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Young entrepeneurs mix business with charity
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Simpson, Nadine
Jewish Standard, The
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For those who feel most comfortable shopping at 3 a.m., in their underwear, online shopping is extremely convenient.
But that doesn’t mean online retailers have figured out how to cater to consumers’ every need — and to help Israel in the process.
That’s where 19-year-old entrepreneurs Mike Schneider and Bryan Welfel of CremeCrop.com come in.
Their goal is to provide people who want to buy electronics with a "no-stress shopping" experience at a user-friendly Website, rather than others they feel come across as cold and mechanical. Along the way, they plan to donate a portion of their profits to the Save a Child’s Heart Foundation.
The organization is based at the Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, the largest suburb of Tel Aviv, and provides surgery for children in developing and third world countries.
The Hillel of Colgate University, where Schneider is a student, raised money for the organization. When Schneider went on Colgate Hillel’s Birthright Israel trip this summer, the group hand-delivered the money and he saw the difference being made firsthand.
"We got to visit them and talk to the administrators and the kids who just had surgery and the kids who were going to. It was really moving," Schneider said. "Sometimes you donate to charities and you wonder what your money’s doing. But here you see a tangible difference. Each $10,000 directly saves a child’s life."
The experience was so moving that when Welfel asked about the trip, most of Schneider’s response was about seeing this charity in action.
"He asked how it was, and I didn’t tell him the typical stories college students would share. I told him all about the charity and how I wanted to donate."
"And I said, ‘Okay, we’re doing it!’" Welfel interrupted.
"I wanted to donate on my own anyway," said Schneider. "But we could give a more substantial contribution if we did it through CremeCrop than from personal funds alone."
Because they want to wait until they can raise a significant amount, they have not chosen a specific percentage from their sales that will go to Save a Child’s Heart.
"If we say a certain percent and sales don’t do so well, it might not be a lot, so we’re going to wait until we get a good amount," said Schneider.
As for the Website, "Some people go shopping and want to see every camera. But there are some people, who are like, ‘Just give me a camera that takes pictures that look good and doesn’t cost a fortune,’" said Welfel, who is from River Vale. "That’s the person we want to help. We’re just trying to save the consumer money. We’re telling you what you need based on what you want."
The site offers several different products, but unlike other retailers, they sell only one brand and model of each item.
But they aren’t saying people can’t do the research themselves. Welfel stresses that it can be tedious and not everyone has the time or technical knowledge to do it.
"For every two products we put up, we’ve probably looked at 500," said Welfel.
"We stand by all of our products," said Schneider. "And we’re brutally honest."
They aim to pick the best products, reviewing every version and brand they can find, even if those aren’t the most popular ones on the market. For example, anyone looking for an MP3 player won’t find an iPod on the pair’s Website.
"We hate to be the ones to break it to you, but the iPod really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. That’s right — not only is the iPod overpriced with limited features, but purchasing one won’t make you as fun and cool as those shadowy dancers on fluorescent backgrounds from the commercials. That’s why we’ve chosen a player that has more features and costs less — the Creative Vision M," says the Website.
"It cuts into our financial gains," said Schneider, but neither he nor Welfel is upset by that. So far, the entrepreneurs have done very well for themselves, especially considering that when they began, they knew nothing about starting a business.
The initial idea for CremeCrop.com came from Welfel, who loves to pitch ideas to Schneider, sometimes calling him at 3 in the morning to do so.
"We have a great dynamic," said Schneider. "He comes up with the ideas and I shoot them down and refine them."
"I’m always coming up with ideas," said Welfel. "Most bad, some okay, some good. And I always pitch them to Mike and he almost always shoots them down. But I pitched this one, and he was silent for a good minute and he said, ‘No, I actually really like it.’ And everyone’s jaws just dropped."
They set a two-week deadline for the launch date, which turned into a year of uphill battles studying business issues such as tax laws, making a bank account, convincing veteran businessmen that they were legitimate, and making deals with companies and distributors.
The result is a Website on which viewers see products with pictures from every angle and their features in plain English. Any term that might be confusing is followed by a lawn chair icon that takes the user to a definition that’s thorough and easy to understand.
"It’s one thing to sell a product," said Welfel. "But it’s another to completely satisfy a customer." |
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Writer's focus pays off in best-seller
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Moss, Meredith
News Tribune
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A love of storytelling and a lifelong commitment to the craft of writing have paid off for Kim Edwards.
Her paperback novel, “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,” has been a publishing phenomenon, selling 3.1 million copies, hitting No. 1 both in Australia and England. The book has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 56 weeks.
But readers were never the objective, says Edwards, who lives in Lexington, Ky.
“It’s not easy to get published, especially as a young writer, so – if you count on publication to sustain you, you’ll give up,” she says. “I don’t really think about readers.”
They began to think about her, however, when one of her short stories won the prestigious Nelson Algren Award, given by the Chicago Tribune in 1990. That story and 13 others are featured in a collection titled “Secrets of a Fire King” (Penguin, $14). First published 10 years ago, the book has just been rereleased with new stories added.
Edwards, 49, says the imaginary world has captivated her since childhood. She attended Colgate University, then studied fiction writing at the well-known Iowa Writers Workshop.
