Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:40:58 GMT

Artwork

Oh, you pretty, pretty pictures of pretty, pretty girls. 
Sorry, I"m too lazy to upload this on Photobucket where it will be a decent size, so just click for a bigger version. Also too lazy to do the promised kicks photo shoot just yet. I spent the day snowed in, running around in the geekiest of snow hats. I buy "em geeky on purpose; if the hat is cool, I"m not interested. Do not ask why. 
Thanks for the birthday wishes yesterday! I had a really great day, and I"m pretty happy with things in general at the moment. Also, happy Hannukah! I now have a bit of holiday cash to spend, so I"m thinking it may be time to take advantage of the 50% off sale at Karmaloop. Maybe a bit of Tarina Tarantino, Betsey Johnson, Cheap Monday, or the like will find a way into my wardrobe. . . Posted by: Kori      Read more     Source

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:33:42 GMT

If a dress had an answering machine

Hi dress,
It"s me. I know you probably have a lot of admirers right now, but hear me out. I"ll be good to you, baby; I can promise you that. If you"ll be mine, I swear to adore and cherish you. We"ll go to all the best parties together. You can rest on my shoulder whenever things get hard or whenever you feel like it, and I"ll never push you away. Ever. In the winter I"ll cover you with a jacket so you don"t catch a chill, and in the summer I"ll let you fly free. I"ll bathe you gently when you need it, and make sure you don"t sit in gum or wet paint or that kind of thing. I"ll watch out for you. I"ll love you. I"ll treat you right.
Think about it, okay? We could be so good together. I just know it. Posted by: Kori      Read more     Source

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:56:39 GMT

Tape Installations

Tape Installations.Today we have some "Tape Installations", which are absolutely amazing. The installations are site-specific works that are dependent upon the space they occupy. Utilizing the existing lines, and angles, each piece created is informed by the individual site and its unique linear placement. These installations are inherently architectural. And here is the rest of the interesting work - gallery. Posted by: Venus      Read more     Source

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:11:49 GMT

Still Life

Still Life.Here we have a few photos from ''Still Life'' by D T Smith, a British photographer. He is a highly talented individual, his primary emphasis is photography but his expertise is quite well seen in other areas too which is seen on his site that has some exceptional art too. Here we have ''Letter E, Letter V, and Creative Review Annual 2007'' of his work which really impressed us. His work has already featured in Grafik, i-D, New York Times Journal, Wallpaper, Creative Review and many more publications. Posted by: Venus       Read more     Source

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:24:43 GMT

7 Reasons Leaders Fail

Around two-thirds of workers say the most stressful aspect of their jobs is their immediate boss, their line manager (Hogan, 2006). While this will come as no surprise to most, this statistic suggests a massive number of unhappy working relationships. So, does this mean that leadership is failing on a massive scale? Well, not exactly....

A recent article published in American Psychologist beautifully explains why so many people experience their managers as piping hot geysers of stress (Vugt, Hogan & Kaiser, 2008). What emerges is that bosses aren''t inherently bad people (mostly), but that the modern culture of work sets them up to fail. Here are the seven main reasons I''ve picked out from this article for why leaders fail:

1. Strict hierarchies.For Mark Van Vugt of the University of Kent and colleagues a large part of the problem with many modern organisations is their hierarchies. Leaders are at the top of the chain and are assumed to have all the answers, so they make most of the decisions. In reality knowledge and expertise is spread across people in organisations. But it''s the leaders who must be seen to lead and so followers get frustrated because their superior knowledge and expertise is frequently ignored. This leads to:

2. Poor decision-making.Leaders often don''t make any better decisions than followers, and frequently make worse ones. This is another consequence of strict hierarchies. Rather than setting up leaders to fail, Van Vugt et al. (2008) argue it''s better to agree that leaders are not always the best people to make the decisions. Spreading the responsibility around, or using more participatory strategies for decision-making is often more effective. But this isn''t the way things generally work, part of the problem is:

3. Huge pay differentials.Followers often hate their leaders because of the huge difference in their salaries. It''s hard to feel any sympathy for someone whose pay is stratospheric (average CEO pay is 179 times that of average workers). And, because more pay means more status, leaders can quickly come to believe they really deserve the God-like status their pay suggests, resulting in their thinking they have all the answers and that they have the right to treat their employees less than fairly. In the bosses'' defence, though, there are:

