Washington is a city of experts, and not just the political experts who work in the alphabet soup of government industries and brag about their security clearances. We’re talking about arts experts: the Gumby-bodied dancers and captivating actors who grace the city’s stages, the artists who can render an ugly world beautiful and the comedians who keep us from taking that world too seriously. Wouldn’t it be the greatest thing ever if we could hit up these experts for some insight? We thought so, too.

Introducing “Show and Tell,” a series in which we ask arts professionals for advice that applies to our everyday lives. First up: how to be a good public speaker, with David Selby, who plays Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theatre’s “Necessary Sacrifices,” opening Friday. Selby, 70, has appeared in numerous Broadway, off-Broadway and regional productions and has portrayed Lincoln multiple times, most recently in “The Heavens Are Hung in Black” at Ford’s in 2009.

Shorter is sweeter: “You can look at what a lot of people consider one of the greatest speeches, the Gettysburg Address. . . . Edward Everett [who spoke before Lincoln that day] gave a speech that was two hours long. Lincoln’s lasted three minutes.”

Play nice: “Even in that bitter war, the Civil War, Lincoln had this thing about letting the rebels up easy. . . . We had to be respectful. . . . I think maybe Lincoln felt he could do more with an ounce of encouragement than by knocking people over the head. He had such a strong moral code. . . . Lincoln saw [the Gettysburg Address] as a way to rise above politics.”

No sweat: “Lincoln had a sense of calmness, [even] under the most trying situations — and I can’t think of a more trying time than the Civil War.”

Study the classics: “I think for anyone in public speaking, it’s always great to go back and look at Lincoln’s second inaugural. If you’re in Washington, you can go to the [Lincoln] Memorial and see it.”

Background, check: “Know what you’re going to say and know why you’re saying it. . . . Lincoln didn’t like to speak off the cuff, extemporaneously. He liked to be prepared. We all do. We might like to say that we’re good at improvising, but when you’re talking about important things, it’s better to prepare.”

Don’t try to fake it: “What helped Lincoln so much was his compassion for his fellow man, for his soldiers. So anytime you’re getting up, you want to have a strong belief in what you’re saying. And if you don’t, it’s undoubtedly a mistake to venture into the area.”

Giggles are good: “Don’t be afraid to inject some humor. But only humor injected with a point. . . . [Lincoln] would tell one story after another and make jokes about his appearance.”

Necessary Sacrifices runs Friday through Feb. 12, Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St. NW. Visit www.fords.org or call 202-347-4833.

A fellow starts out his day early, having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 a.m., after crawling out from under an electric blanket (MADE IN HONG KONG).

While his coffee pot (MADE IN JAPAN) is perking, he puts his hair dryer (MADE IN TAIWAN) to work and shaves his face with his electric razor (MADE IN TAIWAN).

He puts on a dress shirt (MADE IN TAIWAN) and designer jeans (MADE IN HONG KONG) with a neat pair of tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).

After cooking up some breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN JAPAN), in his apartment which he rents from foreign investors, he sits down to figure out how he can spend this day on his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO).

After setting his watch (MADE IN HONG KONG) to the radio (MADE IN JAPAN), he goes looking for a good-paying American job in his automobile (MADE IN JAPAN). His wife leaves at the same exact time in her American made automobile which has sixty-percent of its parts (MADE IN CHINA, JAPAN, MEXICO, TAIWAN, ETC.).

At the end of a completely disgusting day this man decides to relax a while. He puts on a pair of shorts (MADE IN KOREA) and sandals (MADE IN HONG KONG), pours himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turns on his entertainment center (MADE IN JAPAN), all this time trying to figure out why he can’t find a decent, good-paying American job.

THINK AMERICAN – - PROMOTE AMERICAN – - INSIST ON AMERICAN

Most of this can be bought at WALMART. 

Check out the ABC News special report “Made in America.” http://youtu.be/38MfZ17nT50  After removing everything in the house they found “NOT” made in America, the house was actually empty. The part of this I found funny, was ABC News then went to find and replace the item’s/ furnishing’s in their home with American made product’s, and the furnishing’s not were just as durable … but even looked way better in my opinion than the foreign furnishing’s, and the real kicker is that the price’s were in most case’s less than the foreign made product’s … um, um, um … imagine that! The video will highlight part’s of the week long ABC series.

