The actress, 23, sported a dress not many women could get away with as she arrived at Nice airport.
She wore a tight white skater dress that ended several inches above her knee.
And the Harry Potter star combined the figure-hugging number with dark sunglasses, black shoes and a black handbag as she made her way through the airport.
Cal-ling in love ... Ellie Goulding sports Daisy Dukes in the video. The Scottish producer and singer ELLIE GOULDING play a loved-up couple in the clip for their collaboration I Need Your Love.
Golden girl ... Miley sports chunky jewellery with pal in Los Angeles. Long and short of it ... Miley shows off slender legs in hotpants during Los Angeles stroll
HAS MILEY CYRUS borrowed my Italia ’90 Scotland shorts? The singer just about squeezes into the hot pants, which would fit most ten-year-olds.
And earlier this week we reported that tiger bone wine is on sale in China and then db’ssenior writer, Lucy Shaw, drank some snake wine at an event in London.
But even these exotic ingredients fall well short of the weirdness factor of bear bile and the stomach churning Korean “faeces” wine…
(10)
Fining agents – blood powder, egg whites and isinglass
Although not strictly ingredients nor added for flavour, some strange things may have gone through a wine prior to bottling during the fining process. The point of fining is to add something that will create an enzymatic bond with particles in the unfinished wine that cannot or are unlikely to be taken out during filtration.
In the past the rather terrifying sounding “blood powder” was used. Now egg whites, casein, gelatin and the famous isinglass (made from fish swim bladders) are more common.
Other fining agents include bentonite clay and charcoal – which is apparently particularly good at removing phenols that contribute to off-colouration and bad odours.
9. Chocolate wine
Many red wines boast notes of chocolate and last year dbnavigated the minefield of matching wine with Easter chocolate, but this is wine that is made with chocolate.
As we have previously reported, a chocolate infused wine called Chocolate Shop has seen a surge in demand across the US and UK. The Chocolate Shop is owned by Washington-based Precept Wine and was launched in January 2011 in the US using a Bordeaux blend from California, mixed with sugar and natural chocolate. For the UK market, the base wine is a Tempranillo from Spain, while Shiraz is used in Australia. Precept Wine has said it will be experimenting with the development of new flavours, such as a white chocolate, caramel and Chardonnay combination.
8. Nettles
If people will eat naga chillies then drinking nettle wine might not seem too strange, maybe. But aficionados of nettle wine, which is popular among home winemakers, will tell you that while the plant is known for its stinging properties, those do not transfer into the wine.
Nettle wine is actually made using the small flowering buds that appear at the top of the plant. These are edible, although it is recommended that anyone picking these buds wears gloves to avoid hours of pain and itching. It is often advised that those making nettle wine infuse it with extra ingredients such as ginger root, parsley or lemon thyme as straight nettle wine “lacks character”. The good news is that you don’t need to have a glass of dock leaf wine on hand when drinking nettle wine.
7. Cannabis
Like chocolate wine, cannabis wine has become popular in the US with a number of Californian winemakers producing this potent drop. Cabernet Sauvignon is proving to be the grape variety of choice.
According to Crane Carter, president of the Napa Valley Marijuana Growers, pot wine delivers a quicker high than pot brownies, and the combination of alcohol and marijuana produces “an interesting little buzz.”
6. Birch Sap
According to John Wright, a forager author, birch sap tastes almost exactly like water, “but the freshest water you have ever tasted, with just a hint of sweetness”. In Sweden, Sav winemakers produce a sparkling wine using a birch sap recipe from 1785.
Sav says its sparkling wine tastes of “citrus, some sour dough bread and nuts. Weak almond scent, and much herbs. Long, slightly nutty balanced aftertaste of forest, fungus, herbs and apples.”
5. Meteorite
A Chilean wine has been created using a meteorite formed during the birth of the solar system. TheCabernet Sauvignon called Meteorito has been developed by Ian Hutcheon, an Englishman working in Chile.
The meteorite, which is believed to have crashed into the Atacama Desert in northern Chile around 6,000 years ago, is submerged in the wine during the fermentation process.
Hutcheon believes the meteorite gives the wine a “livelier taste”.
Tiger tonic wines are produced by leaving tiger bones to soak in the wine for varying lengths of time, the bones are then removed before bottling.
The wine, which in China is believed to have medicinal properties, sells for between £65-£500 a bottle depending on how long the tiger bone was in contact with the wine for.
3. Reptiles
Snake and scorpion wines are found throughout China and South East Asia and are made by infusing the reptile in question in rice wine, but they can also be infused in grain alcohol. Sometimes snakes and scorpions are combined in the same wine and lizards and geckos can be infused in wine as well.
Like tiger bone wine, snake wine is believed to have medicinal properties helping with everything from eyesight to hair loss and sexual performance. Venomous snakes are often used and are left to steep in the wine for many months.
Other parts of the snake are also used in wine including blood, bile and gall bladder.
2. Bear bile
The bear bile used in this wine has to be fresh and is obtained from live bears, a practice which has drawn much criticism from animal rights campaigners as the bears are often kept in very distressing conditions.
The bile is then mixed with the wine and Chinese cassia, jujube, orange peel and fennel seed are added, this presumably makes the wine taste better.
This is another wine thought to have medicinal benefits, with Pingbian Bear Bile Wine claiming it can “help keep the liver and gallbladder healthy, dissolve gallstones, reduce inflammation and swelling, relieve pain, and clear away heat and toxic materials. It also has certain curative effects for high blood pressure, hyperlipemia, and cardiovascular disease.”
1. Deer penis
According to traditional Chinese medicine, for deer penis to retain its beneficial properties it must – horrifically – be extracted from the deer while it is still alive.
It is claimed that prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympics athletes were told not to drink deer penis wine, because it may contain certain banned substances including ephedrine. The wine is said to be an effective remedy for athletic injuries, and other benefits are thought to be enhanced sexual virility, aiding joints and making pregnant women (and their baby) stronger.
The wine sells for anything from US$12 a glass up to $450 for a bottle and is also thought, by some, to be an aphrodisiac.
Japanese website RocketNews24 claimed to have tracked down a Korean wine, known as Ttongsul, which is made primarily using human or animal faeces. The website claims Ttongsul is made using a Korean distilled grain alcohol, called soju, so technically it is not a wine.
The faeces are soaked in the soju with medicinal herbs for three to four months until it ferments. It is thought Ttongsul can help broken bones to heal and can cure illness – personally this scribe will stick with a cast and some paracetamol.
RocketNews24 gave the drink to a Japanese girl band to taste, one of whom said: “This is really good, and easy to drink. I think this could be a hit with girls.”
Err, no thanks, some people are happy drinking crap wine, but this is going too far.
(USA TODAY) -- A Communist Party official had a meltdown for the ages at an airport
in south-central China, flying into a rage after his family missed a
flight for the second day in a row.
Yan Linkun, identified by NBC News
as "a deputy chairman of a mining company and a member of a Communist
Party political advisory body," smashed gate agents' computers into a
wall and to the ground. His fury continued for several minutes, with Yan
next taking debris from the destroyed computers and smashing it against
the glass wall that separated him from the walkway to his flight.
What set Yan off? The Shanghai Daily
reports he was traveling with his wife and two 10-year-old sons. The
family missed a Feb. 5 flight to Shenzhen and were rebooked for a flight
the following day. Citing local reports, The Wall Street Journal's China Real Time Report says the family missed their second flight "after going to eat breakfast in the airport" and missing the boarding announcements.
That, according to reports, is what set Yan off into the rage seen on the video. Scroll down to watch the video
NBC
News adds "his wife, whose name has not been reported, also gets in on
the act, and smashes what appears to be a coffee cup midway through the
video."
The incident happened Feb. 6, but apparently did not hit
the press until surveillance video of the episode was leaked and posted
online this past Friday. Since then, the video has gone viral and has
now been viewed by tens of millions across the globe.
The episode drew condemnation via Chinese social media.
"That's just how a rich man acts," NBC quotes one user as saying via Weibo, a Chinese service similar to Twitter. "He who has wealth speaks louder than others."
Yan has been suspended by his mining company employer as a result of the uproar that has followed incident.
The
Communist Party also is considering whether it should take action,
according to local reports. Yan also could face criminal charges.
Yan apologized, telling the Shanghai Daily: "I failed to be a qualified political adviser as well as a good father."
World's first space tourist plans privately-funded mission to the Red Planet when it makes its nearest approach to Earth in 2018
It has been a long-cherished dream of space enthusiasts, as well as
lovers of science fiction, but now it seems that someone has finally
come up with an ambitious – and some say realistic – plan to send two
astronauts to Mars in just five years’ time.
