LONDON (Reuters) – Scientists studying the effects of the psychedelic chemical in magic mushrooms have found the human brain displays a similar pattern of activity during dreams as it does during a mind-expanding drug trip.

Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms can profoundly alter the way we experience the world, but little is known about what physically happens in the brain.

In a study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping, researchers examined the brain effects of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, using data from brain scans of volunteers who had been injected with the drug.

“A good way to understand how the brain works is to perturb the system in a marked and novel way. Psychedelic drugs do precisely this and so are powerful tools for exploring what happens in the brain when consciousness is profoundly altered,” said Dr Enzo Tagliazucchi, who led the study at Germany’s Goethe University.

Magic mushrooms grow naturally around the world and have been widely used since ancient times for religious rites and also for recreation.

British researchers have been exploring the potential of psilocybin to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who don’t respond to other treatments, and obtained some positive results from early-stage experiments.

In the United States, scientists have seen positive results in trials using MDMA, a pure form of the party drug ecstasy, in treating post-traumatic stress disorder.

DREAM-LIKE STATE

People who use psychedelic drugs often describe “expanded consciousness”, including vivid imagination and dream-like states.

To explore the biological basis of these experiences, Tagliazucchi’s team analyzed brain imaging data from 15 volunteers who were given psilocybin intravenously while they lay in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

The volunteers were scanned under the influence of psilocybin and when they had been injected with a placebo, or dummy drug. The researchers looked at fluctuations in what is called the blood-oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal, which tracks activity levels in the brain.

They found that with psilocybin, activity in the more primitive brain network linked to emotional thinking became more pronounced, with several parts of the network – such as the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex – active at the same time. This pattern is similar to when people are dreaming.

They also found that volunteers on psilocybin had more disjointed and uncoordinated activity in the brain network that is linked to high-level thinking, including self-consciousness.

“People often describe taking psilocybin as producing a dreamlike state and our findings have, for the first time, provided a physical representation for the experience in the brain,” said Robin Carhart-Harris of Imperial College London’s department of medicine, who also worked on the study.

“I was fascinated to see similarities between the pattern of brain activity in a psychedelic state and the pattern of brain activity during dream sleep, especially as both involve the primitive areas of the brain linked to emotions and memory.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Turning off the mind could be as easy as flicking a switch.

That’s what doctors at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., inadvertently discovered while evaluating a 54-year-old woman with epilepsy. The researchers realized that by using electrodes to deliver tiny jolts of electricity to a particular region of the woman’s brain, they could control her consciousness almost as if they had an on-off switch.

While neurologists have in the past used electrodes to evaluate the function of various brain regions, this was the first time such a reaction had been observed.

Dr. Mohamad Koubeissi and his team observed the phenomenon while mapping electrodes implanted in the woman’s brain as part of an attempt to determine the origin of her seizures. They activated the electrodes one by one, sending a pulse of electricity to various brain areas. When they stimulated a sheet-like area of neurons called the claustrum, Koubeissi noticed something odd: rather than responding to commands, the woman was just staring blankly into space.

“The patient had a complete arrest of volitional behavior,” Koubeissi told The Huffington Post, adding that when they stopped stimulating the region, “she had absolutely no idea what had happened.”

To confirm that the patient had indeed lost consciousness rather than just temporarily losing her ability to talk and move, the team asked the patient to repeat a word and snap her fingers before the stimulation began. Each time the electrode was turned on, the team observed the same result — the woman slowly lost consciousness and became unable to recall what had just happened.

“Whatever we stimulated is a key component in the networks that constitute consciousness,” Koubeissi told HuffPost Science.

Koubeissi said he’d like to do more research on this brain region but acknowledged that that’s difficult to do because implanting electrodes into the brain solely for the purpose of research is out of the question unless a specific clinical trial has been approved.

Koubeissi said he hoped to do similar studies on other patients with epilepsy who have electrodes implanted near the claustrum. In the meantime, he’s using the knowledge he’s gained from the case study to investigate whether stimulation of the claustrum, or a neighboring region, reduces seizures in animals.

The research was published online and is scheduled for publication in the August 2014 issue of Epilepsy & Behavior.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Lincoln may be famous for Husker football, but Nebraska’s capital city also welcomes visitors with free attractions for history buffs and families on a budget.

Here are five free things to see and do in Lincoln.

THE NEBRASKA CAPITOL

Few places speak to Nebraska’s independent spirit as well as the state Capitol. Home to the nation’s only one-house, nonpartisan Legislature, the Capitol is famous for its unusual design: It was the first to break from the traditional, “federal dome” look that most state capitols adopted. The 400-foot (122-meter) tower stands high over the Plains, with an observation deck that offers sweeping views of Lincoln. It’s the second-tallest state capitol in the nation, behind Louisiana’s.

The Capitol was built in stages between 1922 and 1932, but the work was halted because of the Depression. Just this year, lawmakers approved $2.5 million to place a fountain in each of the Capitol’s four open-air courtyards — the final, unfinished feature envisioned by architect Bertram Goodhue. The project is set for completion by 2017, when Nebraska celebrates its 150th anniversary a state.

THE RAILYARD

Amid the restaurants and bars, Lincoln’s new entertainment district offers free entertainment for families and young professionals.

Admission is free for the district’s new, outdoor ice-skating rink that’s open during the winter months (there’s a fee to rent skates). In warmer seasons, the rink is converted into a public courtyard. Visitors can watch movies, television shows and sporting events on the Cube — a set of digital screens perched on a building over the courtyard. The larger, 35-by-15-foot (10-by-5-meter) screen faces the courtyard, while a second 14-by-15-foot (4-by-5-meter) screen faces Canopy Street.

The Railyard sits across the street from the new Pinnacle Bank Arena, in the city’s popular Haymarket District. The Haymarket also hosts a regular Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings, usually from May to mid-October. It’s all less than a mile from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s main campus and Memorial Stadium, where the Husker football team plays.

