How would you describe your attitude toward competition? a. I relish it. Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. b. I avoid it. Competition brings out the worst in people. c. I compete hard when I have to, but have been known to bluff my rivals. d. I compete hard, but my eye is always on the payoff.
Your boss says, “That’s the way we do things here.” How do you react? a. I respect established procedures, but I know when to ignore them. b. I begin to think I should be working somewhere else. c. I accept it and proceed accordingly. After all, I want to keep my job. d. I may try to change his mind, but if I don’t succeed quickly, I’ll go along.
Which statement comes closest to describing your personal finances? a. My checkbook is always balanced, and I pay my bills when they come in. b. I have an interest-bearing bank account, and I wait until the end of the statement period to pay my bills. That way the bank doesn’t get the interest. c. I have multiple credit cards, and every one of them is about maxed out. d. I separate my business and personal expenses by using different credit cards.
What gives you the greatest personal satisfaction at work? a. Having an idea and being allowed to run with it. b. Receiving praise for a job well done. c. Coming out ahead of an office rival. d. Knowing my office status is secure.
How do you handle criticism at work? a. It throws me off track and makes my next task more difficult. b. Other perspectives are often helpful, so I listen carefully and adjust if the criticism makes sense to me. c. While maintaining my dignity, I try to shift at least some of the blame to others. d. I don’t like it, but what can I do? I absorb the criticism and move on.
What’s best about your current job? a. My salary and perks. I do OK compared with people like me. b. The fine reputation of my company. c. I enjoy a certain amount of freedom to start my own projects. d. I get regular promotions, and there’s a clear career path to the top.
Which statement best describes your attitude toward your projects at work? a. I like to start projects, but I tend to lose interest and delegate things to other people. b. I find myself moving on to new projects before I finish the current one. c. I always finish what I start. Personally. d. I’ve been known to put a project on hold if I run into difficulties.
How much time do you typically invest in your projects at work? a. I take pride in being on schedule, so I put in however many hours it takes. Then I take a breather. b. I work hard, but sometimes I’ll take a day or two off in midproject. c. I’m pretty much a 9-to-5er. d. My work is my life.
If you had what you thought was a good idea for a start-up, how would you finance it? a. A loan. That’s why banks exist. b. To hold down my own exposure, I’d hit up friends and family. c. I’d take out a second mortgage on my house. d. I’d sell my house if it came to that.
SCORINGAdd up your score, using the following key
a-3 b-1 c-2 d-4
a-3 b-4 c-1 d-2
a-1 b-3 c-4 d-2
a-4 b-2 c-3 d-1
a-1 b-4 c-3 d-2
a-2 b-1 c-4 d-3
a-2 b-3 c-4 d-1
a-4 b-2 c-1 d-3
a-1 b-2 c-3 d-4
10 TO 19 POINTS You are probably a responsible employee, but not a self-starter. You wait to be assigned tasks. Security is important to you. Your tolerance of risk is relatively low. You may derive too much of your sense of self-worth from factors outside yourself, such as the prestige of the company you work for. Stay put.
20 TO 29 POINTS You are capable of initiative, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. You try to advance your career, but are careful not to offend people along the way. You understand office politics, but are reluctant to make bold moves. If you aren’t already in middle management, you may be a good candidate.
30 TO 35 POINTS Lack of ambition is not one of your shortcomings. Neither is a willingness to work hard, and outside normal office hours. You may, however, be somewhat impatient, and reluctant to seek advice from others. These are not good qualities in an entre-preneur. Go for top management instead.
36 TO 40 POINTS You have the makings of an excellent entrepreneur. You have a high tolerance for risk–an essential ingredient. You are passionate about your ideas. Equally important, you are able to balance your own ambition with interest in others’ thoughts and regard for their feelings. Go for it.
title: “The Right Stuff” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-31” author: “Angela Johnson”
On Saturday we were cruelly reminded, once again, that leaving Earth, though common, is still anything but commonplace. The seven members of Columbia’s crew certainly had no illusions about the danger of their mission. At 11:39 last Tuesday morning, they gathered for a minute of silence in memory of the Challenger crew, who had died at that moment 17 years before. “They made the ultimate sacrifice, giving their lives and service to their country and for all mankind,” eulogized flight commander Rick Husband.