“It was total immersion in writing and literature, and chance to study with wonderful teachers and to work with peers who were not established writers but very stimulating,” she says. That academic experience was followed by five years of “traveling and teaching and having adventures.”
“It was wonderful – in Iowa City I focused on writing, in the rural east coast of Malaysia there were no literary events,” she says. “On one hand, it was stimulating in a new country, but it was quiet. I could listen to my own narrative voices, and I could take risks.”
Those risks resulted in the Algren Award, which, she says, confirmed that she’d been heading in the right direction.
The idea for “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter” came from her pastor, who insisted she had a real-life story worth telling.
“It was about a man who discovered, when he was middle age, he’d had a brother born with Down syndrome who had been institutionalized at birth and kept secret,” she says.
The idea stayed with her. When she was invited to do a writing workshop for adults with learning challenges – including Down syndrome – Edwards enjoyed the experience.
The book took three years to write, but the calls started pouring in the day after it was sent to 16 publishers by her agent.
“There’s something mysterious about it,” she says, when asked about the novel’s great success. “It stays with people, they recommend it to others. People have come up to me after reading it and told me their most amazing secrets.”
Now Edwards, who teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky, says she’s had to cut back on personal appearances and responding to the “tons of e-mails” she receives. She’s just returned from England and Italy.
She needs time, she says, to work on her next novel.
“I don’t feel quite myself if I’m not writing,” she says. |
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Museum guide program reflects NYC diversity
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Hajela, Deepti
Associated Press (AP)
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When a young boy loses interest in a museum tour, guide Hassan Mohamed expertly draws him back in.
And when another child interrupts, Mohamed takes it in stride. "After I finish this, I'll answer your question," he says gently.
Sounds like an experienced tour guide, right?
Nope.
Mohamed, 19, is a college student participating in an American Museum of Natural History program that trains young adults to become tour leaders.
It lets the college students design their own excursions through the vast institution _ and uses their enthusiasm to capture the interest of even younger minds.
The program, now in its 12th year, also reflects the diversity of New York City. So far this year, tours have been offered in Cantonese, Spanish, Italian and French, said Caren Perlmutter, who's in charge of hiring the students.
Through the Museum Education and Employment Program, about 40 college students, ages 18-21, are hired. They get a month of training, and are asked to come up with a themed tour that they can teach to children's groups over the summer.
While other institutions have roles for college students, the one at the Natural History museum is unique for the way it allows students to create their own tours, said Perlmutter.
"They can explore their own interests, they go back into the halls, go up into the library, use their own resources and design tours on whatever they find most interesting," she said.
Mohamed, a Queens resident studying at Colgate University, leads the "Attack and Defense" tour, focusing on how animals protect themselves and attack others. Stops include the Hall of North American Mammals, the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, and of course, the Fossil Halls with all the dinosaur bones.
He loved the idea of creating his own tour. "It was definitely something: You could plan it the way you like, show you're personally into it," he said. "You tell kids something that interests you and hope that it interests them too."
Among the other offerings this summer: "Precious Matter," which takes a look at what people consider to be the most important things to them, like gold and gemstones, "Disney Tour," which teaches children about some of the people and animals they've been introduced to through Disney movies, and "Insignificance," which looks at how humans measure up in the history of the world.
Having young tour guides is a way for the museum to better connect with young visitors, Perlmutter said.
"I think there's a greater ability to relate to the students coming in, and a greater desire and willingness from the students coming in to learn from their peers," she said.
Teacher Gregory Wood, who came in with the boys on Mohamed's tour, agreed.
"It's not an authoritative figure," he said. "I think it's an excellent way of doing it."
It makes sense to Mohamed, who has spent previous summers working with kids in other environments, like his community mosque.
"Kids normally they want a friend rather than someone that oversees them," he said.
It certainly seemed to work on the four boys who went on the tour with Mohamed. By the end of the session, the questions wouldn't stop coming as they asked him seeming everything they had ever wanted to know about natural history.
"It was good," said Brian Martinez, an 11-year-old from the Bronx, who was making his first visit to the museum. "I think it was more fun because he was younger and he made it more fun." |
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Small publisher offers a different book of numbers
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Brad Stewart was a teenage stock trader in 1986 when he went to a West Los Angeles financial bookstore and stumbled across a strange, smoke-filled back room devoted to an odd science.
The co-owner of the store, Jerome Baumring, sat with his cowboy-booted feet on a desk and chain-smoked while staring through owlish glasses at a computer screen filled with stock market quotes. Baumring was surrounded on three sides by teetering stacks of books, mostly rare original editions about financial markets, music theory, astrophysics and mysticism.
If properly understood, he told Stewart, the books offered the astute investor a better understanding not just of life, but of the world of finance.
Soon Stewart was "buying hundreds of books I needed to understand the subject."
Over time, Stewart amassed a library of tomes on such things as Pythagorean harmonics, celestial mechanics and Jewish mysticism, and established himself as the go-to guy for such material among financial traders with similar interests.
Now, the 40-year-old son of a Laguna Beach real estate investor presides over the Sacred Science Institute, a small publishing firm specializing in English translations of some of the most complicated and convoluted tracts ever written. The audience: people who see geometrical connections between the architecture of Hindu temples and fluctuations in the Dow Jones industrial average.
