So I went with the CEO and Founder of lead fusion for breakfast, oatmeal and grits – but a look at the menu of this chef/owner restaurant makes this a must go back. Randy Gruber has quite an interesting selection – some highlights include a salad with a fresh oregano lemon vinaigrette, grilled Portuguese spiced shrimp on fennel radish salad and diced avocado with lemon, pan seared calamari steak with crispy capers, garlic, lemon, parsley and baby grape tomatoes , rigatoni with broccoli rabe, Andoulle sausage, garlic, pine nuts, chili flakes, white wine, cram roasted tomatoes. Mains include a pesto grilled halibut over lemon thyme risotto with grilled aspergus and tomato basil salsa, pan seared sea scallops with red lentils, sauteed spinach and orange carrot ginger sauce, a seared duck breast and Israeli couscous with golden raisins, dried cranberries, pine nuts, sauteed string beans and fig sauce. And last, sides including polenta with vanilla clove honey and caramelized onion mashed potatoes. Ummmmm. Got go got to go back.

Happy to share that we will be creating a Life Cube installation in Downtown Las Vegas in March/April 2014. The success of The Life Cube – Art at Burning Man over the last four years could not have happened without the 100s of supporters, contributors, volunteers, and an ever-growing community of Cube-ists. Creating a Life Cube Project in a major city is a big step and an exciting moment. The location will be part of the Downtown Project Las Vegas in the East Freemont District, and we hope to partner with as many local artists, volunteers, and members of the community as possible. As with each progression of The Life Cube, there’s a plan for a new level of interactivity and engagement, which we are going to incorporate.  Stay tuned… more news to come! #thelifecube #lasvegas #downtownlasvegas #downtownproject #dtp #lifecube #burningman #urbanart #art #blackrockcity #eastfreemont #eastfreemontdistrict #downtownprojectlasvegas #lifecube #lifecubeprojectlifecubethelifecubeprojectlifecubeprojectthelifecubelasvegasdowntownlasvegasdowntownprojectdtplifecubeburningmanurbanartartblackrockcityeastfreemonteastf #lifecube #lifecubeproject

This AM I rec’d a Google Web Alert for: "natasha cohen": The End of America? | BU Today – During a question-and-answer period after the speech, Natasha Cohen (CAS’12) asked Bacevich how internal change might be brought about. … Turns out it is my daughter Natasha Cohen (smile).

Dave has a tradition of swimming with his friends the number of laps that you are old.  Dave celebrates his 56th birthday this week and I was invited to join.  He is in amazing shape.   Triathalons, marathons, swims around Manhatten, and now training to swim the English Channel.  Anyway – I made it.  Photo is on the side.

I often refer to this so thought it best to post on my Live Spaces Life is a Journey Blog – Enjoy, scotte cohen WEAR SUNSCREEN – (NOT) A COMMENCEMENT SPEECH, (NOT) BY KURT VONNEGUTIf I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.Do one thing every day that scares you.Sing.Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.Floss.Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.Stretch.Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.Respect your elders.Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.But trust me on the sunscreen. * * * * * The original column by Mary Schmich of The Chicago Tribune. June 1, 1997. Click here to read Mary Schmich’s version of how her article was miscredited to Kurt Vonnegut via e-mail and became hugely popular. The song, on the CD Something for Everybody by Baz Luhrmann, is properly credited to Schmich. The lyrics to Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen, by Mary Schmich: * * * * * Dateline: 08/10/97 Don’t bother trying to look up Kurt Vonnegut’s email address on the Internet. He doesn’t have one. The reason is the 74-year-old author’s longstanding aversion to all things “cyber” – an aversion doubtless exacerbated by the events of last week. In case you’ve been living in a bomb shelter, here’s what happened: on or about Thursday, July 31, 1997, an