The same can now be said for Husband and his comrades. Together, they embodied the shuttle program’s ideal of the modern NASA astronaut. They were pilots with Ph.D.s, soldiers who were scientists. Men and women alike. Pilot William McCool sported the buzz-cut hair and fighter-jockey swagger of the “right stuff” days–but he also had advanced degrees in computer science and aeronautical engineering. Born in India, shuttle veteran Kalpana Chawla held a doctorate in aerospace engineering and had logged 6.5 million miles in space. Mission specialist David Brown was a fighter pilot and flight surgeon who worked his way through college riding unicycles in the circus. Ilan Ramon, the mission’s payload specialist, was a seasoned combat pilot and the first Israeli in space.
They were an unusually tight group. Like all crews, they had trained in close proximity for years. Still, Husband was aware that four of his crew had never been to space, and that two hailed from different cultures. He wanted to find out early on if they could work together flawlessly, even under stress. In August 2001 he took them on an arduous 11-day camping trip in the mountains of Wyoming. There, they hiked for miles bearing 75-pound packs, suffered altitude sickness climbing 13,000-foot Wind River Peak, and lived side by side 24 hours a day. The group’s guide, John Kanengieter, was amazed at the easy camaraderie, and the lack of egos. “It sounds cliched,” he says, “but they always put themselves behind the team.” America will mourn the fallen team, but remember them as individuals.
RICK HUSBAND, 45 COMMANDER AMARILLO, TEXAS Rick Husband was a devout Christian, a man who wasn’t embarrassed to discuss his faith on national TV. An Air Force colonel and the commander of the Columbia, he said one of the things he was most looking forward to about his second trip to space was learning more about Judaism from Ilan Ramon. Each astronaut was allowed to bring some personal effects on the mission; among the things Husband brought onboard were trinkets from Boys Ranch, a Christian home for at-risk kids located just outside his hometown of Amarillo, Texas.
He was also fiercely determined. He decided he was going to be an astronaut as a child; despite three rejections, he kept applying for the job. When he was finally chosen, he quickly rose to the top. He was the pilot on the first shuttle mission to dock with the International Space Station. Known as a phenomenal airman, he had flown more than 40 types of aircraft; colleagues said he exuded a quiet, almost egoless leadership. Soon after assembling his crew for the Columbia mission, Husband decided he wanted to make a very good crew into one of the best ever. He booked them on an 11-day outdoor survival trip, and in the years since the trip he’s kept in touch with John Kanengieter, the trip’s leader. While in space, he sent Kanengieter an e-mail: “He wrote, ‘I’m so proud of my crew, I could pop.’ He really talked like that.”
Husband, who was married with two children, was also known to break spontaneously into song. He was active in his church choir, but also would sing impromptu parodies and grew up lending his rich baritone to barbershop quartets. But it was his faith that sustained him. “Rick was right with God,” says Tammy Jernigan, who flew with Husband on his previous space trip. “He’s in heaven now.”
WILLIAM MCCOOL, 41 PILOT SAN DIEGO People who knew the man at the controls of the Columbia felt more than lucky. “Everyone should meet a Willie McCool in their lifetime,” says Al Cantello, his cross-country coach at Annapolis. It wasn’t only the shuttle pilot’s contagious smile, although that certainly played an important part. “He was an inspiration to be with,” says his U.S. Naval Academy classmate Mark Patterson. “Nothing ever got him down.” McCool was an Eagle Scout, captain of the cross-country team, second in his class at the Naval Academy, the test pilot entrusted with the Columbia’s helm. “Whatever he decided to do, Willie did it to perfection,” recalls Patterson. “When he decided he wanted to be an astronaut, you knew he’d make it.”