Tomorrow at the National Press Club in Washington, multi-millionaire
Dennis Tito – the world’s first space tourist – is expected to reveal
how he hopes to launch a privately-funded mission to Mars in 2018, when
the Red Planet makes its nearest approach to Earth.
Little is
known about the “Inspiration Mars” mission accept that it is Tito’s
brainchild and that he has garnered some high-profile supporters,
including Jonathan Clark, the associate professor of neurology at Baylor
College of Medicine who was the crew’s surgeon on six Space Shuttle
flights.
Dr Clark told The Independent that he is not
supposed to talk about the mission until all is revealed at the
Washington press conference this evening, but he dismissed suggestions
that the plan is not a serious one.
“I wouldn’t be involved if I
didn’t think that there was something to it. I don’t want to pre-empt
the announcement, but it’s a very in-depth study that has gone into it,”
Dr Clark said.
The Inspiration Mars mission will send two
astronauts on a simple return trip to Mars, flying around the far side
of the planet once but without going into orbit.
Scientifically,
the 501-day mission will accomplish next to nothing. The probes, landers
and robots that have already been sent to Mars have sent back far more
interesting and useful information than this simple manned mission is
ever going to be able to gather.
However, in terms of human
endurance and psychology, the mission could set new precedents in space
exploration. For 17 months, two people will experience what it is like
to be cooped up together in a space module not much bigger than a small
bathroom with the ever-present risk of something going fatally wrong.
Technically,
it is known as a return fly-by, meaning that it will need the smallest
amount of fuel to get there and back again. If anything goes wrong, the
spacecraft should make its own way back to Earth – but with no
possibility of any short-cuts home.
Anyone who knows anything
about the immense problems of manned missions to Mars will want to hear
about how Tito intends to raise the estimated $1.5bn-$2bn (£1bn-£1.3bn)
that it will cost to send two people to Mars and back again.
Tito,
a former Nasa scientist who made his fortune in financial investment,
is believed to be in contact with other self-made billionaires with an
interest in space flight, including Elon Musk, the Paypal entrepreneur
and founder of SpaceX, the private space company.
One possibility
is that a privately-funded mission could raise money through TV rights
and internet deals. The public could be invited to pay for exclusive
access to on-board camcorders or the privilege of talking to the crew –
some commentators have even suggested some kind of reality TV deal.
Anu
Ojha, the director of the UK National Space Academy in Leicester, said
that the global space community is agog at the thought that a group of
extremely wealthy individuals could club together to fund a “quick and
simple” manned mission to the Red Planet.
“I am more excited about
this than any human spaceflight story I’ve seen or heard about being
planned since I was a kid – but it all depends on the funding question,”
Mr Ojha said.
“This could be the biggest space adventure since
the Apollo programme. In fact it is Apollo 8 on steroids, but without
the funding it’s dead in the water,” he said.
Apollo 8 was the
first manned space flight that took astronauts beyond Earth orbit. It
was a trailblazer mission in that, for the first time, men made a simple
return trip to the Moon, orbiting the lunar landscape 10 times before
coming back home.
With the Inspiration Mars mission, “the returns
in terms of understanding human physiology and psychology in
long-duration spaceflight would re-write the textbooks,” Mr Ojha said.
“As
an exemplar of human endurance and exploration, it is totally
unprecedented. This would be an Apollo 8 moment – but lasting a year and
a half rather than six days and with no meaningful abort options once
on its way.”
Professor Martin Rees, the astronomer royal, agreed
that technically the mission is far simpler than sending a manned Mars
orbiter and lander, but the physical and psychological issues faced by
the crew would be formidable.
“The Mars trip would be more of an
ordeal than a Moon-loop trip, though no more than what Ranulph Fiennes
was trying to do, and would require more provisions. But it’s not
technically crazy – and hugely simpler than a Mars landing,” Professor
Rees said.
The Mars Inspiration mission plans to use the Falcon
Heavy rockets made by SpaceX to launch the company’s Dragon space
module, the first private spacecraft to dock with the International
Space Station. Dragon, however, is little more than 14ft long and 12 ft
wide, although extra living space could be made available with the
addition of a Bigelow “inflatable” module.
But even so, the living
conditions will be more Spartan than the recent Mars 500 ground mission
in Moscow where six “astronauts” simulated in a scientific institute
what it was like to live together in close confinement on a 520-day
“space mission”, which ended in January.
A technical paper to be
presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference in Montana this weekend,
co-authored by Tito and Clark, says that conditions on board the Dragon
module will be testing. “Crew comfort is limited to survival needs only.
For example sponge baths are acceptable, with no need for showers,” it
says.
Apart from the psychological problems associated with
claustrophobia and the limited room for exercise and other bodily
functions, there will be the ever-present problem of a coronal mass
ejection from the Sun, which could send out a stream of high-energy
particles and radiation that could seriously harm the astronauts.
Although
in 2018 the Sun will be going through a quiet phase of its 11-year
sunspot cycle time, a coronal mass ejection is still possible, which
would put the crew in serious risk of injury or even death.
But
perhaps this will be the least of their worries on a journey where there
isn’t much else to do but look at the stars and dream of home.
World’s first space tourist plans privately-funded mission to MARS
- See more at: http://newsdoors.blogspot.com/2013/02/worlds-first-space-tourist-plans.html#sthash.RKyGtyS2.dpuf
JEFFERSON CITY —
One of the rare meaningful changes to school policy to overcome
Capitol gridlock in recent years opened the door for more charter
schools in Missouri.
Turns out, the new law pried open a loophole at the same time.
Districts
that open charter schools would be allowed to double dip into the pool
of state aid — getting paid twice for the same students and leaving less
money available for others.
The loophole was an accident. That’s
not in dispute. In fact, lawmakers and lobbyists involved say they would
back a legislative fix.
But history suggests any education bill
can quickly become contentious, even when widespread consensus exists.
Even an everybody-agrees fix, then, might not come easily.
And some say the situation is also a prime example of shoddy lawmaking that has become more frequent in recent years.
Sen.
Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a University City Democrat, staged a four-hour
mini-filibuster against the bill last year, complaining that it was
“sloppily written” and hurried to passage without allowing her to fully
study it in detail.
And that, she says, is how mistakes find their way into state law.
“The
last four or five years,” she said, “I’ve noticed we’ve had to spend a
lot more time going back and fixing our own mistakes.”
Supporters of the bill say two years of work went into getting the bill across the finish line.
“I
don’t believe this loophole happened because people didn’t think about
this bill enough,” said Tricia Workman, a lobbyist who helped draft the
charter school bill on behalf of the Missouri Charter Public School
Association. “It didn’t happen because the bill was rushed.”
Even the most thoroughly vetted legislation has the potential to have “ramifications that you can’t anticipate,” Workman said.
But in recent years, observers say, errors have become more regular.
In
2009, lawmakers accidently banned plastic containers, such as
Tupperware, on Missouri’s waterways. The intent was to ban Styrofoam.
In
2011, legislation led to a legal battle over whether lawmakers had
inadvertently outlawed the use of social media sites such as Facebook by
teachers.
This month, the Missouri Senate finally passed fixes
to a 2005 workers’ compensation law that had caused numerous issues for
employers and injured workers.
The bill faces an uncertain future in the House.
Courts
have also thrown out several laws recently over procedural mistakes in
how they were passed. Those include campaign finance legislation and a
bill to fund science and high-tech businesses.
“Some of the stuff
we get done is flawed, and some is just plain old crap,” said Rep.
Myron Neth, a Liberty Republican. “Things are done in a more knee-jerk
fashion, and then all the sudden you wonder, ‘What did we just do?’ ”
Neth believes part of the blame falls on term limits, which Missouri voters approved in 1992.
Although
he is a strong supporter of term limits, Neth said the loss of
institutional knowledge among legislators is a major drawback.
“You
used to have committee chairmen who knew more about their subjects than
any lobbyist or staffer in the building,” Neth said. “You don’t get
that anymore, which can open the door for mistakes to happen.”
Neth
is proposing a state constitutional amendment that would let lawmakers
serve their entire 16 years in one legislative chamber, instead of the
current limits where terms are split between eight years in the House
and Senate.
That would give lawmakers time to grow into the job, he said, while still making room for those with fresh ideas.
Don’t
place all the blame on term limits, said Otto Fajen, a lobbyist for
Missouri National Education Association who previously worked in the
nonpartisan research division of the Missouri Senate for 11 years.
The
nonpartisan staff that actually writes legislation has also changed
over time, Fajen said. Instead of people coming into the job intent on
staying for a career, he said, legislative research jobs are now seen as
stepping stones to better-paying careers in lobbying or advocacy.
