-star Shia LaBeouf told reporters that Steven Spielberg had cracked the story for Indiana Jones 5 and he thinks they're gearing that up. But as far as I can tell, no screenwriter has been hired to turn that idea into a script. Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford reiterated the first part of Shia's previous statement, telling the BBC this week that Steven [Spielberg] and George [Lucas] and I are sort of agreed on a germ of an idea and we're seeing what comes of it. Ford went on to explain the process:

The process works like this We come to some basic agreement and then George goes away for a long time and works on it. Then Steven and I get it in some form, some embryonic form. Then if we like it we start working with George on it and at some point down the line it's ready and we do it.

Right now it sounds like they are only at step one. If a fifth Indiana Jones movie ever happens, it's very likely we won't see it for some time.

• Indiana Jones 5 Really Isn't That Close
• Lucas Has Idea for Indiana Jones 5; Spielberg, LaBeouf, and Ford Don't Rule it Out
• Harrison Ford Set for Indiana Jones 5? 2011 Release Date Planned?
• Stop Lucas: Harrison Ford Updates on Indiana Jones 5
• Mutt Williams and the Search for Elvis?
• George Lucas Talks Indiana Jones 5, Spielberg's Nostalgia, Compares Fans to Holy Ghost.

Shared by remlaps
h/t High Plains Blogger

So there was President Obama giving his bazillionth speech on health care, droning yet again that "now is the hour when we must seize the moment," the same moment he's been seizing every day of the week for the past year, only this time his genius photo-op guys thought it would look good to have him surrounded by men in white coats.

Why is he doing this? Why let "health" "care" "reform" stagger on like the rotting husk in a low-grade creature feature who refuses to stay dead no matter how many stakes you pound through his chest?

Because it's worth it. Big time. I've been saying in this space for two years that the governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture.

It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible.

In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally "conservative" parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect. (Let's not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a "conservative.") The result is a kind of two-party one-party state:

Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless.

Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic.

Less than three months ago, they were stunned at the way the Democrats managed to get 60 senators to vote for the health bill.

Then Scott Brown took them back down to 59, and Republicans were again stunned to find the Dems talking about ramming this thing into law through the parliamentary device of "reconciliation."

Naive GOP

And, when polls showed an ever larger number of Americans ever more opposed to ObamaCare (by margins approaching 3-to-1), Republicans were further stunned to discover that, in order to advance "reconciliation," Democrat reconsiglieres had apparently been offering (illegally) various cozy Big Government sinecures to swing-state congressmen in order to induce them to climb into the cockpit for the kamikaze raid to push the bill through.

The Democrats understand that politics is not just about Tuesday evenings every other November, but about everything else, too.

A year or two back, when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing north of the border by taking me to the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, a number of outraged American readers wrote to me saying, "You need to start kicking up a fuss about this, Steyn, and then maybe Canadians will get mad and elect a conservative government that will end this nonsense."

Makes perfect sense. Except that Canada already has a Conservative government under a Conservative prime minister, and the very head of the "human rights" commission investigating me was herself the Conservative appointee of a Conservative minister of justice. Makes no difference.

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily "compassionate" statists, but always statists.

The short history of the postwar welfare state is that you don't need a president-for-life if you've got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect "conservatives," as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha'penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A big-time GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass ObamaCare because it's so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November.

Okay, then what? You'll roll it back like you've rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago?

Like you've undone the Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel 'n' dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter?

Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus:

"Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?"

Indeed.

Look at it from the Dems' point of view. You pass ObamaCare. You lose the 2010 election, which gives the GOP co-ownership of an awkward couple of years.

And you come back in 2012 to find your health care apparatus is still in place, a fetid behemoth of toxic pustules oozing all over the basement, and, simply through the natural processes of government, already bigger and more expensive and more bureaucratic than it was when you passed it two years earlier.

That's a huge prize, and well worth a midterm timeout.

I've been bandying comparisons with Britain and France, but that hardly begins to convey the scale of it. ObamaCare represents the government annexation of "one-sixth of the U.S. economy" i.e., the equivalent of the entire British or French economy, or the entire Indian economy twice over.

Unprecedented Takeover

Nobody has ever attempted this level of centralized planning for an advanced society of 300 million people.

Even the control freaks of the European Union have never tried to impose a unitary "comprehensive" health care system from Galway to Greece. The Soviet Union did, of course, and we know how that worked out.

This "reform" is not about health care, and certainly not about "controlling costs." As with Medicare, it "controls" costs by declining to acknowledge them, or pay them.

Dr. William Schreiber of North Syracuse, N.Y., told CNN that he sees 120 patients per week about 30% on Medicare, 65% on private insurance plans whose payments take into account the Medicare reimbursement rates, and about 5% who do it the old-fashioned way and write a check.

Schreiber calculates that, under ObamaCare, for every $5 he now makes, he'll get $2 in the future.

Which suggests now would be a good time to retrain as a realtor or accountant, or the night clerk at the convenience store. Yet Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., justifies her support for ObamaCare this way:

"I even had one constituent you will not believe this, and I know you won't, but it's true her sister died. This poor woman had no dentures. She wore her dead sister's teeth."

Is the problem of secondhand teeth a particular problem in this corner of New York? I haven't noticed an epidemic of ill-fitting dentures on recent visits to the Empire State. George Washington had wooden teeth, but presumably these days the Sierra Club would object to the clear-cutting.

Yet, even granting Rep. Slaughter the benefit of the doubt, is annexing the equivalent of a G-7 economy the solution to what would seem to be the statistically unrepresentative problem of her constituent's ill-fitting choppers?

