Hasta La Gadget!

A recent study carried out by researchers, Victoria Talwar of McGill University and Kang Lee at the University of Toronto, demonstrated the value of praising a character’s honesty as a more effective tool to get young children to tell the truth, than a story that emphasizes the punishment or repercussions to lying. Quoting the University Herald:

“As parents of young children, we wanted to know how effective the stories actually are in promoting honesty. Is it ‘in one ear, out the other,’ or do children listen and take the messages to heart?”

For the study, researchers conducted an experiment with more than 250 children ages 3 to 7. Each child played a game that required guessing the identity of a toy based on the sound it made. In the middle of the game, the experimenter left the room for a minute to grab a book, instructing the child not to peek at a toy that was left on the table. For most children, this temptation was too hard to resist.

When the coordinator of the study returned, she read the child a story, either “The Tortoise or the Hare,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” “Pinocchio,” or “George Washington and the Cherry Tree.” Afterward, the experimenter asked the child to tell the truth about whether he or she peeked at the toy.

Based on their findings, “Pinocchio” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” — which associate lying with negative consequences, such as public humiliation and even death — were no more effective at promoting honest behavior than “The Tortoise and the Hare,” a fable unrelated to honesty.

They found that the apocryphal tale about a young George Washington seemed to inspire the kids to admit to peeking.

Researchers said children who heard the tale in which Washington is praised for confessing his transgression were three times more likely to tell the truth than their peers who heard other stories.

Talwar said the story about George Washington may be effective because it demonstrates “the positive consequences of being honest by giving the message of what the desired behavior is, as well as demonstrating the behavior itself.”

There was a time that we read to our children. However, more and more children today have had this reading time substituted with media, the television or a video game or even their first computer, the small ones, those made especially for children and sold as teaching aids — and what are the message units they offer?

The George Washington story illustrates the power of positive reinforcement. Indeed, when the researchers changed the ending of the Washington story so that it presented a negative repercussion, children who heard the story were no longer more likely to admit peeking.

Our society is full of negative sell images, basically all of those that insist you’re inadequate and therefore need what they have to offer, and then there is all of that fear mongering rhetoric that goes along with not just the sell info but accompanies everyone’s agendas today. If you vote for so and so, the world will end, if you don’t get this or that, well you’ll suffer. Seldom do young people encounter an offer where their honesty is rewarded. Think about that?

How many times as parents do we threaten our children about lying instead of praise their honest behavior?

Like it or not, we live in a mediaocracy today that on a 24-7 basis delivers content designed to manipulate us in some way — period, full stop! The agenda behind this content could care less about anything short of selling its message! And this is what our children are all too often subjected to as their primary learning environment. And it isn’t just our children — adults are as immersed in this as are the kids. The end result may well be extrapolated from some of the research we know about where values are involved in entertainment. Take for example the game, Grand Theft Auto. When adult males play this game their values are altered. They become more accepting of drugs and violence after only one week of playing, based on pre and post testing.

Our media is well known for what’s known as the “The Moral Panic Concept.” This concept may be defined as “an episode, often triggered by alarming media stories and perhaps reinforced by reactive laws and/or public policy, of exaggerated or misdirected public concern, anxiety, fear, or anger over a perceived threat to social order.” What comes to my mind at the moment is the outrage over the Washington Redskins Football team’s name. Now my point isn’t whether this name is a slur or not to Native Americans, it’s rather how the media suddenly finds it reprehensible as though they have been railing against it in every sports broadcast for many years.

So, not to lose our point — the media brings to our attention not just the issues of the moment, but in so doing; they deliver a large portion of our morality. What’s soon to be acceptable will always appear in our entertainment and/or other media first. Obviously, the need for role models and stories portraying the rewarding side of honesty, as well as the other virtues that we hold special, should be what we seek when we choose what we fill our minds and the minds of our children with.

Now, we’re limited by time, but one more point is necessary to flesh out the full picture here. Research now suggests that fear can travel quickly through generations of mice DNA. In the newest of studies, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms. Two weeks later they bred the males and the resulting pups, having no prior exposure to cherry blossoms, nevertheless suddenly became anxious and fearful when they experienced their first whiff of cherry blossoms. Take it a step further, according to the Washington Post, “neuroscientists at Emory University found that genetic markers, thought to be wiped clean before birth, were used to transmit a single traumatic experience across generations, leaving behind traces in the behavior and anatomy of future pups.” There’s little to no reason to believe that these findings will not hold true for good old homo sapiens as well.