“A
bill can touch so many subjects and so many state statutes, and over
time you start to develop the ability to see the bigger picture,” Fajen
said. “What we’re seeing now much more often is that something is put
forward as if there were no existing laws already in place.”
As
for the charter school law, the crux of the issue stems from how schools
are allowed to measure attendance to receive state funding. Under the
school funding formula, districts can use attendance data that is up to
two years old.
Because of that, a district could move students
into a charter school but base their student enrollment on the previous
year’s enrollment.
That would send state money for same students
twice — once for the charter and once for their previous attendance in a
conventional public school, said Ron Lankford, deputy commissioner of
financial and administrative services for the state Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education.
“That would mean less money
that is available for remaining districts,” Lankford said. “And that
could be a substantial amount of money.”
Under the legislation, a
district can enroll up to 35 percent of its students in charter schools.
Smaller districts — those with fewer than 1,550 students — can enroll
all their students in charters.
“I know from experience that it
doesn’t take people long to figure out loopholes that could be a
windfall to their school district,” Lankford said. “In tough economic
times, people will get creative, and they wouldn’t be contrary to state
law if they did this.”
Workman, the lobbyist who helped write the
charter school bill, said it’s unlikely any new charters could be
established under the law before the 2014-2015 school year at the
earliest.
“But I would hope that superintendents wouldn’t use
this loophole to game the system and double count for extra funding at
the detriment of other students around the state,” she said.
Mike
Lodewegen, a lobbyist for the Missouri Council of School Administrators,
agreed that a fix is needed but said it’s not considered an immediate
priority, since to his knowledge no districts are currently considering
taking advantage of the loophole.
Lankford said the department
noticed the issue last summer but has been “hesitant to put it on the
radar screen, because we don’t see any districts moving out to quickly
establish charter schools in the next year.”
“But in the long
term,” he said, “it certainly would be something the General Assembly
might want to take a look at to make sure that the system can’t be used
in a way that is detrimental to other schools.”
Chappelle-Nadal
introduced legislation on Tuesday designed to close the loophole. She
hopes the situation will be a lesson to her fellow lawmakers.
“You can’t rush through this process,” she said. “You don’t handle legislation like it’s a drug deal.”
Read more here: http://ww
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/02/26/4088476/missouri-charter-school-rules.html#storylink=cpy
A man has been killed by a shark believed to be up to 14ft long.
Adam Strange, who was in his 40s, was swimming off New Zealand's Muriwai beach near Auckland when the shark attacked.
His family said that Strange was a ''glorious and great father, husband and friend''. He was a well-known filmmaker who had been a finalist at the Cannes International Advertising Awards.
In his spare time, Strange said he liked to surf on the West Coast. He also enjoyed skiing, mountain biking and live music.
Pio Mose, a witness who was fishing from the beach, told the New Zealand Herald that he saw the swimmer struggling against the shark, which he described as "huge". Mose told Strange to try to swim to nearby rocks.
"All of a sudden there was blood everywhere. I was shaking, scared, panicked. The water was red."
He said other sharks began approaching after the attack. He watched the shark drag Strange's body further out to sea.
Shot at 20 times
"All I was thinking was I wanted to jump in the water and help but I didn't want to get attacked by a shark too," Mose said.
The beach has been closed since the attack and.
Police inspector Shawn Rutene said the swimmer had been around 200 metres from shore. Rescue crews took an inflatable boat out and shot at the shark 20 times but it vanished below the surface.
"It rolled over and disappeared," Rutene said.
Muriwai Surf Lifeguard chairman Tim Jago said three lifeguards aided the police and that they had known Strange. Jago described the death as traumatising.
Two hundred people were on the beach when the shark attacked. Experts believe it was a great white.
Clinton Duffy, a shark expert with the Department of Conservation, said the waters around New Zealand are home to a large number of great whites, but they also harbour several other potentially lethal species.
- See more at: http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/439974/20130227/new-zealand-shark-attack-adam-strange-filmmaker.htm#.US3-o_K73Fw
La Balade Des Gnomes, near the
picturesque town of Durbuy, in Belgium, offers guests a unique
experience where they can unwind in an imaginary world.
London - A Belgian enthusiast has created one
of the world’s weirdest and most wonderful hotels where you can spend
the night inside a Trojan horse or even sleep with a mermaid.
La Balade Des Gnomes, near the
picturesque town of Durbuy, in Belgium, offers guests a unique
experience where they can unwind in an imaginary world.
The fairytale resort comprises
extraordinarily unique bedrooms, from a spaceship in a lunar landscape
to a troll’s habitat complete with running stream and goldfish.
You can even share a room with a mermaid floating in a pool on a yacht.
The owner, Dominique Noel, took
inspiration from the four corners of the world and created the
innovative abode in an unassuming farmhouse.
Noel, an architect, said: “The
hotel was created by people who have a strong interest in nature. It is
built from completely natural materials and celebrates the simplicity of
modern times. I wanted the hotel to be almost imaginary, with a
youthful essence and work harmoniously with nature.”
La
Balade Des Gnomes was built to complement Noel’s restaurant, La
Gargouille, which is conveniently placed next door. Noel charges between
£50 (R683) and £125 a night for the rooms which he believes, offer them
a unique staying experience. – Daily Mail
Miami street runs red with tomato juice
What's a farm to do with a winter excess of tomatoes? At Miami's
oldest bar, Tobacco Road, some 20,000 pounds were turned into ammunition
at a festival on Saturday, the Miami Herald reports.
Participants, mostly college students, went into attack mode after James
Goll, who markets the festival, gave the call: "Let's fire it up." The
concept was simple: Launch as many tomatoes as your arms can wield. Wash
it off at the nearby shower. Wash it down with more beer. The
free-for-all lasted about 45 minutes until a fire truck washed away the
mashed-up mess. It formed a river of red out into the parking lot and
onto the street. A day's worth of fun down the drain.
From
Left to Right: Vinnie Pompei (Project Director & Conference Chair)
Michael Yudin (Keynote Speaker) Actor George Takei (Honoree) Betty
DeGeneres (Ellen's Mother) (Honoree) MSNBC Anchor Thomas Roberts
(Honoree) City Councilmember, Fort Worth, Texas, Joel Burns (Honoree)
This past weekend in San Diego, I had the opportunity to participate in the 4th
Annual National Educator Conference focused on creating safe,
supportive, and inclusive schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) youth. A goal of the conference, presented by the
Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL), was
to bring together education leaders and LGBT experts to empower and
provide educators and school personnel with the knowledge and skills
necessary to create safe, welcoming and inclusive school environments
for all youth, regardless of their sexual orientation.
Additionally, the conference focused on providing educators with the
tools and resources to prevent and respond to bullying of LGBT youth, as
well as empowering them to make the changes in their schools to make
sure all kids are safe and thriving. I met with so many amazing
educators; it truly was empowering.
Safe schools are not only free from overt forms of physical violence
or substance abuse, but work proactively to support, engage, and include
all students. Unfortunately, too many schools are not safe for LGBT
youth. According to GLSEN’s National School Climate Survey,
nearly 8 out of 10 LGBT youth were harassed at school. We know that
students who are bullied are more likely to have depression, anxiety,
and other health concerns, as well as decreased academic achievement and
participation. When students don’t feel safe, they are less likely to
learn and more likely to give up on school altogether. Unfortunately, we
also know that LGBT youth are disproportionately subject to discipline
practices that exclude them from the classroom, and make up close to 15%
of youth in the juvenile justice system.
Given these statistics, it’s not surprising that LGBT youth are at an
increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, suicide attempts,
and suicide. We need to ensure that educators have the tools and
resources to not only protect LGBT students from harassment and
discrimination, but to ensure that they thrive in schools, not drop out!
One of the students who attended the event came with his high school
teacher from Washington State. He had reached out to the conference
organizers after bullying in school left him feeling defeated and
isolated. They attended with the hope that it would transform the
student’s life in a positive way and enable his teacher to help and
learn more to help other LGBT students. In a follow-up to the conference
organizer, the student thanked Vinnie Pompei, the
Project Director & Conference Chair, for the “awesome” opportunity
to attend, and acknowledged that this is a great beginning to share
information learned from the conference with students, teachers and
others at his school.
Another student who participated in the conference said, “I get bullied every day. This started in 1st grade and I’m in 8th grade now. Suicide was an option…many times. [But] I’m not going anywhere…because I’m stronger than that.”
We need to work together and empower both students and teachers and
make sure they have the tools to create changes in schools. I spoke with
many educators who perceive stopping anti-gay bullying as risky and
fear retribution. Teachers also need support in speaking out.
