text:
Do-It-Yourself Medicine

Patients are sidestepping clinical research and using themselves as guinea pigs to test new treatments for fatal diseases. Will they hurt themselves, or science?

By | March 1, 2013

© KAMRUZZAMAN RATAN/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMOn August 10, 2011, Joan Valor Butler diluted a solution of 5 percent sodium chlorite in 1 gallon of slightly salted water, and slowly injected 1 liter of the mixture into her 42-year-old son’s feeding tube, at his request. Sodium chlorite is a chemical commonly used in low concentrations in camping water-purification kits and for municipal water treatment. Many also believed it to be the active ingredient of a promising drug in clinical trials for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)—a disease Eric Valor has lived with for the better part of the past decade.

As the disease gradually paralyzed his entire body, Valor became an avid student of ALS, a degenerative disorder commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease and characterized by a deterioration of motor neurons. He had first learned about the intravenous drug, called NP001, in 2010, when its developer, Neuraltus Pharmaceuticals, announced it would soon be starting a Phase 1 trial and was recruiting ALS patients. Animal toxicology tests had demonstrated the drug’s safety, and a small study in an ALS mouse model suggested it may slow disease progression—most likely by reducing macrophage-initiated killing of neurons, a recently proposed mechanism for how ALS wreaks havoc on the body. Valor started a thread on an online ALS patient forum to discuss NP001, and several patients decided to inquire about taking part in the trial. But 7 years removed from diagnosis, Valor’s disease was far too advanced for him to qualify as a trial participant.

Though he has outlived the average ALS lifespan of just 2 to 5 years, Valor’s muscular paralysis is severe. Within 6 months of his diagnosis, Valor—once an avid surfer and snowboarder—had difficulty walking. He started using a cane, then a walker, then a wheelchair. Eventually the disease confined Valor to his bed, where a ventilator forces air into his lungs 6 to 8 times per minute. By the time NP001 was making a splash in the ALS community, his speech was barely intelligible, and he was unable to move any part of his body except for his eyes and some of the muscles of his face. In his condition, Valor was a risk for any clinical trial testing a treatment expected to slow progression: for the drug to show a noticeable effect, he would actually have to start getting better, rather than simply stop getting worse—something no drug had ever done for ALS patients.

So Valor looked into treating himself at home, scouring the Web through a computer linked to an infrared camera that tracks the movement of his right eye. (See photographs below.) Dozens of other patients who couldn’t get into the trial also searched for another way to try the experimental drug. On the basis of a literature search, a Phase 1 trial consent form, and a patent owned by Neuraltus cofounder Michael McGrath, the patients believed NP001 to be a formulation of sodium chlorite. Some purchased NP001’s precursor, WF10, which was known to contain just over 50 percent sodium chlorite and could be ordered from Thailand, where it was approved for treating the autoimmune consequences of cancer radiation. But for many, the cost of $12,000 for a year’s supply was prohibitive. Sodium chlorite, on the other hand, could be purchased from online suppliers for just $50 per quart—15 years’ worth at the dosage outlined in the patients’ documented protocol.

There’s a new model of medicine in my opinion. You see these DIY programs where patients are deciding, after doing an Internet search, that this is what they want to do; they go get the medicine; they take it; and they log their own output measures.
— Richard Bedlack,
Duke University ALS Clinic

Self-dosing patients went to great pains to ensure that what they were doing was safe. Because WF10 was already approved in Thailand, they knew that at least one form of chlorite had completed safety testing to satisfy that country’s regulatory authorities. Patients reached out to the drugs’ inventors, and spoke to their doctors and each other about the risks and the proper dosing. Even test engineer Tom Poast, who does not have ALS, chimed in on the patient forum with insights on the purity of chlorite solutions available for purchase, dilution and mixing, and the chemical’s behavior. More than 1 year and 1,000 forum posts later, some two dozen ALS patients decided ingesting sodium chlorite was worth a shot.

While the ALS community has taken do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine further than most, patients across the board are starting to play a noticeably bigger role in their own care. “There’s a new model of medicine in my opinion,” says neurologist and clinical researcher Richard Bedlack, director of the Duke University ALS Clinic. “Once upon a time we had a very paternalistic system, where patients would come, and they would have a set of symptoms, and doctors would ask all the questions and give all the answers. And in the past decade things have really shifted almost to the other side, where a lot of medicine is autonomous now. You see these DIY programs where patients are deciding, after doing an Internet search, that this is what they want to do; they go get the medicine; they take it; and they log their own output measures.”

