Thursday, May 28, 2009

They made magic in backcourt


ORLANDO, Fla. - It didn't take Anthony "Grandpa" Johnson long to make people forget about the Magic's suspended starting point guard, Rafer Alston, last night. Johnson was playing too well for anyone to waste time thinking about a guy in street clothes.

"Anthony Johnson, I thought, set the tone of the game," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "He's a wily, tough, old veteran and he came to play. He deserved that performance."

The 11-year veteran got the start in Game 3 in place of Alston, who served a one-game penalty for slapping the Celtics' Eddie House in the head Wednesday night. And Johnson quickly made his presence felt in Orlando's 117-96 rout, making his first three shots, including a two-handed dunk over Celtics center Kendrick Perkins.

"I was able to use my old legs and throw one down," said Johnson, 34. "I still can spring up a little bit."

Motivated by the chatter that his extended playing time would benefit the Celtics, Johnson immediately made it known that he wouldn't be the liability many had suggested. Johnson finished with 13 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals in 28 minutes, shooting 5 of 7 from the field.

"It adds fuel to the fire," Johnson said. "I've always been talked about for the things I can't do. Trying to fight that battle is a waste of time."

Johnson will return to his reserve role tomorrow. The Magic still need two more wins before they can move on, and they will need the same type of performance off the bench.

Johnson's solid performance wasn't the only boost the Magic received. Courtney Lee returned from the sinus fracture that forced him to miss Orlando's previous three games. Wearing a protective mask, the rookie guard continued his solid postseason with an 11-point performance that received rave reviews from his teammates.

"He was great tonight," Dwight Howard said. "He played like himself tonight and it just feels good to see him back."

Aside from the feel-good stories, the Magic's growing disdain for the Celtics' physical play is becoming a hot topic.

"It's a playoff series, it's very physical. We understand that," Howard said. "We have to stay composed. We know that Boston is a very physical team; we have to be able to take those shots."

They've already sent some nasty glares the Celtics' way after hard fouls.

"We're not into fighting, but you're a human being too," said Hedo Turkoglu, who was whistled for a double technical (with House) in the fourth quarter last night. "You're man enough to stand up for yourself and sometimes you have to."

Source

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Pushed in a new direction


If you were recently laid off, you've probably heard enough about "blessings in disguise" and "silver linings."

But for some people, these aren't just platitudes. Consider the banker who became a foreclosure prevention counselor. Or the marketing executive who now heads a catering department. Or the investment analyst making a career from his true passion: model trains. For them, a job loss was just the jolt they needed to set off on a more fulfilling - if not necessarily more lucrative - path.

To be sure, starting over after a layoff is not for everyone. It involves time, energy, lengthy training, and a lot of reflection.

But for people who have long nourished visions of more satisfying jobs, losing a job can be a catalyst, said Dan King, who heads Career Planning and Management Inc. in downtown Boston.

"Sometimes a layoff gives people just the push they need to change their reality, " said King. "If you were just waiting for the right time, now you have the incentive to do it."

Just don't expect it to be easy.

Finance to food
For Deb Flohr, the decision to go to culinary school meant spending the better part of a year living out of her car and sleeping on friends' couches. The lifestyle was a far cry from the one she had before August of 2006, when she lost a high-paying sales job at a financial services company.

Flohr's decision to ditch 15 years of spreadsheets and pantsuits for dough and bakers' whites came suddenly, when she strolled past the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and saw a sign for an orientation session.

"I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to apply and figure out a way to go,' " she said. "My boyfriend said I was crazy."

Flohr said the move was about reclaiming the career she was meant to have, as opposed to the one she fell into. Her parents owned a hotel and restaurant in Killington, Vt., and in her final years of college, she worked in event planning. She had hoped to make a career of it, but took a job out of college at a financial services company, and one thing led to another.

"You get the financial responsibilities and you feel like you can't leave," she said. "I was miserable and looking for something else. Then [my company] started to lay people off, and I decided it's time to take that leap of faith."

After completing the year-long program at the culinary school in 2007, Flohr worked at restaurants on Cape Cod and in Savannah, Ga. Then responding to an ad, she took an hourly job with Wolfgang Puck at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston, a job that in December led to her promotion to director of catering.

