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12 May, 2011 | (01 hr)
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This is a two part Conference KeyNotes Webcast series to include video clips and live discussion of sessions delivered at The 2011 Talent Management Strategies Conference.
During these sessions, executives will discuss:
April 21
- Real World HR Lessons: Recruitment, Engagement and Retention Practices
- Leading in an Increasingly Complex Business Environment
May 12
- ROI: Managing Critical Talent Pipelines to Drive Business Growth
- Translating Talent Strategy into Business Success
Participants will have the opportunity to pose questions to the speakers.
You may register for just one or for both webcasts.
Who Should Attend:
Executives responsible for HR and Talent Management.
Shannon Sisler
Shannon Sisler is the Vice President of Talent and Diversity at DaVita, Inc. and is responsible for leading efforts to optimally select, assess, develop and retain teammates. Additionally, she leads corporate social responsibility and diversity initiatives. Prior to DaVita, Shannon was the Senior...Full Bio
Ed Colbert
Ed Colbert is the global director of Talent Management. In this role, Ed and his team focus on attracting, developing, deploying and retaining the best people to help Dow Corning achieve its strategy.
Prior to his current position, Ed held various roles within both Finance and Human Resou...Full Bio
Meg Gottemoeller
Meg Gottemoeller is a Senior Fellow, Human Capital at The Conference Board. In this role, Meg supports the Human Capital Practice which includes The Conference Board Human Capital Exchange™, research, conferences, webcasts and programs in a broad spectrum of h...Full Bio


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SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- She's Robin Williams' grieving daughter, she's super into video games and she's named for the iconic princess from the Legend of Zelda -- but to Internet trolls, Zelda Williams is just another target.
Less than two days after the death of her father, Williams deleted the Instagram and Twitter apps from her phone, citing repeated harassment from Internet trolls sending her graphic digitally edited images of father's face superimposed on corpses. Both accounts remain active online and available for public viewing.
The trouble began when she posted a passage from The Little Prince on Twitter in honor of her late father.
August 12, 2014
That tweet inspired some trolling, but things especially escalated when Zelda posted a longer more personal message on her Tumblr, in which she spoke lovingly of her father and promised those harassing her family "that some small, giggling part of [Robin Williams] is sending a flock of pigeons to your house to poop on your car. Right after you've had it washed. After all, he loved to laugh too."
Seemingly taking that as a challenge, anonymous Twitter users posted increasingly graphic images of Robin Williams as a corpse, prompting the 25-year-old actress to write in a deleted tweet, "Please report @PimpStory @MrGoosebuster.
"I'm shaking. I can't. Please. Twitter requires a link and I won't open it. Don't either. Please."
Hours later, Zelda announced she was at the very least taking a break from social media and may never return to the digital world.
I'm sorry. I should've risen above. Deleting this from my devices for a good long time, maybe forever. Time will tell. Goodbye.— Zelda Williams (@zeldawilliams) August 13, 2014
As a notable person maintaining an active online presence, Zelda's had to address trolls in the past, penning an open letter on her Tumbler in June to those who sought to harass her.
Dear Trolls
I am not a 'dyke' or a 'yid'. I'm not a man in drag nor a failed abortion. What I AM is someone who doesn't have to put up with someone else's [expletive] and 'take it' like I keep being told. Sorry, despite how many times it's parroted back at me from whichever other dip[expletive] was heard saying it first, that is NOT my job, nor the job of any other human with a pair of lips and a middle finger.
But seen as the insults have gotten further and further from the truth, it would appear the majority of you are grasping for straws, so let me help with that oh so favored and misused 'comeback' before it's even been made:
Freedom of Speech is your right, but what you've misunderstood on your punch drunk mission to make being an insufferable asshat excusable is that it does NOT protect you from someone telling you you're a racist, bigoted, bored prick giddily looking for digital excitement beyond furiously masturbating and crying. It does NOT protect you from someone calling you out for being the skidmark on everyone else's otherwise pristine day. You, my dear little [expletive], do not automatically get a free pass for leaking all over the rest of the world without warning, reason, or even logic when they don't know you or care to know you.
I'm afraid the only thing it DOES protect you from, english speaking douchebags of the USA...
... is the government suing you for being one.

