There are those who say that a button-down collar is the sign of a buttoned-down mind. The tie being similar to a noose around the neck doesn’t help that either. Even a cute bolo tie doesn’t change the image much. However, Dapper and Swag’s Collar Clips can give you an alternative that can seem both casual and dressy at the same time. The designs can range from antlers and cow skulls to anchors and owls.
Since Leonard Nimoy passed away yesterday, tributes have been pouring in from around the we b. But this one, posted without comment from NASA astronaut Terry Virts aboard the ISS, is probably the most touching. LLAP.
Warren Buffett is a fan of Airbnb.
The billionaire business magnate, who serves as chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, endorsed the room-sharing startup in a Saturday morning letter to shareholders.
The so-called Oracle of Omaha suggested the 7-year-old service, which allows users to rent lodging to each other for short periods of time, as an alternative to hotel rooms for attendees of his annual conference in Nebraska’s largest city.
Expecting record attendance, Buffett said he enlisted Airbnb to help obtain extra listings in Omaha around the time of the May conference.
“Airbnb’s services may be especially helpful to shareholders who expect to spend only a single night in Omaha and are aware that last year a few hotels required guests to pay for a minimum of three nights,” he wrote. “That gets expensive. Those people on a tight budget should check the Airbnb website.”
Airbnb did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
The company has faced challenges in recent months. In October, New York’s attorney general released a report claiming that three-quarters of Airbnb’s listings in New York City were illegal.
Still, Airbnb has ponied onward. The company is raising an enormous round of funding that would value it at $20 billion, according to a report published on Friday by TechCrunch.
For folks wanting to take a weekend jaunt to a warmer destination put Florida high on your list and make that Tampa where the food, activities and just good time await.
On a recent trip to Tampa my time consisted of some quality pampering as I enjoyed two very different types of spas and amazing meals each experience with its own unique impressions.
First things first, the perfect vehicle for a Tampa jaunt is definitely the 2015 BMW M4 and if you are scratching your head wondering where the M4 came from, never fear BMW aficionados; it’s really the M3 with a new name and slightly updated look minus a few doors and with a headier sense of style.
With a price tag of $83,325 all those places “in” Tampa where you can see and be seen will just look better when you are behind the wheel of this BMW, competition being the Lexus RC F, Audi RS 5 and the Porsche Boxster S.
Since the M4 is a new model there are no changes, just part of the new 4 Series coupe with a turbocharged engine and lots of body armor, aka aluminum. Since the whole naming thing can get quite confusing on the makes and models, let’s run down the idea behind the 3 and 4 naming approach that BMW is touting these days playing with the evens and odds.
If it’s a sedan it’s going to be an odd number and if it’s the sexier coupe or convertible it will sport an even number, pretty easy after all.
I drove the coupe and that came well-equipped with the Executive Package offering a heated steering wheel, comfort access keyless entry, rearview camera, retractable headlight washers, park distance control and satellite radio.
The 2015 BMW M3 and M4 are about 175 pounds lighter than earlier models, but the biggest change is under the hood where there is a S55 3.0-liter twin turbocharged inline six cylinder engine and it gives you 425 horsepower with 406 pound-feet of torque. There are two transmissions available the six-speed manual with a twin-plate clutch, stronger gears or the seven-speed dual-clutch automated manual. Also of importance is the fact that the M4 is about two inches wider than the 435i coupe. Overall, the cool option of Comfort, Sport or Sport+ modes means drivers gets to choose how to own the road with seamless effort.
Inside and out, the BMW is a snazzy option for good times with an easy to drive attitude that will appeal to men and women who prefer to drive the best and now, let’s hit the road and find out what snazzy stops we can find in the Tampa area.
Tampa’s Epicurean Hotel is good for not only a relaxing spa experience, but dining and it’s the perfect location. Epicurean is located in South Tampa’s SoHo district, which is these days the place to see and be seen in the city. Enjoy a few stops at the boutiques that line the streets and be hard pressed to determine what to decide for dinner. Very walkable and near Hyde Park where you can ride a bike or stroll down cobblestone streets remember the water is nearby too on Bayshore Boulevard.
Epicurean’s guest rooms are luxurious and chic, the restaurant offers fresh foods with a living wall that grows seasonal produce, however the spa is where I spent my time. Called Evangeline, the spa offers a variety of treatments from manicures and pedicures to massages and facials. Have the spa’s sommelier help you create your own custom spa products to use during your treatment. 
You can also stop in at the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club and the Indaba Spa, the sort of place that will remind you of old world Florida charm. Innisbrook, even without the spa, is an amazing story and it is recognized as a world class golf resort and the host of the PGA Tour’s Transitions Championship. The owner, Sheila Johnson acquired the property in 2007 taking it to the next level with a stylish transformation that creates a relaxing and enjoyable environment for any type of guest to enjoy.
