Category: News

I recently read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie for the first time. It’s the kind of book that I’ve avoided most of my life. Self help books, especially ones with a strong slant towards the business world, usually don’t excite me. However, it had been recommended to me by a couple of people, and I realized that it might be of some use for me.

As I read the book, I wondered about how it might apply to the life of improvisation. On one level, it’s pretty straight forward. The way you build relationships in the worlds of theater and comedy are not that different from the business world. The advice translates pretty directly to how you should treat your fellow improvisors off stage. The advice seems especially well suited for sales, and while many of us in the theatre world loath selling ourselves, it is something that definitely helps us be successful.

But I also began to wonder how it might apply to other areas. For instance, some of the advice is tricky to follow if you are a coach, director or teacher. For instance, the first principle discussed in the book is don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Obviously critiquing a student or performers work is exactly what they need (and sometimes crave). So can one follow Carnegie’s advice and still be an effective instructor? I think so. The last section of the book addresses this head on, so some of what I’m thinking won’t show up until a later blog post.

It also occurred to me that some of these principles might be applied in interesting ways on stage. For instance, it might be fun to use some of the principles as negative templates for characters. In other words, you might want to follow Carnegie’s advice off stage, but on stage, you might want to create characters who would sorely need to read his book.

With all this in mind, lets dig into Carnegie’s book. The first section of the book is titled “Fundamental Techniques in Handling People” and the first principle is “Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.”

Don’t criticize, condemn or complain

As an improv student, you should remind yourself of this principle before every class and practice, until it becomes second nature. Criticizing your fellow students work is unlikely to do anything except annoy them. But this should probably extend to the teacher, the theatre and the class itself. People who spend a lot of time complaining are unpleasant to be around, no matter what they are complaining about. This is important, because you are in class to learn and to practice. But you can’t forget that you are also there to network and to make friends. If you go to make a career in comedy, some of the people you meet in your classes may end up being your friend for decades. Don’t be the jackass who spends their time in class complaining about exercises, condemning techniques and criticizing their fellow students.

Like any guideline there are going to be exceptions. As a teacher, occasionally I’ve run into students whose behavior is disruptive to the rest of the class. Sometimes it’s a behavior that I see, but sometimes I haven’t seen it. I think it’s fine for a student to complain to their instructor about a serious problem, but I would wait until a discreet moment, at break or after class. Also, there have been some rare occasions that I’ve heard of where a teacher is conducting his or her class in an inappropriate manner. An example might be a teacher who shows up drunk or consistently late. In this case, you have every right to complain to the school administrator.

What you probably don’t want to do is whine and bitch about a teacher’s style, their exercises or their teaching philosophy. There are going to be some teachers who you don’t gel with. Some instructors might ask you to do an exercise which you don’t understand or might hold an opinion about improv with which you don’t agree. These are not good reasons to have a tantrum. If faced with a situation like this, I would suggest that you suck it up, try your best to do the exercises and thoughtfully consider what the instructor has to say. If after the class, you don’t think you learned anything of value and you didn’t enjoy the class, avoid that instructor in the future. Whining about it in class will likely just turn people off to you.

Your attitude as part of a team or show should be similar. You want to be the kind of performer who other people like to be around. Sure it’s important that you have talent and that you are funny and skilled as a performer, but people have a lot of choices when they are putting together a show or a group. Most improvisors would prefer to perform with an optimistic, fun player with a positive attitude, not someone who spends their time bitterly complaining about their teammates or the theater where they perform.

Now as a coach, a director or a teacher, you have to criticize people you are working with. There is an implicit agreement when someone comes to your rehearsal or class. They know you might criticize them, and they have agreed to listen to your notes and consider them, and to at least try to do what you ask. However, I think there has to be some balance here.

For instance, you are coaching a team and they have a performance which is significantly below their capability. You could go backstage after the show and rip them a new one. You could give them two hours of notes picking apart everything they did wrong (in their 30 minute set). What effect do you think this will have? Will your performers be able to implement every last little note you gave them in future shows? Will they even remember them? Will they spend the rest of the night feeling like crap because their coach made them feel like they suck at improv? Will that help them that much in future shows? I don’t think it will. Don’t get me wrong, you need to critique your performers, but an onslaught of negative notes may not be your best approach if your goal is to truly motivate them to do better.

