Let's say you're a calm, laid-back person. You deal with the world from a take-it-as-it-comes point of view. And it has always worked for you.

But didn't you ever envy people who seemed to be on fire, enthusiastic and passionate about their work, their pro football team, and their home life?

There's no question that you can't change the color of your eyes and other in-born traits. The height of your fire is something else.

In The Welch Way, Jack and Suzy Welch say there's no question about it. You can stoke up your fire, uncork your passion and get hot! When you do, you can turn clock-watching workers into fired-up people as well.

It's every leader's job to make purpose come alive and to turn cynicism into engagement, say the Welches.

Sometimes it takes an event to do it. They tell of a break-even unit of a big manufacturer. The unit had little growth and its people had little motivation. They just plugged along with the work.

When the unit was sold, everything changed. A few slackers were let go, but through great attention to individuals and promises of better things to come, work became fun for those who stayed.

Fortunately, you probably won't have the buyout situation to contend with but the new owner's techniques could work for you too. By focusing on individuals, what they are doing and what they could become, you could replace cynicism with excitement.

When you get passionate about what your people are doing, true engagement will be your reward. And theirs.

Some call it a modern day Noah's Ark. Others call it a doomsday vault. Whatever it's called, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is considered the final backup to protect the world's seeds in case of a global catastrophe.

Blasted into the permafrost of a frozen mountain on the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic, the refrigerated vault is meant to preserve the world's agricultural seeds and protect the world from famine.

Norway proposed the idea of the vault back in 2005 and started to build it in 2006. While Norway owns the vault, each country that contributes seeds will own their own material. The vault has the capacity to house up to 4.5 million seed samples.

There are more than 1000 seed banks in the world, but individual countries can find themselves in trouble when their banks are wiped out by such natural disasters as typhoons and the man-made disaster of war.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust, which was founded in 2001 by the United Nations, will help operate the vault.

"The seed vault is the perfect place for keeping seeds safe for centuries," said Cary Fowler of the Trust. "At these temperatures, seeds for important crops like wheat, barley, and peas can last for up to 1,000 years. This facility will provide a practical means to reestablish crops obliterated by major disasters."

On Nov. 16, 2007, refrigeration units began pumping chilly air deep into the mountain cavern to bring the temperature down from 5 degrees Celsius to 18 degrees Celsius

Seeds were arriving at the vault in mid-February with the official opening date set for February 26, 2008.

Flash memory is the kind that comes with digital cameras. It doesn't forget what it has stored when the power goes off. Flash is getting so inexpensive it is starting to blur the distinctions between devices, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Digital cameras now have so much memory they can capture long videos, making them competitive with camcorders.

For about $40, you can buy a two-gigabyte flash-memory card, which is more than enough to play music and videos. You could store three movies in that much memory and hundreds of music albums.

Flashes with four gigs are also available, and that capability is predicted to double this year. Surprisingly, the prices will not significantly change.

The digital abundance of the desktop will now be available everywhere you go. For example, a Sony Reader the size of a paperback can hold thousands of novels, thanks to a flash-memory add-in card. It can hold music too.