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Author John Robbins, The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less

Posted: February 22, 2011 11:11 AM

The food police may find this hard to take, but chocolate has gotten a bad rap. People say it causes acne, that you should eat carob instead, that it’s junk food. But these accusations are not only undeserved and inaccurate, they falsely incriminate a delicious food that turns out to have profoundly important healing powers.

There is in fact a growing body of credible scientific evidence that chocolate contains a host of heart-healthy and mood-enhancing phytochemicals, with benefits to both body and mind.

For one, chocolate is a plentiful source of antioxidants. These are substances that reduce the ongoing cellular and arterial damage caused by oxidative reactions.

You may have heard of a type of antioxidants called polyphenols. These are protective chemicals found in plant foods such as red wine and green tea. Chocolate, it turns out, is particularly rich in polyphenols. According to researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, the same antioxidant properties found in red wine that protect against heart disease are also found in comparable quantities in chocolate.

How does chocolate help to prevent heart disease? The oxidation of LDL cholesterol is considered a major factor in the promotion of coronary disease. When this waxy substance oxidizes, it tends to stick to artery walls, increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. But chocolate to the rescue! The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

And there’s more. One of the causes of atherosclerosis is blood platelets clumping together, a process called aggregation. The polyphenols in chocolate inhibit this clumping, reducing the risks of atherosclerosis.

High blood pressure is a well known risk factor for heart disease. It is also one of the most common causes of kidney failure, and a significant contributor to many kinds of dementia and cognitive impairment. Studies have shown that consuming a small bar of dark chocolate daily can reduce blood pressure in people with mild hypertension.

Why are people with risk factors for heart disease sometimes told to take a baby aspirin every day? The reason is that aspirin thins the blood and reduces the likelihood of clots forming (clots play a key role in many heart attacks and strokes). Research performed at the department of nutrition at the University of California, Davis, found that chocolate thins the blood and performs the same anti-clotting activity as aspirin. “Our work supports the concept that the chronic consumption of cocoa may be associated with improved cardiovascular health,” said UC Davis researcher Carl Keen.

How much chocolate would you have to eat to obtain these benefits? Less than you might think. According to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, adding only half an ounce of dark chocolate to an average American diet is enough to increase total antioxidant capacity 4 percent, and lessen oxidation of LDL cholesterol.

Why, then, has chocolate gotten such a bum reputation? It’s the ingredients we add to it. Nearly all of the calories in a typical chocolate bar are sugar and fat.

As far as fats go, it’s the added fats that are the difficulty, not the natural fat (called cocoa butter) found in chocolate. Cocoa butter is high in saturated fat, so many people assume that it’s not good for your cardiovascular system. But most of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which numerous studies have shown does not raise blood cholesterol levels. In the human body, it acts much like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil.

Milk chocolate, on the other hand, contains added butterfat which can raise blood cholesterol levels. And it has less antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than dark chocolate.

Does chocolate contribute to acne? Milk chocolate has been shown to do so, but I’ve never heard of any evidence incriminating dark chocolate.

Dark chocolate is also healthier because it has less added sugar. I’m sure you don’t need another lecture on the dangers of excess sugar consumption. But if you want to become obese and dramatically raise your odds of developing diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, foods high in sugar (including high fructose corn syrup) are just the ticket.

Are chocolate’s benefits limited to the health of the body? Hardly. Chocolate has long been renown for its remarkable effects on human mood. We are now beginning to understand why.

Chocolate is the richest known source of a little-known substance called theobromine, a close chemical relative of caffeine. Theobromine, like caffeine, and also like the asthma drug theophylline, belong to the chemical group known as xanthine alkaloids. Chocolate products contain small amounts of caffeine, but not nearly enough to explain the attractions, fascinations, addictions, and effects of chocolate. The mood enhancement produced by chocolate may be primarily due to theobromine.

Chocolate also contains other substances with mood elevating effects. One is phenethylamine, which triggers the release of pleasurable endorphins and potentates the action of dopamine, a neurochemical associated with sexual arousal and pleasure. Phenethylamine is released in the brain when people become infatuated or fall in love.