4. Impossible standards for leaders.Perhaps because of the huge pay and incredible demands, followers expect their leaders to be almost superhuman. The leadership literature identifies a whole range of personal qualities thought important for a good leader. These include integrity, persistence, humility, competence, decisiveness and being able to inspire the troops. While a leader may be high on one or two of these, they are unlikely to have the full set. Followers are almost bound to be disappointed by what is, after all, another fallible human who is just trying to:

5. Climb the greasy pole.If the boss is nice to you, it''s a bonus, because it''s not required for them to get on in the organisation. Leaders are promoted by those higher than them, not those below them - so it''s only necessary for bosses to impress their bosses. This is a recipe for disaffection amongst the followers. Talking of which, forget the psychology of leadership, what do we know about the:

6. Psychology of followership?One of the best points Van Vugt et al. make is that although it''s leadership that has been most extensively studied and discussed, most of us end up as followers. So really the psychology of followership is more important than leadership. What is it that makes us follow someone else? And, more subversively: do we need leaders? For example, some research shows that when people know what they''re doing, they resent having leadership imposed on them. Generally, though, there''s little known about followership, and how to avoid:

7. Alienation.As a result of the strict hierarchies, huge pay differentials, poor decision-making, greasy-pole climbing and feeling powerless to change huge bureaucracies, followers naturally develop feelings of alienation, and alienation kills motivation and productivity, along with any hope of job satisfaction.

Talk is cheapBy implication the way to rectify these perceived problems is to do the reverse. Don''t instigate rigid hierarchies, discourage huge pay differentials, democratise decision-making and don''t set impossible standards for leaders. Some organisations are already managing this - presumably those in which followers don''t find their bosses the biggest sources of stress - but most are not.

Of course talk is cheap and recognising the problem is quite different to knowing what to do about it, or having the courage to do it. Anyone wanting to make these types of changes across an organisation would have to be a really great leader - and there are truly few of those around.

What do you think?Do you recognise these problems in your organisation? Has anyone tried to do anything about it? Are there other major reasons leaders fail? Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:23:29 GMT

Pantry raid: banana bread

Have you ever opened the freezer and had to dodge cannonball-sized projectiles cascading out the door? No? Then you are a better freezer manager than I. This past weekend it became obvious that it was time to go on a pantry raid and clean out some of the food I''ve been saving for another day.

The result? A buffet dinner of warmed up bits of Martin''s terrific cassoulet, some weeknight pasta with tomato sauce and the like. And for dessert? A pretty tasty banana loaf made from some skanky, black peel covered bananas.

Although this was definitely not the best dinner I''ve served, it was satisfying on other levels: As a housekeeper, I felt great about organizing the freezer and having a heat-and-eat dinner was a nice break from meal planning, too.

How often do you need to clean out the freezer? When you do, is it more like a treasure hunt or a step into the mysterious beyond? Posted by: danamccauley      Read more     Source

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:11:37 GMT

I am a good patient, believe it or not

Here is an article published in the British Medical Journal in 2003 by Alejandro R Jadad, Carlos A Rizo and Murray W Enkin. They mentioned what the good patient of the future would be like:

• Bring lists of questions to the consultation and will expect answers in clear terms
• Know how involved they want to be in decisions about their health care; most will choose to share decisions with their healthcare providers
• Have free access to their health record on paper or through electronic means and will use it or share it as they see fit
• Request and receive a second opinion whenever they face a major diagnosis or decisions about treatment
• Use telephone, internet, and other forms of communication to complement personal visits with members of the healthcare team

They were absolutely right. The situation is almost the same in 2008. How many e-patients do you think we have now? Not too many, but the number is certainly much bigger than the number of web-savvy doctors.

World wide web is for us, not against us…

I hope Webicina will help them find relevant and useful web 2.0 content. Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:19:33 GMT

How to Improve Your Self-Control

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How personality and the situation affect self-control.

How to improve your self-control.

New research suggests self-control can be improved using abstract reasoning.

Temptation comes in many forms, often so potent, so animal, that it seems impossible to resist. Eating too much, drinking too much, spending too much or letting the heart rule the head. We get instant messages from deep in the gut that resonate through the mind, trying to dictate our behaviour.

One of humanity''s most useful skills, without which advanced civilisations would not exist, is being able to engage our higher cognitive functions, our self-control, to resist these temptations. Psychologists have found that self-control is strongly associated with what we label success: higher self-esteem, better interpersonal skills, better emotional responses and, perhaps surprisingly, few drawbacks at even very high levels of self-control (Tangney et al., 2004).