email message began making the rounds featuring the text of a “commencement speech” purportedly given by Vonnegut at MIT. It was clever, poignant, full of the kind of arch-cynical humor Vonnegut is famous for. Unfortunately, Vonnegut never gave any such address. Nor did he write the words attributed to him. The actual address heard by MIT graduates this year – in which Vonnegut had no part whatsoever – was delivered by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan on June 5. According to an MIT spokesman, Annan’s speech was “a lot longer and maybe not as clever” as the text falsely attributed to Vonnegut. Annan’s words of wisdom have been publicly available on the Internet since the date of the commencement. But the phony Vonnegut speech had already funneled through thousands of modems before the hoax was discovered and the true source of the text identified – a newspaper column by Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune. In that column, published June 1, Schmich fantasized about giving a commencement address. “Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97,” the imaginary speech began. “Wear sunscreen.” It was funny and it was well-written. But it wasn’t Vonnegut. “I thought about it and said I didn’t think I gave any talk like that, but I wished I had.” The incident took everyone concerned by surprise. Recipients of the message who thought they’d recognized Vonnegut’s unique wit were embarrassed to find out they’d been duped. Supposedly even Vonnegut’s wife, Jill Krementz, fell victim to the hoax, gleefully forwarding the message to family and friends. In the aftermath of the hoax, Mary Schmich, who has taken to calling the Internet a “lawless swamp,” received hundreds of phone calls and email messages, some of them accusing her of plagiarism. She subsequently tried to track down the originator of the hoax, but could not. Vonnegut himself, bemused by the incident, says that cyberspace is “spooky,” populated by people who’ll believe anything they’re told. But there are deeper phenomena underlying what happened here than the lawlessness and gullibility of Internet users. What Marshall McLuhan said of television is no less true of the Internet: “the medium is the message.” New technologies are not simply changing the way information is transmitted; they are changing our perception of reality. Or befuddling it * * * * * Claim: In 1997, Kurt Vonnegut gave an unusual commencement address at MIT. Status: False. Legend: According to a text circulating all over the Internet, Kurt Vonnegut was the 1997 commencement speaker at MIT. His speech supposedly began as follows: Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Origins: Kurt Vonnegut was not the 1997 commencement speaker at MIT. That honor went to Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations. The speech attributed to Vonnegut was actually a 1 June 1997 column by Chicago Tribune writer Mary Schmich. As with many other good bits of writing and speech, the attachment of a famous name to the works brings them to the public’s attention in a way they could otherwise not have achieved. (Echoes within echoes: Georgia State University graduates may remember Ted Turner’s speech at their graduation in 1994. Turner, facing a skin cancer operation, told them: “The one piece of advice I can give you is put on sunscreen and wear a hat.”) In 1998, the text of the Mary Schmich piece was turned into a “spoken voice” recording featuring the voice of Australian actor Lee Perry. Titled “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen,” the piece immediately became a cult hit in Australia, and by early 1999 the “song” was taking America by storm. 