As I addressed the conference, I asked the individual educators to do
four things to help improve the school experience of our LGBT youth.
Create positive school climates for all students – this happens only
through a deliberate, school-wide effort, and with the participation of
families and communities.
Be proactive and visible to LGBT youth – they cannot know they are
supported, valued, and appreciated, if the adults in the building aren’t
there to tell them so.
Identify “safe spaces,” such as counselors’ offices, designated
classrooms, or student organizations, where LGBT youth can receive
support from administrators, teachers, or other school staff.
Encourage student-led and student-organized school clubs that
promote a safe, welcoming, and accepting school environment (e.g.,
gay-straight alliances, which are school clubs open to youth of all
sexual orientations).
Understand student mental health issues. Everyone can play a role
here; not only school counselors or nurses, but teachers and
administrators that can identify warning signs, like sudden changes in
behavior.
And importantly – they are not alone. While educators play a
critical role in providing support to LGBT youth, they can build
partnerships with local health and mental health agencies, community
based organizations, and child welfare. And, there are federal resources
to provide guidance and information on how to make schools safe,
supportive, and inclusive. For example, check out www.stopbullying.gov.
I would like to extend my deepest thanks to the courageous teachers
who are working every day to make this happen. Thankfully, educators
have the power to create change in their schools, supporting students
and saving lives. Michael Yudin is acting assistant secretary for ED’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services
SOURCE : http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/02/ensuring-safe-schools-for-lgbt-youth/
Secretary
Arne Duncan joined WNBA player Maya Moore, NBA player Harrison Barnes,
former NBA player Allan Houston, and high school student athletes from
across the country for a discussion about how sports have played a role
in their education and maturation. (Photo by Otto Kitsinger - courtesy
of NBAE via Getty Images)
Prior to Secretary Arne Duncan “schooling” the competition during his third appearance in the NBA Celebrity All Star Game in
Houston last Friday, he sat down with former NBA All Star Allan
Houston, current Golden State Warrior Harrison Barnes, and the WNBA’s
Maya Moore to speak with five high school student-athletes from across
the country during the Department of Education’s first Google Hangout.
The discussion centered on the importance of education and how sports
can play an important role in maturation on and off the court.
During the live Hangout moderated by CNN’s John King, the students
quizzed Secretary Duncan—who played college and professional
basketball—and the NBA/WNBA players on how they balanced the demands of
education and athletics, as well as discussed the importance of being a
leader and a role model in the community.
Sequoia High School (Redwood, Calif.)
senior point guard Alaina Woo said it best, “It’s really important that
you surround yourself with role models who are passionate about
basketball but can go beyond the sport and see the importance in having a
balance in life.”
JUSTIN BIEBER has been knocked down a peg or two recently.
First he was given the boot by girlfriend SELENA GOMEZ. Now he’s had a slap in the face in the UK after being turned away from Manchester house club Sankeys on Thursday.
That’s an honour usually reserved for ravers already off their faces.
Bieber was in the city for his show at MEN Arena and after the gig thought he’d walk straight into the venue.
But bosses weren’t going to let a teen pop star ruin their well-earned credibility and told him to try somewhere else.
Yesterday a message on the Sankeys website said: “Yes the rumours are true, we turned Justin Bieber away.
“He shuffles on stage and we can’t be having that in Sankeys now can we!”
Punters at the club have more than just a shuffle up their sleeves.
They’ll be thankful they didn’t have to pull shapes next to young Justin in his shades, white vest and matching blazer.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Put on your suit and tie: Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are hitting the road together.
The performers announced Friday that they'll embark on a 12-city
stadium tour that will kick off July 17 in Toronto. "Legends of the
Summer" will wrap up Aug. 16 in Miami.
Stops on the tour also include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.
Jay-Z is featured on Timberlake's comeback single, "Suit & Tie."
Timberlake's new album, "The 20/20 Experience," will be released March
19.
The U.S. is a pretty unhappy place compared to Europe, Australia, and South America. That’s according to a survey of 10,000 people in 29 countries from market research company GfK Custom Research.
Conducted in 2009, the Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index, claims that
San Francisco is the only U.S. city to crack the list of the 10 happiest
cities in the world. Who else came out on top, and why?
Rio de Janeiro is at the top of the list for its many outdoor and
cultural attractions, shopping centers (is that really a measure of
happiness?), performances, and general amusement. Sydney comes in second
for many of the same reasons, and Barcelona rounds out the top
three--mainly because of its extensive shopping. Rio and Barcelona seem
like traditional choices, but Sydney makes it because of its general
Australia-ness, according to Simon Anholt, who conducted the survey.
"It’s where everybody would like to go," he told Forbes. "Everybody thinks they know Australia because they’ve seen Crocodile Dundee. There’s this image of this nation of people who basically sit around having barbecues."
Amsterdam, Melbourne, and Madrid come in next. You’ll notice that
Amsterdam seems to be there because of one reason: its "coffee shops,"
which are not coffee shops, but rather marijuana dispensaries.
Oddly enough, San Francisco also makes it onto the list largely
because of its shopping centers. I can’t speak to this entire list, but
as a resident, that’s probably the last thing I’d mention as a reason
for the city’s overall happiness. Traditional picks--Rome, Paris, and
Buenos Aires--follow close behind.
The Anholt-GfK Roper City Brands Index is based on perception--that
is, the world’s population perceives Rio as the happiest city. But there
are objective factors we can take into account when looking at happy
cities and countries. Last year, Columbia University’s Earth Institute
released the first World Happiness Report,
looking at happiness in the world and the science behind it. Some of
the findings: Rich people are happier than poor people, but social
supports and personal freedom matter; there’s a positive correlation
between happiness and self-employment in the American and European data
(but not in South America); mental health is the biggest contributor to
happiness in all countries; and a lack of perceived equality cuts down
on happiness.
Judge for yourself whether the cities on this list meet those
criteria (or how much shopping they have). And if you want to zoom out a
little and check out the world’s happiest countries, we’ve got a story on that too.
[All Images: Shutterstock]
For simultaneously scaring and wooing brick-and-mortar universities
into the future by helping get their courses online, at no cost to
students. By the end of 2012, eight months after the site’s launch, 33
universities were offering 206 courses over Coursera’s
platform, all free to the site’s two million users--up from only five
universities in the beginning. Now the startup, whose growth “has really
amazed” even cofounder Andrew Ng, is looking more and more like a
stand-alone school. Last December, the company launched career services
to begin matching students with employers (early recruiters are
Facebook and Twitter), and Coursera will soon offer its own online
courses for credit.
2_Udacity and 3_EdX
For blowing open the online education market with the backing of seasoned entrepreneurs. Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity,
is an award-winning professor at Stanford; Anant Agarwal, founding
president of EdX, is an acclaimed former professor at MIT. Each has
created online platforms offering courses for students at reduced or no
charge, pioneering the format known as the massive open online course,
or MOOC. The classes are from acclaimed institutions--Stanford, MIT,
Harvard, and UC Berkeley among them--and function as laboratories to
test the Internet as an education platform.
4_Rio Salado Community College
For creating a customized course-management and student-services
system to keep track of at-risk students on its Arizona campus and
online. It’s the fastest-growing community college
in the nation, with 70,000 students in Arizona and online
nationwide--mostly poor, Hispanic, and first-generation. The RioLearn
system alerts faculty when a student’s attendance slips or if anyone
misses an assignment, and also sends students text message reminders.
Within the first eight days of class, the data can predict which
students are likely to drop out so that teachers can focus their
attention on them. This year, the system began to offer news, alerts,
social networking features, and a single sign-on for all campus systems.
5_Amplify
For charging into the new field of learning analytics. NewsCorp first
dipped its toe into educational technology late in 2010 when it
acquired Wireless Generation, a data systems engineering firm that built
software to track student progress. The acquisition was announced just
days after it was revealed that Joel Klein, the former superintendent of
New York City Public Schools, would be joining the conglomerate as
well. Last July it launched Amplify, an education technology unit led by
Klein, which will produce open-source, tablet-based classroom
assessment tools that will help teachers use classroom and student data
to their advantage. NewsCorp also secured the support of AT&T, which
will provide hardware during the program’s pilot phase.
6_GameDesk
For building STEM concepts into games that both engage and entertain. GameDesk
is the product of seven years of research at the University of Southern
California to test the power of games as educational tools. The result
has been some of the most exciting games in the field--both in
playability and their power to educate. A $3.8 million donation from
AT&T early last year was the largest grant of any kind in the
telecom giant’s history and will help the group develop its learning
software--as with, for instance, a version of Angry Birds that teaches
kids the mathematics of a parabola.