subset: commoncrawl


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The increasing water pressure as you go deeper is generally explained in terms of the weight of the water column above the observation point pressing down. The question, then, is what would happen if you had a big blob of water in free fall, say 100m in diameter-- not big enough to produce large gravitational forces on its own-- and swam to the center of it. I'm imagining some sort of contained environment, here-- a giant space station, or the planet-sized envelope of air in Karl Schroeder's Virga novels, that sort of thing-- so you don't worry about the water boiling off into vacuum or freezing solid, or whatever.
Would there be any pressure differential between the surface of the blob and the center of the blob? At first glance, it would seem not, or at least not beyond whatever fairly trivial difference you would get from the self-gravity of the water. But it's conceivable that there might be some other fluid dynamics thing going on that would give you a difference.
For that matter, what difference would you expect between the pressure inside the water and outside the water? We know from shots of astronauts goofing around that water in free fall tends to stay together in discrete blobs. This is presumably some sort of surface tension effect. Does that lead to a higher pressure inside the water than out? How much of a difference would that be? Or would you not particularly notice a change from sticking your head into a blob of free-falling water? (Other than, you know, being wet...)
(This is just an idle question, brought on by thinking about the equivalence principle, and thus free-falling frames. It occurred to me that somebody here might know something about this kind of scenario, so why not post it?)


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'Sing Something' Is 'Draw Something' For Singers
Playing mobile games with your friends just got a little more vocal. Sing Something is like a combination of Draw Something and Karaoke — it's a social singing game that has you sing a song from a selected category, and your friends try to guess what tune you were trying to belt out.
While the game wasn't made by Draw Something creator OMGPOP (which was recently purchased by Zynga), it shares quite a bit with that game in terms of play.
"We love singing in the shower and always wanted to create a music based game, we just couldn´t find the right recipe," Vlado Hrincar, one of the developers for the app told Mashable. "Then we came across the Draw Something concept and that was it. Enlightened by the idea, we put our next-big-thing gaming project on hold and started working on Sing Something."
To get started with Sing Something, select a friend to play with and a song to sing from a set of three options. If you know the song, you can go ahead and belt it out to send your musical stylings to your friend. The game doesn't provide you lyrics for the tune while you're actually singing, but it does give you links to a few YouTube videos where you can get an idea for what the song is supposed to sound like.
When you receive a song, you get to guess what hit your friend likely butchered by selecting letters from a virtual keyboard to fill in the blanks for the song and artist, hangman-style. Sing Something currently has a library of over 1000 songs based on the personal likes of the programmers as well as what tunes are popular on YouTube.
"Currently we have four categories (80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010-2012), covering the overall history of the modern music," Hrincar tells us. "We are planning to add at least 10 more categories, focusing on specific genres or artists — Madonna, Jackson, and yes, Justin Bieber too and Rebecca Black if we're really evil."
Much like with Draw Something, you and your friend earn coins when you're able to guess a tune correctly. You can also use bombs to get different song choices or eliminate some of the available letters when you're guessing to make things easier.
The game started out as a weekend project and quickly spiraled into a full-blown app. While currently only available for iOS, there are plans in the works to make the app available for Android as well as add new categories.
While definitely a fun concept, Sing Something will certainly be more awkward to pull out on the train or at the lunch table than its drawing counterpart.
Do you think the singing game will catch on like Draw Something? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.