So, selling fear has many ramifications! When next you think about building character, remember that character, honesty, integrity, knows its own rewards, and those rewards are not found in fear!

Thanks for the read,

Eldon

Will Google be your business banker? Think about it: Does your business really need a bank? Or maybe, you should just let Google handle it all.

According to this recent piece in the Washington Post the

…universe of (banking) competitors has grown to include T-Mobile, Wal-Mart, Google and a host of other retail, tech and telecom companies that are now operating like banks. These upstarts are gaining footing in the banking world with prepaid debit cards that customers can use to pay bills, make purchases and deposit checks via a smartphone camera — pretty much all the things you can do with your traditional checking account.

Banking with Google? Hey, why not. They’ll be driving our cars and controlling our vision soon enough, so why not just let them take over our finances too? If not them, then how about other online services like Simple, PayPal, and Square? They’re also out to replace our banks too.

The banking industry is undergoing an enormous change. And, whether you like it or not, your business is stuck in the middle of it. Your paper checks are slowly disappearing in lieu of electronic payments. Your need to make a physical deposit at your branch is becoming less necessary. It’s hard to believe that, for many of us, our moms and dads had to take cash out of the bank every week, and be there before the branch closed at 3 p.m.! Those were simpler times. So, like gas station attendants and Tab cola, will banks disappear altogether?

Relax. Google’s not going to take over the world. Or your banking. At least, not anytime soon. In fact your banking relationship will soon be changing… for the better.

“Yes, banking will significantly change for most companies,” says Keri Gohman Executive Vice President and General Manager, Small Business Bank at Capital One (a client of mine). “Good banks will not only adapt, but also play an increasingly vital role to many small companies.”

Gohman is right. Banks are surely not going away. That’s because many small companies will need the cash management and financing support that only a good bank can provide. But there is no question that your company will have a different relationship with your banker over the next few years, and particularly in these four ways:

•Crowdfunding and other alternative investments will help both banks and small companies. Today’s small companies can raise crowdfunded money from sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to help them fund projects in return for favors and gifts. Soon, the SEC will ultimately allow these same companies to use these platforms to raise equity financing too. Couple that with the recent proliferation of venture capital firms, angel investors and micro-lending businesses too. It’s becoming easier and easier for a small business or startups to raise some much needed seed money from places that, frankly, bankers don’t want to be. Going forward, they won’t have to be the bad guy as often. That’s because markets will perform the due diligence for these young companies that banks were in the past forced to provide. If a company can survive this early stage and mature, more of tomorrow’s banks can pick up the ball and deliver next stage financing, comfortable that there’s a track record and that someone else assumed the early stage risk.

•Big data will help banks prove creditworthiness. In addition to the help that crowdfunding and other alternative investments can provide to get companies out of the startup stage, banks will increasingly rely on more data to make better financing decisions. Information will soon be coming faster from their existing customers (see below). But other sources of data such as purchasing and payment histories, popularity and conversations about your company on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter and reviews on other sites such as Yelp, Foursquare and Angie’s List will all play into a bank’s loan making decision process. There will be no place to hide from the bank’s credit department.

•New software will put your bank in a better position to help you (and themselves). Banks are increasingly developing applications to help small businesses pay their bills, do their invoicing, receive money, manage their cash flow and even do payroll. Most integrate with popular accounting applications like QuickBooks and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some banks develop their own simple bookkeeping software in competition with companies like Intuit and Xero. This benefits the bank because they can keep closer, more real-time tabs on their customers. But it also benefits you, as good bankers will also provide feedback and advice based on the latest metrics and data that you’re providing to them as you do your day to day work. Loans can be provided, increased (or decreased) based on this information, reducing delinquencies and losses.