PIONEERS PARK NATURE CENTER

Bison, elk and white-tailed deer roam the grounds at the Pioneers Park Nature Center. The 668-acre (270-hectare) park in southwest Lincoln surrounds visitors with nature and a sense of life on the Plains: Eight miles (13 kilometers) of hiking trails weave through a mixture of prairie, woodlands, wetlands and streams. A wildlife preserve gives visitors the chance to see owls, wild turkeys, a bald eagle, and other animals.

The park also includes hands-on exhibits for children and a variety of gardens. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged. Fees are charged for birthday parties and special events.

NICHE MUSEUMS

Lincoln offers a surprising mix of free museums, exploring everything from roller skates to the history of Germans from Russia.

Consider the Frank H. Woods Telephone Museum, which appeared briefly in the 2008 movie, “Yes Man,” with Jim Carrey and Zooey Deschanel. The museum features more than 500 telephones and related items, in a collection that stretches back to the early 1900s.

Or swing by the National Museum of Roller Skating, which chronicles the history of skates from the 1800s to the modern roller derby. The American Historical Society of Germans from Russia provides a look into the lives of German settlers in the Russian empire and their descendants.

HOMESTEAD NATIONAL MONUMENT OF AMERICA

The Homestead National Monument of America pays tribute to the 1862 law that helped populate the western United States. Located near Beatrice, Nebraska, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Lincoln, the monument includes some of the first acres successfully claimed under the law. The site also offers a heritage center that explores the law’s impact on America, a tall grass prairie, a restored cabin from 1867 and the Freeman School, which provides a look at historic schools on the frontier.

By Lisa Baertlein

Aug 3 (Reuters) – McDonald’s Corp CEO Don Thompson sure could use a break.

The head of the world’s biggest restaurant chain, who for much of his two years at the helm has been battling to spark sales growth in the United States and Europe, got battered by headline-grabbing bad news in late July.

In the final days of the month, its China business was hit with a food-safety scare involving a key supplier; the chain got ensnared in the West’s sanctions standoff with Russia; burger flippers at U.S. restaurants claimed an incremental win from the National Labor Relations Board in their fight to hold McDonald’s responsible for the actions of franchisees; and, a Texas jury slapped the company with a $27 million verdict. Add to all that its results showed second-quarter profit dropped more than expected.

“They’re under siege on three continents,” said Howard Penney, restaurant analyst at Hedgeye Risk Management, an investment research firm.

To be sure, the company’s famous name and the ubiquity of its restaurants worldwide help to fuel the media storm, said Penney: “McDonald’s is a pawn in many instances around the world. It’s an easy target.”

Such upheavals are not uncommon for McDonald’s and other global power houses, including Coca-Cola Co and Wal-Mart Stores Inc, experts said, though perhaps not quite so many in such a short period.

In a statement a McDonald’s spokeswoman said: “In the last few weeks, we’ve seen issues in various parts of the world which directly or indirectly affect our brand and others. We have 35,000 McDonald’s restaurants in 120 countries, and skilled professional communications teams in every area of the world.”

She said that dealing with a 24/7 news cycle around the world is par for the course, and the communications teams address such issues so that the company can keep its focus on serving customers.

Thompson was not made available for comment.

DEFAULT BRAND

Analysts and investors said the latest, largely external events appear to pose manageable risk to McDonald’s profits, but they are a headache at a time when the company is grappling with intense competition, shifting consumer tastes and service slow-downs stemming from the menu additions of everything from salads and wraps to lattes and smoothies aimed at broadening its audience and boosting sales.

Branding expert Robert Passikoff, said McDonald’s needs to find a way to stand out from the crowd.

“McDonald’s has reached the point where it’s become a default brand. It’s there. That’s it,” said Passikoff, president of Brand Keys.

Shares in McDonald’s are up less than 7 percent since Thompson took the helm on July 1, 2012, lagging the S&P 500’s gain of nearly 42 percent in that period.

Investors, analysts and franchisees are clamoring for the company to stop trying to be “all things to all people”. They want it to simplify its unwieldy menu and point to the success of rivals like Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc and In-N-Out Burger, which have won passionate fans by selling just a few items.

McDonald’s was caught up in the latest China food safety scare after a July 20 television expose showed workers allegedly mishandling meat at Shanghai Husi Food Co Ltd, a factory owned by OSI Group LLC, a major supplier to the chain.

When the story broke, McDonald’s China business had been rebounding from the double whammy of a food safety scare and a bird flu outbreak that crushed sales in 2013.

McDonald’s roughly 2,000 restaurants in China suffered meat shortages after it ended its relationship with OSI China. Executives from the chain’s long-struggling Japanese unit, McDonald’s Holdings Co Ltd, who were forced to find alternate chicken McNugget supplies, said the scare sent sales down as much as 20 percent.

RUSSIA CONCERN

Seattle-based portfolio manager Bill Smead, whose firm Smead Capital Management holds nearly 516,000 shares in McDonald’s, took news of the China food scandal in stride.

“We assume that something is going to go amazingly haywire with companies in China,” said Smead, who added that he has ceased adding to McDonald’s holdings while the company works through its “tribulation” period.

About 15 percent of McDonald’s operating profit comes from the Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa unit that includes China and Japan, said Bernstein Research analyst Sara Senatore.

The bigger concern, she said, are McDonald’s troubles in Russia, where the company has about 400 restaurants.

Against the backdrop of the political tussle over U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia because of Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine, Russia’s chief sanitary inspector Anna Popova on July 25 accused the company of violations “which put the product quality and safety of the entire McDonald’s chain in doubt.”

Europe contributes about 35 percent of McDonald’s operating profit. The company does not break out country-specific contributions, but Russia “up until recently had been one of the stronger markets for them in Europe,” Senatore said.

Meanwhile at home, the troubles also piled on.

McDonald’s workers’ union-backed fight for better wages and working conditions scored points when the general counsel for the U.S. National Labor Relations Board said in a letter made public on July 29 that McDonald’s, not just its franchisees, can be held liable in complaints that the company violated employee rights.

David Hess, associate professor of business law at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, said the NLRB attorney’s finding is just an early step in what is usually a long process.

As for the $27 million jury verdict awarded to family members of two teenagers who died following a beating in a McDonald’s restaurant in Texas, legal experts said that is expected to fail on appeal.