Still, he was anything but arrogant. John Kanengieter met him when the seven astronauts attended an 11-day outdoor training session in Wyoming: “We were laughing the week before they got here, thinking, ‘Jeez, this guy’s an astronaut and his name is McCool–he must think he’s Tom Cruise.’ And he’s the closest thing to Opie Taylor.” For his first space flight, the Columbia mission, McCool invited as many old friends as he could to the launch. Cantello was there. “I was so proud,” he told NEWSWEEK. “It’s been 20 years since he graduated.” It seemed as if McCool invited practically everyone he knew. “Years ago Willie went to Switzerland with five other midshipmen and stayed with a doctor,” says Cantello. “He invited him to the launch. He invited the contractor on his house to the launch.” The pilot’s unfailing good humor and outgoing manner made it all the tougher for friends to comprehend the disaster. “Willie’s one of those people you don’t expect a tragedy like this to happen to,” says Patterson. “He was blessed. And we were blessed to know him.”
MICHAEL ANDERSON, 43 PAYLOAD COMMANDER SPOKANE, WASH. As schoolchildren in the 1960s, Michael Anderson and his sister Brenda had bunk beds. On Saturday mornings the top bunk was their spaceship. “Let’s go to the moon!” he would call down to her. He never quite reached the moon, but he got closer than most of us. After earning his B.S. in physics at the University of Washington (“I think I was the only African-American physics major at that university,” he later recalled), he joined the Air Force and became a pilot. NASA chose him for its space program in 1994. “Michael’s desire was to get into space, and he made it a reality,” his mother told NEWSWEEK. “He was doing what he loved, and that’s my consolation.” Her son was basically the Columbia’s science officer, responsible for all of the many experiments performed on the 16-day flight.
The Columbia mission was Anderson’s second trip into space. His first was a 1998 Endeavor mission delivering scientific gear, water and crew to the Russians’ accident-plagued Mir space platform. The visit left a powerful impression on him. He spoke afterward of how much he admired the Russians’ determination in refusing to abandon the Mir, even after it suffered a near-disastrous fire in February 1997 and collided with a remote-controlled cargo craft that June. Following that example is the only way humans can make it into space, Anderson argued. “We are going to have accidents. We are going to have things happen that we didn’t plan on,” he said. “If we’re going to be serious about exploring space, then we’re going to have to have the resolve that the Russians showed here.”
KALPANA CHAWLA, 41 MISSION SPECIALIST SEABROOK, TEXAS Kalpana Chawla was in charge of more than a dozen experiments onboard the Columbia, but she was in love with the poetry of space travel as much as the science. “In the pre-sleep period, when you’re looking out the window, you’re floating,” she said, describing her one previous trip in space. “The Nile River looks like a lifeline in the Sahara… Earth is very beautiful. I wish everyone could see it.”
Her dreams of space travel started early. As a rugged tomboy running around in jeans and old T shirts, she would lie in her family’s courtyard on summer nights, staring into the sky and dreaming of the day when she could afford to own a telescope.
Chawla immigrated to America from India in the 1980s. After earning a degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas and an advanced degree from the University of Colorado, she was hired at NASA’s Ames Research Center. In 1994 she was selected by NASA as an astronaut trainee, and on her first trip into space in 1997 she traveled more than 6.5 million miles. But she never forgot the kids back home. Since 1998 she and her husband had sponsored students from the school where she studied as a child.
They never forgot her, either. On Saturday night in Karnal, India, a celebration was planned at her old school to watch the Columbia land. One student stood stunned, tears running down her cheeks, clutching autographed pictures of Chawla and the other Columbia astronauts. “She told us to dream,” the student said. “She loved us so much.”
DAVID BROWN, 46 MISSION SPECIALIST ARLINGTON, VA. By the time David Brown was 6 years old, he was already paging through Reader’s Digest. “He was always so curious,” his mother, Dorothy Brown, remembered. Athletic and tender at the same time–he used to make his mom tapes of his favorite music, stuff like Enya and Simon & Garfunkel–Brown was a star gymnast on the parallel bars at Yorktown High School and went on to make the varsity team at The College of William & Mary. After college he joined the circus on a lark, working as an acrobat, tumbler, stilt walker and seven-foot-unicycle rider.