•Finally, retail and small business banking will go almost entirely mobile. Capital One, for example, has a suite of products called Spark Pay, which enables their customers to do all of their banking from any mobile device from wherever they are. Other good banks are increasingly offering similar options. Ultimately we’ll see more “co-opetition” between the banking community and the growing number of companies who now provide mobile payment and cash management services. This will enable small businesses to pay their employees, contractors and suppliers wherever they are, whoever they use as a bank and in whatever currency they require. The smallest of banks will be providing the types of international transactional services that only the big guys could once perform. And, dare I say it, even virtual currencies such as bitcoin will likely find their way into the banking mainstream.

“We’re going to lean on our customers to tell us where we can do things better and what services we can provide,” Gohman promised. “We can build or we can partner with others because the banking and financial ecosystem for small businesses needs to become more linked together.”

Will you be banking with Google in a few years? For most small businesses, probably not. But the relationship you have with your banker will be much different over the next few years. Hey, whatever happened to getting a new toaster?

__________
A version of this column previously appeared on Inc.com.

Earlier this month, two dozen Georgia middle school students were suspended with the hefty charge of making “terroristic threats” via Facebook. Their cause? Taking down the dress code.

This clash over the school’s three-page code outlining items banned from its halls, including flip-flops and tank tops, is just one of many to have made national headlines in recent months. Administrators claim they are preparing their young scholars for “the real world,” but students and parents question whether targeting female and LGBT students is legitimately helpful.

Few disagree that some clothing is not conducive to a classroom setting. But many students are hitting back at schools with incisive critiques over how their schools are failing them. Here, in the students’ words, is what’s wrong with their school dress codes.

“Too distracting for boys’ is giving us the impression we should be guilty for what guys do.”

In March, over 500 students at Haven Middle School in Evanston, Ill. signed a petition opposing what they’d been told was a full ban on leggings and yoga pants. Seventh grader Sophie Hasty explained to local news that teachers said the clothing was distracting for other students — rather, the boys.

“We just want to be comfortable!” Hasty wrote to the Evanston Review in a letter that also included the above quote. Students at Wauwasota West High School in Wisconsin voiced similar feelings. “I understand that girls shouldn’t be coming to school with their butts or chests hanging out, but there has to be a happy medium,” sophomore Elizabeth Kniffin told local news.

Shared from wibblywobblytimeywimeygirl using Embeddlr

“It’s almost teaching us that if any guys harass us, it’s the girl’s fault.”

Anna Angrick, a student at Lawrence Central High School student in Indianapolis, Ind., writes a column for her school’s newspaper called “Own That Look,” a photo of which recently went viral on social media and included the statement above. “Schools … are neglecting to think in a more liberal way to teach boys to respect girls and control themselves around them,” she wrote.

“We [female students] have all these restrictions on our clothing while boys didn’t have to sit through it at all.”

In April last year, an administrator at Kenilworth Junior High in Petaluma, Calif. gathered all the school’s female students during their last class for a very important announcement: Girls were forbidden from wearing tight pants.

Student Brittany Kruljack gave the quote above to local news, and other students, like senior Jestine Langlas, who attends Wauwasota West High School in Wisconsin, claimed that singling out girls for their sartorial choices blows the dress code issue out of proportion. “It makes a scene, and a spectacle of the girl,” she said. “It makes it way bigger of a deal than it needs to be.”

“The school is making [boys] out to be uncontrolled horny monsters.”

In May, 30 female and male students were sent home after protesting the dress code at their school in Canada by wearing tank tops on a hot day. It was a teachable moment — one student told the International Business Times that teachers used the incident to explain how boys can be distracted by just a bare shoulder.

Student Maddie Pynn disagreed, giving the quote above and saying that “a shoulder shouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable, and if it does, you’re the problem.

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“[I was called out] because I had a different body type than my friend.”

Lucy Shapiro, a student at Haven Middle School, described an incident in which she and a friend wore the same type of shorts that illustrated how girls aren’t even treated equally among themselves at times. A teacher “dress-coded” Shapiro, but not the other girl. “With all the social expectations of being a girl, it’s already hard enough to pick an outfit,” Shapiro told The Evanston Review.

“I’ve been told that even though my skirts were technically acceptable, they were still too short for me to wear.”

In a protest at New York City’s Stuyvesant High School in 2012, senior Lucinda Ventimiglia said that due to her curvy body type, “once it was suggested that I should follow a separate dress code” with longer hem requirements. Indeed, the Richmond, Virginia, student kicked out of her prom by a chaperone who said a group of dads had been ogling her at the dance followed all the dress code rules.