McDonald’s executives have promised to boost sales over the next 12 to 18 months by doing things like focusing on value, digital advertising and the quality of its food.

As for Thompson, Penney predicted that he will survive the current crises and gets more time to fix the longer-term problems, at least into 2015. “I don’t think he’s going anywhere. It’s too soon,” he said. (Reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Jilian Mincer and Martin Howell)

Gloria Larson is the president of Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., and launched the PreparedU Project in 2013. Before joining Bentley, Larson was an attorney, public policy expert and business leader.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
My career has evolved without a specific game plan in almost every way. Through a combination of hard work and serendipity, I’ve had the good fortune to work in federal and state government, the private sector and the non-profit world, and to have had invaluable experience across a variety of industry sectors. In addition, I’ve had the chance to participate in many highly gratifying local and global civic endeavors. It’s this unusual combination of career and life experience that has made me open minded to different perspectives, helped me to be a strong collaborator with a knack for problem solving, and sparked my interest in shaping public policy in important areas such as education, economic development and healthcare.

How has your previous employment experience aided your position at Bentley University?
As an attorney, first serving in increasingly responsible management roles in government, later as a partner in a large Boston law firm, and now the first female president of a major business university – all fields dominated by men – I have had an exhilarating career. As a lawyer charged with running large organizations, I’ve also faced classic gender challenges along the way. These varied experiences have given me the background and “nuts and bolts” skills needed to succeed at Bentley, while also fueling my interest in closing the gender gap – something that women clearly cannot do alone. Our economy is only at its best when every individual has an equal opportunity to participate and succeed at every level. I’m thrilled to have been given this significant platform – it enables me to make a real difference on this front.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at Bentley University?
Segueing from the leadership roles I’ve previously held to that of a college president was not an easy or seamless transition. I made a lot of early mistakes. It’s a completely different environment, much more process-driven than others in which I have worked. It’s far less about calling the shots and more about enabling faculty and staff to be as good as they can be so that our students will be successful in their pursuits.

One of the biggest changes that took place just as I joined the university was changing our status from Bentley College to Bentley University. Much of the ground work had been completed to meet Massachusetts’ regulatory requirements to become a university, but winning over alumni and other stakeholders to accept both the new name and the larger national and international aspirations that accompanied the change was not easy. Many had sentimental attachments to the college and were concerned that becoming a global business university would change the nature and culture of the school. We needed to show them why and how our new name and bolder goals added value to the Bentley degree.

A major highlight for me has been the number of new programs created during my tenure by our faculty and staff that are focused on redefining a 21st century business education. For example, our graduate school developed a highly innovative new MBA program – a studio-based, 11-month, global degree that places special emphasis on honing students’ individual leadership styles and change-management skills, while working on diverse teams and across cultures. And I’m especially proud to have helped found the Center for Women and Business at Bentley, designed to advance shared leadership among women and men at all levels of the corporate world.

Why do you think female graduates are more prepared for success than their male counterparts?
This is an interesting question, as men are usually assumed to be better prepared for life-long career success, particularly when it comes to senior management roles. Recent research shows that this is based largely on general perception, rather than concrete evidence. That said, there are more women than ever entering the business world. A recent study on preparedness commissioned by Bentley found that women are seen as better suited to success when it comes to certain specific qualities, like organizational skills, as well as interpersonal and communication skills. While women may have an advantage in these areas and men in others, I believe that both genders have the ability to be equally prepared for the workforce and should be equally accepted at all levels.

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
Work/life balance is an elusive concept for most of us and I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is believing that we have to “have it all” — at the same time. That’s a lot of unnecessary pressure and it can ultimately lead to feelings of resentment or failure. It’s important to remember that you can, over time, do everything you set out to do. It doesn’t all have to happen simultaneously. Over many years my husband and I have figured out how to support each other in our various career, family and civic endeavors, prioritizing our activities differently at different times. I’ve found support from family and friends to be especially helpful. Of course, time management is crucial too, whether you’re balancing kids, or volunteer and community commitments, with a career. Equally important is that you make sure you reserve some time and relaxation for yourself. Having three Labrador retrievers has been a great outlet for me!

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
There still seems to be significant unconscious gender bias in the workplace and, unfortunately, progress in eliminating it has been slower than we all wish. According to McKinsey and Company, women now fill 53 percent of entry-level positions, yet only 28 percent are in senior management positions. Board membership numbers for women are even lower. I’ve served on several corporate boards and, in each case I’ve been one of just a few women in the room. As this gender gap persists, it causes too many women to doubt themselves and then hesitate in pursuing senior management positions – and a self-perpetuating cycle continues. We need buy-in from both male and female executives to bring about real lasting change.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Both mentors and sponsors can make a significant difference. Mentors can share advice and provide support, while sponsors are people in your organization who believe in you and are in a position to help you climb the organizational ladder. I would not have possessed the confidence to achieve success without strong mentor and sponsor support. The preparedness survey I cited earlier underscores the importance of mentorship programs and women-specific networking events to help women succeed in business. At the same time, recent research also shows that having someone in your company who can act as a sponsor, actually advocating for you in terms of career advancement, is especially effective for high potential women.

Very early in my career, I thrived with the support of a woman who held a presidential appointment at the Federal Trade Commission, someone who had already successfully broken through the glass ceiling in Washington in the early 1980’s, an especially tough, male-dominated arena. A Commissioner at the FTC, Patricia Bailey not only served as a role model, but was in a position to help me move up in my career – two vital ingredients in helping me get to the leadership position I hold today. When women get close to achieving leadership positions, they need someone they can turn to in order to reach that next step.

This is a recommendation I strongly suggest to business-minded millennials who fear the gender bias that awaits them: Look for mentors and sponsors who will not only offer advice and support your career ambitions, but will help you reach your goals. Surround yourself with professional, strong women – and men – who will encourage you to succeed.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
Arianna Huffington immediately comes to mind. She’s visionary, smart, successful and candid in her views, while also having a good sense of humor and strong interpersonal skills. She has urged all of us to get more sleep and to otherwise adopt a healthier lifestyle – great advice that I personally aspire to someday adopt! Growing up, my earliest role model was the fictional character Nancy Drew. She embodied everything I wanted to be: razor sharp and likeable, able to solve the thorniest of problems while always impeccably dressed in matching skirt and heels.