I guess I would say that as a coach or teacher, don’t complain, don’t condemn, and be careful how you criticize. I’m sure I’m going to expand on this as we go along. The last part of the book has a lot of ideas that should work well in a teaching or directing scenario.

How about the characters you create on stage? Is it alright if they are complainers? Of course! I can think of a lot ways that a character who complains can work on stage. There are some pitfalls to avoid though. For instance, you don’t want the critical nature of your character to stop him or her from doing something in the scene. Let’s say you are playing a husband who complains about his wife’s cooking. If your wife has cooked a seven course meal for you, it’s going to be better for you to go ahead and try each course and find things to criticize, than it would be to refuse to eat anything. I remember Susan Messing often pointing out how behavior that you should avoid off stage, often is great behavior to indulge in on stage.

Rabies used to be in the news quite a bit – it was even the subject of movies (think Old Yeller). Sadly, before vaccinations were available and treatment had been discovered, rabies killed many animals and humans.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), although rabies may be out of the minds of those who live in the developed nations, the disease is still a major concern elsewhere:

• More than 55 000 people die of rabies each year. About 95% of human deaths occur in Asia and Africa.
• Most human deaths follow a bite from an infected dog. Between 30% to 60% of the victims of dog bites are children under the age of 15.

In North America, rabies is sometimes transmitted by rabid bats, so countries, like Canada, have guidelines in place about prophylactic (preventative) treatment if someone comes in contact with an animal that could be rabid.

Canadian guidelines required anti-rabies injections for people who would wake up and find a bat in their bedroom. The reasoning was that if the person was sleeping, they would not always be able to tell if they had been scratched or bitten by the animal. However, researchers looked into the number of people who found themselves in that situation and found that this type of blanket treatment was likely not needed.

Now, instead of encouraging that the bat be caught for testing, which could put people at risk if they hadn’t been bitten in the first place, adults must meet one of the two following requirements:

• The bat must have touched or landed on the person
• It cannot be ruled out that there was not a bit or scratch that has come into contact with a wound on the person or the person’s mucus membranes (mouth, nose)

With children, more caution may be taken and injections given if there is any concern.