Another substance found in chocolate is anandamide (from the Sanskrit word “ananda,” which means peaceful bliss). A fatty substance that is naturally produced in the brain, anandamide has been isolated from chocolate by pharmacologists at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. It binds to the same receptor sites in the brain as cannabinoids — the psychoactive constituents in marijuana — and produces feelings of elation and exhilaration. (If this becomes more widely known, will they make chocolate illegal?)

If that weren’t enough, chocolate also boosts brain levels of serotonin. Women typically have lower serotonin levels during PMS and menstruation, which may be one reason women typically experience stronger cravings for chocolate at these times in their cycles. People suffering from depression so characteristically have lower serotonin levels that an entire class of anti-depressive medications called serotonin uptake inhibitors (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zooloft) have been developed that raise brain levels of serotonin.

Since I am known as an advocate of healthy eating, I’m often asked about my food indulgences. One of my favorite desserts is a piece of dark organic chocolate, along with a glass of a fine red wine.

I do have a policy, though, to eat only organic and/or fair trade chocolate. This is because of what I have learned about child slavery in the cocoa trade.

May your life be full of healthy pleasures.

John Robbins is the author of many bestsellers including “The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World,” the classic “Diet For A New America,” and “The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less.” He is the recipient of the Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award, and Green America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. To learn more about his work, visit www.johnrobbins.info

1. “A tool that could measure out an event space. No more bulky measuring wheels or tape measures.”

—Shannon Waters Vogt, sales and design manager, Showorks Inc., Oldsmar, Florida

2. “Apps that were able to tell me when: 1) Security stepped away form their assigned post, 2) a buffet needed replenishing, and 3) the music exceed a prescribed noise ordinance level so I could intervene before neighbors called the police.”
—Jason Wanderer, president, Precision Event Group, Los Angeles

3. “An app to show what flowers are in season depending on where you are, with floral contacts, markets, and photos to browse.”
—Shai Tertner, president, Shiraz Events, New York and Miami

4. “I would love an app that gave the loading dock addresses and hours for all of the venues in the city that we produce in. Proper load-in protocol would be great too.”
—Jes Gordon, owner, Jes Gordon/Proper Fun, New York and Los Angeles

5. “A Pantone app—think Shazam for colors: You scan/take a pic of anything (a snippet of wallpaper, a favorite cocktail dress), and the app will tell you which PMS colors it is comprised of. It would be fabulous for coordinating the linen wardrobe, lighting scheme, floral decor—just about anything for an event, using whatever you want as inspiration on the spot!”
—Marina Alexandra Birch, owner, Birch Design Studio, Chicago

6. “An app that can read the minds of brand managers during the RFP process, reveal marketing budgets for desired brands, provide a SWOT analysis for desired brands, critique pitch decks before it goes to a client, uncover key insights when you enter a business specific challenge for brands, and provide demographic and psychological trends when you a describe a particular target.”
—Tony Cornelious, account director, Jack Morton Worldwide, New York

7. “Voice recognition to DMX control protocol, so I can walk around the room and tell the lights what to do at any given moment.”
—Bentley Meeker, owner, Bentley Meeker Lighting & Staging Inc., New York

8. “We work in most major cities around the world, and are always scrambling at the last minute to find local entities to take recycled goods, food for the needy, re-sellers, etc. I would like a mobile app that would give me local resources in cities that will  pick up items after an event to recycle, re-purpose, re-sell, or donate to local charity. The app could search by city, product category, etc.”
—Mark Yumkas, president, Angel City Designs, Los Angeles

9. “My dream app would be a ‘Sponsor/Donor Application.’ The user would type in their geographic location and organization name, and key words associated with the specific organization. (For example, I would type in key words like hunger, food distribution, nutrition, food drives, obesity etc.) Then this application would pull all the companies locally and nationally that support or donate to food-related issues. It would also display updated contact information for the company and person who specifically handles sponsorships or donations for each organization. It would target groups that believe in your cause and help eliminate unnecessary solicitation to companies that may not support hunger related issues.”
—Jana Robinson, special events manager, Capital Area Food Bank, Washington

10. “A pop-up store locator, a Magic 8 ball for budget-specific questions, and something that turns your clients’ Blackberrys to airplane mode while [you’re] pitching.”
—Sarah Shulman, head of production, Jack Morton Worldwide, New York

What apps do you wish you had to make your meeting planning, production or execution easier?  Leave comments.