7_Duolingo
For crowdsourcing web translation by turning it into a free
language-learning program. Developed at Carnegie Mellon, the program is
both easy and addictive: Pick the language you want to learn, sign up,
and start translating. Duolingo
serves up a sentence for you to translate. If you don’t know a word,
hover over it, and the site will define it for you in English. Advance
through the levels and earn reward points. And never, ever pay. That’s
because what you’re actually translating is Internet content;
essentially, you’re performing a service for the world wide web--a
service Duolingo can sell, making it economically sustainable.
8_InsideTrack
For motivating 350,000 students nationally, from undergraduates to
adults, to complete their education through intensive, individual
counseling. Three hundred coaches work for InsideTrack,
a 12-year-old San Francisco company that is the biggest player in the
growing field of providing hourly counseling services for college
students. InsideTrack has racked up good results; at the colleges it
serves, it has boosted graduation rates an average of 15%.
9_FunDza
For publishing a series of addictive YA novels that deal with racial
and social issues while teaching South African high school students to
read. A project of socially conscious publisher Cover2Cover Books, FunDza
has three prongs: the Harmony High series, like the Sweet Valley High
of the South African literary market, written for and appealing to
everyday teens; a mobile site that hosts serialized short fiction and
non-fiction narratives; and a mobile feature that lets students publish
their own work. FunDza also provides free reading materials to schools
that pledge to push literacy with their students.
10_ClassDojo
For giving teachers an app to help them solve their biggest
problem--classroom management--through real-time feedback and online
rewards. The cofounders are Sam Chaudhary, a former teacher and
education analyst, and Liam Don, a game developer who turned down a
recording contract to pursue a PhD in education technology. In its first
year of beta testing, the site
attracted more than 3.5 million teachers and students in 30 countries
and raised $1.6 million in seed funding from investors including Learn
Capital and Paul Graham of Y Combinator. The best part is that most of
the growth has been viral--word of mouth among teachers over Twitter and
Facebook--showing that the program has real traction with its target
audience.
For sticking it to fraudulent pharmaceutical sellers. Sproxil has
developed a game-changing approach to help eliminate the fake drugs
that kill more than 700,000 people around the world each year. When
patients receive their medications, they simply scratch off a sticker
label to reveal a code, then text it to Sproxil, which verifies its
authenticity. Last year, the company crossed the 2-million-use threshold
and launched a partnership with IBM to analyze customer data so they
could discern drug-counterfeiting patterns. Sproxil has since expanded
to several other fields in need of product verification, from
agricultural goods to auto parts.
2_Safaricom
For bridging the healthcare gap with telecom. Safaricom
first won international attention for dramatically expanding banking in
Kenya by providing financial services over the phone. Now, it’s doing
the same for healthcare with Daktari 1525, a call-in service launched in
late 2011. For a small fee, Kenyans can phone a doctor 24 hours a day,
giving them access to basic medical advice in a country where healthcare
providers are in ridiculously short supply. Safaricom recently launched
a budget-friendly smartphone called Yolo, which is also the first
Intel-powered phone to reach Africa.
3_D-Rev
For bringing design to third-world healthcare. While access to
healthcare in developing countries has improved, new patients often shy
away from (if not scoff at) providers who use today’s typically
expensive and complex tools and machinery. D-Rev
aims to bridge the gap by designing top-quality products that can be
built affordably, then partnering with distributors to bring them to
market. Last year, it launched Brilliance, a scaled-down phototherapy
lap for infant jaundice that costs a fraction of the price of competing
products.
4_Proteus Digital Health
For putting GPS in our pills. Finding out what’s wrong with our
bodies would be a lot easier if doctors could just see inside, right?
That’s the thinking behind Proteus Digital Health’s
product, an ingestible sensor the size of a grain of sand and powered
by stomach acid. When swallowed with a pill, the device, which won FDA
approval last year, relays information to your smartphone about your
intake schedule and how the drug is affecting your body. The ultimate
goal is to embed the sensor directly within pharmaceutical products.
5_Dexcom
For bringing design to your blood-sugar monitor. Dexcom treats
medical devices like your favorite electronics. Its continuous glucose
monitor (CGM)--a device that that monitors a diabetic’s blood-sugar
level via a sensor placed under the skin of the abdomen--could be
mistaken for a sleek flip cam, and helped the company increase it
revenue 42% in the second quarter of last year. In October, the FDA
approved its newest line, the G4 Platinum, which offers a color LCD
display, customizable alerts, and up to 30% better accuracy.
6_GE Healthcare
For making an ultrasound for your whole body. While GE
has long been the top seller of ultrasound devices around the globe,
Logiq, its light and portable laptop-size machine, can do things most
others can’t. Logiq has become a favorite of sports doctors--most
notably those in the NFL and major-league baseball--by allowing them to
peer inside an athlete’s body mere moments after an injury. Its latest
versions can construct 3D versions of scans and observe needles inside
the body during injections.
7_Walgreens
For redefining the role of the pharmacy. A public spat last year with
a prescription partner stalled Walgreen’s revenues and siphoned
customers away. To counter the loss, the company bet on a more refined
approach to patient care, which yielded new mobile app features that
help patients manage their medications, such as Pill Reminder, and a web
tool called Find Your Pharmacist, which lists local pharmacists by
their expertise. Those efforts, combined with partnerships with the CDC
and the Department of Health and Human Services to expand in-store HIV
testing, created a new standard for the patient-pharmacy relationship.
8_Athenahealth
For making it easy to access medical records online. Athenahealth
stands out among the companies that are putting medical records online:
It’s a system that doctors actually like to use, a critical factor in
dragging healthcare into the Digital Age. Athenahealth’s nimble,
cloud-based application is so attractive that more than one-third of its
new clients had been users of other costly electronic systems. With its
recent acquisition of mobile health company Epocrates, Athenahealth
will soon be able to let doctors access patients’ records on the go.
9_Teladoc
For strengthening the doctor-patient connection. Teladoc
provides medical consultations by phone and video, selling its services
to insurers that want to keep members from making unnecessary trips to
the doctor’s office. Last year, the company more than doubled its
membership and launched a service to let physicians connect directly to
their patients. A new partnership with medical software company
HealthSpot will let Teladoc create private, walk-in kiosks for patient
care.
10_SeeChange Health
For giving members incentives to get healthy. After three years administering fast-growing products for United Healthcare, SeeChange Health
launched its own insurance company last year, and it’s pursuing the
industry’s Holy Grail: getting members to take more responsibility for
their own health. The startup sells software that analyzes workers’
health risks, and then maps out plans to help them stay healthy. When
employees complete simple tasks like getting a physical or filling out a
wellness survey, they earn rewards in the form of cash or discounts on
out-of-pocket expenses.
Even the bigwigs get tempted by the
latest cat video. They just figured out how to kick the habit with some
simple mind hacks and easy-to-use apps.
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the
result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused
effort.”-–Paul J. Meyer.
Since the early 1970s, productivity--the amount of output per hour
worked--has been steadily rising in America. Between 1973 and 2011, the productivity of the American worker has grown an astonishing 80 percent,
according to the Economic Policy Institute. Since 2000 alone, the
productivity of average Americans has risen 23 percent. How are we
achieving this extraordinary rise in productivity? In large part, it’s
because we’re finding new tools and techniques to increase our focus and
efficiency.
The average level of productivity for all American workers has
shifted upward; but that’s the average American, not the top CEOs,
entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are constantly finding
creative ways to accomplish more. So what are the strategies and
practices that these highly successful people incorporate into their
professional and personal daily routines?
Below, some of the most productive people--from
successful investors to “always-on” executives--share their secrets on
how to be your most productive self, despite the overflowing in-boxes,
the constant buzz of the phone and the never-ending ping of meeting
alerts. Clear Your Mind, Define Your Focus Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction
and principal at The Chatham Group, shared two tips that keep her
focused, energized, effective and productive both personally and
professionally. “There are two things I do to get the energy, capacity
and focus I need to not only be efficient, but effective. Personally, I
take 15 minutes every morning for contemplation and to empty my mind. I
take a bag full of thoughts I need cleared and each morning I pick one
out, read it, and send it down the river near my house. Watching the
thought float away really helps clear my mind, reorient things and
increase my focus for the rest of the day,” said Lea, who successfully
juggles several roles across various companies including CEO, investor,
advisor, mentor and principal.
“Professionally,” Lea added, “I send an email to my team each Monday
morning with the top five things I will be focused on for the week. This
really keeps me on track and gives me the focus I need. These two
things set the pace for me every day, both in my personal and
professional life.” Cut Back On Meetings Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
(KPCB), said he keeps productive by being diligent about
meetings--sticking to the allotted time and only scheduling in-person
meetings when it’s absolutely necessary. “I leave meetings at their
allotted end time regardless of whether they are finished,” said
Komisar, who authored the book, Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model.