The change in recommendations came about because the risk of rabies with just being in the same room did not justify the expense and discomfort of the prophylactic treatment.

~~~

Image: PhotoXpress.com

Post from: Blisstree

Canadian Bat/Rabies Shot Guidelines Changed

This new wave of hydrogen fuel cell cars is not due to new technology, but instead a demand from the public in response to rising gas prices. In fact, fuel cells have been around since the early 1800’s. Even so the first car to put fuel cell technology to use was the 1966 GM Electrovan.  This van’s fuel cell had a range of over 120 miles which is not to bad compared to the modern Honda Clarity which has a range of 24o miles. This van was built and tested in 1966 but ultimately ended up failing due to cost and a lack of space.  The piping and equipment needed to power the fuel cell turned the 6 seat GMC Handivan into a 2 seat hyrdogen Electrovan. High costs came as a result of a lack of information, technology, and interest at the time. There was such a lack of information on hydrogen fuel cell cars that even the Smithsonian Institute did not allow it inside their facilities for the sole reason that they had never heard of a fuel cell before and did not understand it’s dynamics. Obviously the information  and technology available today makes the hydrogen fuel cell cars more affordable and safe, but the main reason they may now succeed is that there is a greater worldwide interest due to the global energy demand and rising fuel prices.

There are only 4 days left until the end of this year’s New Year’s Resolutions Contest.

For a chance to win $750 in Primal Prizes submit your 60 second YouTube video detailing your health and fitness goals for 2010 by this coming Friday.

Click here for all the details about the prize package and contest. Grok on!

Get Free Health Tips, Recipes and Workouts Delivered to Your Inbox

Related posts:

1. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest
2. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest
3. Contest: What Did You Learn This Year?

For anyone who thought the federal regulators were all on the same page regarding the best way to police compensation at banks, think again.

Bair

Tension behind the scenes spilled into a nasty exchange of words at a public meeting of the five-member Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board of directors. The long and short of it: FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and two other board directors support proposing a new policy that would tie the fees banks pay for deposit insurance to the risk-profile of the compensation plans at those banks. In other words, if the bank pays executives in a way that the FDIC feels encourages dangerously risky behavior that could ultimately lead the bank to fail, then the FDIC can charge them more for deposit insurance.

Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, whose agency regulates national banks, and Office of Thrift Supervision acting director John Bowman, whose agency regulates federal thrifts, strongly disagreed with the proposal. They said, among other things, the FDIC was moving too quickly because the Fed and Congress were both looking to address of banker compensation using different standards. They also said it was unclear how much of a factor banker pay really played in causing banks to fail. And Mr. Bowman also suggested it was unclear whether the FDIC even had the authority to assess higher fees based on pay plans. Messrs. Bowman and Dugan voted against the proposal, which narrowly passed 3-2.

Ms. Bair wouldn’t let their criticisms go unanswered, and launched into a lengthy unscripted rebuke:

(The only acronym worth noting is “MLR,” or material loss review. These are conducted after sizable bank failures, when government investigators go through the causes of the collapse)

Ms. Bair: I must say to take a position that we should not even be asking these questions is not one that I can understand. I also cannot understand why we need to keep waiting. We need to keep waiting for this or that, and in the interim, nothing changes. We just maintain the status quo, and the longer we try to [implement] meaningful reforms, the more momentum for that dissipates. We are simply asking the question.
There are a number of MLRs for the smaller institutions that draw quite a clear contributing factor to bank failures on losses. We don’t have MLRs for the larger institutions because they got bailed out. That does not mean to say that we shouldn’t be looking at the huge compensation systems of the larger institutions as well, and how that fed into risk taking and the credit crisis which has obviously imposed massive losses for the deposit insurance fund. We must rely on academic research and other work done by our own staff to determine whether there is cause and effect here. We are asking the question right now but we are obliged to have risk adjusted premiums. And we are obliged to evaluate risk to the deposit insurance fund, and we are obliged to try to factor in those risk elements into our premium structure.
So I think there is nothing we are doing that conflicts with the Fed is doing. It complements that. There is nothing we are doing that conflicts with what the Congress is doing…
To suggest this agency shouldn’t do anything when there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence that this is clearly a contributor to the crisis and to the loses that we are suffering, I just cannot understand that.