The spa uses botanical products and offerings are diverse from facials, to body work to wraps and scrubs. The distinct water and gardens bring peace once you enter the spas domain and note the hints of tribal Africa, which I found stunning. After all, Indaba means gathering in Zulu and like the ancient African people who knew the importance of ritual and ceremony, so will you find that vibe here as well.
Remember too, Tampa is home to the “Original Cuban Sandwich,” with Columbia Restaurant (the oldest restaurant in Florida) and Gaspar’s Grotto located in Ybor City (where the sandwich was created) topping the list to find one of the best. While you are in Ybor City check out the men making hand-rolled cigars on Seventh Avenue (also named one of the 10 greatest streets in America in 2008). Even if you don’t smoke cigars you are still watching a work of art and Ybor City was once known as the cigar capital of the world with 700 million hand-rolled cigars made a year during the good old days of the chic cigar.
Other must stop in places include Ulele offering everything from Oysters from the Gulf Coast to Okra Fries, Crab Mac & Cheese and Florida Jumpers (that’s frog legs), the entrees include a variety of fish, of course, but also porterhouse, pork chops and duck. Rumor is the place is crowded every night and it’s located on the new Tampa River walk just north of downtown offering what owners call “a fusion of ingredients from Florida waters and land once home to many Native Americans.”
Ava is a newly opened restaurant in Tampa serving up Italian that is traditional, handmade, and rustic and I was happy to see a brick oven pizza. Told by a credible source that this place was “the place” these days to hang out, Ava was definitely crowded when I was there. However, that did not stop the owner from coming over to chat, but even more I loved the food and I ordered my “go to” choice when I see a brick oven, the Margherita pizza. It did not disappoint.
Check out the Le Meridien Tampa too, it’s a new hotel that has been honored by Historic Hotels of America. It was recently opened and was once the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Tampa, after sitting empty for a long time it has now found new life as a lovely hotel featuring Bizou Brassiere, French inspired and the architecture has been saved so you can enjoy the history of this old building. The old courthouse had also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was built in 1905 and the recent renovation cost about $26 million. 
NOTE: This author does not and will never take any money from any automotive brand or destination/restaurant/activity, etc. in exchange for coverage, the views are strictly the author’s opinion.
Disruption seems to be proxy for the new normal today in nearly every industry. This is an uncomfortable state of affairs to many of us who are creatures of habit–which is most people, as scientists tell us that we are basically hardwired this way. Psychologists have given it a name: enculturation. Most of us would rather stay in our comfort zones than search for what is new, exciting and, just possibly, better.
What happens, however, when disruption lands on our doorstep, either at home or work? Do we pretend for a while that this disruption will not affect us? If so, this strategy usually only lasts for a short time until we can no longer remain in denial. Then we either wait for the meteor to strike or find a way to innovate and create solutions.
Organizations and entire industries are not so different from us in their response to change. Since many hiring managers hire in their own images, it’s no wonder that companies and entire industries eventually find themselves facing a reality existing outside their comfort zones. “Thinking outside the box” workshops either have not been utilized or implemented over the past several decades.
Two options exist for companies and industries that are caught in this inertia trap: either maintain the status quo and hope that no Apple, Google or Facebook comes onto the scene to disrupt it, or fully commit to pursuing innovative, creative ideas that may even disrupt their tried-and-true business model.
It is tough to initiate the second approach, as we as a nation find it much easier to use the left-brain, linear and logical skills of strategic planning as it has been done for the past few decades, than to embrace the right-brain, intuitive “big picture” type of strategic thinking. (The higher up individuals are in the organizational chart, by the way, the more likely they are to opt to maintain the status quo.)
In some organizations today, it is even difficult to call for brainsorming sessions for new ideas and products, as past history from these brainstorming sessions indicates that often they did not produce the promised results. A reluctance to throw out specific ideas in fear of retaliation from senior managers present can hamper the brainstorming process, along with potentially good ideas having been lost in the process because the participants were all talking at the same time.
Once again, it’s not easy to discard the complacent, habitualized, conventional thinking process and invent a new approach to brainstorming that will yield better results. I personally know that it can be done, however. I have facilitated sessions with both large and small, Fortune 500 and even global companies, where teams have activated neural pathways in their brains in a new, exciting way.
Scared of leaving your comfort zone?
If so, here are ten actions you can take to dislodge your organization from its conventional thinking rut.
1. Identify and discuss the key problems your organization faces.
2. Frame these key problems into questions.
3. Send these questions to a disparate group of employees and customers to think about, and record their answers on paper.