2002 saw the “Vonnegut/MIT commencement speech” tale circulated anew, that time identified as the speech given to the graduating class of 2002. Last updated: 23 July 2002 * * * * * Vonnegut? Schmich? Who can tell in cyberspace? by Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune I am Kurt Vonnegut. Oh, Kurt Vonnegut may appear to be a brilliant, revered male novelist. I may appear to be a mediocre and virtually unknown female newspaper columnist. We may appear to have nothing in common but unruly hair. But out in the lawless swamp of cyberspace, Mr. Vonnegut and I are one. Out there, where any snake can masquerade as king, both of us are the author of a graduation speech that began with the immortal words, “Wear sunscreen.” I was alerted to my bond with Mr. Vonnegut Friday morning by several callers and e-mail correspondents who reported that the sunscreen speech was rocketing through the cyberswamp, from L.A. to New York to Scotland, in a vast e-mail chain letter. Friends had e-mailed it to friends, who e-mailed it to more friends, all of whom were told it was the commencement address given to the graduating class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The speaker was allegedly Kurt Vonnegut. Imagine Mr. Vonnegut’s surprise. He was not, and never has been, MIT’s commencement speaker. Imagine my surprise. I recall composing that little speech one Friday afternoon while high on coffee and M&M’s. It appeared in this space on June 1. It included such deep thoughts as “Sing,” “Floss,” and “Don’t mess too much with your hair.” It was not art. But out in the cyberswamp, truth is whatever you say it is, and my simple thoughts on floss and sunscreen were being passed around as Kurt Vonnegut’s eternal wisdom. Poor man. He didn’t deserve to have his reputation sullied in this way. So I called a Los Angles book reviewer, with whom I’d never spoken, hoping he could help me find Mr. Vonnegut. “You mean that thing about sunscreen?” he said when I explained the situation. “I got that. It was brilliant. He didn’t write that?” He didn’t know how to find Mr. Vonnegut. I tried MIT. “You wrote that?” said Lisa Damtoft in the news office. She said MIT had received many calls and e-mails on this year’s “sunscreen” commencement speech. But not everyone was sure: Who had been the speaker? The speaker on June 6 was Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, who did not, as Mr. Vonnegut and I did in our speech, urge his graduates to “dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.” He didn’t mention sunscreen. As I continued my quest for Mr. Vonnegut — his publisher had taken the afternoon off, his agent didn’t answer — reports of his “sunscreen” speech kept pouring in. A friend called from Michigan. He’d read my column several weeks ago. Friday morning he received it again — in an e-mail from his boss. This time it was not an ordinary column by an ordinary columnist. Now it was literature by Kurt Vonnegut. Fortunately, not everyone who read the speech believed it was Mr. Vonnegut’s. “The voice wasn’t quite his,” sniffed one doubting contributor to a Vonnegut chat group on the Internet. “It was slightly off — a little too jokey, a little too cute . . . a little too `Seinfeld.’ ” Hoping to find the source of this prank, I traced one e-mail backward from its last recipient, Hank De Zutter, a professor at Malcolm X College in Chicago. He received it from a relative in New York, who received it from a film producer in New York, who received it from a TV producer in Denver, who received it from his sister, who received it. . . . I realized the pursuit of culprit zero would be endless. I gave up. I did, however, finally track down Mr. Vonnegut. He picked up his own phone. He’d heard about the sunscreen speech from his lawyer, from friends, from a women’s magazine that wanted to reprint it until he denied he wrote it. “It was very witty, but it wasn’t my wittiness,” he generously said. Reams could be written on the lessons in this episode. Space confines me to two. One: I should put Kurt Vonnegut’s name on my column. It would be like sticking a Calvin Klein label on a pair of K-Mart jeans. Two: Cyberspace, in Mr. Vonnegut’s word, is “spooky.” by Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune #MarySchmich #LiveSpaces #ScottCohenBlog #KurtVonnegut #LifeJourney #bestcommencementspeech #MITcommencementspeech #WearSunscreen #commencementspeech

The clock is ticking to switch. Yes, me, one of the first 100,000 blackberry users will probably move to Apple someday in the future.