“I do not reschedule an appointment for a more important one unless it
is an emergency. If an email will do, I don't make a call; if a call
will do, I don't have a meeting; if a 30-minute meeting is sufficient, I
don't schedule an hour.” All About Evernote Dylan Tweney, the executive editor at VentureBeat, said Evernote,
the popular note-taking and archiving service, is his go-to
productivity tool. “I use Evernote to collect everything I might
possibly need to save for later, with the exception of emails--Gmail is
fine for that. I store all of my important documents--from notes to
interviews--in Evernote. I also use Evernote tags as a kind of to-do
list: I have a set of tags that I can use to prioritize things that need
to happen immediately or that I'm waiting for someone else to finish:
("1-next," "2-soon," "3-later," "4-someday," and "5-waiting"). When I
get an email that I need to act on but can't respond to immediately, I
forward it to my private Evernote address and then prioritize it,” said
Tweney. “Finally, I use Instapaper
liberally to save articles that I run across during the day, but don't
have time to read during the busy hours. It sends stories to my Kindle
automatically, so I always have something interesting to read on the
train ride home or in the evening. That helps keep me focused on work,
even when people are sharing fascinating things on Twitter and Facebook
all day.” Get Tunnel Vision Kevin O’Connor, the serial entrepreneur who founded both DoubleClick and more recently FindTheBest,
a data-driven comparison engine, said he makes an effort to focus on
only the top few things that really are going to move the needle. “Most
people tend to focus on the 100 things they should do, which can be
overwhelming and result in the failure to actually accomplishing
anything of importance. I try to focus on the three to five things I
absolutely have to do. I don't get distracted by those ninety-seven
other unimportant things that don't ultimately contribute to my success
or the success of my company.” Get Physical Patrick Dolan, the EVP and COO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB), said what keeps him productive, focused and energized is going
for runs in the morning. “I love to run in the morning before I get into
work. Running clears my mind, gets the blood flowing and ultimately
makes me much more focused and productive. During my morning runs, I try
to come up with solutions to any unresolved problems at work,
brainstorm new ideas, and really prioritize my work in terms of the top
things I want to accomplish that day. By the time I get into work, I
already have a set of focused priorities, and I also have the energy to
make them happen.” Police Your Own Internet Habits: Notifications Are Evil Fred Bateman, the CEO and Founder of Bateman Group,
said he uses a tool called StayFocusd to keep track of how much time
he’s spending on various sites. “To stay ‘in the zone’ and increase
productivity in today's digital age, I strongly recommend blocking all
audio and visual notifications from Outlook, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I
think all notifications are evil because they typically have both audio
and visual distraction triggers, which can wreak havoc on your
concentration. This extends to my iPhone, which is always, always set to
vibrate with all notifications on all email accounts and mobile apps
turned completely off, said Bateman. “I also have a tendency to begin
earnestly researching something online with the very best of intentions
and then get lost viewing irrelevant content and wasting way too much
time. To limit this, I turn on a browser extension to Chrome called
StayFocusd where I maintain a list of sites I can get lost on for
hours--the New York Times and Facebook are my top two.
StayFocusd alerts me after ten minutes have passed and then blocks the
offending sites to help me resist temptation and stay focused on the
task at hand.” Put Email In Its Place Anne-Marie Slaugher, a professor of politics and international
relations at Princeton University and author of the popular article
published last year in The Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t
Have it All,” said basing your work day around the never-ending flow of
incoming emails is a huge productivity suck. “My principal productivity
tip is that if you are caught up on your email, your priorities are in
the wrong place. An extra of hour of email will accomplish very little
in the long run, but that hour could be spent reading to your kids
before bed, cooking a meal, or taking a walk and clearing your head--all
far better choices,” said Slaughter, who previously served as Director
of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. “More generally, email
puts you in response mode, where you are doing what other people want
you to do, rather than send mode, where you are deciding what you want
to do and taking action.”
Every Wikipedia entry has an optional feature we take for
granted--geotagging. An entry on the Lincoln Memorial will be linked to
its specific latitude and longitude in Washington D.C. On any individual
post, this may or may not be a useful thing. But what about looking at
these locations en masse?
That was a question asked by data viz specialist and programmer Olivier Beauchesne.
To find out, he downloaded all of Wikipedia (it’s open-source, after
all) then used an algorithm that would assemble 300 topical clusters
from popular, related keywords. Then he placed the location of each
article in these topical clusters on a map. What he found was
astounding.
Articles about shipwrecks
“I thought I would get only geographical clusters [like mountains],”
Beauchesne tells Co.Design, “not topics about abstract subjects like
history, archeology, TV shows, race relations, etc.”
In the gallery above, Beauchesne walks us through the findings of
several of his maps (it’s worth exploring). Blue is always the
baseline--just locations of all Wikipedia articles. The red is where the
geolocation of any searched topic appears.
You can see that, yes, the mountain ranges are an easy spot. The
geotags on articles about mountains aggregate to re-create actual
mountain ranges. But there are a slew of other, more fascinating
results, too. Articles about beer and wine generate a map of the
grape-growing regions in Italy, California, and France. Coastal stories
create thin coastal outlines of our continents. War articles paint a
picture of the world’s battles, and specific searches including “navy”
and “navy battles” will actually draw a picture of World War II. You
don’t just see a map of places; you see images of history and culture.
“I was a bit taken aback of the granularity of the geocoding,”
Beauchesne admits. “It seems that everywhere on Earth (except jungles,
deserts, oceans, etc.) is documented.”
Articles about mountain ranges
Assuming Wikipedia is around for the next century, it would be
incredible to watch the dark spots of the map fill in with knowledge, as
submarines take us deeper into the ocean and as historians learn more
about past cultures. Eventually, Beauchesne’s maps evolve to something
more than the locations of everything in the world. They become the
locations of, quite simply, everything we know.
Stefan Olander, head of Nike's three-year-old Digital Sport division,
is watching a group of his engineers hack an experiment together.
They're using a pair of Nike trainers with embedded sensors. The sensors
measure pressure created when the shoes, which happen to be on the feet
of a lanky product manager named Brandon Burroughs, strike the ground.
The data are collected and then fed wirelessly to an iPhone; the iPhone
is plugged into a MacBook; the MacBook's screen features a program that
is busily imitating a 1987 Nintendo video game called Track & Field II.
Which brings us to the ostensible goal of all this madness: finding out
if new-age sensors and wireless devices work with an ancient video
game.
That's why Burroughs, who is outfitted head to toe in Nike attire, is
crouched in anticipation like a runner before a starter pistol is
fired. Suddenly, a whistle screams from the MacBook--it's the game's
signal that a steeplechase "race" has begun--and Burroughs starts
sprinting in place. It isn't pretty. He's panting heavily. He's been at
this for a while and is clearly spent. His feet thud against the carpet
like a clumsy drumroll as his crude avatar lurches forward on screen.
And he's doing all this in a big, clean, stark corporate lab full of
engineers, which isn't very glamorous. But the experiment is working,
sort of: As his avatar nears the first hurdle, Burroughs leaps too late,
leading his digital self to trip and tumble into a pixelated pool of
water. "Arrrrrrr!" yells Burroughs. "Come on!"
Olander, who bears a distracting resemblance to Matthew McConaughey
and looks fit enough to have cleared that hurdle with ease, jokes that
the only problem here is that Burroughs "is not very fast." He actually
loves that the group is "just mucking about and having fun," as he puts
it. "Really cool stuff can come from the opportunity to test without
constraints." And that, in sum, is innovation, Nike-style: a messy,
exhausting process culled from myriad options and countless failures.
In 2012, Nike's experimentation yielded two breakout hits. The first
is the FuelBand, a $150 electronic bracelet that measures your movements
throughout the day, whether you play tennis, jog, or just walk to work.
The device won raves for its elegant design and a clean interface that
lets users track activity with simple color cues (red for inactive;
green if you've achieved your daily goal). Press its one button for a
scrolling stock ticker of how many calories you've burned, the number of
steps you've taken, and your total NikeFuel points, a proprietary
metric of activity that Nike encourages you to share online. The
FuelBand is the clearest sign that Nike has transformed itself into a
digital force. "Nike has broken out of apparel and into tech, data, and
services, which is so hard for any company to do," says Forrester
Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.
The other innovation is the Flyknit Racer, featherlight shoes that
feel more like a sock atop a sole. Created from knit threading rather
than multiple layers of fabric, it required a complete rethink of Nike's
manufacturing process. The result is a shoe that's more environmentally
friendly and could reduce long-term production costs. "Flyknit could
turn the [shoe] industry on its head," says Nike sustainability VP
Hannah Jones.