Observers point to lessons at CityCenter Las Vegas

It’s the largest private development ever built in the United States, and a year after its opening, CityCenter still holds an outsized sway over the Las Vegas hospitality market.

It has been an adventure: From opening a passel of boutiques and earning more than 20 industry awards to scrapping an unfinished tower and writing down the property’s value, CityCenter, which turns 1 on Thursday, has provided its share of ups and downs for local gaming observers to follow. Both its successes and its stumbles offer important lessons and indicators as the city prepares to welcome yet another megaresort in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, which is scheduled to open Wednesday.

At least a few of CityCenter’s highs and lows have come from the nation’s economic travails, which cut deeply into local spending among tourists and residents alike. Those struggles make it tough to evaluate CityCenter’s success.

“You’re judging the property’s performance during the worst economic downturn in Southern Nevada’s history, and in the nation’s modern history,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal in local research and consulting firm Applied Analysis. “That seems to me to be an unfair landscape for a long-term judgment.”

Still, tracking CityCenter’s roller-coaster story offers clues to the market’s direction as The Cosmopolitan prepares to open next door.

Start with what’s gone right at CityCenter.

Jim Murren, chairman and chief executive officer of CityCenter developer MGM Resorts International, said the megaresort has performed admirably in some of its most important measures. Especially crucial, Murren said: CityCenter has generated new customers for the resort operator, rather than siphoning off big numbers of patrons from the company’s nine other Strip properties.

“I would say CityCenter has been a very solid performer for us lately, and it certainly has been impressive, I think, given the environment that it has been in and the fact that it has been brand new,” Murren said Monday. “For it to build its market share and for it to be profitable and not to have cannibalized the existing resorts we owned, I would say it’s been very positive.”

What is more, none of CityCenter’s stores, either inside the 4,004-room flagship Aria or at the Crystals shopping center, has closed.

Crystals has added nearly 30 shops since it opened with 20 boutiques on Dec. 3, 2009. Among the additions: jewelers Cartier and Tourbillon; clothing and accessories stores Hermes, Lanvin, Prada and Gucci; and restaurants Mastro’s Ocean Club, Social House and Puck Pizzeria/Cucina.

CityCenter has collected an armload of awards and honors, including kudos from the James Beard Foundation, magazines Conde Nast Traveler, Esquire and Food & Wine and travel website Orbitz. CityCenter won plaudits for everything from its cuisine to its interior design to its room technology. Travel club AAA gave both Aria and Mandarin Oriental its highest Five-Diamond praise — an exceedingly rare honor in a resort’s first year — and Aria nabbed top honors from the Green Key Eco-Rating Program, designed to highlight hotels committed to improving environmental performance.

And though Murren acknowledged that Aria’s occupancy started out lower than MGM would have liked, bookings inside the hotel have risen steadily, from 63 percent in the first quarter to 82 percent in the third quarter. The hotel-casino is selling out on some weekends, and its occupancy levels equal those of any local resort, Murren said.

“We’ve achieved that without sacrificing our rates,” he said. “Had we simply wanted to fill the building, we could have heavily discounted and filled up to 100 percent right away. But that wasn’t our business strategy, and we’re glad we didn’t do that.”

Perhaps most importantly, after two quarters of losses totaling $383 million, CityCenter posted a profit in the third quarter, bringing in net revenue of $413 million and cash flow of $52.4 million.

Murren said the positive trends probably will continue in 2011, as Aria’s convention bookings for the year look “extraordinarily strong.”

On the flip-side, CityCenter has experienced its share of stumbling blocks.

That newfound cash flow? Credit it at least in part to “dramatic” write-downs of CityCenter’s value, Aguero said.

MGM wrote down CityCenter’s worth from $4.9 billion in October 2009 to $2.6 billion in August. CityCenter cost about $8.5 billion for MGM to build, and the operator still faces $13 billion in long-term debt. By the end of the third quarter, MGM had taken $600 million in impairment charges for reduced values, including a $279 million impairment on the unfinished Harmon.

The Harmon has grabbed its own headlines. Work on the hotel tower stopped after Clark County officials found that its structural work did not match building plans.

MGM executives said in November that it’s unlikely the Harmon will ever be finished; CityCenter Chief Executive Officer Bobby Baldwin called the building “the poster child for nonconforming work worldwide.”