Flohr has hefty student loans, topping $20,000, as well as a mortgage. She estimates she's taking a 75 percent pay cut this year, compared with what she was making in financial services. But she doesn't regret her decision for a moment. "I've finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up," she said.

Banker turned counselor
Over a 30-year career in banking, Joe Madaio has taken his share of knocks. He was laid off during the banking crisis of the early 1990s, and a couple years ago, parted ways with a South Shore credit union that was experiencing financial problems. Now, he works for a nonprofit in Brockton as a foreclosure counselor, and when people ask, he says he's doing well. "Foreclosures are a growth industry in Brockton," he quips.

It may seem like an unlikely transition, from representing banks to helping people keep banks off their backs. But even before getting laid off, Madaio was involved in a local initiative that brought together housing advocates and business leaders to address foreclosures, which have hit Brockton as hard as any community in the state. After he lost his job, these contacts helped lead to his position with Neighborhood Housing Services of the South Shore.

In addition to his banking experience, Madaio's own bouts with unemployment allow him to empathize with homeowners struggling with job loss.

At 60, Madaio has no illusions of getting rich from his new career. But there are other rewards, including the feeling that he's serving a greater purpose than a company's bottom line.

"You're not in the pressure cooker the way you are in private industry," he said. "I wanted to do something to give back to the community. Certainly that's the case in this role here."

Writing about a hobby
When Barry Lewis was recently laid off from his job at Boston mutual fund company Fidelity Investments, he turned to model trains. Now, he's writing marketing copy for a company that makes the miniature locomotives that Lewis has collected since he was a kid.

Lewis had written occasionally for the model train company MTH Electric Trains of Maryland for several years, but since losing his job he has cranked up his output. MTH, Lewis says, is the main competitor to the company synonymous with model trains, Lionel, of Chesterfield, Mich.

He expects this year to write about eight product catalogs, in which he highlights the specifications and historical significance of the dozens of train lines the company makes. He also writes a weekly newsletter for train collectors, and he's hoping the company will let him revamp its website, complete with a blog that would showcase MTH's products.

Lewis, 60, recognizes that making a living from model trains will be a challenge, so he hopes to cobble together other freelance writing gigs. But like "The Little Engine that Could," he's motivated and determined, which career advisers say is crucial to a successful professional transition.

For Lewis, who studied filmmaking in college, the work for MTH is a return to his creative roots after 15 years of writing financial reports for Fidelity. Lewis says he's still not earning nearly as much as he did before he was laid off, but the work is far more satisfying - and fun.

"All the boring stuff from your 401(k) that you throw away, that's the stuff I would write," Lewis said. "But with these catalogs, people stop and say, 'Hey, I like what you did there.' "

Learning to build homes
Jack Witherington was laid off twice in one day. It was the late 1990s, just as the bubble was beginning to deflate. Two heavy equipment manufacturing companies that make engines and trucks and employed Witherington as a sales agent informed him that they would cancel his contract.

With a wife, a child, and a baby on the way at the time, Witherington didn't take his next move lightly. He decided to haul himself from the Philadelphia area up to the Berkshires to go to the Heartwood School, an intensive program in timber-frame construction, which uses traditional beam building techniques and requires a high level of carpentry skills. This college-educated son of an executive at a small manufacturing company wanted to build houses.

"Since I was a little boy I've loved to work with my hands," Witherington said. "I wanted to build houses and homes that were special and part of the next generation of buildings that would be preserved with reverence in a 100-plus years."

Witherington, 42, said losing his job - or jobs - gave him the chance to seriously consider what he wanted to do.

Timber-frame construction appealed to Witherington because he would be building homes with a level of quality and craftsmanship not common in most suburban construction. He decided on Heartwood because it had a good reputation and because it was an intensive program. He figured he would be able to quickly get back into the working world.

He served as an apprentice at Heartwood over a summer while completing the courses, and then he began working for Bensonwood, an established timber-frame builder in New Hampshire. Witherington returned to the Philadelphia area, where his family lives, and in 2003, he started his own company, the Methods & Materials Building Co.

The company has steadily grown, although Witherington says business has slowed considerably since the housing market tanked.

But he's confident things will turn around, and in the meantime, the company is getting by doing smaller-scale jobs.