To produce even one of these innovations in a given year is a rarity
for any company, especially one with 44,000 employees. But Nike CEO Mark
Parker knows he can't just rely on celebrity endorsements and the power
of the swoosh when confronted by big-name competitors such as Adidas
and upstarts like Jawbone and Fitbit. "One of my fears is being this
big, slow, constipated, bureaucratic company that's happy with its
success," he says. "Companies fall apart when their model is so
successful that it stifles thinking that challenges it. It's like what
the Joker said--'This town needs an enema.' When needed, you've got to
apply that enema, so to speak."
Every CEO says this kind of thing (minus the enema part). The
difference is that Parker delivers. Last year, Nike's annual revenue hit
$24 billion, up 60% since he took over the reins as CEO in 2006.
Profits are up 57%, and Nike's market cap has more than doubled. This
story is about how he has achieved that growth, and how he has driven a
commitment to the company's culture. Nike is a business with much
corporate lore, that lovely, misty story of how a bunch of renegades
with a waffle iron bucked the system and revolutionized an industry. But
a close examination of the development of Flyknit and the FuelBand,
based on interviews with top Nike executives, current and former
designers, engineers, and longtime collaborators, reveals four distinct
rules that guide this company, that allow it to take big risks, that
push it to adapt before competitors force it to change.
What makes Flyknit so truly disruptive is that it isn't a shoe--it's a
way to make shoes. As the team members who spent four years developing
the technology like to say, they're "breaking the sewing machine." The
old Nike model involved cutting rolls of prewoven material into pieces,
and then stitching and assembling them. But with Flyknit, a shoe's upper
and tongue can be knit from polyester yarns and cables, which "gets rid
of all the unnecessary excesses," says Ben Shaffer, studio director at
the Innovation Kitchen, Nike's R&D center. The Flyknit Racer, one of
the first shoes in the Flyknit line, is 5.6 ounces, roughly an ounce
lighter than its counterparts. Nike uses only as much thread as it needs
in production, and the shoe can be micro-engineered--tightened here,
stretched there--to improve durability and fit.
Parker clearly has big expectations for Flyknit, telling shareholders
it "is one of those technologies that has incredible potential, not
only within running, but across multiple categories." That's a massive
bet given Nike's dominance of the athletic-shoe business, where, for
example, it owns half the running market and a whopping 92% of the U.S.
basketball shoe business. And Nike has gone all-in on that bet, building
a whole new manufacturing process around the product. "Does this change
our business model in some cases, or our supply chain? Absolutely,"
Parker says.
Shaffer shows me some of the 195 major iterations the Flyknit went
through as we tour the Kitchen. Some appear as rudimentary as a
ballerina's slipper. The prototype that marathon runner Paula Radcliffe
marked with scribbles now looks like a rejected Project Runway
design. Nike's ambitions for Flyknit can be seen in the trays full of
feet that live in tall carts around the Kitchen. The disembodied wooden
lumps--most generically sized and others made by scanning some of the
actual feet of the thousands of professional athletes that the company
sponsors--are all waiting to be fitted, like Cinderella, with the
perfect prototype shoe.
"Flyknit is a platform," Nike's Jones says. "We're reimagining the
upper, the bottoms--the whole caboodle." In addition, as materials such
as rubber become harder to come by because of overharvesting or climate
change, "we're going to be able to navigate the volatility of these
resources," she adds. Then, perhaps reminded of the fierce competition
Nike is in with Adidas over knit shoes, Jones stops short and wavers, "I
can't say anymore."
Before the FuelBand, a product called Magneto was, briefly, Nike's
next big thing. You'd tape magnets to your temples and then clip
futuristic eyewear onto them. "Perhaps we went too far with that idea,
because we actually started to make it," admits global brand EVP Trevor
Edwards. Parker decided the product was impractical, and he killed it.
That sounds like an obvious call, but Parker reputedly approved
Flyknit after being shown only a tube sock stitched to a rubber sole.
Early on, great ideas can resemble bad ones: They both sound ridiculous.
"Steve [Jobs] had a good bullshit meter, but also an open mind," Parker
says. "It's that bullshit filter that says, 'Really? Is this really
compelling?' We kill a lot of ideas."
Parker says he often feels like Tom Hanks in Big--a kid at a
toy company whose job is to approve only the products he has fun with.
In the FuelBand, Parker saw what athletes would instinctively value. As a
"smart" version of the already popular Livestrong bracelet, the
FuelBand would give users their own digital coach to motivate them. They
could connect with other users and with their friends and family via
social media to cheer them on, whether it's to lose weight or train for a
marathon. Nike would benefit from this community, thanks to the ongoing
connection with its customers, as well as every user promoting Nike
with each post or tweet of their activity report. Plus, people were
already comfortable with wearing a silicone wristband, unlike, say, face
magnets.
As if to prove the point, when Parker and I meet, he's wearing a
FuelBand on each wrist--exactly double what any user needs. "I don't
normally wear two," he says, beaming, "but I have to admit, I'm
obsessed." The company is now working to extend that obsession to
others. In December, Nike partnered with the startup mentoring firm
TechStars to woo entrepreneurs to launch companies that will build on
top of Nike's digital platform. Nike has already announced games built
on Fuel points.
This three-steps-ahead thinking is important for any product. Flyknit
is not only valuable because its technology will help Nike make all
kinds of lighter, better-fitting shoes, but also because it fits into
the company's global growth initiatives. With Brazil hosting both the
2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, Sterne Agee analyst Sam Poser
believes Flyknit will help Nike reorient how it makes and sells shoes in
such an important international market. "The duties importing from
China [where Nike does much of its manufacturing] to Brazil are absolute
craziness--way too cost-prohibitive, and the [manufacturing] in Brazil
is so expensive," he says. "But Flyknit is much less labor intensive. If
they can go into Brazil and set up [knitting] machines, they win."
Poser goes further, imagining that Flyknit will one day allow customers
to digitally personalize shoes to match the exact shape of their feet.
Parker wouldn't be blamed if he had passed on Flyknit after seeing a
modified tube sock, but if Nike doesn't bet on crazy ideas, its rivals
will. "They're like sharks," says Poser. "If they stop swimming, they
die." Adidas, also after four years of research, launched its Primeknit
line only months after Flyknit's. Nike then dragged Adidas to court over
patent-infringement claims related to knit technology.
Stefan Olander has barely ushered me into his neatly arranged office
when he invokes FuelBand lore. He has an early prototype at the ready,
the very one that his team used in 2010 to pitch the idea to CEO Mark
Parker. "We pulled up [our sleeves] and revealed this," he says, sliding
his fingers over the white leathery Velcro bracelet marked with green
calculator-like numbers. "Mark is so consumer-driven that instinctively
he said, 'Go do this now.' His first question was, 'How fast can you
build this?'"
The tale is burnished to a high gloss, which is a shame, because an
idea as big as the FuelBand does not get cooked up in a single lab. It
doesn't become a sophisticated, beautiful product just because Parker
admired a leathery wristband. Nike doesn't like to discuss the gritty
details of how something like the FuelBand gets made, but the real story
shows how messy true innovation is.
In a world of rapid disruption, companies no longer must--or can--own
all the skills required to thrive. Just as Google needed Android to
attack mobile and Apple needed Siri to give it a foothold in search,
successful businesses need to constantly evolve, either through
partnerships, new talent, acquisitions--or all three. "You can't have a
barrier or restriction," says lead Nike engineer Aaron Weast. For the
FuelBand, Nike had to open its doors.
The FuelBand's road to reality began in March of 2010, when a
three-person Nike team flew to San Francisco to share their idea with
the industrial design firm Astro Studios.
"They had this concept of a tennis sweatband with an electronic watch,"
Astro design EVP Kyle Swen recalls, as he sits in the same third-floor
conference room where the meeting took place. "They wouldn't even leave
us the pitch; it was super confidential." Nike also consulted
engineering firms Whipsaw and Synapse, and longtime digital marketing agency R/GA.
This team of outside partners created hundreds of prototypes,
imagining concepts for displays that resembled an Amazon Kindle screen;
bands that fully illuminate with color; ones that fit over your leg or
upper arm; and even a fastening system modeled after a gas nozzle.
"Everything was custom, custom, custom," says Astro designer Anh Nguyen.
Olander played the shepherd. "You will never get good work out of
anyone if you hand over a brief and go, 'We have no clue what we want,
but why don't you just do it for us,'" Olander says. During the
FuelBand's development, for example, Nike's specific requests to
partners included its red-to-green color scheme; the idea of Fuel
points, which Olander felt would encourage competition among users
regardless of their sport; and a dead-simple interface without excessive
metrics. The team learned that last insight from its experience with
Nike's earlier digital products, for which 30% of users turned off
calorie tracking.