There have been other construction-related woes. Perini Building Co. filed $491 million in mechanic’s liens against CityCenter soon after the property opened, alleging that MGM hadn’t paid Perini’s subcontractors. MGM has negotiated payments with nearly all of the 223 vendors involved in the Perini action.

Nor can patrons ignore the shortened hours at many of CityCenter’s restaurants.

Amore Patisserie at the Mandarin Oriental is the only eatery that is shuttered. A sign outside said it’s closed for redevelopment and Mandarin officials did not respond to an e-mail asking about future plans for the space.

But plenty of other restaurants, including Vdara’s Silk Road and Aria’s Bar Masa, Union and the SkyBox Sports Bar and Grill, are either closed two or more days a week or have dropped entire meal services, such as lunch.

Murren responded that resorts up and down the Strip see seasonal, temporary restaurant closings between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The SkyBox is set to reopen on Christmas Eve as it ramps up for business in the first quarter thanks to the Super Bowl and other big sporting events.

And though Murren noted that MGM has not steeply discounted rooms at CityCenter, research from a gaming analyst does show some softness in the resort’s rates.

Robert LaFleur, managing director of gaming, lodging and leisure equity research at Hudson Securities in Connecticut, said Monday that CityCenter’s rates are flat to generally below where they were a year ago.

“But there is a lot of variability,” he said, noting that Aria’s December asking rates are down 8 percent on weekends and 36 percent on weekdays when compared with a year ago, even as advance rates for March are up 16 percent on weekends and 13 percent on weekdays year over year.

With the ups and downs, CityCenter drew attention for quirkier developments, from the Vdara “death ray” sunbeam that singed a Chicago attorney’s hair in September to the Hollywood-tinged management dust-up at actress Eva Longoria’s Beso Restaurant and Eve nightclub.

And we can’t overlook the quotidian changes: After widespread public feedback about the lack of places to sit, Crystals now has benches throughout, with more to come.

“We listen to our customers and guests, and that (the lack of seating) was an observation we took to heart,” Murren said.

So for all those experiences, what does CityCenter teach the market on the eve of The Cosmopolitan’s opening?

For one thing, room rates have held up better at high-end properties than they have fared at midtier or budget hotel-casinos, LaFleur said. That could bode well for The Cosmopolitan, where rates are running as high as $300 a night.

Plus, the Strip’s big new developments can still grab headlines around the world. Even newspapers in Europe couldn’t resist the siren song of the “death ray” story, and publications worldwide turned to CityCenter time and again as they compiled lists of travel and leisure superlatives.

For Murren, CityCenter proves that operators today need resilience, persistence, determination and a distinctive property to succeed.

CityCenter was hours from bankruptcy in March 2009 when a last-minute, $200 million construction payment kept the project going after development partner Dubai World balked at further investments in the project.

The Cosmopolitan had its share of development woes too, with original developer Ian Bruce Eichner defaulting on $1 billion in project loans in 2008 and Deutsche Bank taking over to finish the $3.9 billion, 2,995-room resort.

“We’ve also learned, really since the birth of the modern resort here in Las Vegas, that if you build something compelling, with imagination and great execution, the public will respond positively to that development,” Murren said. “That has happened decade after decade in Las Vegas, and I think we’ve proven it again with CityCenter.”

What Aguero sees in CityCenter’s story is the very survival of the Strip market. Despite a severe recession in 2009 and economic torpor in 2010, Las Vegas managed to lure 36 million tourists who left behind $20 billion in the local market. CityCenter captured a significant share of that.

“The fact that the market survived the storm so far, and the fact that CityCenter and the balance of properties are coming out of the other side of the downturn, is sort of a success story in itself,” Aguero said. “That’s not to say bringing on additional hotel rooms is what we want to do, and it’s not to say MGM Resorts and other companies don’t have challenges. But I think a fair number of people in 2008 and 2009 were writing off Las Vegas, and MGM especially, almost as a going concern.”

The Cosmopolitan has a few advantages over CityCenter, Aguero said.

It will open during improved economic times, with unemployment numbers stabilizing and consumer activity picking up nationwide. That gives the property a perception edge, he said.

And while MGM was battling to keep CityCenter afloat financially in the months before its opening, The Cosmopolitan has been able to focus all of its efforts on a superior marketing and sales effort, he added.