People, being only human, find the constant battle with basic urges is frequently too great and their self-control buckles. However, recent experimental research by Dr Kentaro Fujita at Ohio State University and colleagues has explored ways of improving self-control, where it comes from and why it sometimes deserts us.

Based on new research, along with studies conducted over the past few decades, Dr Fujita and colleagues have proposed that abstract thinking and psychological distance are particularly important in self-control.

1. Evidence that abstract thinking improves self-control
It never ceases to amaze just how different two people''s views of exactly the same event can be: one person''s freedom fighter is another''s terrorist. But the way in which we view people or events isn''t just constrained by unchangeable patterns of thought that are set in stone. Dr Fujita and colleagues explored the idea that simple manipulations of how we construe the world can have a direct effect on self-control. Their hunch was that thinking from a more abstract, high-level perspective increases self-control.

In their research, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Fujita et al. (2006) used a number of experiments to test the idea that self-control is affected by how we construe or interpret events. The problem for the researchers was manipulating aspects of people''s construal without them realising: this required some deception.

In one of Fujita et al.''s (2006) studies participants were told they were going to take part in two separate experiments - one on personality and another billed as a student survey. In fact this was just a cover story as the two pieces of research were designed to work together.

Experimenters used the ''student survey'' as a cover to manipulate levels of construal. They needed participants to be thinking in either a high-level way (abstract - seeing the whole forest) or a low-level way (concrete - seeing individual trees). They did this by getting participants to think about their level of physical health, but in two different ways:

• High-level construal condition: participants were asked to fill in a diagram which encouraged them to think about why they maintain good physical health. Participants tended to put answer such as: "To do well in school." This got them thinking about ends rather than means - the ultimate purpose of physical health.
• Low-level construal condition: in contrast participants in this condition were asked to think about how they maintained their physical health. Naturally they responded with things like: "Go exercise". In other words they focused on means rather than ends, the actual process.

Just before this manipulation of construal level, in a study they were misinformed was separate, participants were told their personality was being tested physiologically through holding a handgrip. This handgrip was designed to be difficult to squeeze together but participants were told to hold on as long as possible. This provided a baseline measurement of their grip strength.

Just after the manipulation of construal level participants had dummy electrodes attached to their arm and were told that their personality could be measured while they squeezed the stiff handgrip again. This time, though, they were told that the longer they could squeeze the handgrip the more accurate the information would be. The question was: how well could participants forget the temporary discomfort of holding the handgrip once they had been told about the desired goal of getting information about their own personalities?

The results confirmed Fujita et al.''s (2006) suspicions. They showed that participants in the low-construal thinking condition (thinking about means rather than ends) held on to the handgrip for, on average, 4.9 seconds less than they had during the baseline measurement.

In contrast those in the high-construal condition held on for 11.1 seconds longer than their baseline measurement. Whether participants were thinking about means or ends had a really significant effect on how long they squeezed the handgrip. Those participants who had been encouraged to think in high-level, abstract terms demonstrated greater self-control in enduring the discomfort of the handgrip in order to receive more accurate personality profiles.

Along with this design Fujita et al. (2006) also carried out other studies using different measures of self-control and different ways of inducing either high-level or low-level construal. These produced similar findings. People in the high-level construal condition were consistently:

• More likely to avoid the temptation of instant gratification.
• Prepared to make a greater investment to learn more about their health status.
• Less likely to evaluate temptations like beer and television positively.

2. How personality and the situation affect self-control
Self-control is not just affected by how we are thinking at a specific moment, that would be too easy. We have each developed different amounts of self-control. Some people seem to find it easy to resist temptation while others can be relied on to always yield to self-gratification. To a certain extent we have to accept our starting point on the self-control sliding scale and do the best we can with it.

Although a few people have very high (or very low) levels of self-control, two-thirds of us lie somewhere near the middle: sometimes finding it easy to resist temptation, other times not. Naturally the exact situation has a huge effect on how much self-control we can exert. One property of different situations central to self-control that psychologists have examined is ''psychological distance''.

Research reveals that people find it much easier to make decisions that demonstrate self-control when they are thinking about events that are distant in time, for example how much exercise they will do next week or what they will eat tomorrow (Fujita, 2008). Similarly they make much more disciplined decisions on behalf of other people than they do for themselves. People implicitly follow the maxim: do what I say, not what I do.