What do you want Bentley University, its students and staff to accomplish in the next year?
We launched our PreparedU initiative in 2013, and that will continue to be a main focus for this coming year. The University, its faculty, staff and students are committed to working together to bridge the gap between employers and higher education so we can better prepare our graduates for today’s complex and demanding workplace. The post-recession job market has been tough for recent college graduates and our surveys have shown that employers don’t believe most graduates are adequately prepared for the work world. While Bentley is fortunate as a business-focused university to have a high job and graduate school placement rate, our PreparedU Project has spurred a broader public conversation that highlights the career challenges that millennials face and also identifies solutions that all schools can adopt to better prepare them for success.

Men love meat and ladies love sweets. Right? These stereotypes are near-effortless to buy into, particularly in the U.S., where marketers have played them hard, and consumers have adopted them as their own preferences and truths.

The perception is as follows: Women are to subsist on salad (and chocolate, sometimes) and men are to fill their plates with meat and savory dishes.

Just take a glance at the chocolate advertisements below.

(From left to right: Frames from TV advertisements for Dove, Ghiradelli, Hershey and Godiva. Click on each individual photo to watch the commercial in full.)

In all four commercials, chocolate is branded as a sinful treat that women (thin, attractive women — but that’s a topic for another day) consume because they just can’t resist.

And here, four masculine meat commercials.

(From left to right: Frames from TV advertisements for Hungry Man, Burger King, Weber Grills and McDonald’s. Click on each individual photo to watch the commercial in full.)

In these ads, men are either behind the grill or eating meat products. In Burger King’s commercial, the Texas Double Whopper is advertised for strong men who can push cars over bridges and can’t subsist on “chick food” like quiche.

So, do women really enjoy chocolate more than men do? The answer’s a little complicated. Forty percent of women in the U.S. report chocolate cravings, while just 15 percent of men lust after it. And maybe unsurprisingly (depending on who you are), “half of the women [in the U.S.] who crave chocolate say they do so right around menstruation,” Dr. Julia Hormes, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Albany told The Huffington Post over the phone.

Chocolate and PMS are closely associated, which had Hormes wondering if menstruation causes the craving. Is it a biologically-instilled hankering? Are women deficient in certain nutrients in the days leading up to their period that lead them to desire chocolate? No. In a study she published in Appetite in 2011, “These biochemical, physiological hypotheses didn’t pan out.”

So then, why do women hunt down a brick of Godiva to survive cramps and bloating? “There’s a strong influence of culture,” Hormes said. The commercials above say it all. Chocolate is marketed as a way for women to deal with negative emotion (like, say, the stress and headaches that come with PMS), Hormes said. It is an “indulgence” because it is an exception to the rule — women who diet and subscribe to a certain ideal of beauty should only consume chocolate when they “need” it.

Only in America. In Spain, for example, women don’t report craving chocolate perimensturally nearly as much as women in the U.S. do. It’s not that Spanish women have a different make-up to their cycle, it’s really that tampon and chocolate ads aren’t aired during the same commercial break. In the U.S., it seems, there’s something so strongly feminine about chocolate that fewer men report wanting it. But, “Spanish men are almost as likely to crave chocolate as Spanish women.” In Egypt, neither men nor women really report craving chocolate; “They tend to crave savory foods,” Hormes said. Our conflicting relationship with chocolate is a culturally-manufactured one.

Men get the short end of the cultural-perception stick when it comes to vegetables and healthy eating (though this is evolving as health is increasingly a priority for Americans, as more than one-third of U.S. adults are obese). While meat is commonly associated with masculinity, there’s no striking biological evidence than men need more meat than women (just typically more calories and protein, due to their larger size). This misperception developed from a historical and evolutional account — men were hunters, women were gathers (but hey — they didn’t really pluck chocolate bars from the ground).

Women do dominate the greener eating space; just 41 percent of the 7.3 million Americans that are vegetarian are male, according to the Vegetarian Times. There’s this curious sub-trend sprouting among vegetarian and vegan men: The book, Meat Is For Pussies, is a how-to guide targeted men who want to get fit on a plant-based diet. It is not a subtle example of how some are trying to re-market the vegetarian space as masculine. In an NPR feature, “For These Vegans, Masculinity Means Protecting The Planet,” one male vegan, who also happens to be a triathlete, relents, “”Everyone always thinks vegans are weak, skinny, frail, pale.” He and his fellow vegan friends are interviewed about their vegan barbecue in Brooklyn, N.Y. In the feature, the group poses while flexing muscles, exposing tattoos and appearing generally “tough.” They’re almost Popeye-esque.

“We use food to make judgments about people all the time,” Hormes said. Humans naturally label people and things to make sense of the world, but maybe, when armed with more information, we can start moving toward a more gender-neutral view of the grocery store.

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University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel told a group of faculty Monday the school has admitted athletes who weren’t skilled enough to be students at the public institution, the Michigan Daily reports.

Speaking before the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs, a faculty governance group, Schlissel lamented how too many football players were coming to the prestigious public university who weren’t academically ready to be in college.

“We admit students who aren’t as qualified, and it’s probably the kids that we admit that can’t honestly, even with lots of help, do the amount of work and the quality of work it takes to make progression from year to year,” Schlissel said. “These past two years have gotten better, but before that, the graduation rates were terrible, with football somewhere in the 50s and 60s when our total six-year rate at the university is somewhere near 90 percent. So that’s a challenge.”

Schlissel spoke for the first time since the university’s athletic director, Dave Brandon, was forced out from Michigan. Schlissel was also speaking in light of a University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill report showing two decades of academic fraud, especially concentrated in that school’s football program, released in late October.

Schlissel suggested athletics at Michigan were trumping academics, and complained that no one is following the 20.5 hours per week limit set by the NCAA for how much time athletes can spend practicing in-session, according to the Detroit Free Press.

A CNN analysis earlier this year found most schools have between 7 and 18 percent of revenue sport athletes — football or basketball — who are reading at an elementary school level. CNN requested information from UM on the ACT or SAT scores of athletes playing football or basketball, or the number of specially admitted athletes, but the university said in May it did not have documents with that material.