Stewart operates out of a chalet outside Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains west of Palm Springs. The company operates under an unusual working relationship between scholars and translators with an academic interest in rare scientific and religious works, and Stewart's clients — about 400 people he likes to call "my financial guys." These book buyers tend to live in the world's financial centers, such as New York City, Singapore and London.
The Sacred Science Institute is 12 years old and has published about 500 books, mostly rare financial market treatises.
Most of his clients are fans of financial wizard W.D. Gann, whose century-old books are so dense that many students give up before gaining an inkling of his "square of nine" investment techniques. Stewart's clients aren't reading these texts to find coded references to Dell's stock price on a specific date. They read to discern larger patterns in how the universe operates.
Settling into a chair at a large wooden table in his living room and opening an elephantine edition, Stewart said, "I'll show you why my guys are into this."
"This baby begins with Pascal's arithmetical triangle and logarithmic spirals," he said, "and then just keeps going and going through Hindu chakras, the Egyptian alphabet and the harmonic patterns in the stained-glass windows of medieval cathedrals."
"The point is that this is a mysteriously organized universe," he said. "The market — its prices and times — move in accordance with its harmonic rhythms; there's a nonrandom element to it all."
The big book on the table had an equally hefty title: "Natural Architecture: A Report by Petrus Talemarianus on the Establishment of a 'Golden Rule,' According to the Principles of Tantrism, Taoism, Pythagoreanism and the Kabala, Serving to Fulfill the Laws of Universal Harmony and Contributing to the Accomplishment of the Great Work."
Published in 1949 in French and restricted to 252 copies for members of a secret society, "Natural Architecture" was recently translated into English by Ariel Godwin and edited by his father, Joscelyn, a professor of music at Colgate University in New York.
"You don't have to get the math to understand the basic idea, that numbers are the basis of the universe," Joscelyn Godwin said. "By the time you finish reading, you believe."
As for putting that knowledge to work in the stock market, however, Godwin joshed, "I just wish I had the money, the time and the temperament to try it out."
But are such things actually related to the stock price of Microsoft in the morning?
"Absolutely not," said critic John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia. "Why not study belly button lint? The translations might be difficult undertakings, but the financial codes and formulas that people think they discern from them have nothing to do with the stock market."
Still, Stewart has his fans. Future offerings will include "The Archeometer" by Saint-Yves d'Alveydre. The works will sell for as much as $350 each, for those who wish to buy only one, and $250 for those who join the Sacred Science Translation Society.
Exactly when the books will be released is hard to say. "I have no deadlines," Stewart said. "It can take years to translate some of these books. But my guys will wait, because there's no place else to get them."
Regular customers include Steve Rideout, a natural-gas trader and hedge fund developer who believes that "while the predictive world of finance is difficult," mastering the geometrical codes hidden within such works as Plato's "Timaeus" will give him just enough of an edge "to actually make some money."
Commodity trader Robert Tam said two decades of intense study of the relationship between science and religion has led to spiritual renewal.
"It takes a lot of homework figuring out these ideas — initially, it killed my social life," he said. "But as I delved deeper and deeper into Plato, geometry, the movement of the planets and music, I found myself also moving deeper into my own Orthodox Judaism."
Stewart appreciates such connections as well.
"This material is not for everyone," he said. "And I always tell people, 'Don't expect to read a few books and get rich.' In fact, I'm not even all that interested in the stock market anymore.
"Money doesn't solve the big questions, the ones that resonate with the heart," he said. "For me and many of my financial market guys, it was simply the stick that was whacking us down the road to the real prize: a better understanding of the order of the universe." |
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Colgate hopes returning talent, tougher schedule enough to earn '08 tourney bid
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After arguably its best season in school history, Colgate University still missed out on the NCAA Tournament in 2007.
A season-ending win against Syracuse, the school's first since 1975, and the Red Raiders’ 11 total victories weren't enough to sway the tournament selection committee, which left the Patriot Leaguers out despite a No. 16 national rankings, the highest standing ever for a Colgate men's lacrosse team.
The Red Raiders were able to win their first conference tournament game (a semifinal win against Bucknell), but couldn't secure the automatic bid that comes with the Patriot League title. They lost to Navy, 15-9, in the championship after being outscored 6-1 in the fourth quarter.
So while head coach Jim Nagle believes, "We had a good enough season that we would have been competitive in the tournament," he also adds, "We have to take accountability rather than say we got screwed."
Colgate finished 11-5, with the five losses coming to Navy (twice), Cornell, Albany and Penn State. All but the Patriot League title game defeat to the Midshipmen came before the end of March. The biggest win – the seven-goal victory at Syracuse – was played after the Patriot League tournament.
"We didn't start reaching our potential until midseason." Nagle says. "That will be something we want to work on this season."
The Red Raiders have the ability to again make a run at the NCAAs. The important pieces of their skilled and versatile offense return including the top two scorers in the Patriot League last season. They are rising junior Brandon Corp, who moved from midfield to attack mid-season and subsequently earned 2007 Patriot League Offensive Player of the Year honors, and rising senior attackman Matt Lalli, a returning captain.
Colgate also returns face-off man Chris Eck, who led the league with a .653 win percentage.
But the biggest challenge Colgate faces is successfully filling the void on defense left by honorable mention All-American Colin Hulme, the 2007 Patriot League Defensive Player of the Year, and John Dunn, a second-team all-league selection.