Nike's role was between a coach and a traffic cop. Nike designer
Jamian Cobbett describes it as an "ebb and flow." Astro's Swen relates
how engineers from other parts of Nike's assembled team would see what
the designers had in mind: "They were like, 'No fucking way,'" he says,
laughing. "But that's innovation: full throttle, hit the brakes; full
throttle, hit the brakes." The effort produced several breakthroughs,
such as when Whipsaw embedded 120 LED lights in the bracelet (to look
like an old-time scoreboard) and Synapse developed a curved lithium
battery. Both are key features of the final product.
R/GA was tasked with the interactive experience and toyed with making
Fuel points spendable. "We had conversations around racking up points
and spending them on Nike socks," says Ian Spalter, who was then R/GA's
product design VP and who now serves a similar role at Foursquare. The
agency tinkered with tabulating Fuel points in aggregate for public
causes--the digital equivalent of charity runs. Several sources say Nike
considered selling FuelBands synced in pairs (so spouses or best
friends could track each other's progress), and it even explored using
the system to create campfire moments--that is, lighting up all the
FuelBands in the world at a particular time to connect with its
community, such as when the Olympics commenced. In the end, the pull of
getting a small shot of electronic serotonin from checking your progress
all the time, the same way many people incessantly refresh email and
social media statuses, proved more than addictive. "There's something
about dipping into feeds," says Nick Law, R/GA's chief creative officer,
"whether it's fantasy football, Twitter, or Instagram."
As the product rounded into shape, "editing [then] becomes critical,"
Parker says. Olander adds, "It was like, 'What if we know your heart
rate and have galvanic skin response, or add a gyro and magnetometer? We
could know everything.' But who's going to do all that stuff? It's this
interaction between design and engineering that keeps the experience
refined."
And during that process, "Nike was the ultimate creative director,"
says Spalter. "What's more important--the people who cook up all the
options or the people who curate and make the decisions? For a company
of Nike's size, they keep the number of editors to a pretty damn short
list."
I am sitting in a Winnebago, parked in the middle of the Innovation
Kitchen. The team purchased it on Craigslist for $750 to use as a
conference room. There's plenty of meeting space elsewhere, but as
legend has it, Nike cofounder Phil Knight first sold shoes in the back
of an RV like this one. So here we are.
Nike's campus is full of odd talismans like this, a living museum of
itself, a container of legends and oral histories. The waffle iron that
cofounder Bill Bowerman ruined making rubber soles in the 1970s? It's
enshrined on campus like the Liberty Bell. In fact, with so many bits of
lore around, anything can be mistaken as symbolic. The clock inside the
Winnebago reads 2:59 even though it's barely past noon. My PR handler
makes a point of asking about the significance of the clock's time. "I
don't even know," Shaffer says, "but there's always something superdeep
in things like that." Adds my handler, "That's the kind of detail people
obsess over here--little things like this have a story behind it. Or,
well, maybe it just means the battery is dead."
If Nike treats its past with reverence, it represents its present in a
different but equally honed way: as "top secret." In Parker's office,
he shows me a pink running shoe that he says will reinvent Nike's
manufacturing processes yet again. (It fuses Flyknit technology with a
new, peculiar honeycomb-like sole.) "You might be the very first person
outside of Nike to see this," he says.
In fact, I'm repeatedly dipped into the company's inexhaustible
supply of secrets--so much so that I wonder if Nike labels ideas
"secret" the way the government broadly labels files "classified."
Inside a garage on the outskirts of campus, behind a day-care center and
a security firm, with its door simply marked "A," I witness two toned
athletes lunging in front of a pair of Xboxes. This is the Sparq
performance center, which was key to developing the analytics behind the
FuelBand and other digital Nike products. At one point, Sparq
performance director Paul Winsper insists, "We don't want anybody to
know about this." And as I enter the Zoo, another of Nike's "secret"
facilities, an engineer confides, "Sometimes you want to be nice and
hold the door for someone behind you, but you just never know."
All of this surely has some level of truth: Nike doesn't want full
details of its R&D leaked out, nor does it want, say, some Adidas
employee wandering in to snap photos. (Ahem: "Hell would freeze over
before we copied a product," Adidas design lead James Carnes tells me.)
But like an action movie, the story isn't built to withstand serious
inquiry. I'm told, for example, that only a few dozen employees have
access to the Zoo and the Innovation Kitchen. Yet there are clearly more
than a few dozen employees inside both, which, mind you, are on the
first floor of the Mia Hamm building, behind only slightly tinted
windows through which passersby can clearly see from the campus
sidewalk. At one point when I walk by, a door to the Kitchen is propped
open, unsupervised.
So what's with all the hush-hush? Culture. Employees internalize
their own stories--that their work is imbued with a value worthy of
secrecy, vaulting Nike into the lofty heights of philosophical (and
sometimes self-important) corporate cultures alongside only Apple and
Disney. When I bump into Nike coach and three-time New York City
Marathon winner Alberto Salazar, in between the campus's Olympic-size
swimming pools and sky-high climbing walls, even he tells me, "This
place is like Disneyland."
That cohesive culture begets tangible benefits, such as talent
retention. At Nike, you're a rookie if you've been at the company for
less than a decade. Workers quote the company's maxims like the Ten
Commandments. More than a dozen tell me, independently and unprompted,
"Be a sponge" and "If you have a body, you're an athlete." "We can
almost finish each other's sentences," Parker says. "But not in a
drinking-the-Kool-Aid, cultlike way."
That self-image is infused into every marketing message and product
release, and transferred to a public eager to finally be let in on the
secret. The more exclusive the presentation of those products and
brands, the more they are desired. Parker borrowed more than a bullshit
meter from Steve Jobs. No wonder consumers and media line the block for
both Apple and Nike product launches.
"There's a halo effect of being seen as an innovative company," says
Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps. "It's hard to overstate how important it
is that Apple CEO Tim Cook is seen wearing one of your products onstage
at an Apple event," as he was with a FuelBand during the iPad Mini
launch last October. Never mind that Cook sits on Nike's board. The cool
kids are sitting at the same table, and you're invited.
After leaving that secretive garage on the corner of campus, the one
labeled A, I'm told I won't be able to locate it again. It's that
hidden, my handlers say, like a witch's cabin that vanishes into the
woods.
It seemed like a challenge. So the next day, I go hunting. I search
in the rain for 45 minutes, down endless little roads. Finally, there it
is--unguarded, intact, no laws of physics denied.
Another Nike myth busted? Perhaps. But I can't go in; the garage is
empty. The lights are turned off. The building is there, but the ideas
inside are gone. The secret is kept.
For nearly a decade, tennis star Serena
Williams has been one of Nike's most visible athletes. (In March, in
fact, her core workout will be released on the Nike Training Club app.) But she's also a serious entrepreneur: Her clothing line Signature Statement
is on HSN.com, and her business investments range from skin care to
tech startups to part ownership of the Miami Dolphins. And she credits
Nike for setting her business standards. 1/Always offer something new
"You look at where Nike started, from the '80s until now, and it's
such a huge difference," Williams says. "I wonder, like, how were
athletes able to play back then? Every time I turn around there's
something new--pants with ventilation, seamless fabric. They actually
invent fabrics, which is really cool for me, with my fashion background.
I always use them in my line. I'm like, 'So what are the colors for
next season?'" 2/The invisible is as valuable as the visible
"When I first came to Nike I said, 'I don't care how I feel; I just
want to look good.' And they said, 'We're going to make you look good,
and we're going to make it comfortable.' Last year at the French Open,
my dress was almost like a Herve Leger [bandage] dress, really tight
fabric. But I was able to perform, I was able to move. It was really
functional, but it was also bringing design and style."
3/Consider yourself an underdog
"I'm not disrupting my brand enough. I need to do it more. Nike
always tries to improve. They never say, 'I'm No. 1, and I'm happy.'
They always say, 'How can we get better?' Beyond a company, beyond
entrepreneurship, you can really take that attitude in your life, like, I
want to be a great mother, or a great student, or a great doctor. What
can I do to be better?" --As told to Whitney Pastorek
[Top photo: Jason Pietra, Prop Styling: Erin Swift; Parker: Art
Streiber; Fashion Styling: Melanie Leftick; Grooming: Juanita Lyon;
Serena: Photo by Art Streiber; Hair: Nikki Nelms; Makeup: Sheika Daley;
Prop Styling: Nick Tortoricii]