My good friend Steven C sent this to me and 2 others with a note about learning sales from us. He is one of the most terrific sale people I know…and let’s face it folks, I’ve said it before, I am just a sales guy. Anyway, good read and information. Harvard Business Review – HBR Blog Network Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople by Steve W. Martin June 27, 2011 If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally. Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I’ve also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers. The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories. The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers’ selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style. 1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over. Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece. 2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results. Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny. 3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals. Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they’re selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves. 4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person’s hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts. Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible. 5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers. Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson’s recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance. 6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness. Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete. 7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness. Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects. Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success. Steve W. Martin teaches sales strategy at the USC Marshall School of Business. His latest book on sales linguistics is Heavy Hitter Sales Psychology: How to Penetrate the C-level Executive Suite and Convince Company Leaders to Buy. #Harvard #HBR #sales #topsalespeople

HEALTH JOURNAL APRIL 5, 2011 The Sleepless Elite Why Some People Can Run on Little Sleep and Get So Much Done By MELINDA BECK Melinda Beck explains why for a small number of people getting a full night of sleep is a waste of time and the reasons behind it. For a small group of people—perhaps just 1% to 3% of the population—sleep is a waste of time. Natural “short sleepers,” as they’re officially known, are night owls and early birds simultaneously. They typically turn in well after midnight, then get up just a few hours later and barrel through the day without needing to take naps or load up on caffeine. They are also energetic, outgoing, optimistic and ambitious, according to the few researchers who have studied them. The pattern sometimes starts in childhood and often runs in families. While it’s unclear if all short sleepers are high achievers, they do have more time in the day to do things, and keep finding more interesting things to do than sleep, often doing several things at once. Nobody knows how many natural short sleepers are out there. “There aren’t nearly as many as there are people who think they’re short sleepers,” says Daniel J. Buysse, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a past president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional group. Out of every 100 people who believe they only need five or six hours of sleep a night, only about five people really do, Dr. Buysse says. The rest end up chronically sleep deprived, part of the one-third of U.S. adults who get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to a report last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, only a handful of small studies have looked at short sleepers—in part because they’re hard to find. They rarely go to sleep clinics and don’t think they have a disorder. A few studies have suggested that some short sleepers may have hypomania, a mild form of mania with racing thoughts and few inhibitions. “These people talk fast. They never stop. They’re always on the up side of life,” says Dr. Buysse. He was one of the authors of a 2001 study that had 12 confirmed short sleepers and 12 control subjects keep diaries and complete numerous questionnaires about their work, sleep and living habits.One survey dubbed “Attitude for Life” that was actually a test for hypomania. The natural short sleepers scored twice as high as the controls. There is currently no way people can teach themselves to be short sleepers. Still, scientists hope that by studying short sleepers, they can better understand how the body regulates sleep and why sleep needs vary so much in humans. View Full Image Matt Colins Normal Sleeper Most adults have normal sleep needs, functioning best with 7 to 9 hours of sleep, and about two-thirds of Americans regularly get it. Children fare better with 8 to 12 hours, and elderly people may need only 6 to 7. Wannabe Short Sleeper One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night, which puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems. Short Sleeper Short sleepers, about 1% to 3% of the population, function well