John, you made a very good inventory of all the regulatory and statutory provisions dealing with management and compensation, but I must say, how effective have those been? And maybe we should be looking at some other tools as well to again reinforce and complement those supervisory efforts.
I think the regulators have been roundly criticized for not fully exploring the regulatory tools we have at our disposal to address some of the root causes of this crisis…not to even ask the question I think would not be responsible for this board to do.

Nissan no presentó grandes novedades en Detroit, pero anunció en la sesión de prensa, que presentará dos modelos económicos dirigidos exclusivamente al mercado norteamericano.

Ambos modelos se basarán en la plataforma del Nissan Micra, que reemplazará al Versa, el vehículo más pequeño y más económico que la marca japonesa vende en EEUU.

Los nuevos vehículos serán construídos en México, para toda América, en un intento por ahorrar costos de mano de obra y mantener el precio lo más bajo posible. A pesar de que el Versa es uno de los vehículos menos equipados del mercado norteamericano, sigue siendo un coche que vende, viendo que, a pesar de una caída en el 2009, todavía vendió casi 7.000 coches en el mes de diciembre.

El precio aproximado de los nuevos Nissan Micra, será de unos 10.000 dólares, lo mismo que lo que cuesta el Versa, pero sobre una plataforma mucho más moderna. El intento no será algo aislado de la marca por ofrecer un coche económico, ya que se tiene previsto fabricar al menos un millón de estos coches al año.

Vía | Automotive News

Once, most of exoplanets that astronomers spotted were giants, but now they’re seeing more and more new planets with masses not far off from the Earth’s. One of those newly found Earth-like exoplanets, however, may not have always been so similar to our own world: An astronomer made the case last week that the small, sweltering planet was once a mighty gas giant that shrank.

Astronomers discovered Corot-7b in September. Its diameter is roughly 1.7 times that of Earth. Based on its size and mass, its density is similar to Earth’s, indicating that it is a rocky Earth-like orb [ABC News]. But the comparisons end there. While it’s rocky like Earth, this fiery hellhole is no place for life. It orbits its star at a distance of only 1.6 million miles (we’re presently at a much more comfortable 93 million miles from our sun) and completes a revolution in only 20 hours’ time. And, NASA’s Brian Jackson argued at last week’s American Astronomical Society meeting, Corot-7b is probably just a shell of its former self, and once was a type of gas giant called a “hot Jupiter.”

Given the planet’s proximity to its star, Jackson says it would be subject to a constant blast of heat that robs it of its mass. Rock vaporized by the extreme temperatures could escape the atmosphere of Corot-7b, and the planet would’ve steadily lost mass as it moved closer to its star. It could be shedding half an Earth mass every billion years. Extrapolating backward in time, Jackson concludes that the planet may have started as a gas-giant world more akin to Jupiter or Saturn, and that its light elements were driven off [Sky & Telescope]. The gas giant case isn’t clinched; one could also argue that the planet was always rock, and just slowly lost mass over the years. Either way “this planet is disappearing before our eyes,” Dr. Jackson said in a statement [ABC News].

Elsewhere at the AAS meeting, astronomers announced a new find: the second-smallest exoplanet ever, given a mouthful of a moniker in HD156668b. The team of astronomers who discovered HD156668b used one of two Keck telescopes at the 4,145-meter (13,600-foot) summit of Mount Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The astronomers used the so-called wobble method, which measures the gravitational effects of a planet on its star [AFP]. This new world is some 80 light-years away in the Hercules constellation. It’s only four times more massive than Earth.

With the exoplanet tally now well past 400, and the planet-hunting Kepler telescope starting to spot its first distant orbs, expect the announcements to keep coming. Maybe soon we’ll even find an Earth-like world that isn’t unbelievably sizzling hot.

Related Content:
80beats: Rock Solid Evidence of a Rocky, Earth-Like Planet
80beats: Study: Strange Planet Has Atmosphere of Gaseous Rock—and It Rains Pebbles
80beats: Kepler Telescope Spies Its First 5 Exoplanets, Including “Styrofoam” World
80beats: Meet the New Neighbors: Earth-Like Worlds Orbiting Nearby Stars
DISCOVER: How Long Until We Find a Second Earth?
DISCOVER: Big Picture: The Inspiring Boom in “Super-Earths”

Image: ESO. Artist’s impression of COROT-7b.

The Nexus One, while being a very good Android device, has some issues. It is starting with the ordering process with Google and the upgrade eligibility with T-Mobile. There are also reports of signal quality with 3G as outline by Gizmodo. The Nexus One is made by HTC, distributed by Google and subsidized by T-Mobile, so who is responsible for technical support, software updates and contract conditions…?

Well HTC, through their Tweet account said 2 days ago:

For the Nexus One, rate plan related ?’s should go to your carrier. Hardware/software support, please reach out to HTC http://ow.ly/UnTI

and again today:

Again, if you need hardware/software support with Nexus One, please contact us (HTC) via http://ow.ly/VemJ