Hulme started all but one game during the past three seasons and was selected No. 16 overall in May's MLL collegiate draft by the San Francisco Dragons. Dunn played in 53 games for Colgate during his career.
Candidates to replace the two dependable defenseman are rising junior Andrew Watkins, who will be one of three team captains, rising sophomore Samuel Kinney and rising junior Cory Hinton. All three have had little experience, with just one start between them during their college careers, but will certainly play more often as the 2008 schedule unfolds.
"The wild card heading into the season is how those guys play together," Nagle says.
The '08 schedule will feature tougher non-conference opponents which Nagle hopes will boost Colgate's strength of schedule ranking. If the NCAA selection committee had any legitimate claim for leaving the Red Raiders out of its postseason tournament, it was because Colgate's opponents may not have been as tough as some other schools.
So this season, the Red Raiders will take on Duke, Denver, and Ohio State in addition to their regular out of conference games against Albany and Binghamton.
"[In 2006] we were 11-4 and didn't get in the tournament. We improved our strength of schedule dramatically this year, went 11-5, and still didn't get in," Nagle says. "So we have to bump it up again."
Even with the intended tougher schedule, Nagle thinks his team is among a few dozen that have legitimate shots of reaching the NCAA postseason.
"There's probably the top five and then like 40 teams after that where anybody can beat anybody," Nagle says. "I say the same thing all the time, but that's what I believe. That's the way we approach it. The difference in wins and losses is so marginal and the ability level is so marginal that I think our chances are just as good as they were last year." |
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Lessons in Upstate Field School
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Coin, Glenn
Post-Standard - Madison County Bureau, The
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Colgate University students this summer are helping organize a local kids' circus, working with troubled teens and their families, and helping represent victims of domestic violence.
They're all working for the college's Upstate Field School, which pairs willing students with local governments and community agencies in need of expertise and plain old hard work.
Students, many from upper-middle-class backgrounds, gain an insight into community problems and how to solve them. The agencies get an intern to tackle jobs the regular staff doesn't have time for the rest of the year.
The program is part of Colgate's continuing efforts to connect the college and the community, and to give students real-life experiences beyond the classroom, said said Ellen Kraly, who runs the program for Colgate. 'It's a way to share our human capital with the region and its not-for-profits,' said Kraly, director of the college's Upstate Institute. 'It gives them some people power and resources to allow them to undertake research or special projects that they might not have been able to do.' Agencies pay nothing for the students, who work for eight to 10 weeks. Colgate pays the students a stipend of $400 a week.
The program started in 2004 and has grown ever since, Kraly said. This is the first summer the college had more requests than it had students to do the work, she said. Twenty-six organizations asked for interns, and Kraly was able to assign 18 students to cover 23 projects.
Students have been working for governments or agencies from Cazenovia to Utica. The students are at their jobs Monday through Thursday. Each Friday, Kraly holds a seminar with the students to discuss broader aspects of not-for-profit work.
The program has attracted the attention of other colleges. This week, Kraly gave a presentation in Hamilton to representatives from Bloomsburg, Bucknell and Wittenberg universities who are interested in the program.
Liz Harkins, a Colgate junior from Westchester, said she's come to understand problems of teens and families that she didn't before. 'I've learned so much about issues facing teens in this community,' said Harkins, who is working with the Madison County Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse in Canastota. 'I've always known alcohol was a problem, but now I've become more aware of what a pervasive problem it is and how it affects people. It was something I wouldn't really have considered before.' Much of the students' time is spent in research, one of the goals of the program. At the Madison County Department of Social Services, Kate Serrurier is compiling information to help the county's largest department figure out how its programs are working.
Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald said Serrurier is laying the groundwork for more detailed studies that will help the department assess itself. She is studying the needs of the county and the best ways to address them. 'There's a kind of general feeling, but there's never any research behind it,' Fitzgerald said. 'What the field school allows us to do is find out what the research tells us and what are the best practices.' |
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Major discovery at Copan
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A recent discovery of an entombed human skeleton, perhaps of the Maya aristocracy, will help to further position the ancient city of Copan as a location of some of the most artistic and historically significant Mayan ruins in Central America.
The remains are of a 50 year-old man, seated in an upright position adorned and flanked by shells, pottery, vessels, and jade adornments, suggest a surprisingly diverse culture and complex political system in the influential Maya city of Copan around AD 650.
The entombed individual was found with a necklace of dozens of jade beads of various sizes.
Jade, a valuable and uncommon stone, along with the design etched into the larger piece, likely tie and identify the individual to the high social or political class.
Ancient artisans carved intricate stone images and scribes etched complex hieroglyphics at Copan. The extensive Hieroglyphic Stairway, along with other inscriptions on stelae and altars, is the largest concentration of Mayan texts. The texts have played a significant role in deciphering Mayan code and revealing their culture, including their fascination with astronomy. The Mayan culture's high period lasted from 250 to 900 AD and Copan, one of the regional capitals, is believed to have been abandoned in the 10th century AD. As well as the Hieroglyphic Stairway, other areas of interest are the Great Plaza, the Ball Court, the Acropolis, the Tunnels and Las Sepulturas where Mayan royalty lived.