“I’m not responsible for some perverted 45-year-old dad lusting after me because I have a sparkly dress on and a big ass for a teenager,” she wrote on her sister’s blog. “And if you think I am, then maybe you’re part of the problem.”

#yesallwomen when was the last time you heard a mother say to her son “don’t wear that outside of the house girls will get the wrong idea”

— Niall Horan Fans (@nialljameshoran) May 26, 2014

“I felt very attacked… and I wanted to tell them how I felt.”

Some students complain administrators aren’t willing (or perhaps able) to explain the reasoning behind the rules. After an embarrassing dress code check in one of her classes at Beaconsfield High School in Canada, eleventh grader Lindsay Stocker tried asking about the dress code. But “they didn’t really want to hear anything I had to say, and it was in front of my entire class,” she said. “They don’t really care what guys wear. They just kind of target the girls first.”

“I feel judged by what I’m wearing and what I do on Sundays.”

Sophomore Kimberly Montoya expressed the above sentiment to the Salt Lake Tribune after her school’s failure to properly communicate dress code expectations sparked an uproar. Administrators of Wasatch High School in Utah recently doctored yearbook photos to cover revealed skin — without telling students. “It made us out to be something we weren’t,” Montoya said.

“Whenever the excuse ‘boys will be boys’ is used, it’s just an exercise of male privilege.”

Other times, dress code rationale simply isn’t good enough. Marion Mayer, a junior at Lakeland Senior High in Lakeland, Fla., blasted her principal’s use of the phrase “boys will be boys” in explaining the school’s dress code in a recent blog post.

“It’s this ‘boys will be boys’ mentality, culture and attitude that condone sexual assault,” she wrote on The Huffington Post. “You are telling them that it’s okay for them to be sexually violent.”

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“If you are sexualizing me, you are the problem.”

This phrase, written by one Tumblr user, is just one of the many examples showing how students are expressing their feelings. A search for “dress code” on Tumblr or Twitter will return countless text posts and photos with lines such as the one above. “I just got sent home because my skirt was a centimeter above my knees and if you don’t think there’s something wrong with that then wow [sic],” reads another.

When educators use shame as a tool to enforce a system of rules that singles out one group of individuals, they miss an opportunity to encourage positive self-image and equal respect for others. And while there’s always room for healthy debate in a learning environment, it seems all the time that goes into squabbling over the dress code could be better spent, you know, actually learning.

By now, most people know about the perils of identity theft, where someone steals your personal or financial account information and makes fraudulent charges or opens bogus accounts in your name. ID theft can take a serious toll on your credit and take months or years to fix, even if you spot it quickly.

Lately, a not-so-new twist has been getting a lot of attention — medical identity theft. That’s where someone gains access to your health insurance or Medicare account information and uses it to submit phony insurance claims, obtain prescription drugs or medical devices (often for black-market resale), or get medical treatment in your name.

Besides its high cost (an estimated 1.8 million victims paid more than $12 billion in related expenses in 2013, according to the Medical Identity Fraud Alliance), medical ID theft can have deadly consequences as well: Suppose someone poses as you and gets an appendectomy; if you later entered the hospital with abdominal pain, your medical file would show that your appendix was already removed and you could be tragically misdiagnosed.

Here are a few tips for avoiding medical ID fraud and steps you can take if it happens to you:

First, it’s important to understand what medical ID thieves are looking for and how they access your information. Your medical files are often full of information they crave: account numbers for Social Security, health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid, contact information, email address, etc. Some doctor’s offices even keep your credit card number on file (bad idea). All it takes is one stolen employee laptop or an intercepted piece of mail or email to leave you vulnerable.

Sophisticated thieves will also hack computer networks of insurance companies, pharmacies, medical equipment suppliers or anyone else who might have access to your medical records. And unfortunately, the black market for stolen information is so tempting that employees have been known to steal data. Plus, think about all the news stories of corrupt doctors and clinics defrauding Medicare for millions of dollars.

Common signs of medical identity theft include:

• Provider bills or insurance Explanation of Benefits (EOB) forms that reference medical services you didn’t receive. (Verify all dates, providers and treatments for accuracy and look for duplicate billing.)
• Calls from debt collectors about unfamiliar bills.
• Medical collection notices on your credit report.