“The incentives are really strong for them to be as successful on the field as possible, and some of those are in dollars and others are in performance,” Schlissel said. “If we had won Nobel Prizes this year, we wouldn’t have gotten as much attention as did our A.D. It’s sad but it’s really true.”

Andrea Gellert is the Senior Vice President of Marketing at OnDeck, where she brings more than 15 years of small business marketing and client service experience. Most recently, she was Vice President of Client Services and Operations at Group Commerce, a market-leading e-commerce platform for publishers. Previously, Andrea spent 15 years at American Express, holding leadership positions in both the OPEN small business and Merchant Services divisions. In her most recent position as Vice President of Marketing for OPEN, Andrea spearheaded initiatives that greatly improved the customer experience, as measured by net promoter score and retention rates, and created the company’s first small business recognition platform. Andrea graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
It’s so tempting in both large and small companies to want to tackle everything all at once, vs doubling down on the most important business drivers. As someone who has always liked pursuing a variety of interests in both my personal and professional life, learning how to focus and backburner ideas has been a real priority. Although it can be a challenge, I still encourage idea generation so there’s always a strong pipeline for the next advances in the business.

It’s funny, when I started to get leadership roles years ago, I was told that women apologize too much and men perceive that as weak because they never do. I think there’s a balance. I coach people (regardless of gender) that what’s most important is demonstrating accountability – accepting responsibility for your actions and moving forward is what shows the most business maturity.

How has your previous employment experience aided your position at OnDeck?
I’ve been focused on the small business financial services sector for the majority of my career. I joined American Express in what is now OPEN as a summer intern, then spent 15 years there, working my way up in marketing, strategy and account development functions across the OPEN and the Merchant Divisions. Being at a company which has a world class brand and customer experience has definitely informed my approach to marketing at OnDeck.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at OnDeck?
A major highlight was the re-launching of our OnDeck brand. We rolled out a new logo, our new tagline “We actually want to lend to small business”, a new visual identity and a new website geared towards our customer – the small business owner. We got incredibly positive feedback from all of our constituents, including employees, investors, and most importantly, customers. It was a great team effort.

In terms of challenges, we have this very ambitious mission to power every small business loan in the country. It’s an achievable goal but we’re still a young company with limited resources and only 24 hours in a day. Developing a brand takes time, especially with a non-viral product like ours (people generally don’t post pictures of their loan on Facebook or Twitter), and so our main challenge is getting all small businesses to know who we are.

What advice can you offer women who are looking for a career in marketing?
Focus on the customer: Marketing is all about showcasing how a product solves a customer need, so find one and go deep on understanding exactly who needs it and why. Spend time with your customers and prospects – they are the ones who will make money for your company and usually have tremendous insights that can help drive whatever part of the business you manage.

Get quantitative: In this day and age marketing is all about data, and so being strong analytically has gone from being important to critical. That means understanding how to structure and read marketing tests as well as how to evaluate and understand all of the components of your marketing channels and sales funnel. There are all kinds of marketing analytics courses out there if this is a development area for you.

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
I’ve always thought of the notion of work/life balance as a funny way to think about it – I think you’ve got one life and you have to decide how you are going to live it. I’m a wife, mother of two children, a career person and someone with my own personal interests – and I aim for fulfillment across all those areas. As a family we’ve made some decisions to help us stay involved – so we live in Manhattan where work, school and home are close by; and I have a very supportive husband who’s active in sharing household and parenting responsibilities.

It’s always been important to me that my place of work respects the flexibility that working parents need, so I’ve sought out companies like American Express and now OnDeck. One of the benefits of working in FinTech is that the offices are very tech-enabled – it’s easy to work from home if you have to, or check in via a variety of devices.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Confidence. Over and over what I observe is that women are often far more capable than they give themselves credit for. So they hold back, which is not a great recipe for success in the modern workplace.

I think there is a lot of opportunity for women in the workplace. Women make up more than half of the professional workforce, and are more active on social media than men, but the tech industry is predominantly comprised of men. It’s very easy for a woman to feel like an outsider in the tech industry, but we are starting to stake our claim in the space, and it’s very exciting.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work at companies that don’t have preconceived norms of gender. American Express has a lot of women, especially in senior leadership positions. When I first started at OnDeck, I was the only senior woman at the company and in general there weren’t that many women here at all. But the team here has always been far more interested in how to solve problems and disrupt traditional financial services methods than what your gender is, which creates a tremendously stimulating environment. And since joining OnDeck, we’ve hired several women at all levels and are starting to close the gender gap.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Mentorship has helped me become a better leader. I’ve had the good fortune of having several great bosses who have taught me a lot about how to lead, both by their example and by their guidance. A great boss is someone who not only inspires you to be better but is also willing to point out your blind spots and help you more effectively manage around them.

We started a women’s group at OnDeck called Women@OnDeck with this in mind. We’re encouraging women of all levels at the company to get to know each other better, and for the more senior women to share their experiences and lessons learned to the younger, more junior women, in hopes that it will help them grow and succeed in the workplace.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
I had the fortunate opportunity to see Gloria Steinem speak at a women’s luncheon, and she said something that really stuck out to me. She gave an anecdote about someone asking who she’s going to pass the torch to, and her immediate response was “What a male oriented question! I’m not giving up my torch – I’m using my torch to light other womens’ torches.” That idea that it’s not a zero sum game, that we can all be successful, is something that Steinhem has always championed and has stayed relevant. And, I have to admit, who doesn’t want to be that fabulous at 80!

I’m also very impressed with Dr Maria Klawe, the President of Harvey Mudd College. 40% of computer science majors there are now women due to her efforts. And she’s done it by spending time understanding and addressing root cause issues. Simple things, like creating a special introductory computer science class for people with no prior coding experience, ensuring there are female instructors and the like have made the field far more accessible and so more women are entering it.

What do you want OnDeck to accomplish in the next year?
OnDeck’s vision is to transform how money flows to Main Street by leveraging our platform to enable all types of investors to make capital on demand a reality for small business owners. Think of how Priceline transformed travel, or Zillow has transformed home buying – we believe small business financing can be ongoing and friction-free.