They take responsibility on their part of the deal, which is nice. Then, we can only assume that the 3G problem a lot of users are experiencing will be resolved with a software upgrade from HTC.

It seems the problem with the confusion came from Google who didn’t communicate about this, they could have done it from the Nexus One’s page. Also, T-Mobile was not ready to deal with the specific of customers already on contract with them as outlined by TmoNews.

Unfortunately, once again, this highlight the fact that carriers don’t care much about existing customers and prefer to be nice only with potential new ones! Google want to change the game by distributing the phone themselves but until there is an infrastructure in place (WiFi everywhere or use of white spaces) to do without them, we still have to deal with carriers!

“This is not GDrive” said Google Docs product manager Vijay Bangaru yesterday while showing me something that sure does look exactly like the fabled GDrive.

“How is it different,” I asked.

“That’s hard to say, because GDrive doesn’t exist.”

Alrighty then. Putting that aside, you can soon upload any file type at all to Google Docs, not just the dozen or so Office formats that the service allowed as of yesterday. Video files. Images. Audio Files. Even Zip files. As long as those files are 250 MB or smaller, you’re good. The new feature will roll out over the next several weeks, says Google.

Like other documents in Google docs, files can be kept private, made public or shared with a few users. Google Viewer can be used to view many file types, with the notable exception of video.

Regular users have 1 GB of free storage and can purchase more for $0.25/GB. Enterprise customer pay higher prices, starting at $17/year for 5 GB. There are no bandwidth charges.

Three Third Party Apps Available Now

Three partners have been working with Google to build value add features on top of the new product. The most interesting, Memeo Connect (from Memeo), lets users sync files between the desktop and Google Docs.

Syncplicity is offering businesses an automated backup and file management application. And Manymoon, an online project management application, is also now integrated with Google Docs file storage.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

The line between online security and reputation is blurring. ReputationDefender is a new kind of online security startup that helps you monitor your reputation on the Web and take actions to make sure that when someone Googles you they see you in the best possible light. Last year, ReputationDefender raised $8.65 million from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins, which it is announcing today. The round came in two tranches, with $4 million form Bessemer in May, 2009 and another $4.65 million from Kleiner in August, 2009, with Bessemer participating again. David Cowan of Bessemer and Ted Schlein of Kleiner now have board seats, along with angel investor Mike Maples who led the Series A in 2008.

ReputationDefender sells four different security products on a monthly subscription basis (MyReputation, MyPrivacy, MyChild, and MyEdge) which lets you monitor information about you across the Web, as well as in semi-private databases, and helps you remove inaccurate information or counter by promoting your own vetted profile. CEO Michael Fertick thinks “we are entering a third phase of digital security.” The first phase was around protecting your devices from viruses and malware. The second was around financial payments and making sure people are who they claim to be. “Now we have a third phase,” he says. “Your whole life is on the Web. You live, work, date on the Web. Nobody has your back yet. Nobody gives you the tools to control your life on the Internet.”

Privacy might be dead, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about it. “Information security has to evolve form protecting hard drives to protecting identities,” says Cowan. ReputationDefender specializes in recursive search. It doesn’t just do a search on your name. It will match your name to your employer, college, address, and other information it knows about you so that it can pull up comments, blog posts, photos, and other mentions of you across the Web even if your full name isn’t used.

In computer science this is known as the persona isolation problem, or in national security circles the “27 Mohammeds problem.” How do you know that the John Smith mentioned in an online forum is your John Smith. But ReputationDefender has an edge. Fertick explains: “The unfair or competitive advantage is we are doing searches of our customers, who give us more information about themselves.” So it can narrow down, when someone is talking about you. And it constantly keeps an eye out for new mentions, so you don’t have to Google yourself every morning.

“We now have a whole generation of folks growing up who think it is ok to say whatever they want to whoever they want, whenever they want,” says Shlein, who is an online security veteran and sits on the board of Lifelock, another online security firm which addresses identity theft, with Cowan. ReputationDefender aims to help people regain control of their online reputation, which is increasingly becoming an issue whenever someone applies to a new school or for a new job, or even when they are trying to get a date. Because what is the first thing a college admissions officer, potential boss, or prospective date will do? Google your name. And anything said about you on the Web will come up.