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When we last touched on the terms of the new Mets ownership deal, there was enough information to make fun of the Mets, but a key detail was missing. We knew that David Einhorn had essentially agreed to loan the Wilpons $200 million dollars in exchange for a third of the team until the loan was paid back, a guaranteed one-sixth stake regardless, and the potential to buy a majority stake. What we didn't know was how much more than the $200 million it would take to purchase majority ownership from the Wilpons, and whether the Wilpons would be amenable to the scenario. It seemed as though the most Einhorn-friendly scenario possible was that he would pay for the additional shares at the same scale that he purchased one-third of the team, and get 51 percent control for a total of $350-400 million.
Well, it's lower than that:
If the Wilpon family does not pay back the hedge fund manager's $200 million investment in three years, the hedge fund manager can obtain a 60 percent stake in the team for an additional $1, Forbes reported. So his total investment for control of the team that some have valued at more than $1 billion would be $200,000,001.
Let's say the Mets are worth $747 million. If that and the terms of the deal (denied by the Mets) are true, then Fred Wilpon has taken out a $200 million loan at 62 percent total interest with $324 million worth of collateral (the value of the one-sixth and the additional 43 percent share respectively). The terms are reminiscent of Eddy Curry's $750,000 loan at 85 percent interest.
Why would Wilpon do that, and why wouldn't any entity with $200 million take the deal if he were offering it? The Madoff legal entanglements aren't the issue, as Einhorn is guaranteed protection from them. Here's the most likely scenario as we see it: Wilpon expects to pay Einhorn back; Einhorn does not expect Wilpon to pay him back; and the Mets are worth nowhere near $747 million. As intriguing as a free sixth of the team looks, it can't be that valuable. No part of the deal includes a stake in SNY, the Mets' cable network and the only profitable part of the whole organization. The Mets themselves are going to lose $50 million this year. Combine that with the hundreds of millions of dollars in debt stashed in Citi Field, and a minority share in the team isn't attractive.
But a majority is. There's inherent value in getting to run your own baseball team, and Einhorn presumably has enough confidence in himself to turn the franchise around. That's the real prize here, and the only way he'll get it is if the Wilpons can't pay him back. Einhorn therefore has to think that scenario is a strong possibility.
Wilpon, meanwhile, could likely sell a 60 percent stake in the Mets for north of $200 million, which is an indication that he doesn't think he'll have to hand the team over. Or he's just desperate and wants to hold onto the team as long as possible, risks be damned. Another possibility is that he could borrow again or sell a significant portion of SNY to pay Einhorn back and retain control.
When news of the deal first broke, commentators noted Einhorn's talent and affinity for shorting stocks like Lehman Brothers. They saw his Mets purchase as a break from that trend. But maybe that's the wrong way to look at this. Everything we've learned so far suggests that Einhorn sees a significant chance that the Wilpons will lose a significant amount of money in the Madoff lawsuit. This is just another short, in other words — not on the Mets but on the Wilpons.
Report: Mets deal has twist [ESPN New York]


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Item Description
Copy of letter, S. L. Adair to Mrs. H. L. Hibbard
Author: Adair, Samuel Lyle
Date: August 14, 1856
Adair, writing from Osawatomie, reported on conditions in Kansas. Mrs. Hibbard was the president of the Woman's Kansas Aid and Liberty Association of Chicago, Illinois. He reported that many recent emigrants were ill and others were using up their reserves to help others, hoping they would be repaid by aid received in Kansas. He also reported that a group of Georgians camped near Osawatomie and ran off more than 18 horses. Some free state men were prepared to confront them but they left the area. Adair wrote of rumors that a large force was coming to burn Osawatomie.
Location of Original: KSHS Call Number: Samuel & Florella Adair Collection, #161, Box 7, Folder 12
Item Number: 100563 Number of images: 3
Keywords: Adair, Samuel Lyle; Chicago, Illinois; Emigration and immigration; Free state perspective; Hibbard, Mrs. H. L.; Illness; Lykins County, Kansas Territory (see also Miami County, Kansas); Miami County, Kansas (see also Lykins County, Kansas Territory); Migration, internal; Osawatomie, Battle of; Osawatomie, Kansas Territory; Proslavery activities; Proslavery settlers; Women
pg. 1
pg. 2
pg. 3