“I think The Cosmopolitan is going to face a very competitive marketplace, and they are going to find themselves up against competitors who are constantly raising the bar,” Aguero said. “But I think they have a product that is ready for the market.”

After touring The Cosmopolitan, Murren agreed.

“I’m actually very optimistic for The Cosmopolitan. The property is quite beautiful, and there are some very special moments inside,” Murren said. “I think the pre-opening campaign has been very clever and creative, and they’ve got some talented people working over there. I think it’s going to build on a momentum that we began about a year ago.”

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512

Dec. 14, 2010 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

<Gina Trapani is the founding editor of Lifehacker.com. Her book based on the website, Upgrade Your Life, is in its second edition. I enjoy listening to her on a weekly podcast: This Week in Google (TWiG) >

Every time you make or receive a phone call that involves leaving or listening to a message, you’re wasting time. You can’t write as fast as people speak, so transcribing phone numbers, addresses, and other information from a voicemail message is tedious. When you have to leave a voicemail for someone, you’re forced to listen to Robotic Voice-Mail Woman trod through the instructions on how to wait for the tone before you can start.

There are two ways to cut this unnecessary voicemail overhead out of your day:

1. Get your voicemail messages transcribed automatically and emailed to you. Instead of calling your voicemail and having to listen to messages directly, you can receive text transcripts via email on your smartphone or desktop. Several online services can store, convert, and email you voice-to-text transcriptions of your voicemail messages. I use the free (but invitation-only right now) Google Voice service to do just that. In addition to a host of other features, you can forward your existing cell phone’s voicemail messages to Google Voice. Google stores them, transcribes them, and can email you both the playable audio file and the text transcription. Google Voice’s transcriptions are far from perfect; in fact, most times they’re laughably inaccurate. (There’s even a blog dedicated to bad transcriptions, entitled “GV Screwups.”). However, the transcripts are good enough for you to get the gist of the message without dealing with time-consuming playback.

If you don’t have an invitation to Google Voice, several other pay-for services offer voicemail transcription services, like Jott Voicemail, YouMail, CallWave, and MessageSling. Almost all of these services are built to work with mobile phones, and whether or not they work may depend on whether your carrier allows call-forwarding.

<I have been a Wildfire subscriber for ever.  Not transcribing voice mails is her major defect, in my opinion. Ray>

2. Bypass unnecessary voicemail instructions with One-Star-Pound. Every time you need to leave someone a message on their mobile phone, you have to sit through this time-wasting, robotic script: “To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options.” You can skip through this drawn-out greeting and get straight to the beep, but the key to do so varies depending on the carrier. Blogger Jeremy Toemon came up with a three-key combo that works on major U.S. mobile phone carriers. Toemon explains the three steps and why they work:

Step One:

Push 1. If your friend is on Sprint (or possibly Verizon, but not always), this skips the greeting and you are done; leave a message. If you hear a message that says “One is not a valid option” skip to Step Three below, otherwise continue to Step Two.

Step Two:

Push *. If your friend is on Verizon, you’ll hear the beep and can leave your message.

Step Three:

Push #. This works for both AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers, and you’re all set to go.

One-Star-Pound: Train your fingers now and never listen to “at the tone, please record your message” again.

How do you cut down time spent dealing with voicemail?

<What are your experiences with Google Voice?  Subscribe to this post below.>

This article was published in Yahoo Health.

Why Power Naps at Work Are Catching On

By Angela Haupt

Falling asleep on the job may be evolving into office protocol—not grounds for termination. A growing number of companies are recognizing the health benefits of a quick snooze, including increased alertness, enhanced brainpower , and fewer sick days. While naps aren’t necessary for those who get the recommended eight hours of shut-eye at night, they may be key for those who skimp on sleep. “Most people don’t get enough sleep,” says Nancy Collop, president-elect of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “And for those people, a nap will clearly help. The most important factor is duration, and it’s well-accepted that short naps are good.”