Just as you shouldn’t hesitate to ask your doctor or nurse whether they washed their hands, so you should feel free to ask what security precautions their business office takes to protect your personal and medical information. Here are a few preventive measures you can take:

• Never reveal personal or account information during unsolicited calls. If in doubt, hang up and call your doctor’s office or insurance company directly. The same goes for emails.
• Be suspicious if someone offers you free medical equipment or services and then requests your Medicare number.
• Never let people borrow your Medicare or insurance card to obtain services for themselves. Not only is this illegal, but it could be disastrous if your medical histories become intermingled (think about differing allergies, blood types, etc.)
• Regularly check your credit reports for unpaid bills for unfamiliar medical services or equipment. This could indicate someone has opened a new insurance policy using your identity and is running up charges. (You can order one free report per credit bureau each year at www.annualcreditreport.com.)
• Safely store paper and electronic copies of medical records and shred unneeded forms.
• Don’t post detailed medical information on social media sites.

If you suspect or know that your information has been compromised, ask for copies of your medical records from each doctor, clinic, hospital, pharmacy, lab or health plan where a thief may have used your information. Although you’re legally entitled to see these records, you may have to pay a fee. If a provider denies your request, file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights.

Ask your health plan and each medical provider for a copy of their Accounting of Disclosures, which lists everyone who got copies of your medical records. By law, you’re entitled to one free copy per provider, per year.

Next, write to your insurer and medical providers by certified mail to explain which information is inaccurate, along with copies of documents that support your position. Ask them to correct or delete each error and to inform everyone they may have sent records to (labs, other doctors, hospitals, etc.) Keep copies of all correspondence and logs of all phone calls or other related activities.

You can also:

• File a police report and keep a copy as proof of the crime.
• Contact the fraud units at the three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You may want to place a fraud alert or freeze on your accounts.
• Notify the Federal Trade Commission, whose Identity Theft site contains information on fraud alerts, credit freezes, how to work with police and much more.
• File a complaint with the government-sponsored Internet Crime Complaint Center, which forwards cybercrime complaints to appropriate law-enforcement and regulatory agencies.
• Contact the IRS’ Identity Protection Unit.
• Report Medicare- or Medicaid-related crimes to the Office of Inspector General’s Fraud Hotline.

Bottom line: Medical identity theft is serious business. Make sure you’re taking every precaution to protect your medical records.

This article is intended to provide general information and should not be considered legal, tax or financial advice. It’s always a good idea to consult a legal, tax or financial advisor for specific information on how certain laws apply to you and about your individual financial situation.

The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.

By STEPHEN L. BETTS

Willie Nelson’s Teapot Party movement, which now has more than 115,000 Facebook followers, was founded after his 2010 arrest for marijuana possession in Texas. His practical (and slyly humorous) advice to fellow pot advocates is to support like-minded candidates.

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“Get out and go vote,” he says in an interview with CelebStoner News. “If it’s the day to go vote, make sure you go vote before you burn one down. Don’t get high and forget to vote.”

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The country legend and tireless marijuana advocate admits even he was surprised when pot was legalized in Colorado and Washington state, noting, “I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime, but here it is. The future looks good.”

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The 81-year-old performer has even been contacted by the governor’s office in Colorado to appear in a public service announcement about marijuana, but has yet to decide whether he’ll do it or not. One thing he has decided on is his backing of Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis, due to her stance in support of medical marijuana. Nelson also has his eye on other changes in the laws regarding pot use and attributes many of those changes to financial concerns.

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“There’s a lot of money in selling marijuana,” he reasons. “If you can do it legally, that’s good. Why should all the criminals make the money? This is what people are thinking. If it’s happening, if it’s going to be legal, let’s tax it and regulate it, like we do with everything else, and make some money off this. I think that’s one reason why people are taking this a little more seriously.”

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The singer-songwriter, whose Band of Brothers album was released earlier this month, reveals he’s not a big fan of edible marijuana but does advocate vaporizers. He also notes that his daughter Paula, who was busted for pot possession (on 4/20) this year, has since has her case thrown out and taken off the record.