We’re excited to continue to bring new products to market for our customers and really be a partner to small business throughout their entire lifecycle.

Dhruv Aggarwal analyzes the social ramifications of China’s tax revolution

In 2011, the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, responding to public opinion, raised the monthly income tax exemption threshold, the minimum level of income above which a person must pay income tax, from 2000 to 3500 RMB. The exemption threshold was 800 RMB a month in 1980.

The fact that while the tax exemption threshold has increased by over 300 percent, the income of the average Chinese person has shot up by a staggering 2700 percent over the same period is the truly remarkable phenomenon at the heart of China’s tax revolution. Many commentators have emphasized that increases in exemption limits indicate the Chinese government’s responsiveness to popular dissatisfaction with taxation. This view, however, ignores the fact that, with rapidly rising average incomes, more and more Chinese people fall into taxable categories. This flooding of the middle class has offset the increase in the tax exemption threshold.

The rise in general prosperity is no doubt a largely urban phenomenon. Most rural households are exempt from income tax, since their family members are agriculturalists. The rise in per capita income is also starker in the urban sector. McKinsey and Company predicted in 2013 that 75% of Chinese urban consumers would earn between 60 and 229 thousand yuan by 2022. In 2000, this number stood at 4%.

For this high-powered, mostly young demographic, a yearly income tax exemption level of 42,000 yuan is unlikely to mean much. The concentration of taxpayers in urban areas also allows the Communist party to focus on retaining its grip on power – with most rural inhabitants exempt, and urban consumers seeing an exponential rise in incomes, no section of the population could conceivably have major grievances against taxation.

All is not as it seems, however, with China’s taxation system. First, the collection and valuation of taxes itself is questionable. As with all data collected in China, the level and growth of income in the top tier of urban society is contested. Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of Capital in the 21st Century, has written about China’s tax structure in comparison to that of other developing countries. According to him, the Chinese government needs to be more transparent in the way it releases its tax data. “In particular,” says Piketty, “the government should publish annual income tax statistics by income bracket and by region.”

Piketty’s reference to region is worth noting. Particularly prosperous urban regions, which are mostly found the east of the country, are home to increasingly affluent young taxpayers. Yet while these people are the new backbone of the country’s tax system, they also happen to be considered the greatest potential threat to one-party rule. With higher incomes translating to higher tax sums under China’s progressive tax system, these urban youngsters may start demanding more from the authorities than just ceaseless economic growth.

Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have faced their greatest tests in cosmopolitan metropolises, with their educated and wealthy young populations the most likely challengers to governmental authority. The protests of Tiananmen and the recent upheaval in Hong Kong suggest that the concentration of dissent can often be in the country’s most wealthiest cities and among its most aspirational youth. This “paradox of plenty” may be something that Chinese policymakers and tax authorities need to consider in the future.

The fact still remains that China has seen its income tax revenues skyrocket, accounting for 0.1% of GDP in 1986 and 2.5% in 2008. By 2015, this number is expected to further swell to 10% of China’s GDP. The country’s generous exemption limits have been offset by the wealth advancement of its citizens. By resisting the tendency displayed by other Asian countries like India to keep expanding its classes of “exempt” incomes, China has steadfastly increased its tax-to-GDP ratio. As it continues its transition from being a purely manufacturing-based economy to a consumption-based economy, China would do well to ensure that its tax code stays in touch with the changing socioeconomic profile of its citizenry.

Dhruv Aggarwal is a junior at Yale University and an associate editor of the magazine. Contact him at dhruv.aggarwal@yale.edu.

This article also appears in China Hands.

Yifu Dong reviews Louisa Lim’s People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited.

If George Orwell were still alive, maybe he would have regretted naming his book 1984 instead of 1989. But as Orwell noted in 1984, the year would not have mattered, for no one in Oceania remembered the date anymore. Likewise, very few in China care to remember about the fateful date of June 4, 1989.

Yet, somehow, I learned. Having spent a year of elementary school in the US, I had come to learn more about the events of 1989 than most of my peers at home. I vividly recall watching a documentary film called “The Gate of Heavenly Peace,” borrowed from the Harvard-Yenching Library, at a lunch party with some Harvard graduate students from China. I, 11 at the time, watched with wide-eyed bewilderment as the scenes unfolded, while the older and wiser Harvard students seemed equally baffled. Later, in my American class, my teacher even asked me to explain the emblematic Tank Man photo to my class. But before leaving the US, my mother reminded me to forget about all the forbidden knowledge I had accidentally acquired and not to talk “nonsense” after returning home.

Last year, when the same Tank Man photo was shown to 100 students in four of Beijing’s elite colleges active in the 1989 student movement, only 15 of them identified it correctly. Holding this picture and conducting this survey was Louisa Lim, author of People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited. Lim, courageous and insightful, invites readers to revisit the events of 1989 in their own modern setting.

The first seven chapters of the book feature profiles of people who participated in or witnessed the events as well as young “amnesiacs” who are largely ignorant of the past. The last chapter, Chengdu, describes the often-neglected 1989 protests in the southwestern metropolis. Lim uses State Department cables and interviews with eyewitnesses to reconstruct a more complete picture of the events in Chengdu, calling to attention incidents outside of Beijing in the eventful spring of 1989. Scholars had already noted the nationwide nature of the unrest, though a complete volume encompassing the experiences of all parts of China has yet to be written.

The main goal of The People’s Republic of Amnesia is by no means a simple documentary of stories and profiles. Lim breaks free from the commonplace discussion of history and its possible alternatives. Instead, the author sees the events of 1989 as a historical turning point and a springboard for the analysis of still-developing repercussions of that momentous occasion. Along with profile interviews, Lim neatly stitches together well-known vignettes in the news and on the Internet to showcase the legacies of 1989 and analyze the problematic aspects of contemporary Chinese society.