on less than 6 hours of sleep without being tired during the day. They tend to be unusually energetic and outgoing. Geneticists who spotted a gene variation in short sleepers were able to replicate it in mice—which needed less sleep than usual, too. Related Sleep Videos What Is a Good Night’s Sleep Worth to You? Worth It?: Sleep Tracker Elite Using A Sleep Monitor To Track Healthy Sleep News Hub: Why Some Couples Sleep in Separate Beds “My long-term goal is to someday learn enough so we can manipulate the sleep pathways without damaging our health,” says human geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California-San Francisco. “Everybody can use more waking hours, even if you just watch movies.” Dr. Fu was part of a research team that discovered a gene variation, hDEC2, in a pair of short sleepers in 2009. They were studying extreme early birds when they noticed that two of their subjects, a mother and daughter, got up naturally about 4 a.m. but also went to bed past midnight. Genetic analyses spotted one gene variation common to them both. The scientists were able to replicate the gene variation in a strain of mice and found that the mice needed less sleep than usual, too. News of their finding spurred other people to write the team, saying they were natural short sleepers and volunteering to be studied. The researchers are recruiting more candidates and hope to find more gene variations they have in common. Potential candidates for the gene study are sent multiple questionnaires and undergo a long structured phone interview. Those who make the initial screening wear monitors to track their sleep patterns at home. Christopher Jones, a University of Utah neurologist and sleep scientist who oversees the recruiting, says there is one question that is more revealing than anything else: When people do have a chance to sleep longer, on weekends or vacation, do they still sleep only five or six hours a night? People who sleep more when they can are not true short sleepers, he says. That All-Nighter Feels Good—Temporarily Sleep deprivation makes most people grumpy. It’s sometimes used as a form of torture. Oddly enough, it can also bring on temporary euphoria, according to a study in the journal Neuroscience last month. Researchers had 14 healthy young adults stay up all night and all the next day and then compared their reactions with 13 subjects who had slept normally. In one test, sleepless subjects asked to rate a series of images uniformly saw them as more pleasant or positive. “We saw this strange lopsided shift,” says lead author Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of California-Berkeley. Brain scans also showed that the subjects who had pulled all-nighters had heightened activity in the mesolimbic pathway, a brain circuit driven by dopamine, a neurotransmitter that typically regulates feelings of pleasure, addiction and cravings. The boost of dopamine after an all-nighter may help explain why sleep deprivation can alleviate major depression in about 60% of patients, although the effect is only temporary. “As soon as they get recovery sleep, all that mood elevation is lost,” says Dr. Walker. Could the sleep-deprived brain be somehow compensating for the lack of downtime with a surge of dopamine to keep on going? Scientists don’t yet know. Earlier studies have also shown that sleep deprivation amplifies activity in the amygdala, the primitive emotional center of the brain, and reduces it the prefrontal cortex, where higher, more rational thought occurs. It may be that the brain reverts to a more basic mode of operating when it is sleep deprived, Dr. Walker speculates. Alternatively, he says, “we know that different parts of the brain are more sensitive than others to sleep deprivation. It may be that the prefrontal cortex just goes down first.” Although the feelings of euphoria sound great, Dr. Walker warns that operating more on emotion than reason can be very risky. “You are all gas pedal and no brake,” he says. That can be dangerous, indeed, if you are in a job that requires both long hours and difficult decision making To date, Dr. Jones says he has identified only about 20 true short sleepers, and he says they share some fascinating characteristics. Not only are their circadian rhythms different from most people, so are their moods (very upbeat) and their metabolism (they’re thinner than average, even though sleep deprivation usually raises the risk of obesity). They also seem to have a high tolerance for physical pain and psychological setbacks. “They encounter obstacles, they just pick themselves up and try again,” Dr. Jones says. Some short sleepers say their sleep patterns go back to childhood and some see the same patterns starting in their own kids, such as giving up naps by age 2. As adults, they gravitate to different fields, but whatever they do, they do full bore, Dr. Jones says. “Typically, at the end of a long, structured phone interview, they will admit that they’ve been texting and surfing the Internet and doing the crossword puzzle at the same time, all on less than six hours of sleep,” says Dr. Jones. “There is some sort of psychological and physiological energy to them that we don’t understand.” Drs. Jones and Fu stress that there is no genetic test for short sleeping. Ultimately, they expect to find that many different genes play a role, which may in turn reveal more about the complex systems that regulate sleep in humans. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Leonardo da Vinci were too busy to sleep much, according to historical accounts. Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison came close but they were also fond of taking naps, which may disqualify them as true short sleepers. Nowadays, some short sleepers gravitate to fields like blogging, videogame design and social media, where their sleep habits come in handy. “If I could find a way to do it, I’d never sleep,” says Dave Hatter, a software developer in Fort Wright, Ky. He typically sleeps just four to five hours a night, up from two to three hours a few years ago. “It’s crazy, but it works for me,” says Eleanor Hoffman, an overnight administrator at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York who would rather spend afternoons playing mahjong with friends than sleep anymore than four hours. Sometimes she calls her cousin, Linda Cohen, in Pittsburgh about 4 a.m., since she knows she’ll be wide awake as well—just like they were as kids. “I come to life about 11 at night,” says Mrs. Cohen, who owns a chain of toy stores with her husband and gets up early in the morning with ease. “If I went to bed earlier, I’d feel like half my life was missing.” Are you a short sleeper? For more information on the genetic study, contact Dr. Jones at chris.jones@hsc.utah.edu Write to Melinda Beck at HealthJournal@wsj.com #sleep #sleepless #TheSleeplessElite

I brought a camera and took a few pics, but most of the time, I just handed my camera to a friend or someone who was around and let them take photos.  There are a ton of other pictures and some movie footage coming from others as well, but even so, I thought it was time to sort through what was on my camera and post some pictures now.  What a fun time! This slideshow requires JavaScript.skeeter #art #TheLifeCube #burningmanburningman #thelifecubeartprojectatburningman #artatburningman #bm2012 #skeeter #BM2012 #blackrockcity #TLCV2 #lifecube #artburningman #TheLifeCube #TheLifeCubeV2 #BurningMan

Saw this in the NYT – brought back memories of cooking goat.  Remember Michelle, me, and Natasha going to the Jamaican market to buy goat.  I think we even found a live one at the market in Rochester, but Mich was not looking for that fresh. How I Learned to Love Goat Meat – NYT by henry alford Jennifer May for The New York Times NOT LAMB, NOT BEEF… Goat meat is a staple in many cuisines around the world but only recently has become a novelty at restaurants in Manhattan and elsewhere. Top of Form By HENRY ALFORD Published: March 31, 2009 YOU never know where goat will take you. When I asked the smiley butcher at Jefferson Market, the grocery store near my apartment in the West Village, whether he had any goat meat, he told me: “No. I got a leg of lamb, though — I could trim it nice and thin to make it look like goat.” I politely declined. We fell into conversation. Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times NEW TASTE IN TOWN Barbecued goat at Cabrito. I found myself telling him: “Koreans think eating goat soup increases virility. It can lead to better sexytime.” My new friend responded: “My lamb does that a little. You won’t want to every night, but maybe every other night.” Reaching toward his counter to pick up a mound of hamburger, he paused to ask, “It’s for you, the goat?” Mine is the tale of the recent convert. Admittedly, I’m late to the party: goat is the most widely consumed meat in the world, a staple of, among others, Mexican, Indian, Greek and southern Italian cuisines. Moreover, it’s been edging its way into yuppier climes for a year or so now, click-clacking its cloven hooves up and down the coasts and to places like Houston and Des Moines. (When New York magazine proclaimed eating goat a “trendlet” last summer, one reader wrote on the magazine’s Web site, “Here are white people again!!!! Acting like they invented goat meat.”) A famed beef and pork rancher, Bill Niman, returned from retirement to raise goats in Bolinas, Calif.; New York City has a chef (Scott Conant) who’s made kid his signature dish. Novelty and great flavor aren’t the only draws here — the meat is lower in fat than chicken but higher in protein than beef. There’s even an adorable neologism (“chevon”) for those who want their meat to sound like a miniature Chevrolet or a member of a 1960’s girl group. I’d partaken of the bearded ruminant before, most memorably in a Jamaican curry in Brooklyn. I’d liked the flavor of the meat, equidistant as it was from lamb and beef. But when my teeth wrangled a particularly tough piece of meat that was shield-shaped and curved and slightly rubbery, I had the distinct impression that I had bitten into the cup of a tiny bra. Indeed, goats have long held a lowly reputation. Scavengers, they are falsely accused of eating tin cans. Their unappetizing visage is simultaneously dopey and satanic, like a Disney character