The extent that ReputaionDefender can actually do anything about erroneous or unflattering information about you varies, but for the most part simply knowing what’s out there is first step to doing something about it. And the company is definitely seeing strong early demand. “The numbers are going up and to the right,” says Shlein. Fertick won’t go into too many financial details, but does share that when the company launched in October, 2006 it made $33,000 in revenues. The next year, revenues grew to $1.21 million. He pretty much bootsrapped the whole thing. “We were profitable for much of the history of the company,” he says. Even in the fourth quarter of 2008, when the economy was falling apart, ReputationDefender had a record quarter, followed by an even better one in the first quarter of 2009. It was that financial strength which helped convince Cowan and Shlein to back the company. Now, the company is investing ahead of growth and is not currently profitable.

It is still early days and there is a lot of work ahead. Perhaps ReputationDefender’s biggest weakness is that it does not have a full view into Facebook, where only public comments or photos show up. If somebody is going to badmouth you online, chances are it will be on Facebook. “I don’t think we are especially awesome in getting into the semi-closed systems yet. We don’t yet have the ability to search all of Facebook,” Fertick acknowledges. But he does have at least partial access to 40 social networks, and this is a big area of focus for him. And over time, as Facebook becomes more public by default, it will become more visible to ReputationDefender. It’s the public stuff that most people care about anyway.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Boeing [NYSE: BA] and partner Bell Helicopter delivered two MV-22 Osprey Containerized Flight Training Devices (CFTD) to the U.S. Marines at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar in California in the last quarter of 2009.

“Before the deliveries to Miramar, Marines would have to spend months at a time in North Carolina for training,” said Mark McGraw, Boeing vice president of Training Systems & Services.

“Having two trainers in California increases warfighter availability while allowing the Marines to train more crew members at once.”

The CFTD trains aircrew on basic aircraft familiarization and handling qualities, systems/sub-systems operation, communication, malfunctions, day and night flying, use of night vision goggles, formation flying, aerial refueling and landing on ships.

The device is intended to train crews for any task that might be performed in the aircraft, while limiting the monetary and environmental costs and safety risks of in-flight training.

“We thank Miramar’s warfighters for lending us their expertise,” said McGraw.

“They participated in pre-acceptance testing ‘flyability’ trials and provided around-the-clock availability for the acceptance testing.”

Boeing has delivered a total of three CFTDs to the Marines to date. Two more of the devices are scheduled for delivery to Miramar in mid-2010.

Another CFTD will be delivered to MCAS New River, N.C., in fall 2010, where it will join the first CFTD, which Boeing delivered in 2007.

All CFTDs can be locally networked to one another to allow for more robust training capabilities. The CFTDs at MCAS New River also will be able to network with AV-8 Harriers at MCAS Cherry Point, N.C.

Cost and cycle time have been progressively reduced for each CFTD, while simulator quality has increased. The projectors are sharper and clearer than those on earlier Osprey simulators. Future CFTDs will include additional improvements.

The V-22 Osprey is a tiltrotor aircraft manufactured by Boeing Rotorcraft Systems and Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. [NYSE: TXT] company. Bell and Boeing are teamed in a Strategic Alliance Agreement for the design, production and sustainment of the V-22.

Bell Helicopter, a wholly owned subsidiary of Textron Inc., is an industry-leading producer of commercial and military, manned and unmanned vertical lift aircraft and the pioneer of the revolutionary tiltrotor aircraft.

Globally recognized for world-class customer service, innovation and superior quality, Bell’s global work force serves customers flying Bell aircraft in more than 120 countries. More information is available at bellhelicopter.com.

Textron Inc. is a multi-industry company that leverages its global network of aircraft, defense, industrial and finance businesses to provide customers with innovative solutions and services.

Textron is known around the world for its powerful brands such as Bell Helicopter, Cessna Aircraft Company, Jacobsen, Kautex, Lycoming, E-Z-GO, Greenlee, and Textron Systems.

More information is available at textron.com.

About Boeing Defense, Space & Security

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is one of the world’s largest defense, space and security businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions, and the world’s largest and most versatile manufacturer of military aircraft.

Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Defense, Space & Security is a $32 billion business with 70,000 employees worldwide.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Alison Sheridan, 314-232-8187
Boeing Media Relations
[email protected]

Heralding the triumph of women in the workforce last week, the Economist reported that women not only make up the majority of professional workers in many countries, but also that they earn nearly 60 percent of university degrees in America and Europe. Reinforcing the case for the Great Recession being a Great “Mancession,” the article cites an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent for women but 11.2 percent for men.