It''s not hard to see the convergence between the idea of ''psychological distance'' and high-level construal. Both emphasise the idea that the more psychological or conceptual distance we can put between ourselves and the particular decision or event, the more we are able to think about it in an abstract way, and therefore the more self-control we can exert. It''s all about developing a special type of objectivity.

3. How to improve your self-control
Fujita et al.''s (2006) studies, along with other similar findings reported by Fujita (2008), suggest that self-control can be increased by these related ways of thinking:

• Global processing. This means trying to focus on the wood rather than the trees: seeing the big picture and our specific actions as just one part of a major plan or purpose. For example, someone trying to eat healthily should focus on the ultimate goal and how each individual decision about what to eat contributes (or detracts) from that goal.
• Abstract reasoning. This means trying to avoid considering the specific details of the situation at hand in favour of thinking about how actions fit into an overall framework - being philosophical. Someone trying to add more self-control to their exercise regime might try to think less about the details of the exercise, and instead focus on an abstract vision of the ideal physical self, or how exercise provides a time to re-connect mind and body.
• High-level categorisation. This means thinking about high-level concepts rather than specific instances. Any long-term project, whether in business, academia or elsewhere can easily get bogged down by focusing too much on the minutiae of everyday processes and forgetting the ultimate goal. Categorising tasks or project stages conceptually may help an individual or group maintain their focus and achieve greater self-discipline.

These are just some examples of specific instances, but with a little creativity the same principles can be applied to many situations in which self-control is required. Ultimately these three ways of thinking are different ways of saying much the same thing: avoid thinking locally and specifically and practice thinking globally, objectively and abstractly, and increased self-control should follow.

[Image credit: brothaloveimages] Posted by: Jerry      Read more     Source

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:35:08 GMT

Tough as Nails

I''m currently loving the styling of Alternative Apparel''s "Alternative Earth" collection as shown on the website. It has a sort of desert/military theme, and I think it looks laid-back, grungy, and slightly badass. In other words, it''s just plain cool.

The clothing may be eco-friendly gym wear (although, to be honest, I''d wear it on a day-to-day basis), but what I love is how the accessories bring it to the next level. Fingerless leather gloves, long-strapped leather bags, and gauzy beige scarves make me think of Tank Girl, a certain type of casual Israeli style, the military, and hiking. White smudges and dirty-clean tousled hair are a nice finishing touch. I''m really fighting the urge to wear goggles on my head tomorrow; how cool does that look? And fingerless leather gloves - well, those I''ve been wanting for over a year now. Must find perfect pair.

At the very least, I plan to pull out my cargo pants, stomp around in my combat boots, and blast my bedhead with hairspray come morning. Which, of course, will lead me to drink black coffee and snarl single-word responses to any questions. When a girl looks tough as nails, she''s gotta act the part. You know how it is. Posted by: Kori      Read more     Source

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:45:19 GMT

Guaiacum coulteri

A couple of announcements before today''s entry: first of all, welcome to Ruth Sanborn, who will be sharing both her photographs and writings with us on Botany Photo of the Day. We''ll get a short bio from Ruth in the near future.

Secondly, for local readers, don''t forget the Indoor Plant Sale tomorrow and Friday here at the garden!

Ruth is responsible for today''s write-up:

Guaiacum coulteri, an endemic Mexican tree species, is the victim of extensive logging in Mexico. Commonly known as the soap bush, Guaiacum coulteri is a relative of the more commonly known creosote bush, Larrea tridentata of arid southwest North America. Both are members of the Zygophyllaceae. Soap bush''s distribution ranges 1,500 km along the western edge of mainland Mexico from southern Sonora to northern Oaxaca. Excessive felling of canopy trees for export quality lumber since 1914 has altered the population structure to understory shrubs, and has also left the population with a patchy distribution. The tree is currently being evaluated for endangered species status on the IUCN Red List (see: Gordon, JE et al. 2005. Guaiacum coulteri: an over-logged dry forest tree of Oaxaca, Mexico. Oryx. 39: 82-85).

This small tree has ornamental value boasting gorgeous sapphire blooms from May to September. It grows to a height of 2-8m (6-25 feet) and can thrive in partial shade to full sun. The water requirements are less clear, as some sources call it a xeriscape specimen while others recommend wet soil. Its native range in Mexico receives between 30 and 100cm (12 to 40 inches) of annual rainfall.

We would like to sincerely thank DarinAZ of the UBC Botanical Garden forums (from Phoenix, Arizona) for posting this exquisite photograph in this thread via the Botany Photo of the Day Submissions Forum. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source