with a terrible secret. Their chin hair is sometimes prodigious enough to carpet Montana. Chaucer said they “stinken.” My conversion moment came this February when I went to the West Village restaurant Cabrito and had the goat tacos. This hip taquería-style restaurant — which is named after the baby goat that is pit-barbecued in Texas and Mexico — marinates its meat for 24 hours before wet-roasting it over pineapple, chilies, onion and garlic. The resultant delicious pulled meat is tender throughout and slightly crisp and caramelized around the edges. Think lamb, but with a tang of earthy darkness. Think lamb, but with a rustle in the bushes. Think … jungle lamb. Suddenly I was go go goat. I wanted to order goat in as many restaurants as possible. Shortly into this process, a friend asked me, “Is it gay meat?” Confused, I said, “There’s nothing gay about it at all.” She explained, “No, I said is it gamey?” Oh, that. Only very slightly, and depending on how it’s prepared. Two of my favorite goat dishes in New York are the least gamey. At Scarpetta, Mr. Conant’s signature dish, capretto, consists of slices of moist-roasted kid floating on top of a column of peas and cubed fingerlings. Convivio serves baked cavatelli in a tomato-braised goat ragù. In both dishes, the meat is as tender as a Jennifer Aniston movie. Once I’d tasted a wide variety of goat — from a spicy curry at Dera in Jackson Heights, to a goat paratha at the Indian takeout place Lassi, two blocks from my apartment — it was time to make some of my own. Three butchers in my neighborhood told me that, with three days’ or a week’s notice, they could get me frozen goat meat. “You have elk and wild boar, but not goat?” I harangued a butcher at Citarella, invoking Norma Rae; he countered, “That’s how life is,” suddenly Montaigne. I had better luck at the Union Square greenmarket, where two farms, Patches of Stars and Lynnhaven, sell frozen meat for about $13 to $18 a pound on Saturdays (and Lynnhaven on Wednesdays, too), as well as at Esposito Meats at 900 Ninth Avenue, which has it daily ($4.98 a pound). I found fresh goat meat available daily at $4.50 a pound at Atlantic Halal on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. Two things quickly became clear once I started cooking. First, because it’s so lean, goat is particularly good when braised or cooked with moist heat so it won’t dry out. While my mantis, or mini Turkish ravioli, filled with goat and parsley and onion, were pretty good and my goat and pork polpettine, or tiny meatballs, slightly better, the two winners so far have been goat ragù and chèvre à cinq heures. Skip to next paragraph Jennifer May for The New York Times A Boer goat at Triple H Ranch in Hudson, N.Y. Related Recipe: Five-Hour Goat (April 1, 2009) Recipe: Goat and Pork Meatballs (April 1, 2009) Recipe: Goat Ragù (April 1, 2009) Evan Sung for The New York Times Cavatelli with goat ragù at Convivio. Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Capretto at Scarpetta. The former, an adaptation of the chef Andrew Carmellini’s lamb ragù, adds cumin and lots of fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary and mint) to a tomato ragù, yielding a dish that evokes the saturated greenness of a meadow in springtime. In the latter, an Anthony Bourdain recipe, you cook a garlic-clove-studded leg of lamb — or, in this case, goat — in a Dutch oven so it can have all the benefit of sitting for five hours in a pool of white wine and 20 more cloves of garlic. My second realization was that goat, like lamb, has a lot of the fatty membrane known as caul. Though a sharp knife is your friend here, I have, on two occasions, resorted to using scissors, and, while doing so, been reminded of how the chef Fergus Henderson uses a Bic razor to depilate pig. This is the only part of cooking goat that I don’t love — however, I will confess that I think the single most terrifying passage in all of literature is from a lamb recipe in Madame Guinaudeau’s 1958 book “Traditional Moroccan Cooking”: “Make a hole with the point of the knife just above the knee joint of one of the legs between flesh and skin. Blow through the opening until the air gets to the fore legs and them stick up.” It is the hallmark of the true enthusiast that he is wont to proselytize. Indeed, I recently threw a dinner party at which I served goat at every course — the polpettine among the appetizers, the ragù as our entrée, and a cheesecake interlarded with nearly a pound of Coach Farm’s chèvre for dessert. At evening’s end, as my wine-fueled guests prepared to scramble down the stairs of my four-flight walk-up, it was all I could do not to tie tiny bells around their necks. More recently, in an effort at romantic overture, I mail-ordered some of Mr. Niman’s wonderfully flavorsome loin chops ($45 for 3 pounds from www.preferredmeats.com); marinated them in red wine, garlic and rosemary before broiling them; and ate them with my boyfriend amid candlelight and fresh flowers. Did the goat yield the desired end? Let a veil of decorous restraint fall over the proceedings forthwith, the better to mask a small storm of bleats and four cloven hooves, gently twitching.

