What I Learned Today

30th June 2009

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The Feast Salon

Yesterday I attended alldaybuffet’s The Feast Salon and was quite inspired by all aspects of the event.

First – The space: MEET at the Apartment.

Located at 101 Crosby Street, Meet is a highly stylized loft created to provide an intimate space to hold events and business meetings. It is “intuitively outfitted with idea-generating essentials,” and is really just beautiful. What a great concept, and a comfortable, hip place to hang.

The speakers:
Noah Brier discussed LikeMind, a concept he and Piers Fawkes of PFSK created out of the desire to just meet and converse with people. Likemind facilitates the meeting of like minded people over coffee and conversation in the morning. It has grown from its inception in New York in 2006, to a global entity, with meetings in over 65 cities across the world. Perhaps I’ll give the next NY one a go.

Steve Larosiliere spoke about his non-profit organization, Stoked Mentoring .  Stoked is great. It’s a mentoring program that helps at risk youth through the use of action sports including skate, surf, and snow. As a mentor, you join your mentee in learning how to either snowboard, surf, or skate over the course of the year.  They’ve also grown to include programs focusing on graphic design and sports photography. I admire that Steve found a way to combine the hobbies he loves with his passion for helping at risk youth. In his talk, he advocated two things. One - a book called No More Prisons, which I just ordered. And two - a mentor with whom to just kick it twice a month and from whom to learn. I’ve got to get me one of those.

Perry Chen spoke about Kickstarter, a new platform for funding new start-up ventures. To demonstrate the site, he showed us Allison Weiss’ video, soliticing donations in return for “cool stuff” in order to help her make a new EP. It reminded me of Kiva, but more of a pledging system for personal creative art-focused projects. On the site, one can raise money to build an i-Phone app, print a book, start an art project, and even empower women in Rwanda. Looks like it has the potential to be a very powerful platform.

The food: I think the delicious chocolates were from SweetRiot, though I can’t be sure..

The guests: I met quite a few diverse people with varying jobs – photographers, web developers, founders of non-profit organizations. Overall an inspiring and refreshing evening.

30th June 2009

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the five longest prison sentences for a white-collar crime

1. 845 years - Sholam Weiss, 2000
   Crime: Wire fraud and money laundering, which led to failure of National Heritage Life Insurance company. Also fled the country but was apprehended. He was convicted of 78 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering.
   Amount: $450 million
2. 740 years - Keith Pound, 2000
   Crime: Weiss’ right hand man in the scheme to defraud National Heritage Life Insurance.
   Amount: $450 million
3. 330 years - Normal Schmidt, 2008
   Crime: Led fraudulent high yield investment scheme but actually used the money to buy a castle and eight NASCAR race cars.
   Amount:  $40 million
4. 150 years - Bernie Madoff, 2009
   Crime: Led a Ponzi scheme that was the largest investor fraud ever run. Convicted of 11 criminal charges including money laundering and fraud.
   Amount: $65 billion
5. 100 years - Will Hoover, 2005
   Crime: Fraudulent financial advisor. Convicted of 44 counts of racketeering, securities fraud, and theft.
   Amount: $15.4 million
6. ~10 years - Charles Ponzi, 1922
   Crime: The original Ponzi scheme. Charged with larceny by the state of Massachusetts for which he received 3.5 years of prison, was released, and then charged with 86 counts of mail fraud by the Supreme Court. Then he appealed, was freed, started a new scam, and was indicted again, appealed, was feed, started a new scam, and was caught again, finally returning to Massachusetts to serve out his time.
   Amount: millions

18th June 2009

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Spotlight on: Van Jones

I’ve been meaning to write about this guy since I saw him speak at a business conference back in March. I just finished reading his book The Green Collar Economy.