Some companies are offering designated nap rooms or even setting up tents or lofted beds, but at Workman Publishing in New York, employees usually sleep underneath their desks or behind room-divider screens. “You can close your eyes for 10 or 15 minutes and wake up feeling completely refreshed,” says Susan Bolotin, Workman’s editor in chief, which has been nap-friendly since 2007. “We’ve seen very positive effects. I keep a nap mat in my office, and I’m still known to lie down, put my sleep mask on, and see what happens.” Bolotin has distributed eye masks to her team, and sometimes lends her office floor to those without a private workspace who are in need of a nap. “We have one guy who works here who likes to nap, and you’ll walk by and he’ll be lying down on a mat like a kid in nursery school,” she says. Other companies, including British Airways, Nike, <Taco Bell>, Pizza Hut, and Google, offer reclining chairs and “renewal rooms.”

Most employers who allow napping say they do so in the name of their staffers’ well-being, which research suggests is a smart idea. People who take daily 30-minute naps are 37 percent less likely to die of heart disease than those who don’t nap, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2007. Naps can also boost the immune system—theoretically leading to fewer sick days— and propel employees into their most alert, energetic, and creative states, say nap advocates. Plus, a well-rested employee is a cheery employee, Collop says: “If you’re sleep deprived, you’re going to be moody. And if you have to interact in meetings or if you’re a marketing person and have to convince someone to buy your product, that’s going to create a problem.”

At JAWA, a software developing company in Scottsdale, Ariz., employees can nap on a cot in a Zen-like room featuring soothing earth tones. Or they can opt for a beach-themed room and snooze in a futuristic “energy pod”—a helmet-shaped chair that only exposes their legs, which are elevated above the heart. The contraption shuts out external distractions and offers a sense of total darkness and privacy, and it vibrates when it’s time to wake up.

The nap rooms are popular among the company’s nearly 200 employees, and are the brainchild of Brad Owen, director of content development at JAWA. “When I have to get something done and I’m here a little late, I can either take a 15-minute nap and get it done within an hour—or I can just sit and slog through it, and it will take longer and the quality will suffer,” he says. “We definitely see people using [the nap rooms] when they’re tired, instead of slamming another energy drink and trying to power through.” Employees usually nap during their breaks, Owen says, so they don’t have to compensate by staying late: “It’s pretty much on your honor, and we haven’t had much abuse.”

Some companies are even outsourcing their napping. Time Warner, Hearst, and Yahoo!, for example, employ Manhattan-based YeloSpa, which offers power naps in private rooms complete with customized aromatherapy, music or nature sounds, and lighting. A 20-minute nap costs $15, and a 40-minute nap is $28. Most of those companies allow employees to visit YeloSpa during their lunch breaks and have negotiated discounted rates. YeloSpa has seen an uptick in nap popularity: Business is up 25 percent from last year and 2009 brought a 10 percent increase over 2008. “We hear from a lot of people who say, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you—I don’t know how I’d make it through the day without a nap,’” says Michael Hazel, YeloSpa’s director of operations. “For some people, it’s almost like a euphoria. They wake up and it’s a fresh start.”

A fresh start, however, is not always the result. Typically, 20 to 30 minutes is best for a midday snooze, since that allows time for only a light sleep—meaning there’s a greater chance of quickly snapping back into alertness. Longer naps equate to deeper sleep, making waking up a challenge and inviting grogginess that could linger for hours. Some experts warn of sleep inertia, a hangover-like effect that makes shrugging off sleepy feelings practically impossible. But there’s a caveat: For those who have been up all night and are severely sleep deprived, a longer nap—at least 90 minutes—is necessary to catch up, Collop says.

For now, workplace naps remain the exception, rather than the rule. If you want to bring the trend to your non-napping workplace, draft a proposal that views the arrangement through the employer’s eyes, says Sara Mednick, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Diego and author of Take a Nap! Change Your Life. Instead of emphasizing personal reasons, like “I want to nap at work because I have insomnia,” stress the benefits the company could reap. Explain that napping reduces absenteeism—research suggests employees often miss work because of fatigue—and increases productivity and employee retention. Band together with coworkers and suggest a six-week to three-month trial.

“People are starting to see how beneficial napping is—and how easy and affordable,” Hazel says. “The most important thing is let everything go, take care of yourself, and surround yourself in a cocoon.”

<Please leave your comments. Thanks, I will check your thoughts when I wake up from my knap.  Ray>

Most of us have no idea what’s really going on inside our heads. Yet brain scientists have uncovered details every business leader, parent, and teacher should know.

How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? What can science tell us about raising smart, happy children?