My friend Steven Comfort introduced me to this hidden gem at their old location of Houston Street.  It is funky, and I look forward to visiting their new location. RESTAURANT REVIEW | SHOPSIN’S GENERAL STORE More on Shopsin’s General Store All the Vulgar Charm, in a Smaller Box Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times ITS OWN WORLD The new Shopsin’s at the Essex Street Market. By PETER MEEHAN – Published: August 8, 2007 TOLSTOY had it wrong about happy families, because there are none like the Shopsins.   The tiniest perceived injustices can trigger Kenny Shopsin, patriarch of the clan, to spew invective at his kids, who will cheerily engage him in bluer-than-blue verbal sparring matches while they wait tables, cook, clean and pop over to nab some cheese curds from Saxelby Cheesemongers in the next stall so the old man can put the finishing touch on an order of poutine ($11). If your ears aren’t too delicate to weather the shower of obscenities the Shopsins rain down on the world around them, it can be downright heartwarming to spend a few minutes over a hot plate of Blisters on My Sisters ($8; it is like, but is not, huevos rancheros) and watch them — Mr. Shopsin, one of his sons, and sometimes both of his twin daughters — in action at the reincarnation of Shopsin’s General Store in the Essex Street Market. This Shopsin’s is the new outpost of Mr. Shopsin’s fabled West Village restaurant, fabled most famously by Calvin Trillin. In The New Yorker, Mr. Trillin chronicled the old restaurant’s countless quirks: the sign saying “All Our Cooks Wear Condoms”; the rules, like the one that no two people at the same table could order the same thing; the sprawling menu. The menu is one of the first things old-time Shopsin’s customers comment on when they arrive at the new location. Like the new space — a tiny, bright and uncluttered stall in the Essex Street Market that looks like an interior designer’s refutation of the untamed wilds of the restaurant’s previous home, filled as it was with decades worth of Shopsin family clutter — it is not as expansive as the old one. Even so, with a few hundred dishes that run the gamut from Tex-Mex (guacamole is big) to vaguely Chinese (like the vegan bok choy bop soup) and points beyond (Cincinnati-style “5-way” chili, as well as other dishes done up in a Cincinnati 5-way style), it is still a disorienting documentation of Mr. Shopsin’s singular brand of kitchen madness. That madness might manifest itself in, for example, the Shirley ($11), one of 29 wildly different dishes billed as “breakfast name plates.” It is a B.L.T. sandwich chopped into bite-size pieces, tossed helter-skelter in a bowl and topped with a few poached eggs. It is an indulgently madcap way to greet the day. Plenty of other gems are hidden throughout the menu: Shopsin’s slyders — three White Castle-style burgers to a $9 order, each loaded with conscientiously charred sweet onions — may be the city’s best tiny hamburgers; the postmodern pancakes ($12; pancakes dotted through with chopped pancakes), made famous in the Kenny Shopsin biopic “I Like Killing Flies,” are a good idea; and banana-chocolate chip-walnut pancakes ($10) are good eating. Plenty of dishes are only so-so, like the Bridgette ($12), a dry chicken salad on a drier baguette that even slices of ripe avocado couldn’t moisturize back into the realm of desirability, or some of the sloppily conceived and sloppy executed breakfast sautés. But — a little weird to say in a restaurant review — that inconsistency is kind of beside the point. Some things about the place are easy to appreciate, like a huge, honestly fresh-squeezed glass of orange juice ($4). Other things, like the occasional dry sandwich, or the fact that ordering from such an enormous menu always feels like a shot in the dark, aren’t. And some aspects of the place, like Mr. Shopsin’s brand of extemporaneous philosophizing, will sit better with some than others. Holding court from a chair in the hall outside his stall on a recent Thursday morning and addressing his comments to no one in particular, he asked, “Did you hear that Whole Foods sold out of those ‘I Am Not a Plastic Bag’ bags in 15 minutes?”   “I guess people really aren’t that smart,” he glumly summarized before rousing himself to return to the kitchen.  I, for one, was glad he was back.