After the circus, he went to Eastern Virginia Medical School, and immediately after his internship he joined the Navy. In 1988 he was tapped to train as a pilot, a rare honor for a doctor, and he graduated at the top of his aviation class. Soon he achieved his ultimate dream. In 1996 he became an astronaut. “When David was young, he would say that being an astronaut was too much to even dream for,” his mom said. “But the flying thing got him. He was great. He could land on ships in the middle of the night. Flying was his life. He even lived on Airline Drive.”
This was Brown’s first trip into space, and he was serving as the Columbia’s unofficial archivist–during the multiple years the crew trained together, through a bike trip in Europe and a backpacking trip in Wyoming, he brought along a personal video recorder. As John Kanengieter, the backpacking trip’s leader, said, “When I was watching the launch and the shuttle doors were closing, I could see the video camera there. That was David. He never stopped.”
LAUREL CLARK, 41 MISSION SPECIALIST RACINE, WIS. As thrilled as he was to attend the launch, 8-year-old Iain Clark didn’t want his mother going into space. “He wanted to know why Daddy couldn’t go up in space instead of Mommy,” says Laurel Clark’s old schoolmate Matthew Solberg. The fact is, she never set out to be an astronaut. She wanted to be a pediatrician. But she came from a family of nine children and stepchildren, and medical school was expensive. She joined the Navy “purely for financial reasons,” she later recalled; it was the only way she could think of to pay the bills. After earning her M.D., she served a tour as an undersea medical officer. She was about to begin training as a flight surgeon when she applied to NASA, almost on a whim but with her husband’s encouragement. When they didn’t accept her on the first pass, she applied again–and this time she made it.
Her responsibility aboard the Columbia was medical and biological research. In particular she was investigating such topics as gene transfer in plants (which for some reason seems to work better in space) and the way bones lose their calcium in free fall. She took a personal interest in the latter question; osteoporosis ran in the family. Shortly before she died, she sent an e-mail to close friends and relatives. “Viewing Earth from space is spectacular,” she wrote. “I feel blessed to be here.”
Before the mission, members of the local media in Madison, Wis., asked what advice she would give to an aspiring astronaut. “Do what it is you love to do,” she said. “You’ll do a really good job at it because you love it, and you’ll be doing something that you love. Not everyone’s in luck to be an astronaut.” She loved many things. “Laurel loved nature, hiking and camping,” her 38-year-old brother, Dan Salton, told NEWSWEEK. “She loved animals and people.” She enjoyed scuba diving and parachuting. She had a special fondness for the mountains, and for Scotland, where her husband, Navy Capt. Jonathan B. Clark, proposed to her. She named her two cats Haggis and Neeps (Scottish for “turnips”). More than anything else, though, “she loved her son,” says Salton. “He’s the one we’re all thinking of.”
ILAN RAMON, 48 PAYLOAD SPECIALIST ISRAEL Months before he was to become the first Israeli to travel into space, Ilan Ramon paid a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The Air Force colonel was searching for an appropriate object to take with him on the mission when museum curators showed him a tattered pencil drawing of the Earth as seen from the moon. The sketch had been done by Peter Ginz, a 16-year-old Jewish boy who died in Auschwitz in 1944. Ramon, whose own mother and grandmother survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Israel after World War II, was captivated. “I feel that my journey fulfills the dream of Peter Ginz 58 years later,” he said just before carrying the fragment aboard the Columbia.
Ramon joined the space shuttle mission as a payload specialist, running an experiment that tracks dust particles from sandstorms. But it was the astronaut’s role as a symbol, not a scientist, that inspired his war-fatigued and hero-starved countrymen. Television devoted endless hours and newspapers countless inches to his mission. FIRST HEBREW ASTRONAUT SINCE ELIJAH, trumpeted Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yediot Achronot, referring to the Jewish prophet who, according to the Bible’s Book of Kings, ascended to heaven aboard a fiery chariot. Kindergarten teachers instructed their kids to post newspaper photos of Ramon on the walls; a mattress manufacturer said he would name a line after him; the Israeli Postal Authority planned a commemorative stamp.
Born in Tel Aviv and raised in Beer Sheva, Ramon served with distinction as a fighter pilot in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. In 1981, he was one of eight F-16 pilots who bombed Iraq’s unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor, after flying for hours without detection over enemy territory. Ramon was tapped to become Israel’s first astronaut in 1997. He moved to Houston with his wife and four kids, ranging from 5 to 15, and spent 4 1/2 years in training.