Among these analyses, “amnesia” is the recurring theme. It is not only a symptom, but also, as Lim suggests, a survival mechanism for many Chinese. Lim captures the amnesia of typical Chinese people, especially the youth, such as the college students in the Tank Man survey. The forgetful youth featured in the book belong to the so-called “post-80’s generation” in China, the group perhaps most inclined to amnesia. Young people of the post-80’s generation usually have parents who were innocent advocates of the Cultural Revolution but were later sent to the countryside and deprived of formal education. A relatively oppressed generation, their parents understood all too well the dangers of politics and developed amnesic mechanisms themselves. In addition to their parents’ influence, the post-80’s generation grew up in an environment where political education tightened after 1989 and the Internet–perhaps the only possible source of free information in China–was still out of reach. Moreover, after graduating from college, many of them have to deal with cutthroat competition, possible unemployment, rising prices and a lack of financial support from their parents. Under such insecure circumstances, the post-80’s generation has adopted amnesia as a defensive response to avoid unnecessary troubles.

What Lim misses is the “post-90’s generation,” who grew up in a relatively more open environment with more access to free information. The outlook for them may be a bit more optimistic than Lim presents. In my high school, there were even students who commemorated the anniversary in early June by going to Tiananmen Square, dressed up in school uniforms and waving small Chinese flags. They also sent postcards of Tiananmen to teachers who had mentioned the truth about the events of 1989 in class, even if only for a brief moment. Many of my peers of the post-90’s generation are actively seeking out the truth, either out of curiosity or out of a sense of justice. Although this ray of hope is far from mainstream at the moment, it may prove significant in the future.

Despite the underrepresentation of the post-90’s generation, Lim explains in great detail why amnesia matters amid the predominant counterarguments that abound in the official narrative of the Communist Party, as well as in the minds of beneficiaries of the current system. One forceful counterargument is voiced by Eric X. Li, a Chinese venture capitalist who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in February 2012 to argue the superiority of China’s current political system. Li does not seem to show the symptoms of amnesia; he directly confronts the sensitive topic of 1989: “The Chinese nation paid a heavy price for that violent event, but the alternatives would have been far worse.” Most people are psychologically inclined to unconsciously justify existing systems, but Li, as a beneficiary of the system, feels compelled to make his judgment explicit. Similarly, many Chinese people, even including a few of the 15 knowledgeable students who successfully identified the Tank Man photo in Lim’s survey, overtly support the current system. These people readily acknowledge that the country paid a heavy price, but given the progress China has made since 1989, it seems everything was all worth it.

Lim, however, contends that the price is too much to bear. All the success the regime achieved after this dramatic historical turning point, Lim argues, came at the cost of humanity, which matters most to Lim. Humanity can be discussed in the contexts of philosophy and ideology, but for Lim, humanity can be as simple as “Facts are facts. Right is right. Wrong is wrong.” Here, Lim quotes Tang Deying, an elderly woman who tried fighting for an explanation after losing her son in the Chengdu crackdown. Humanity is in peril in the minds of the young people Lim interviews. Humanity seems to persist in the quiet corners of Chinese society where Chen Guang, a soldier-turned-artist who participated in the “clearance” of the Square, and Bao Tong, a top Party official who was detained before the crackdown for his wrong political leanings, struggle with faith as well as despair.

Most people in the West take for granted Lim’s stance on humanity, but in the course of human history, humanity has always coexisted with its counter-ideologies. China’s current counter-ideology cannot be better said than Li’s summary: in China political rights are seen as “privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation.” In other words, while the West believes that certain political rights are God-given and inalienable, Communist ideology asserts that individual rights can be sacrificed for greater good. Lim’s argument on humanity, though only discussed at the very end, illuminates the entire book and puts forward a firm response to the amnesic counter-ideology. Amid today’s trendy discussions over China’s economy and politics, one should never underestimate the profundity of People’s Republic of Amnesia.

Yifu Dong is a sophomore at Yale University and an associate editor of the magazine. Contact him at yifu.dong@yale.edu.

This article also appears in China Hands.

It’s been almost two years since 20-year-old Adam Lanza walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and gunned down 20 children and six adults, before killing himself. It was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history–the worst ever in an elementary school. In the wake of this unthinkable tragedy, Americans were enveloped in a national sadness.

The murders took place on December 14th. Psychological theory and common wisdom both say that the intensity of our emotions surrounding Sandy Hook should have diminished by now. But is this true? A team of Columbia University psychological scientists, headed up by Bruce Dore and Kevin Ochsner, are questioning this belief. They are proposing an alternative idea about emotions and psychological distance–one that could have policy implications for the Newtown community and the country.

The fact is, the underlying mechanics of emotional decay are not well understood. One widely held hypothesis is that all emotions diminish at the same rate. That is, if remoteness affects emotional intensity, it should affect sadness and anger and anxiety and so forth, all at the same rate. But what if emotions are not all alike? What if time and distance make us think about tragic events differently–less concretely and more abstractly–and this mental construal affects different emotions differently?

That’s the idea that the Columbia scientists wanted to explore. They thought that over time, our thinking about Sandy Hook might shift from the grisly details to abstract questions, like: Why? In that case, they suspected, sadness might indeed diminish with time and distance, but other emotions–most notably anxiety–might not, and indeed might increase over time.

The scientists found a unique way to test this idea. They gathered Twitter postings–“tweets”–for nearly six months following the Sandy Hook tragedy. The tweets were all time-stamped, so they could analyze changes over time. They collected only tweets that mentioned either “Newtown” or “Sandy Hook”–and only tweets whose users identified their location. That’s because, according to the theory, both time and geographical distance shape our construal of events–and in turn the intensity of emotions.

They analyzed the content of the tweets in several ways. First, they looked at present-tense verbs and first-person pronouns–which were an indicator of the immediacy of events. They also analyzed emotion words in general, and sadness- and anxiety-related words in particular. Finally, they looked at any words that might indicate an interest in the horrific event’s causes. For all of these indicators, they tracked changes over six months’ time.

The findings supported their predictions. As the Sandy Hook shooting became more remote–both in time and distance–sadness words decreased. But as sadness diminished, anxiety showed the opposite pattern, increasing over time. What’s more, the jump in anxiety was associated with an increase in language suggesting a search for explanations and meaning in the tragedy.

