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Bling Management

Today, you're a struggling MC. Your posse is small—mom-and-sister-sized. Your assets are humble: a Dodge Dart, an old cell phone. Tomorrow, you're beyond-Diddy: selling and making megamillions. Your posse has super-sized to the point HBO is dumping Entourage for a show about your crew. You're so blingalicious, you pay yourself for using your own ring tones.

And the day after that?

That's where the National Urban League and its Young Professionals division (and its silly acronym NULYP) come in with Know Your Money 2004, a program that teaches young African-American professionals of all stripes the ins and outs of keeping their money matters mattering. The program—whose promotional e-mails are subtitled "Bling Bling"—is designed for young moneymakers, ages 21 to 40, looking to learn personal money-management strategies.

Though the bling fling toys with the language of hip-hop, curriculum designer, financial consultant and author Carla J. Cargle means for her coursework to help participants from all walks.

"Know Your Money is targeted for African-Americans," says Ramona Sharpe, president of the Philadelphia ULYP chapter. "However, the class gives information that's valuable regardless of race or age. It teaches basics on budgeting, financial strategies and investment options, but also helps you face your attitudes about money."

As a young prof, I see that need. Yet, it's the DJ/media overlord side of me that keeps thinking bling. Sharpe reels me in. "Know Your Money shows you how to enjoy some of the finer things in life now, and still save money for tomorrow."

Like Jay Z say, it's so very necessary. Consider my eagle on.
— A.D. Amorosi

Know Your Money kicks off Sat., Oct. 2, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., University of Pennsylvania, Stiteler Hall, 208 S. 37th St. $25 for NUL members, $30 for non-members. Visit www.knowyourmoney.net or www.nul.org, or call 888-537-8510 for more information.

Hire Ire Jabs Tab

Daily News staffers are growing increasingly frustrated with a trend that has their staff shrinking with no relief in sight. Since January, when corporate boss Knight Ridder installed Joe Natoli as publisher, seven staff members have either died or left the paper for other jobs. In that time, they've made no new hires.

"It's demoralizing," said one staff member on condition of anonymity. "Meanwhile, upstairs [the Inquirer is] hiring five high school sports reporters."

That staffer went on to say that the vacancies hurt the quality of the paper as reporters who worked hard to get to the point in their careers where they have time to do important investigative reporting must now do jobs that could be done by cub reporters.

Kitty Caparella, the DN's mob watcher who was once president of the local Newspaper Guild union, says it's all about bottom-line concerns, "but you don't do it on the backs of the people that are really critical to putting out the paper. We're not able to cover stories that we have, it's getting worse and worse and then they'll blame us."

The staffing woes have given rise to that ever-persistent rumor that KR is looking to shutter the tabloid, but Caparella and the other staffer don't foresee doom. Even though the union contract is up in August 2006, the paper has recently expanded into the suburbs and started offering home delivery.

Perhaps the biggest victim to date is morale on a staff that's shrunk from 160 to less than 140, or about a third less than the broadsheet upstairs.

"We support each other and care about each other. [Natoli] doesn't see how we are absolutely devastated by the deaths," says Caparella, referring to the losses of photographer George Reynolds, sports editor Caesar Alsop and reporter Rose DeWolf. "We need to hire people and we need to do it now."
— Jonas Raab

Aorta Envy

Cupid would need to upgrade from arrow to ballistic missile to manage The Franklin Institute's "The Giant Heart." On October 1, the two-story replica of the tale-told muscle will reopen. The popular exhibit has been closed for six months undergoing renovations—plus the addition of educational stations—designed to keep enthusiasm pumping.

At one station, the visitor steps onto a console that determines her weight before a stream of red liquid—commensurate with the amount of blood in her body—rushes into the accompanying Bucket of Blood. Another station replicates how many times certain animals' hearts beat per minute.

A health-conscious game not unlike Dance Dance Revolution tests a visitor's ability to replicate how much work the heart must do to keep blood in constant circulation. The floor is sectioned into heart-shaped areas that light up; a visitor must rapidly follow with his feet, increasing his aortic activity.

Procedures to analyze and diagnose heart disease get their own station. A mannequin with attached defibrillator paddles tests a visitor's ability to treat an ER patient. There is even a mannequin with a television monitor in place of the chest depicting, in graphic actuality, a bypass surgery.

Of course, the nutrition sections of the exhibit work to persuade visitors that a trip to the operating room isn't inevitable, so long as they don't treat Bill Clinton's My Life as a cookbook.

Still, the giant heart itself is where it's at. Visitors get to careen through a maze of the different sections of the organ (or tour them virtually) to discover how complicated the human circulatory system is. According to The Institute, the exhibit would be the proper size for a 220-foot tall person. Which means that until Ted Kennedy donates his liver to a museum, "The Giant Heart" will remain unchallenged in its organ-ic, exhibitionist largeness.
— Cory Frolik