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No Pirates news thanks to yesterday's off-day, but there's good news from the Penguins.
Matt Cooke has been re-signed to a three year, $5.4M deal prior to becoming an unrestricted free agent. Cooke is a great asset as a third liner and penalty killer – the classic (cliche alert) player you love to have on your team but hate to play against.
Yesterday the Pens signed defenseman Ben Lovejoy to a very cap friendly three year deal, giving them four D-men under contract for next season (Brooks Orpik, Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski). Talks are ongoing with Sergei Gonchar. If they are unable to come to terms with Gonch then I expect Jordan Leopold to be the fallback option – they won't sign both. The sixth defenseman with be a physical type acquired through either free agency or a trade.
Yesterday it was confirmed that Penguins will open the Consol Energy Center on Thursday October 7 vs the Flyers. The full NHL schedule come out later today.
Filed under: hockey, Penguins | Tagged: Alex Goligoski, Ben LoveJoy, Brooks Orpik, Flyers, hockey, Jordan Leopold, Kris Letang, Matt Cooke, Penguins, Sergei Gonchar | Leave a comment »


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In this presidential election season, when celebrities endorse candidates while talking to empty chairs, engage in political debates on Twitter and encourage the rest of us to vote via cleverly edited YouTube clips, a new university study suggests that, perhaps, they might all be better off keeping their mouths shut.
The study, to be published in an issue of the journal of Basic and Applied Social Psychology, suggests that the more the public knows about celebrities' personal opinions, the less inclined we are to like the celebrities, particularly if we discover that their views differ from our own. Which, perhaps, is common sense. But thanks to this study, it's now science.
Professors at the universities of New Hampshire, Utah and Cincinnati and at Vanderbilt University staged two experiments in which college students' responses to celebrity-related information were assessed. The key part, from my perspective, was the portion that gauged reaction to movie stars who fall on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum: Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson.
Wait, Mel Gibson? The guy who once called a female police officer a name that begins with "Sugar-" and ends in a word not allowed in this newspaper? The man whose explosive arguments with ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva were spewed all over the Internet two years ago? Doesn't his involvement in this scholarly endeavor nullify its results?
Actually, no, says Bruce Pfeiffer, one of the researchers and a marketing professor at the University of New Hampshire, who notes that the students were surveyed before the whole Gibson/Grigorieva mess.
As for the other baggage Gibson brings to the table regarding alleged anti-Semitism and weird interviews with Diane Sawyer, Pfeiffer said it did not seem to affect the participants' overall view of him. "Although his average rating was less positive than Tom Hanks, his overall evaluation was still positive," the professor said via e-mail.
The subjects were asked to read general statements about the careers of both Forrest Gump and Mad Max, then to peruse specific statements about their religious and political views. (Hanks was identified as a Democrat who supports gay marriage and who converted from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity when he married Rita Wilson. Gibson was characterized as a Republican who is anti-abortion and a "Traditionalist Catholic.")
Across the board, subjects thought of both men less favorably once they read these details, but self-identified conservatives disliked Tom Hanks even more strongly, while self-identified liberals had the same response to Gibson. The upshot: We all think beloved actors are "just like us" until we find out they're not. Then we don't care for them as much.
But wait a second. Plenty of celebs are involved in political causes, and they still seem pretty well-liked. Pfeiffer's response: "The bottom line is that stating a belief is fine, as long as very few people disagree with it. Taking a stand on an issue on which there is disagreement will usually result in overall harm to a celebrity's status among some consumers." In other words, it's fine to tell people to vote in a nonpartisan way. But if you tell them who to vote for, well, some people might decide they don't want to see "Trouble With the Curve" or watch "Glee" anymore.
One sticking point in all this is social media, which looms even larger in the celebrity sphere than it did two-plus years ago, when the experiments were conducted. Famous people say potentially polarizing and unlikable things on Twitter all the time and, while it occasionally elicits a negative response, it doesn't seem to have a long-term effect on their success. If it did, John Cusack and Patricia Heaton would no longer be working, and both of them definitely are.
Pfeiffer acknowledges that the direct online connections between fans and their idols might be changing the game somewhat, but "the processes we describe in our research are fundamental, and we believe that people would behave the same way in a decade."
We'll check back in 10 years and see whether that's still true. And whether we all feel the same way about Hanks and Gibson.