The tomb where the skeleton was found was approximately 400 metres (1,500 feet) west of the Acropolis.
The dig is funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration, and the discovery was made by Allan Maca, an archaeologist at Colgate University in New York State.
The Hotel Marina Copan became the city's first hotel and it has evolved into a modern expression of luxury. Together with MC Tours, the hotel can arrange visits to the archaeological site to further bring the Maya mystery to life. |
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Hamilton's handball hotshot; Olympic committee names Megan Ballard its top female athlete
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Duncan, Brenda
Post-Standard
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Editorial assistant Brenda Duncan recently interviewed Megan Erin Ballard, of Hamilton, who plays handball with the Women's National Handball Team. She was named Female Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Olympic committee.
Name: Megan Erin Ballard
Age: 22
Where do you live? I am in the process of moving back to Atlanta, Ga., from Hamilton. I went to France to try out for the handball team. I made the team, so I will be living in Toulouse, France, this year for the season.
How long did you live in Hamilton? I have lived in Hamilton for five years. I went to Colgate for my undergraduate education. I graduated in 2006 with a degree in religion and minor in biology and spent that last year working in the admissions office at Colgate.
Do you have a family? Parents, John and Rita Ballard; brother, Jeremy; sister, Mia. My sister started playing handball before me and I made every team I made before college because she was already on it, including the Junior National handball team. I guess I was her tag along for the longest.
Educational background: I graduated cum laude from Colgate University, with a concentration in religion, minor in biology and pre-med.
Occupation: I am full-time resident of the National Team Handball Women's residency program.
How long have you been playing handball? I started playing handball when I was 11, but it was only two months during the summer every year. At that time, basketball was my main priority. I took a four-year hiatus during college and picked the sport back up again in April 2006 when my basketball season ended at Colgate.
How is handball different from similar sports? Handball is different by the way the game is - it is extremely physical and very fast-paced. Unlike basketball, teams only get one one-minute time out each 30-minute half. The ball is smaller, there is a goalie and you get more steps. It truly is a great sport. It combines every sport I've ever played.
What is the most challenging aspect of playing handball? Learning the skills. There are so many different ways to shoot the ball and pass the ball. It takes time and practice to perfect the skills.
Do you play other sports as well? Basketball was my main sport throughout my life but I also ran track and played softball in high school.
My hobbies are: Listening to music, it always makes me feel better.
What type of music do you listen to? All sorts, but mainly R&B.
If you had an extra hour each day, what would you do? Sleep - I guess that means I'd waste it.
I highly recommend this book: "The Life of Pi," it's an unbelievable book about life, hope, faith and perseverance. No matter who you are, you'll enjoy it.
Do you have a proudest moment? When we won the first ever Women's Patriot League title for basketball and the first NCAA berth. We won on our home court with a record-breaking amount of fans. I can't say how good that felt.
I'm known for saying: "Y'all"
My pet peeve: People who talk really loud on their cell phones in public places.
Name one person you would like to be able to spend a day with: Jesus
Do you have a key philosophy in life? Don't stress myself out. I and others have to keep reminding myself that - life is great and it should be enjoyed.
If I could spend the rest of my days with only one person, I'd want it to be: My soulmate - whoever he is.
What would your dream job be? Be a radio disc jockey. I love music and to have a radio show would be perfect. I would never have to get dressed for work, because no one sees me, I love to talk and I'd get to meet famous people.
If I had a money tree: I would spread its seeds. Definitely put some in Africa and other countries that struggle for medical health, etc.
What makes you happy? The people I care about, chocolate and music.
One thing about me that would surprise people: I am extremely shy and I hate playing games in front of people I know or walking into a room with a lot of people.
Can you describe your personality? I am easy-going but I get stressed about things that I need to do. I love music and people who aren't negative. I work hard at whatever I need to do and enjoy myself afterwards. I like to believe that things work themselves out and everything happens when it is supposed to happen. |
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Research from Colgate University, Department of Psychology provide new insights into life sciences
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Researchers detail in "An intentional stance modulates the integration of gesture and speech during comprehension," new data in life sciences. According to recent research published in the journal Brain and Language, "The present study investigates whether knowledge about the intentional relationship between gesture and speech influences controlled processes when integrating the two modalities at comprehension. Thirty-five adults watched short videos of gesture and speech that conveyed semantically congruous and incongruous information."
"In half of the videos, participants were told that the two modalities were intentionally coupled (i.e., produced by the same communicator), and in the other half, they were told that the two modalities were not intentionally coupled (i.e., produced by different communicators). When participants knew that the same communicator produced the speech and gesture, there was a larger bi-lateral frontal and central N400 effect to words that were semantically incongruous versus congruous with gesture. However, when participants knew that different communicators produced the speech and gesture--that is, when gesture and speech were not intentionally meant to go together--the N400 effect was present only in right-hemisphere frontal regions," wrote S.D. Kelly and colleagues, Colgate University, Department of Psychology.
The researchers concluded: "The results demonstrate that pragmatic knowledge about the intentional relationship between gesture and speech modulates controlled neural processes during the integration of the two modalities."
Kelly and colleagues published their study in Brain and Language (An intentional stance modulates the integration of gesture and speech during comprehension. Brain and Language, 2007;101(3):222-33). |
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Stanley Cup In Hamilton August 11th
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For the second straight year, one of the world’s most recognizable trophies will make a stop in Central New York.