For Witherington, getting laid off truly proved a blessing in disguise as he chased a dream of building high-quality homes.

"I figured that was my chance to do it," he said. "You only regret the things you never try."

Source

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

It's the Prejeans! Your all-American broken home (Thank goodness they're ''not gay'') [video]


'The gay and lesbian community has been supportive of Carrie. It's just been overwhelming.... I'm not gay.... Just this past Sunday [Carrie's mother and I] had our arms around each other, praying in church.''

William Prejean, father of controversial beauty queen Carrie Prejean of the Miss USA California pageant. This piece from E! has an interview with her divorced father who is relaying his interpretation of gay people's feelings about his daughter, Carrie, about the statements made during his divorce from Prejean's mother that he might be gay, and about his current relationship with his ex-wife. Prejean of course, has positioned herself to become the newest darling of conservative media and politically motivated people like the extremely anti-gay Maggie Gallagher and Alaska's Republican Governor Sarah Palin. (E! Online)

''Ms. Prejean accused me, in front of our daughter, of homosexuality.''

TMZ relaying a statmement from a document filed during 1996 divorce of Carrie Prejean's father. It is reported that her father, William Prejean, was accused of being gay by his wife at that time because he was, apparenlty, living with a gay man. (TMZ)

''One time my sister & I went in the hallway of my dad's apartment, & his roommate's door was open all the way & we saw [the roommate] in bed with another man. I don't think it's right for my sister & I to have to live that way.''

Source

Monday, May 25, 2009

Self actualization


Self-actualization is a term that has been used in various psychology theories, often in slightly different ways (e.g., Goldstein, Maslow, Rogers). The term was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realise all of one's potentialities. In his view, it is the master motive—indeed, the only real motive a person has, all others being merely manifestations of it. However, the concept was brought to prominence in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory as the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are fulfilled and the "actualisation" of the full personal potential takes place.

Source

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Self-verification theory


Self-verification is a social psychological theory that asserts people want to be known and understood by others according to their firmly held beliefs and feelings about themselves, that is self-views (i.e. self-concepts and self-esteem). A competing theory to self-verification is self-enhancement or the drive for positive evaluations.

Because chronic self-concepts and self-esteem play an important role in understanding the world, providing a sense of coherence, and guiding action, people become motivated to maintain them through self-verification strivings. Such strivings provide stability to people’s lives, making their experiences more coherent, orderly, and comprehensible than they would be otherwise. Self-verification processes are also adaptive for groups, groups of diverse backgrounds and the larger society, in that they make people predictable to one another thus serve to facilitate social interaction. (Swann , Milton & Polzer 2000, p. 79, 238-250) To this end, people engage in a variety of activities that are designed to obtain self-verifying information.

Developed by William Swann (1983), the theory grew out of earlier writings which held that people form self-views so that they can understand and predict the responses of others and know how to act toward them (see Cooley, 1902; Mead, 1934).

Source

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Monroe's motivated sequence


Monroe's motivated sequence is a technique for organizing persuasive speeches that inspire people to take action. It was developed in the mid-1930s by Alan H. Monroe. It consists of five steps:

* Attention
o Get the attention of your audience using a detailed story, shocking example, dramatic statistic, quotations, etc.
* Need
o Show that the problem about which you are speaking exists, that it is significant, and that it won't go away by itself. Use statistics, examples, etc. Convince your audience that there is a need for action to be taken.
* Satisfy
o You need to solve the issue. Provide specific and viable solutions that the government or communities can implement to solve the problem.
* Visualization
o Tell the audience what will happen if the solution is implemented or does not take place. Be visual and detailed.
* Action
o Tell the audience what action they can take personally to solve the problem.

For instance, a more generalized format may be:

Monroe’s Motivation Sequence

1. Attention: Hey! Listen to me, I have a PROBLEM!
2. Need: Let me EXPLAIN the problem.
3. Satisfy: But, I have a SOLUTION!
4. Visualization: If we IMPLEMENT my solution, this is what will happen.
5. Action: You can help me in this specific way. Are YOU willing to help me?

The advantage of Motivated Sequence is that it emphasizes what the audience can do. Too often the audience feels like a situation is hopeless; Monroe's motivated sequence emphasizes the action the audience can take.

Source