You never get a second chance to make a good first impression!

Folks, remember that old truism when you meet someone for the first time:  

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her new book, "Presence," Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

• Can I trust this person?
• Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.

But in fact warmth, or trustworthiness, is the most important factor in how people evaluate you. "From an evolutionary perspective," Cuddy says, "it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust." 

It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to kill you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire.

 http://finance.yahoo.com/news/harvard-psychologist-says-people-judge-153500132.html

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O.K. kids, it's time to forget all that other crap the political pundits have been telling you over the past few months, THE GUY TO VOTE FOR IS MARCO RUBIO!

Get a load of this headline:  

"Marco Rubio bought a gun to be ‘last line of defense between ISIS and my family!" “I have a right to protect my family,” Rubio said in an interview on CBS’ “Face The Nation” on Sunday. “I have a right to protect my family if someone were to come after us. In fact, if ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment, the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability I have to protect my family from them or from a criminal or anyone else seeing to do us harm. Millions of Americans feel that way.

 Sort of brings a lump to yer throat, doesn't it?

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Meanwhile:


Here’s Everything You Need To Know About The Democratic Debate Tonight

Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley will meet in Charleston, South Carolina for their fourth democratic debate.

Here is what you need to know ahead of the event:

• The debate is being held two weeks before the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1.
• The New Hampshire primary will then be held on Feb. 9.
• Recent polls indicate a shift in the once-wide lead Clinton held over Sanders.
• A poll of New Hampshire voters by Monmouth University indicated that 53% of voters would choose Sanders, compared to 39% for Clinton.
• Another poll of Iowa voters conducted by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics shows that Clinton still has a 2% edge over Sanders. Last month, however, she had a 9% lead.

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Here it is a nice Sunday afternoon and Khloe Kardashian decided to take her nipples out for a walk on the way to church!

 

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Ladies and Gentlemen there is a world famous bronze statue in the harbour of Copenhagen, Denmark known as "The Little Mermaid," and it's statue by Edvard Eriksen depicting a the mermaid from the Hans Christian Anderson story of (what else!) The Little Mermaid!"

The sculpture is displayed on a rock by the waterside at the Langelinie promenade and it's one of the most photographed objects in the world!

BUT!

Facebook Nixes Picture Of Bronze Mermaid Statue For Showing Too Much 'Skin.'

(From Techdirt)


As they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Facebook, being a dominant force in the social media industry, certainly has a great deal of power, but how does it do in the responsibility department. It's an important question, because as a platform essentially designed to facilitate speech and expression, it would seem necessary to treat with care how it collides with that speech when controversy arises.

Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again how Facebook treats the question bureaucratically rather than with any kind of nuance. Between bending the knee to national interests, promising to censor speech deemed to be hateful, or just flat out hiding behind a wall of corporate speak in order to take down photos, the trend for Facebook is one of grip-tightening rather than free expression.

And so the trend continues, being helpfully highlighted by an instance in which a Danish public official has a photo of a bronze statue removed for showing too much body.

Social Democrat MP Mette Gjerskov wanted to post a link to her blog, which included a shot of the bronze statue, when she received a rejection notification from the site, the Ekstra Bladet website reports. The message, which Ms Gjerskov shared on her social media accounts, said the Little Mermaid image contained "too much bare skin or sexual undertones". It added that the rules applied even if an image had "artistic or educational purposes".

Here is the Little Mermaid statue in question.


If you find that image arousing, you are in severe need of psychological care. The idea of a bronze piece of art showing too much skin is the kind of ridiculousness you can only get from bureaucracy, even in the private sector. Rules built to stifle speech that cast wide nets will always, always, always catch too much non-offending speech to be worth the policy.

Now, Facebook eventually agreed after complaints were sent in, citing a policy clarification from last year.

Ms Gjerskov described the decision as "totally ridiculous", although in a later update she said Facebook had subsequently relented and approved the image. In March 2015, the site clarified its rules on nudity and said that it does allow photos of paintings, sculptures and other art that depicts nude figures.

Except this doesn't really solve the issue. Instead, it transfers the dilemma to the question of exactly who are the arbiters of what constitutes artistic expression which should be allowed under the policy. One person's art may be another's pornography, after all. And, while the solution probably can't be a completely limitless allowance of all kinds of nudity in every case, it seems clear that any policy currently entrapping bronze statues of mermaids is probably off by a matter of multiples. 

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160106/06042833250/facebook-nixes-picture-bronze-mermaid-statue-showing-too-much-skin.shtml