The cover, brandishing Rosie the Riveter and the headline: “We Did It!,” would suggest some kind of victorious finality. But the article admits several big concessions to the majority-female-workforce victory, most notably the pay gap. The average full-time female worker in Britain or the U.S. earns 80 percent as much as her male equivalent, though this gap shrinks if the woman is not a mother. Gender parity in the upper ranks looks equally bleak, with a tiny percentage of women in the boardrooms and C-Suites of Fortune 500 companies.

Over at Forbes, Mark Rice links
the pay gap to research showing a decline in the happiness of American
women. U.S. maternity leave policies–the second-least generous policies
of the 30 OECD nations–are no help, he argues, especially in comparison
to Sweden’s extensive allowances for new parents. This almost-cliché
invocation of Sweden as an ideal state brings us back to what I found to
be the most interesting tidbit in the Economist piece: 

“Sweden is not
quite the paragon that its fans imagine, despite its family-friendly
employment policies. Only 1.5% of senior managers are women, compared
with 11% in America. Three-quarters of Swedish women work in the public
sector; three-quarters of men work in the private sector.”

When rumors of the “mancession” started circulating in September, Atlantic Business’ Derek Thompson theorized
that more men than women were losing their jobs because women happened
to work primarily in sectors that have seen a lot of growth over the
past decade–including during the recession–like health care, education,
and government. Largely male sectors like manufacturing and
construction, on the other hand, have been decimated by the financial
collapse.

Why would the public sector attract more women? The Economist says
“traditionally ‘female’ jobs such as teaching mix well with motherhood
because wages do not rise much with experience and hours are relatively
light.” This might explain why women gravitate toward the public
sector, but it doesn’t justify the trend. As Latoya Peterson at Jezebel
points out,
“Wages not rising generally places severe financial stress on a
household–reduced hours are desired by many parents, but the trade off
(less cash) is not necessarily welcome.” On that note,
mancession-denouncers should remember that not all jobs are equal.
Economix’s Nancy Folbre suggests
that measures of employment equality should take into account the fact
that women are twice as likely as men to work part-time.

As more women earn undergraduate and graduate degrees and begin to
infiltrate traditionally male spheres like science and management, one
would expect their titles and wages to catch up. But as the allure of
public-sector and part-time work reveals, women make professional
choices based on more than just their qualifications.

So yes, it could get worse than working for the legendarily munificent
Swedish government. But I find it hard to believe that three-quarters
of Swedish women would rather stick to the middling public wage track
than join their husbands on the private payroll. Once women no longer
have to choose between professional and reproductive output, I’ll be
more inclined to believe that “we did it.”

I’ve written a lot about 3DTV and that I consider it occasionally incredible. But the entire concept is tough to explain because, let’s face it, I can’t just embed 3DTV example videos and you’ve probably never seen it. Allow me:

I stood on a crowded CES floor with an assignment I dreaded. I had to look at every 3DTV I could find, an attraction that seemed to be drawing the slowest, most annoying attendees of all of CES into long lines to split a few pairs of glasses.

And these stupid screens are so unimpressive at first glance. To the naked eye, the screen is a tad blurry and maybe even a bit washed out. Then you slip on a pair of lightweight, heavily-douchey, thick-framed glasses. After a moment or two, the world around you goes darker, that once-blurry image sharpens instantly, and suddenly you’re watching 3D.

The image you see will vary with content. You’ll note a light flickering over your eyes, somewhere between the gaping black holes of an old time projector playing silent films and smooth 24 or 30fps video of a DVD or digital projector. But the biggest change is that your TV is no longer a flat pane but a window, an image in which there’s an actual depth your eye can dig through, a digital diorama, if you will.

And if you happen to be looking around a room filled with 3DTVs, or maybe a display of 15 stacked 3DTVs, all of these TVs will have turned 3D. In mass, the effect is a giggle-filled novelty ever so reminiscent of Jaws 3D.

Animation is, by far, the most impressive demo you will see. Impossibly crisp and colorful, the effect is extremely lifelike…for a cartoon. More simply put, there’s a perfect front to back gradient. Every object looks, well, like an object, like something round that takes up real physical space. When, during a clip of A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s oily, porous nose protrudes from the screen ever so forcefully, you can’t possibly imagine the moment done justice in 2D. The sense of flesh far outweighs what you see in the illustrative lead shot, because truthfully, these scenes have been designed and rendered with information that our displays have been incapable of showing us. With 3D animation, 3D is no gimmick—it’s 2D that’s the lousy undersell. And your eyes will be able to tell as they savor looking as deep as they can into the frame.