Although he was a self-described secular Jew, Ramon honored his heritage and religion aboard the flight. He asked NASA to provide him with kosher food, tried to observe the Sabbath on board and carried both a pocket-size version of the Bible presented to him by Israeli President Moshe Katzav and a Torah scroll given to him by a concentration-camp survivor. “From space, Israel appeared small and very beautiful,” he declared. “The quiet that envelopes space makes the beauty even more powerful, and I only hope that the quiet can one day spread to my country.”
A devoted family man, Ramon stayed in touch with his loved ones from space via e-mail. “Although everything here is incredible, I can’t wait to see you. Big hugs and kisses to the children,” he wrote his wife a couple of nights before his death. Ramon’s father, Eliezer Wolferman, was reading some of those messages live on Israeli TV when NASA lost contact with the astronauts. Wolferman was taken to a side room to watch the broadcast off-air. Devastated, he left for Houston later that night to join Ramon’s widow and children. “Ilan regarded this mission as something he could do for the world,” Ramon’s sister-in-law Orna Bar told NEWSWEEK. “But all that doesn’t matter now because he’s gone. We’re all suffering terribly right now.” It is a loss shared by millions of her countrymen.
CORRECTION
In “The Right Stuff” (Feb. 10) we said that astronaut Kalpana Chawla earned her degree at the University of Texas, which is in Austin. She actually graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington.
title: “The Right Stuff” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Kevin Yielding”
The body needs cholesterol.
The best way to reduce cholesterol is to limit cholesterol-rich foods, such as eggs.
To lower your cholesterol, you should stop eating all meat.
Any total cholesterol level below 240 is fine.
All vegetable oils are good for the heart.
Lowering cholesterol can help people who have already had a heart attack.
Exercise can raise good cholesterol.
Women don’t need to worry about high levels of cholesterol and heart disease.
THE ANSWERS Question 1: TRUE. Cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance that the body uses to build cell membranes and make steroid hormones, such as estrogen, testosterone and cortisone. The problem isn’t cholesterol per se, but excess cholesterol–particularly the “bad” LDL cholesterol, which contributes to plaque buildup in the arteries.
Question 2: FALSE. Although so-called dietary cholesterol does raise blood cholesterol in most people, the chief culprit is saturated fat. The most effective way to control blood cholesterol is to reduce foods high in saturated fat, such as full-fat cheese, cream, butter and meat.
Question 3: FALSE. Red meat is high in saturated fat, which can raise cholesterol. But according to the National Institutes of Health, lean cuts of meat can be part of a healthy diet. Trim the fat and reduce your daily intake to 6 ounces–the size of a deck of cards. (A heart patient should limit intake to 5 ounces.)
Question 4: FALSE. For most people, total cholesterol should be under 200, not 240. But cholesterol comes in two basic forms. In general, “bad” cholesterol (LDL) should be below 130–unless you have heart disease or diabetes, in which case you should aim even lower. However, a low level of “good” HDL cholesterol–under 40–raises the risk for heart disease.
Question 5: FALSE. “Trans-fats”–the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils found in hard margarine and many baked products–raise blood cholesterol. The tropical oils–palm, palm kernel and coconut–are high in saturated fat and can also raise cholesterol. Focus instead on the other vegetable oils, including olive and canola, which contain mostly mono- unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.
Question 6: TRUE. People who have had one heart attack are at higher risk for a second, but lowering cholesterol can greatly reduce that risk. If you have heart disease, your LDL level should be less than 100.
Question 7: TRUE. “Exercise should be part of any program for heart health,” says Dr. Ronald Krauss, founder of the American Heart Association’s Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism. “At least half an hour a day is recommended.” Other measures that can help raise HDL include losing weight and stopping smoking.
Question 8: FALSE. Before menopause, women tend to have lower cholesterol levels than men. But afterward, their levels go up, along with their risk for heart disease. For both men and women, heart disease is the leading cause of death.
Adapted from the National Cholesterol Education Program. For more information, see nhlbi.nih.gov/chd.