Brain Rules are things we know for sure, and John Medina explains what we might do with that knowledge.

EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power.

Will you age like Jim or like Frank? ~ Our brains love motion ~ The incredible test-score booster ~ How oxygen builds roads for the brain

Tour the amazing brain! ~ What’s uniquely human about us? ~ Goldilocks and the Swedish sauna ~ A brilliant survival strategy ~ How we conquered the world

Neurons slide, slither, and split ~ Experience makes the difference ~ Furious brain development not once, but twice ~ The Jennifer Aniston neuron

Emotion matters ~ Why there is no such thing as multitasking ~ We pay great attention to threats, sex, and pattern matching ~ The brain needs a break!

Memories are volatile ~ How details become splattered across the insides of our brains ~ How the brain pieces them back together again ~ Where memories go

If you don’t repeat this within 30 seconds, you’ll forget it ~ Spaced repetition cycles are key to remembering ~ When being underwater could help you remember something

The brain doesn’t sleep to rest ~ Two armies at war in your head ~ How to improve your performance 34 percent in 26 minutes ~ Which bird are you? ~ Sleep on it!

Stress is good, and stress is bad ~ A villain and a hero in the toxic-stress battle ~ Why the home matters to the workplace ~ Marriage intervention for happy couples

Lessons from a nightclub ~ How and why our senses work together ~ Multisensory learning means better remembering ~ What’s that smell?

Playing tricks on wine tasters ~ You see what your brain wants to see, and it likes to make stuff up ~ Throw out your PowerPoint ~ Pictures are simpler

Sexing humans ~ The difference between little girl best friends and little boy best friends ~ Men favor gist when stressed; women favor details ~ A forgetting drug

Babies are great scientists ~ Exploration is aggressive ~ Monkey see, monkey do ~ Curiosity is everything

Thanks to Ken Blanchard again for bringing this to our attention.

I say: take no thought of the harvest, but only of proper sowing. –(Famous Dead Poet), T.S. Eliot,Choruses from The Rock

You want to be better! It’s not a question. If you’re reading this article, you have a desire to perform on a higher level—at work and in life. You’re the fraction of the workforce and society that is ready to perform, learn, and live a better tomorrow than what you’ve achieved today.

But how do we get better? How do we really make worthwhile contributions to our family and friends, our organizations, and our clients, day in and day out?

WE TRAIN!

And I’m not talking about that old dinosaur called Two-Day Seminars or Workshops. The days of one- or two-day classrooms as “training solutions” are ineffective and dying. That’s teaching; that’s not training. I’m talking about a consistent effort to purposely get better at your job through a series of activities, experiences, and acquisitions of knowledge, skills, and competencies that are integrated into your workflow as the actual learning process—not a 15-minute follow up to some mountaintop experience you had last week. Training is a long distance race! It’s not a few toe touches and jumping jacks.

While the classroom itself still holds some meaning, the idea that you only get better in a classroom simply is not true anymore. There era of Dead Poets Society has moved beyond standing up on your desk and shouting about seizing the day, it’s a continual effort outside the classroom, in the real world, actually seizing moments. You can learn theories and skills in a classroom, but you can’t be trained to use them. You can’t create a habit in a Two-Day Workshop. With technological advancements, the idea that Soft or Off-the-Job training takes place outside of your normal workflow (in a classroom, away from your desk, pontificating some abstract leadership philosophy on a mountaintop) is Dark Age thinking. Seminars may be events, but they’re only events. Seminars and workshops don’t make us better; they only make us think about getting better.

Your colleague who is going to run in a marathon this fall doesn’t go to a one-day motivational seminar, or runners’ workshop, and think that he’s prepared to run 26.2 miles tomorrow—he trains for the event by exercising daily on a strict schedule, eating the right foods, getting the proper rest, and shedding a few drops of blood, sweat, and tears as prepare for race day.

If you’re not training, you’re dying from a slow and painful mediocre contribution. It’s not meaningless work, but it could become so much more if we take the leadership, the people, and the technical skills seriously enough to put them into action and apply them directly to our everyday real work and real lives. The next generation of leaders and learners want training, real sustained training, and through that training they want to make great contributions to the world and the workplace.

Jason Diamond Arnold
Co-Author of Situational Self Leadership in Action

What do you think? I welcome comments.