4. Invite this group into an Ideation session (an improved version of brainstorming where key issues can be resolved).
5. Enlist the talents of a nonpartial, skilled problem solver to facilitate the process.
6. Make the process fun, collaborative and outside conventional boundaries.
7. Incorporate a strategic democratization by allowing participants to vote for the ideas they find most compelling.
8. Build task forces around these ideas.
9. Start small with pilot projects.
10. Review, ratify and implement the big, transformational insights.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to Newton South High School to see Herbie Ziskend give a speech to a group of 50+ year olds about the current state of news. His compelling speech broke the fact to the group that physical newspapers as they have existed for hundreds of years, are now almost entirely migrated to digital. He cited websites like HuffPost and Vice as important sources of news for younger generations – with Facebook and Twitter as primary distribution platforms for this news. In other words, he said that the Huffington Post and Twitter were part of establishment media.
After seeing his intriguing talk, I concluded that in fact, there is a group of websites that my generation would actually call our establishment media over websites such as The Huffington Post and Facebook/Twitter. One of the main sites that came to my mind was BuzzFeed, a site that aims to create and share viral content on the internet. BuzzFeed appeals to my generation as a source of both entertainment and news. As I’m writing this blog post, the front page depicts an article on the Ukraine conflict side-by-side with a post about 12 Valentine’s Day cards for people you hate. Countless people in my class use BuzzFeed as a way to pass some time and even read some well-crafted news pieces at the same time. A classmate of mine uses BuzzFeed as her daily source of media: “[BuzzFeed] rivals coffee in importance to me.” She believes that the articles have more personality behind their writing than an article from a more formal source. It’s inconvenient for her to go check Facebook or Twitter for the small tidbits of information that she needs to keep in touch with the world when BuzzFeed contains all of her entertainment and news in one app or website.
YouTube is another example of what I would consider my generation’s new establishment media. While YouTube actually started in the same year as The Huffington Post, in the past 3 or so years, it has evolved considerably. YouTube no longer solely harbors cat videos, but instead has transformed into a very respectable way for one to make a living by producing legitimate content. The Phillip DeFranco Show is a great example of a media company to sprout out of YouTube. Phillip DeFranco’s channel currently has about 3.5 million subscribers on the website and creates around 1 news video a day. The host, DeFranco, reports on the day’s stories with an energetic yet informative style. His channel acts as the main source of news for your’s truly and functions as the pause in my watching of gaming videos to transition to something somewhat intellectual. All in all, YouTube appeals to my generation in the same way as BuzzFeed, it is a place to get a quick and entertaining look at the news before moving on to the rest of the content on the website.
Reddit, though, is a different machine entirely. Reddit functions as a close-to-ad-free website that simply facilitates a huge, loyal community. The community creates “sub-reddits,” which function as categories for different types of media. Sub-reddits are as general as “News” and “Tech” and can be as obscure as “Shower Thoughts” and “Animals Being Bros“. A sub-reddit’s community will up-vote good content to the top of the page and will filter out bad content with down-votes. This model works incredibly well considering how anyone can post to a sub-reddit. After using it for about a week, the “news” sub-reddit does a great job of giving me the daily headlines and links to credible sources on the topic. Reddit constantly creates high quality media from a website with minimal ads and no hired content creators.
Overall, there is still a requirement for traditional journalism and original reporting because all three of these websites report the news but don’t do a lot of the original fact finding and investigation like traditional media sources do. Nevertheless, the variety and personality driving new media sources have pulled my generation away from the traditional article format. “For the loser now/ Will be later to win / For the times they, they are a-changin'” (Bob Dylan).
On the evening of Aug. 9, 2011, one month before the 40th anniversary of the bloody Attica prison riot, a guard in that remote facility in western New York was distributing mail to inmates in C Block, one of the vast tiers of cells nestled behind its towering 30-foot walls.
After weeks of news of hatred around the world against Jews and Muslims, Norwegians have shown humanity what it truly means to love your neighbor.
On Saturday, a hundreds gathered around the Central Jamaat-E Ahl-E Sunnat mosque in Oslo to participant in and support a human peace ring, an effort to show solidarity and respect for their Muslim brothers and sisters. The event was a symbolic “thank you” to Muslims, many of whom had formed formed a popular “peace circle” around an Oslo synagogue last weekend.
On the Facebook page for the event, organizers had said they wanted the ring to be read as support of peace, tolerance and respect for Muslims, who they called “a vulnerable minority in Norwegian society,” HuffPost’s Ryan Grenoble reported when the event was announced.