Former Colgate Red Raider and current Anaheim Duck, Andy McDonald, will bring the Stanley Cup to Hamilton in August.
Hamilton is expecting its small quiet community to become a lot more electric when NHL champ Andy McDonald comes to town, there just aren't that many places in the world that get to host the Stanley Cup.
Hamilton Mayor Sue McVaugh says, "A lot of people have contacted me and want to know about it and where its going to be and some of my friends are not going to be in town and are really regretting that and hoping to change their plans."
McVaugh remembers a young freshman-to-be named Andy McDonald arriving at their home back in ‘96, not the foreign student they were expecting to host for the school, which was a Spanish speaking female student.
“His birthday is in August so we had him over for his birthday and he was so shy he brought his friend Darren with him which was a good thing, otherwise I don't think we would have gotten a word out of him at all."
Colgate has had its fair share of NHLers but Andy McDonald is actually the first among all of them and all the great players to come through Colgate University to win the Stanley Cup and then bring it back there, a real inspiration to all the young players in the area.
Colgate Hockey Coach Don Vaughn says, "Just to have the opportunity to stand next to it and every kid is going to have that chance on August 11th to get a picture with the Stanley Cup and an opportunity to meet Andy McDonald, hopefully it inspires them to keep working and reach for their goals."
Vaughn says hockey is growing in the area. A first year goalie camp of kids from Central New York was born out of the increasing numbers of young local players, and he says girls hockey is really exploding. They’re young players, most with thoughts of winning the Stanley Cup one day, like Andy McDonald.
Mayor McVaugh says, "I wish I'd taken some pictures in retrospect, I had no idea Andy McDonald was eventually going to bring us the Stanley Cup."
Their will be time to capture this special moment August 11th, one year to the day after Eric Cole brought it to Oswego.
The celebration will start at 9:30 in Hamilton. |
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Can 'green chic' save the planet?
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Velasquez-Manoff, Moises
Christian Science Monitor
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Green, it seems, has gone mainstream. Magazines like Elle, Fortune, and Vanity Fair have published "green issues" in the past year, and the Academy Awards were carbon neutral. The Vatican recently announced plans to offset its 2007 emissions, while Costa Rica pledged to arrive at "net zero" by 2021.
Green has also gone trendy. Last week, Whole Foods Market released a limited edition, $15 cotton bag with "I'm not a plastic bag" emblazoned on its side. When the bag went on sale at outlets in Taiwan, a stampede followed. In Hong Kong, throngs shut down a shopping mall. In New York City last week, lines formed at dawn. Later that day, bags were offered on Craigslist for between $200 and $500. "These bags are walking billboards," says Isabel Spearman, a spokeswoman for the bag's designer, Anya Hindmarch. "You do have to make something trendy, and it becomes a habit. That's the whole point."
Savvy marketers have clearly tapped into something. But the green craze has many asking how, if at all, it addresses what many characterize as an impending climate catastrophe.
In what it implies about changing consumer awareness, some see "green-lightenment" as heartening. And since it creates demand for more environmentally friendly products, many think it's moving in the right direction. Yet, as one professor put it, "We're basically rushing toward a cliff, full speed ahead." Can a fad save us? Experts' replies run the gamut from "it's a mockery," to it's the beginning of - and maybe a catalyst for - greater changes to come. But no one thinks that green consumption alone can get humanity out of its climate predicament. As Alex Steffen, cofounder of worldchanging.com, an environmental- commentary website, writes: "There is no combination of purchasing decisions which will make the current affluent American lifestyle sustainable. You can't shop your way to sustainability."
The problem, say experts, is the magnitude of the problem. According to the World Wildlife Foundation's Living Planet report, as of 2003, the demands of humanity as a whole exceeded Earth's capacity by 25 percent. Americans, the biggest consumers, consume at a rate that's twice what the planet can sustain.
Saving the planet requires nothing short of overhauling civilization's energy infrastructure, say many. This would include a multipronged effort to increase energy efficiency and advance renewable technologies, while also rethinking cities, agriculture, and public transportation, among other things.
Some compare the effort needed to achieve this to that of World War II, when, in the face of a clear and substantial threat, American society mobilized - and sacrificed - toward a common goal. (The analogy breaks down when you recall that Americans intended to return to "normalcy" after the war. But as Dale Jamieson, director of Environmental Studies at New York University points out, getting off carbon implies a permanent shift.) Others compare it to Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive Era, a time when corporations and other private interests had accumulated much power at the expense of public institutions and society at large.
But the most apt comparison may be to the founding of the United States, when, with history as their guide, the framers of the Constitution attempted to establish a socially and politically "sustainable society."
"These were people who were looking very far into the future and saying, 'Let's design a government that will last,' " says Dr. Jamieson. "This is a little bit like that."
Michael Dorsey, a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., calls it "the practice of citizenry." He points to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed $8 congestion tax on vehicles. However unpopular it may be with cabbies, it's an idea designed to benefit the greater good, he says.
"We need people not to be thinking like consumers, but like citizens in a society," he says. "Bold decisions from a collective of bold leaders working with bold citizens that aren't afraid to take bold steps is the only thing that will avoid a climate catastrophe. That's it. There's nothing else."
