The White Glove Treatment | Boaz Rauchwerger

Last Tuesday, when I spoke for a great group of CEO’s in Milwaukee, I noticed something very interesting. It was a good example of how some people take customer service to a whole new level and make a very positive impression.

The event was held at the Hilton Garden Inn, on West Park Place, at the Good Hope Road exit on Routes 41/45.

The meeting was in a part of the ballroom. Outside the room the hotel had set up a buffet for lunch for the group. While everyone was having lunch, and discussing some business issues, I noticed that the young lady taking care of the group was very attentive.

She smiled, was courteous, and yet very quiet as she cleared plates when people were through with their lunch.

And then I noticed something interesting about her. She wore white gloves.

Who Owns the Northern Lights? | SPIEGEL ONLINE

“We can not stand by and watch the Finns try to grab a bigger share” of the northern lights market.

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Photo courtesy of goodnature.nathab.com 

Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC

THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES:

• Monthly Local Employment Report
• SoCal Home Sales, Prices Fall From a Year Earlier
• Headline Inflation: Deactivated
• Wholesale Prices Pull Back in December
• Industrial Production Returning to Form in 2011
• December and Year-End San Pedro Bay Port Figures
• Events of Interest
  • January 27: L.A. NABE Monthly Meeting
  • February 15: LAEDC Economic Forecast and Industry Outlook

How to Pass a Lie Detector Test (Whether You’re Lying or Not) | LifesLittleMysteries.com

If you’re like most people, lying makes your heart race. It makes you pant. It drives up your blood pressure and makes you drip sweat. A polygraph machine detects lies by looking for signs of these physiological changes.

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New York Contestant World’s Best Pageant Application Video | New York Observer

While most girls vying for the title have put up online videos displaying their many…shall we say…assets?…Ms. Hajek–whom we found via Reddit– went in a different direction; creating a hilarious piece of performance art involving an interview with a giant puppet talk show host asking the kind of questions you’d really like to hear during one of these shows. (Example: “What’s your favorite Lou Reed album, and don’t say Transformer, because that’s so said.”)

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U.S. Manufacturers Seen Leading Recovery in 2012 on Sales Growth, ISM Says – Bloomberg

Purchasing managers at factories anticipate sales will grow 5.5 percent next year and capital investment will increase 1.9 percent, the Tempe, Arizona-based group’s semiannual forecast showed today. Revenue and spending will increase at a slower pace among service providers, which account for about 90 percent of the economy.

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What is a ‘natural’ sleep pattern? | Scientific American

Thanks in large part to the meteoric rise in direct-to-consumer advertising, medications like Ambien and Lunesta have become household names and seductive panaceas that millions find hard to resist — even though a majority have no serious sleep problem to repair.

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2012 – A New Chance to Become | Peter Mehit

A new calendar is a blank slate. All of the missteps of the prior year are erased and nothing but possibility is before us. What will happen in the next year? To a large extent, it’s up to us and how we think. Most of us set goals, make resolutions, about what we want to happen in that vast gulf that is represented in that empty calendar. We tick our desires down in to-do list fashion: “Lose 20 pounds.” or “Find a new job” or “get a new car”

Time will pass and we will make judgments about how well we did with our goals. We will succeed at some and fail at others. Most of us will fight to a draw, the opportunity represented by January’s blank slate missed.

Over the past year we have been surveying ‘success’ literature looking for common patterns. To our surprise, we found them hiding in plain sight. From Napoleon Hill’s epic survey of industrial titans, “Think and Grow Rich” to the ‘scientifically’ based “Psychocybernetics” to “The Master Key” which is the basis for “The Secret”, all of them are saying the same things even though they were written in different times for different audiences. To us, it breaks down to three basic principals:

Business Networking and Sex (Not What You Think) | Dr. Ivan Misner

There have been a lot of books written about business networking and referral marketing. I’ve written quite a few of these myself. There have also been a lot of books written about the difference between men and women. However, it dawned on me that no one had ever made the effort to combine the two subjects. With that realization, a new book project was born.

Over a four-year period, more than 12,000 businesspeople participated in a study focused around 25 simple questions. After analyzing the results of the survey, I was ready to speak about the results from an expert perspective in the book. I gathered together two of my fellow networking experts: Frank DeRaffele, to write from the male perspective; and Hazel Walker to write from the female perspective. Our combined knowledge and experience came together to bring a unique perspective to this innovative book.

Weekly Economic Update | LAEDC

• December U.S. Labor Market Report
• U.S. Auto Sales – A Strong Finish for 2011
• November SoCal Hotel Results Show Industry on the Rebound
• Events of Interest
  • January 22-24, 2012: VerdeXchange Market Makers Conference
  • January 27: L.A. NABE Monthly Meeting
  • February 15: LAEDC Economic Forecast and Industry Outlook

For sale: condos built in Kansas missile silos | Plog

Hall’s plans call for seven condo units priced at $2 million each, and, the report says, they will be the only homes in America that can survive a direct nuclear attack.

See companion article, “Anonymous Survival Guide for Citizens in a Revolution” – Ed.

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Presenting Anonymous’ “Survival Guide For Citizens In A Revolution” | ZeroHedge

See companion article, “For sale: condos built in Kansas missile silos” – Ed

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Rich Guy Breaks Server’s Finger For ‘Schmucky’ Service | Eater

“You schmuck, why did you bring the bill to the table?” Kucik stated that he replied, “because your lady asked for it.” Kucik stated while he stood on the left side of Mr. Castle, he (Kucik) attempted to hand Mr. Castle an ink pen. Mr. Castle began ranting and grabbed Kucik`s left hand and began squeezing and twisting his fingers.

The 1% have finally gone too far – Ed.

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Part Two: A Digression on the Arcana of Financial Frontiers | DIS Magazine

In his wonderful TED talk, Kevin Slavin, a well-known game developer with an interest in algorithms, explains why we’ll never master the ramifications of such complex math. In regards to the Flash Crash, he says,

All of a sudden nine percent [of wealth] just goes away and nobody—to this day—can even agree on what happened. Because nobody ordered it. Nobody asked for it. Nobody had any control over what was actually happening… We’re writing these things that we can no longer read. We’ve rendered something kind of illegible. And we’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world that we’ve made…

When you see this kind of behavior, what you see is the evidence of algorithms in conflict, algorithms locked in loops with each other without any human oversight, without any adult supervision.

The only power we have over these algorithms, he suggests, is to press the “red button that [says] STOP.” Unsurprisingly, most leaders on Wall Street lack this kind of humility.

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Wal-Mart Heiress’s Museum a Moral Blight | Bloomberg

But many of the paintings in Crystal Bridges hang in eloquent rebuke to the values of the company that has made the Waltons so very wealthy. Three paintings, in particular, struck me as especially pointed commentaries on the perverse values of Sam Walton’s heirs.

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