Sports are a vastly different, inferior experience. Basketball, for instance, is interesting in 3D but also indicative of the format’s limitations. For one, the court has depth, but the players are quite flat, like a few paper cutouts are dribbling a ball back and forth instead of fully corporeal, 6’6″ titans. Your mind can’t quite reconcile the image, as it’s somewhere between 2D and 3D, meaning it looks more fake, in a sense, than the simple 2D presentation we’ve always seen (the term “uncanny valley,” though not quite suitable in this context, certainly comes to mind). I assume such is a result from the use of telephoto lenses, which are notorious for flattening even 2D images. The effect is even more pronounced in 3D, meaning that stereoscopic 3D shouldn’t (and can’t) be the end game for sports no matter what ESPN tells you. I could easily imagine a multicam arena setup which these blank (flattening) information spots could be filled, and an actual 3D image (a la Pixar) could be piped to consumers, rendered in real time. The effect in sports could truly be something we’ve never seen before (Madden 2010 crossed with real textures, essentially). As of now, it feels more like we’re playing with paper dolls.

Live action film, specifically Avatar, is something I haven’t seen on a 3DTV beyond a few 3D previews. The fast paced trailers—as opposed to the long, expansive shots of Pixar-style animation—don’t lend themselves as well to the illusion (the 3D planes constantly break), and it’s quite difficult to really assess or describe an effect that your eyes can’t chew on for a while. On an IMAX 3D screen, I’ve mentioned that Avatar showed me textures I’d never seen before. On a plasma, Avatar looks far more like a cartoon, and its depth gradient is somewhere between the 2Dish sports and the all-out 3D animations (probably because Avatar itself is much a combination of the two). In the theater, I opened my eyes as wide as possible to take in the bioluminesence of Pandora. On the small screen, a light flicker distances you, almost unconsciously, from the content. But then again, Avatar never looked nearly as impressive in trailers as it did in final cut form, and 3D missiles firing straight at you will always be awesome.

But when things go really bad…

…watching 3D is nothing but pain. Before checking out an LCD or OLED, you put on the shutter glasses, as if all is well and good, and the lights again dim instantly. Each actual frame of the video are just as colorful, sharp and Y-axis-deep as those you’ve seen on better displays. But the frame rate seems to drop, with your favorite Pixar hero moving without smoothness or extreme subtlety. And of course there’s a flicker on top of the odd frame rate, causing the already subpar image to strobe. The overall effect is akin to playing Crysis on an underpowered GPU along with some monitor that goes dark several times a second. It’s sour stacked on sour, an experience with so little redeeming quality you should cease to even consider it.

That annoying CES line I described at the start of this piece? It was at the LG booth, right before I took a look at their 3D plasma prototype, which is slated to be released later this year for $200 over a 2D model. And right when I was ready to give up on glasses, gimmicks and eyestrain, the experience wiped my memory of it all as I stood there transfixed for at least 5 minutes, disregarding the line behind me and watching the same remarkable animated clips over and over. I thought of a new era of filmmakers speaking in an updated cinematic dialect, and I knew that words couldn’t quite describe the sensations—we simply hadn’t decoded them yet.

(Oh, and if you think all of this is too lovey on 3D, read all of my technological caveats here.)

To help your with your planning, I am happy to share with you with a release schedule for the next couple of weeks for some of the regular Xbox LIVE Marketplace features.*

 

Xbox LIVE Deal of the Week:

January 18th: Mass Effect’s Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station, 240 Microsoft Points each.

January 18th: Hasbro Family Game Night: Battleship, 400 Microsoft Points.

January 25th: Portal: Still Alive, 800 Microsoft Points.

Xbox LIVE Games on Demand:

January 12th: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

January 26th: Dead Rising

 

Xbox LIVE Arcade:

January 13th: Serious Sam: The First Encounter HD, 1200 Microsoft Points

January 20th: Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgment, 1200 Microsoft Points

January 20th: Death by Cube, 800 Microsoft Points

Xbox Avatars Marketplace:

January 14th: Burton gear and Darksiders outfits.

January 21st: International attire , MX vs. ATV, and University style outfits

 

Starting today, the following Games on Demand are now available for a lower price:

BioShock, Saints Row, MX vs. ATV Untamed, Prey and Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution.

 

If all goes well, I should be able to share a schedule like this with you on a bimonthly basis.

 

Plus, this Friday January 15 from 12n ET/9am PT through Monday January 18 at 12n ET/ 9am PT, Xbox LIVE Silver members can enjoy Last.fm on Xbox 360 for free.

 

*Current schedule, subject to change

Edit: The lower prices are not applicable to all regions. The Burton content is currently delayed.