Many say it's more complex. "You're talking about the greatest consumptive society in the history of the world trying to change its footprint," says Jamieson, comparing it to changing the Roman Empire into a Vermont village. Green consumerism driven by green faddism "is necessary, but not sufficient," he says. "If you're going to get change, you need this kind of energy and enthusiasm. But that just gets you in the door."
The green consumption movement has some built-in limits. By definition, consumers willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products are a small bunch, says Michael Shellenberger, a managing partner at American Environics in Oakland, Calif. They tend to be an educated and affluent "elite," but because they are so few, their ability to effect change through purchasing power is limited. In polls, Mr. Shellenberger has found that most green consumers harbor no illusions that environmentally friendly consumer choices alone are sufficient. They see green consumption as an ethical choice - "a kind of mindfulness," he says. But "almost everyone acknowledges that there needs to be political action."
Or, as Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program, says: "Government has to act; so consumers, to close the loop, need to understand that they need to vote."
And it may be at the polls where the reasons for "going green" matter most. People consume products for both their "manifest" and "latent" functions, says Christopher Henke, an assistant professor of sociology at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y.
The manifest value of a canvas bag, for example, is to carry things without using plastic. The latent value of a Whole Foods- issued, $15 Anya Hindmarch-designed bag emblazoned with "I'm not a plastic bag" - echoing surrealist artist Rene Magritte's famous "this is not a pipe" painting - is almost entirely unrelated to this manifest utility.
"You're trying to present a certain image of yourself where you're someone who cares about the earth, shops at a [certain] store, and someone who's up on a particular trend," Professor Henke says. "But in the end, if it's just another thing people will grab and use for a month, then it is kind of a waste."
So while faddism may influence people's marketplace choices, many still ask the million-dollar question: What will happen when the canvas bag-toting, hybrid car-driving, "green" credit-card-wielding (GE just announced a card with carbon footprint-reducing rewards) consumer goes to the polls?
"That's the key," says Jon Isham, a professor of international environmental economics at Middlebury College in Vermont. "That's where we need to go above and beyond the idea of a fad."
If the defeat last November of a state initiative to tax oil extracted in California is any indication, what's chic in handbags is still far from what's cool at the polls. But there is one certainty, says Dr. Isham, paraphrasing the economist Herbert Stein's famous dictum: "If something can't continue, it won't." |
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Colgate gets airtime on Martha Stewart show
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Colgate University will get a plug Friday from an unlikely source: Martha Stewart.
Stewart shows viewers how to make a magnetic bulletin board, and for the background of the board she uses a Colgate campus map. The son of one of Stewart's employees will be a freshman at Colgate in the fall. |
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Liam Huculak, a rookie out of Colgate University, has signed with the Idaho Steelheads
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Liam Huculak, a rookie out of Colgate University, has signed with the Idaho Steelheads, the ECHL team announced Tuesday.
The 27-year-old right winger served as Colgate's team captain last season. Huculak, a 6-foot-5, 220-pounder, was a four-year letterman.
He registered seven goals, 10 assists and 95 penalty minutes during his collegiate career. |
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What's new
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If you need help choosing what computer or gadget to buy, check out CremeCrop.com.
Launched last month by Mike Schneider of Hillsdale and Bryan Welfel of River Vale, the Web site is designed to help consumers select the top-performing product in a range of categories including printers, MP3 players and laptops. Both members of the Pascack Valley High School Class of 2006 (Schneider attends Colgate University; Welfel is at Marist College), the pair have worked for the last year to get their business off the ground.
Schneider says they winnow the product choices by first looking at product reviews and then obtaining the products to test them. From a couple of hours to a couple of days, "we always get working time with the product," Schneider said.
CremeCrop.com is designed to simplify online shopping by offering only one product, the best product, in each category of electronics, and explaining in plain English why that product has been chosen, the company said. |
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Voters' ambivalence should push Democrats to center
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Abortion has received almost no attention in the Democratic presidential debates to this point because there is nothing interesting to report on the issue. All the Democratic presidential candidates take strong prochoice positions.
Why are the Democrats so united? The answer lies in electoral calculations. Where the electorate consists of two large groups taking opposing positions on an issue, parties maximize votes by moving to the center of one of these two groups. Abortion seems to be such an issue.
But is this view of the electorate really accurate? Whenever public opinion polls offer respondents more than two choices, a very large middle group emerges. When a May 2007 CBS News/New York Times poll asked respondents whether abortions should be generally available, available under stricter limits, or not permitted, 37 percent opted for the middle position.
Similarly, a May 2007 Gallup poll asked whether abortions should always be legal, sometimes legal, or always illegal. Given this slightly different question wording, fully 55 percent opted for the middle position.
Whenever voters are distributed like a bell curve, with the majority of voters in the middle, rational parties will converge to the electoral center.
Seeking a middle ground on abortion is not just good politics. It is also good public policy. While both prochoice and pro-life issue activists tend to treat the abortion issue as if it were one-sided, in reality it requires policymakers to find some defensible balance between the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus.
What would such a balance look like? From 1993 to 2000, an organization called the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice fostered a dialogue between pro-life and pro-choice activists. The goal of the project was to reduce polarization on the abortion issue by getting the parties to the conflict to talk to each other in a spirit of mutual respect.