“We want to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Muslim fellow citizens to show disgust towards increasing Muslim hate and xenophobia in society. In this time of fear and polarization we feel it is more important than ever to stand together and show solidarity. We believe in and will highlight [the] human will to live together in peace and in [respect] for each other regardless of religion [and] ethnicity,” the call for participants read.
The original chain that Muslims formed around an Oslo synagogue took place on Saturday, February 21. It came days after a brutal attack on a free speech event and a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark.
“Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the organizers of the original ring around the synagogue, told to Reuters.
They also thought Kim’s booty broke the Internet. In the noisy, crowded social media world, anything that can captivate an audience’s attention is golden. Of course, by now, everyone knows what #TheDress is…someone today called me and simply said, “Ok, what color do you think it is?”
THAT’s a viral meme. No explanation, no asking ‘did you see it’ — just the assumption that everyone knows. That’s part of what’s so compelling… if you don’t know, you hurry up and find out, so you can be part of it.
Anything that’s in the category of ‘the eye of the beholder’ is intriguing. Beauty, truth, wisdom, color — all subjective to each individual. We’re experiencing an individual phenomenon, collectively, in real-time. No one’s right. Everyone’s right, even if they disagree. WOW, that’s unusual.
Because the cool thing about it is that #TheDress is about science. Wired had a great piece explaining what’s going on:
What’s happening here is your visual system is looking at this thing, and you’re trying to discount the chromatic bias of the daylight axis,” says Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies color and vision at Wellesley College. “So people either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black. (Conway sees blue and orange, somehow.)
Every brand out there would love to go viral on the order of #TheDress #KimsButt or #GrumpyCat . Some brands are even trying to cash in on the viral success by ‘hijacking’ the hashtag or the popularity.
It didn’t break the Internet this time, either. Oh, and yeah, #TheDress is white and gold.
Beverly Macy is a thought leader, educator, author and speaker on power of digital media. She teaches at UCLA Anderson School of Management and is the author of The Power of Real-TIme Social Media Marketing.
We all remember the Ice Bucket Challenge from last summer and its amazing success, raising money for research to cure ALS. What if that same spirit could be used to save children from starvation around the world?
Some University of Rhode Island (URI) students think it can. After they visited the non-profit organization Edesia, which produces life-saving food for infants, they came up with a plan.
The #MakeYourGreenCount Plumpy’Nut Team from the University of Rhode Island visiting Edesia: Sergio Suhett ’15, Kylie Rice ’15, David St. Amant ’16, Kimberly DeLande ’15 (Nora Lewis/University of Rhode Island)
They are launching the Plumpy’Nut Challenge leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. It’s called #MakeYourGreenCount and you are asked to donate $5 between now and St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th, and challenge ten friends to do the same for a total of $55. That amount equals the cost of a box of Plumpy’Nut, a peanut paste that saves from children from deadly malnutrition in the developing world.
It’s catching on already. The students have gotten support from the community including schools and businesses such as Tara’s Tipperary Tavern, the oldest Irish pub in Rhode Island. You are encouraged to join and make a video about the Challenge. The donations go to Edesia, which is based in Providence, Rhode Island.
Edesia produces Plumpy’Nut and similar foods, which are used by relief agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP). For example, Edesia recently produced Plumpy’Doz, which is being distributed by WFP inside war-torn Syria. Small children are desperate for food inside Syria. They are at tremendous risk of developing malnutrition.
Ten-year-old Omar from Derayya is still recovering from heart surgery that he got in the Damascus Children’s Hospital. The volunteers at the clinic say that Omar is progressing steadily and gaining weight with the help of Plumpy’doz. (WFP/Dina ElKassaby)
Malnutrition causes lasting physical and mental damage in children, or death. So it’s vital that children caught in war zones, natural disasters or extreme poverty receive foods like Plumpy’Nut. Time is crucial. Malnutrition can take hold very quickly.
URI staff Kate O’Malley and Professor Regina Bell of the Harrington School of Communications and Media, recruited students to develop the Challenge. Part of their inspiration came from Irish history.
Ireland has a tragic history of famine, one they do not want repeated anywhere. Children must be spared from the deadly ravage of malnutrition. Donations are always needed by Edesia to produce the life-saving food. Heidi Reed of Edesia explains,
“Donations always have impact on our work, no matter the time of year. They help us reduce our costs so that we can reach more children with each order. We are also raising funds to build our new factory in North Kingstown, which will help us reach 2 million malnourished children each year. “
This St. Patrick’s Day and month can be something unique in history. The celebration will still be green, but one that matters for millions of children.
For each donation can save a life. You can get involved with the #MakeYourGreenCount Plumpy’Nut Challenge by visiting their facebook or twitter pages. Or you can donate online.
You can read an interview with the URI students here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