Is it worth reducing the next generation of Americans to indentured servitude to pay for this poor New Yorker's dentured servitude? Yes. Because government health care is not about health care, it's about government.

Once you look at it that way, what the Dems are doing makes perfect sense. For them.

Shit My Dad Says, the Twitter phenomenon with over 1.2 million followers, and more notably, a TV pilot in the works, has taken his act to the new hot (or at least, controversial) social network, Google Buzz.

Now, before you get too excited, you'll note that all this account is doing is importing the Shit My Dad Says tweets into Buzz. In fact, because the account doesn't tweet all that regularly (I suppose creator Justin Halpern is busy trying to write dialogue for William Shatner, who will star in the show), there are only five total tweet imported so far since February 10, when the account was started. Still, there's a lot of activity on those five tweets, with dozens of Buzz users liking and commenting on the blurbs.

There's no way of knowing if this account is an official one since anyone can import any public Twitter account into their Buzz steam, but even if fake, the creator did a nice job recreating Justin's father. For example, his profile says that the one thing he can't find on Google is my pants. And his hometown is shown on a Google Map as somewhere just outside Columbus, Ohio. The About Me section reads the same as the Twitter bio, I'm 29. I live with my 74-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says.

The most interesting thing about this account may be its level of engagement. If I were on the Buzz team, I might point out that even though this account is doing nothing beyond importing tweets, there's clearly a huge demand to have conversations about these tweets something which is much easier to do on Buzz then on Twitter. Of course, some brands are already understanding this.

Also note that the account name is technically sh1tmydadsays, because Google won't allow swear word in Gmail addresses.

[thanks Louis]

I thank Paul Sherman and Loren Poulsen and Eliot Williams for the pointer; a related link is here.

This week, Sports Illustrated ran an article about sexism in Olympic sports, using the example of ski jumper Lindsey Van, whose sport, despite her best efforts, is not yet allowed in the Olympics. At least, not for women. This year, men's ski jumping was an Olympic event, but women's ski jumping is yet to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee, and like Van, the author of the story believes that its exclusion is a result of sexism on the part of the IOC.

Van is the 2009 women's world champion in the sport, and as Rachel Maddow has noted in her coverage of this issue, she holds the world record - not just the women's record, but the world record -in one of the events. In fact, as Maddow pointed out, Van set that world record on the very hill that was used for the Olympic competition in Vancouver last week.

Both Maddow and Phil Taylor, the author of the SI article, suspect that sexism is at play in the decision not to make women's ski-jumping an Olympic sport, and it's hard not to agree with that assessment when members of the International Ski Federation say things like, "Don't forget, it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters on the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view." Two meters? That's 78.7401inches! A thousand times a year? My ovaries are running away in fright at the very thought!

The Canadian courts sided with Van and the other jumpers who filed a suit against the Vancouver Organizing Committee, but as Community blogger Honeybee noted earlier, the Canadian courts don't have the authority to order the IOC to change their decision.

Sadly, the situation with women's ski-jumping is just one example of sexism at work in women's sport. Taylor puts it beautifully in the SI article:

"Sexism isn't confined to any sport or country. It's a universal language, spoken not so much with words as with action, or the lack of it. Female hockey players from many of the European countries competing in the Olympics, for instance, have seen their national federations' lopsided spending on the men's programs as a loud and clear message that they are considered mere afterthoughts. In Russia, where hockey is the national pastime, the women couldn't begin practicing until three weeks before the Games because of budget constraints."

And of course, it's not only in Russia that women's ice hockey gets the short end of the stick; this seems to occur on an international level, too. At Global Comment, Sarah Jaffe observed that she had "heard almost no discussion of women's ice hockey... The women's games seem to be held at times that won't 'interfere' with the men's tournament or other events that need the ice." It hardly bears mentioning, of course, that the shunting aside of women's professional sports doesn't just happen every four years - it's a year-round phenomenon, especially here in the US.

It's important to make the distinction, as Jaffe does, between individual sports and team sports. "Think of women athletes you've seen on TV recently," she writes. "Chances are most of them are individuals," offering Serena Williams as an example. Even when we are presented with women's sports teams, they're either sexed up, to minimize their deviance from traditional femininity, or, as Jaffe notes, we're encouraged to focus our attentions on one or two especially photogenic team members, like Mia Hamm.

In response to our lack of national support for women's pro sports, and women's team sports, especially, Veronica Arreola of Viva La Feminista is encouraging people to take this simple pledge: "I pledge to attend one women's sports event in 2010." It can be a college game or a pro game, it doesn't matter - the point is to show your support, with your presence and with your cash, since lack of spectators and lack of money are two common explanations given for the middling success of women's pro sports in this country. There's even a Facebook group you can join. It's so easy, and if you've ever played competitive sports, you know how great it feels to have a crowd cheering you on. So go buy one ticket. Go to just one game. And be one more yelling, screaming, women's sports-supporting person in the crowd. You can even wear facepaint if you really, really want to.

We told you before that CBS signed a deal with Justin Halpern to co-write a sitcom based on his Twitter account, shitmydadsays. The network recently announced that they tapped actor William Shatner to play the "dad."

Now, according to Nina Tassler, CBS's entertainment president, the network needs to consider a more PG-rated title.

The Hollywood Reporter asked the hard-hitting question:

THR: What are some of the potential titles for "Shit My Dad Says"?

Tassler: Um, one is "Shat My Dad Says."

Ha! At least it's FCC friendly!

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See Also:

• William Shatner To Star In "Sh*t My Dad Says"
• From Twitter to TV: 'Shit My Dad Says' Lands Sitcom Deal
• CBS Earnings Terrible As Expected; Political Ads Flee From TV, Online Ads Down 5%