Despite their strong differences, prochoice and pro-life activists were able to agree on the need to do more to prevent teen pregnancy, to increase the options (including adoption) available to pregnant women, to reduce social pressures and economic conditions that make abortion more likely and to prevent outbreaks of violence aimed at abortion providers.
Democratic presidential contenders should call for a renewal of this dialogue within the party. While Democratic activists tend to be pro-choice, public opinion polls suggest that two out of every five rank-and-file Democrats are pro-life. Moreover, the 2006 midterm election brought more pro-life Democrats to both the House and Senate. The Democratic Party would advance its electoral interests and provide a real service to the nation by fostering civil and mutually respectful discussion of this issue within the party.
Michael Hayes is professor of political science at Colgate University and a member of Democrats for Life of New York. |
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History mystery: Who left symbol in NYC building, and why?
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Peltz, Jennifer
Associated Press (AP)
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A final thrust of the crowbar cracked the wooden crate open, and the architect, the anthropologist and the mortar expert leaned in to look at the oddity that had drawn them to an out-of-the-way warehouse on a glimmering spring morning.
This much was clear: It was a 3-foot-by-10-foot section of timeworn brick wall, its predictable rows abruptly interrupted by three distinct, deliberate-looking triangular shapes. But beyond that, there were only questions.
Painstakingly preserved from a 175-year-old building in lower Manhattan, the brickwork symbol is - at least to some - a smoking gun in a tantalizing historical whodunit. The setting conjures both New York City's mercantile past and its post-Sept. 11 future. The cast of characters includes the founder of a prominent American corporation. And the trail of clues has veered enticingly close to a "Da Vinci Code"-like territory of clandestine symbols.
Could the design be a cryptic marker of mystical beliefs? A tradesman's signature or a bit of architectural shorthand? Simply an artistic add-on or a creative way to patch a hole? Speculation - some backed with scholarly authority - has swirled around the possibilities, generating enough gravity to pull in community leaders and persuade a developer to spend $13,000 to save the artifact from demolition.
The symbol's significance may never become clear, and recent tests have cast a shadow over its glint of history. Still, enthusiasts say the artifact's value lies in the questions it has raised, irrespective of the answers.
"Whether you believe in this stuff or not, it suggested so much and pointed to so many things," Alan Solomon, the volunteer historian who pushed to preserve the symbol and probe its meaning, said this week. "It's just a cabinet of curiosities."
The design is simple, but clearly no accident. It centers on a triangle framed with a strip of mortar, framed by two rougher triangular forms.
Whatever its origin, the symbol sat unheralded for years inside 211 Pearl St., at the edge of New York City's financial district. Solomon, who works for a Brooklyn vintage-lumber dealer, spotted the artifact several years ago, while engaged in a broader effort to save the 1832 building.
Most was ultimately demolished to make way for a parking garage for a new apartment tower, financed in part with tax-exempt bonds intended to spur redevelopment after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But the facade and the brick symbol were saved.
City tax records show the onetime warehouse was built for William Colgate - the civic-minded, deeply Christian soap entrepreneur who founded what is now Colgate Palmolive Co. and helped establish the American Bible Society. A spokesman says Colgate Palmolive has no record that the company, then headquartered elsewhere in Manhattan, used the Pearl Street building. But Colgate prized it enough to make special note of it in his will, Solomon said.
To Solomon and some historians, Colgate's ties to the building fueled a theory that the brickwork pattern had some Christian resonance.
The triangle has traditionally been used to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity. And some scholars, while stressing the need for more research, thought the Pearl Street symbol evoked esotericism - efforts to delve for divine meaning in numbers, geometry, nature and elsewhere. The symbol was even the subject of a presentation at an academic conference on esotericism in Amsterdam in 2005.
The triangular forms could encode an esoteric message in their proportions, Joscelyn Godwin, a Colgate University music and medieval studies professor who examined esoteric ideas in "The Theosophical Enlightenment," said in a recent interview. Alfred Willis, a scholar of esotericism's influence on architecture and a university librarian at Hampton University, suggested in an interview that the proportions may point to certain Bible verses.
No one has claimed to be sure of the artifact's historical merit, and some have questioned whether it has any. They include Rockrose Development Corp., the company building the new tower on the Pearl Street site.
Rockrose's construction experts placed the brickwork pattern sometime in the 20th century, company planning director Jon McMillan said. But the developers agreed to pay for removing the artifact intact after fielding requests from Solomon, City Councilman Alan J. Gerson and others.
In the end, Rockrose's construction experts may well have been right. Tests in June dated the mortar to 1950 or later, though the bricks themselves may be older, said John Walsh, a mortar expert and geologist at Testwell Laboratories Inc. in Ossining, N.Y.
Solomon is now trying to track down recent owners and occupants of the Pearl Street building. He isn't quite ready to give up on the ghost of history, wondering whether the artifact might have originated in the 19th century and later been reassembled with modern mortar. Regardless, he and others who have come together around the brickwork object say they feel its pull as an imprint of human inventiveness, if nothing else.
"Whether it was made in the 1970s or it was made in the 1850s, somebody still made this thing," Rocco Leonardis, an architect and brick aficionado, said as he looked it over in its warehouse crate. "No matter how we slice it, it's meaningful." |
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