Van Jones is the voice of the green collar economy, promoting green jobs as the cure for our economic, socioeconomic and environmental problems. What’s a green-collar job? Jones describes it as “a family supporting career-track job that directly contributes to preserving or enhancing environmental quality.” He says “think of them as the 2.0 version of old-fashioned blue collar jobs, upgraded to respect the Earth and meet the environmental challenges of today.” Here are his views..

Green-collar jobs could cure our economic problems: In 2006, renewable energy created 8.5 million jobs, $970 billion in revenue and over $100 billion in industry profits. Instead of giving away over half a trillion dollars for oil, we can reinvest in our own economy, replacing the millions of jobs that have been lost in manufacturing and construction.

Green-collar jobs could cure our socioeconomic problems: Did you know that the richest 1% of people have more wealth than the bottom 90% of people in the US. The bottom 90%! Jones argues green-collar jobs will be equal opportunity, provide pathways out of poverty, and rebuild a strong middle class while strengthening urban and rural communities.

Green-collar jobs could cure our environmental problems: Jones argues we have lost our accountability. Apparently, the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy states “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” I like that. We, instead, have abandoned this notion and instead have built our country with the easiest, quickest means and methods only to now realize such actions are rather unsustainable. By employing blue-collar employees, we can retroactively weatherize buildings, we can install solar panels, build wind turbines, etc.

Anyway, I guess there’s another book report for you. Van Jones is the head of Green For All, was one of Time Magazine’s 2009 Time 100 Heroes & Icons, and is now an advisor on green jobs to the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

16th June 2009

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Come on, Let’s Get Happy!

Turns out, we may not be able to. I just read this really great book called Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, by David Nettle, which explores what makes people happy and unhappy.  It was really quite interesting, a little scientific at parts, but overall pretty eye opening.

Here’s what I learned from this book.

People will never be completely happy. It is in our nature to look at better looking alternatives – status, beauty, money, etc – and pursue them, thinking that if we only had those circumstances, we would be much happier. And we all think we will be happier at some point in the future. But basically, you’ll never be happier than you are right now.  Sure, things may get better, but you’ll adapt quickly to the positive changes and return to your previous state of satisfaction. This was demonstrated by economist Richard Easterlin. He has an ongoing survey across America where he asks people to go down a list of consumer goods/events that people spend their money on - like a home, car, tv, swimming pool, second home, traveling abroad, etc, and check off the items that form their idea of the good life. Then click off the ones they already had. Sixteen years later, the same group was asked to perform the same task.  Over the 16 years, the average amount of items that people already had on the list increased from 1.7 to 3.1, but “the good life” went from consisting of 4.4 items to 5.6 items. The participants were always two items short of where they wanted to be – both at the beginning of the survey and at the end.

So I guess we’ll always be striving for more. Nettle says this is in our nature. “Evolution has given us a strong implicit theory of happiness,” he argues. It “hasn’t set us up for the attainment of happiness, merely its pursuit.”

Studies show that women report to be happier than men, but also more miserable than men, experiencing more fear, anxiety, sadness, shame, and guilt than do men.  So how are they both happier and more miserable than men? Well, women just experience emotion to a greater intensity. (surprised?)

People who are married are happier than those who are not. Now this does not necessarily mean that marriage makes one happy, but rather, perhaps happier people get married and stay married longer. Next in line based on marital status are those cohabiting, single, separated, divorced, and, finally, widowed. The study on widowhood suggests that the old adage, ‘tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all’ may just be false. Rather, losing something you have is worse than not having it in the first place.

Interestingly, marital status accounts for much more of the variation in life satisfaction that does social class.

And money.. well, there appears to be no relationship between income and life satisfaction (to a certain degree). Yet we continue to choose to working hard for a promotion or a raise when we would most likely attain more satisfaction spending that time with people or hobbies.

So there’s my book report. There’s a lot more to it, so check it out for yourself. It’s quite an interesting read!

Also, if you missed The Atlantic’s article, What Makes Us Happy?, which chronicles what they call the longest running and most exhaustive study of mental and physical well being, check it out.