The Twitter study was convincing, but the scientists wanted to double-check the results with a different kind of study. They recruited a group of adults, and divided them into two groups. Some were asked to write about why the Sandy Hook murders took place, while others wrote about the concrete details of the shooting. They then rated their feelings of sadness and anxiety and, finally, indicated whether or not they perceived ongoing risk for similar tragedies to occur.

As expected, and as reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, focusing on abstract causes of the tragedy decreased sadness–but increased anxiety. So, while thinking about the Sandy Hook shooting evokes more sadness than anxiety in general, focusing on explanations leads to a shift in emotional tone from sadness to anxiety. Importantly, it appears that this emotional shift–especially the growing anxiety–is tied to people’s lingering worry that a similar tragedy might occur in the future.

The scientists conclude by citing a 2013 Gallup poll, which shows that a third of American parents fear for their child’s safety at school. That’s an 8 percent jump from 2012. Sadness and anxiety are very different emotions, and lead to different behaviors, so understanding their ebb and flow following a tragedy could lead to more effective interventions. It could also illuminate why citizens support legislation and policy initiatives to prevent more such tragedies in the future. Or, as in the case with Sandy Hook, why they don’t.

Follow Wray Herbert’s reporting on psychological science in The Huffington Post and on Twitter at @wrayherbert.

Kristin Lemkau is the Chief Marketing Officer for JPMorgan Chase. She is responsible for brand, advertising, media, sponsorships, marketing and market research firmwide. She also leads communications for the Chase-branded businesses. She reports to Gordon Smith, CEO of Consumer & Community Banking, and is a member of the Consumer & Community Banking Leadership Team.

Prior to her role as CMO, she was Chief Communications Officer for Chase since and Deputy Head of Communications and head of Corporate Brand for JPMorgan Chase.

From 2005-2010, Kristin led Global Marketing & Communications for J.P. Morgan’s Investment Bank, including media relations, internal communications, marketing, employer brand, events, and social responsibility. Before that, she ran Global Media Relations for the J.P. Morgan.

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan in 1998, she was director of Media Relations for AlliedSignal, the predecessor firm to Honeywell, Inc. She was previously director of Media Relations for Freeport-McMoRan in New Orleans. During her six-year career at Freeport, she was based in Madrid and Jakarta, where she built the company’s local communications offices.

Kristin graduated from Vanderbilt University. She is Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit focused on preventing the causes of gun violence, and is a member of the Leadership Council for the Robin Hood Foundation. She is on the Board of the Association of National Advertisers.

How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
Big question and hard to say. I guess it comes down to having great parents and not being afraid to fail.

How has your previous employment experience aided your position at JPMorgan Chase?
I’ve been at the company a long time so I have a strong network of relationships, which in a large company helps a lot. I have a history and a high degree of trust with the CEOs who run businesses. I know that I am here to help them grow their businesses. They’re the client – I work for them. I hope that inoculates me against “CMO-itis.”

I’m actually not a traditionally marketer. I came up as a PR person, which I hope can be a strength. I am not married to the traditional ways to market and with marketing changing as quickly as it is around data and digital, I hope that helps me. And good PR is really about building credibility and telling the truth. That’s exactly what we are doing in building relationships with our customers.

What have the highlights and challenges been during your tenure at JPMorgan Chase?
Highlights have been too many to mention, but has to be around working with smart, terrific people. When you’re at work as long as we are, you need to be inspired by the people you’re with as much as the work itself. There have certainly been plenty of challenges. Those have probably been the sheer intensity of the work environment during certain cycles.

What does it mean to you to be included on Forbes’ Most Influential CMOs list?
I was surprised and thrilled. Many of the people on that list are people I have admired for years. So it means I have a lot to live up to!

What advice can you offer women who are seeking a career in finance?
It’s the same advice for men or women. Be a really good person and be really good at your job. I have a sign that hangs in my home office “if you work really hard and are kind, amazing things will happen.” Corny maybe, but true.

How do you maintain a work/life balance?
I have two young children, so every day can be a challenge. And I have never met anyone who has it completely figured out – whether they work or stay home – so once you know that, you can relax a bit. For me, I limit travel, I say no to almost everything I get invited to after work, and I never go more than two nights in a row without seeing my kids. Some days you get it right and some days you feel like a hot mess. You forgive yourself and carry on.

What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Not taking enough risks. I can’t tell you how many women I know turn down opportunities. And usually it’s not because they don’t think they are capable; it’s because they don’t want to take on any more in what’s already an overloaded day. Mobility is really the only way to grow and to expand your career options-the Sheryl Sandberg jungle gym analogy. You just have to trust that thoughtful people have faith in you, do it and figure it out.

How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
Sponsorship has made a huge difference to me. I don’t know whether mentorship works if the mentor doesn’t actually see how you work, but sponsors who know your work directly and can affect your career are critical. I’ve had no better sponsor than Gordon Smith, my boss today. I’m sure it sounds like I’m sucking up, but he’s taken big bets on me and then, more important, followed up by having the patience to let me fumble a few things in the early days. A good sponsor is someone who will take thoughtful risks giving you jobs or projects and then let you know they’ll underwrite your mistakes after you take it on.

Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
Mary Erdoes, CEO of JPMorgan Asset Management. She’s been an amazing business leader, sponsor and friend to me. When I came back from maternity leave in 2007 after having my first child, I was on the ledge wondering how I could do this. Mary rallied around me and actually threw a party at her house with women at JPM who had young children, AND she invited our kids. So while our kids were getting their faces painted and tearing up Mary’s house, we all connected about how we each made our lives work. Because in the end, “balance” is just a logistics challenge. After talking to those women, learning their systems and time management techniques, I realized I could do it. Mary is one in a billion.

What do you want JPMorgan Chase to accomplish in the next year?
Create stronger relationships with our customers. Banks haven’t traditionally established the kind of bond with their customers that other retailers have. Right now, Chase has the strongest customer satisfaction scores of large banks across most products. We have a chance to break through and establish the same kind of brand loyalty that other industries have, like Starbucks, Zappos, or the Container Store. There’s absolute no reason we shouldn’t. To quote Kevin Millar (or maybe it was Curt Schilling), “Why not us?”

Beyond that, I want to have fun.