And although Bedlack has concerns about the safety and effectiveness of patient-driven trials, he argues that patients’ greater involvement is a good thing—both for managing their own health and for deciding the course of drug development. “I don’t think anybody has more to gain or lose from all this than patients,” he says. “So I think they should be driving the agenda.”

A justified risk?

Eric Valor© ELIOT DRAKEThe sodium chlorite project was actually the third patient-initiated trial Valor had taken part in—and the second he had helped organize. The first well-organized and widely recognized patient effort to investigate a potential ALS therapy occurred in 2008, following a promising Phase 1 trial in Italy for the treatment of the disease with lithium carbonate. The 44-patient study suggested that lithium significantly slowed disease progression, as measured by two standardized rating scales, including a revised version of the ALS functional rating scale (ALSFRS-R)—and none of the 16 participants treated with lithium died during the 15 months they were monitored. ALS patient discussion boards began to spread the news. It could be years before lithium became approved as a treatment for ALS, but because the drug was already marketed for bipolar disorder, it was not hard for patients to get their hands on. Some 350 ALS patients began trying lithium to treat their symptoms.

Humberto Macedo, an ALS patient in Brazil, started a Google Docs spreadsheet to track self-reported ALSFRS-R scores. And Karen Felzer, a research scientist on the US Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards team whose father had ALS, built a website to host the project. At 3 and 6 months, Felzer, who has a background in statistics (normally devoted to analyzing earthquake aftershocks), examined the data. Both times, she found no evidence that lithium slowed progression. By November 2008, when Felzer posted her second report on the project’s website, most patients had stopped taking the drug.

It wasn’t until April 2011, however, that the broader scientific community took notice. That month, analysts at PatientsLikeMe, a social networking site that allows patients to input, track, and share data, published their own review, using the ASLFRS-R scores that ALS patients taking lithium had shared on their profiles (Nature Biotechnology, 29:411-14, 2011). The researchers had reached the same conclusion as Felzer: namely, that lithium doesn’t slow the progression of ALS—a finding confirmed by multiple formal clinical trials. But the report was met with immediate criticism, as concerned researchers questioned the validity of the PatientsLikeMe platform and how it might influence patients’ decisions.

As some people can attest, I have an ability to be a cold bastard. I just treat myself as another lab rat.
—Eric Valor, ALS patient

“We gave [patients] the tools to evaluate things that are not going through the formal review process or are not approved or on market,” says Jamie Heywood, PatientsLikeMe cofounder and chairman, “so, at some level, you could be accused of empowering dangerous self-experimentation.”

Indeed, the most commonly cited concern about DIY clinical trials is safety. “I think it’s especially worrisome in [the ALS] field because of our history,” says Bedlack. “In 100 years of ALS research, we have found only one drug, which has a very small positive effect. We’ve found many things that don’t do anything at all, and we’ve found several things that actually are harmful to patients . . . things [that] actually wound up making people progress faster than doing nothing at all or taking placebo.”

With researchers and regulatory agencies unable to consistently predict when an experimental drug will do harm, many doubt that patients will do any better. Drugs like lithium, which are generally considered safe in their approved context, can cause unforeseen complications when taken by patients suffering from other diseases. Furthermore, drugs that have yet to receive the US Food and Drug Administration’s stamp of approval—or treatments that aren’t even in the clinical trial system, like ingested sodium chlorite—hold an even higher chance of doing physical harm. “I don’t think we know that any drug is safe in people with ALS until it’s gone all the way through extensive testing,” Bedlack says.

“There’s a reason that those safeguards exist,” agrees cardiologist Ami Bhatt of Massachusetts General Hospital. “Everything still has to go through the Phase 1-2-3 trial because at the end of the day what the patients and the clinicians and the researchers want is to be as systematic and safe as possible.”

A debate over value

BED-BOUND RESEARCH: Eric Valor views a screen above his bed. An infrared camera detects the movement of his right eye, allowing him to navigate the computer and type his thoughts, which he can e-mail or have the computer speak audibly to others in the room or over the phone.© ELIOT DRAKEBeyond the immediate safety concerns surrounding patient-led trials, the unregulated initiatives may alter the course of drug development. Clinical researchers already face precarious odds: fewer than 10 percent of novel treatments that enter human trials ever make it to market. In the face of such adversity, drug companies are understandably wary of any movement that could jeopardize their chances of success, including patient-initiated trials. Drug developers go to great lengths to control the variables in clinical trials, to optimize the dosing and the treatment window in order to reduce side effects while maximizing therapeutic gain, and to monitor patients’ health. If patients outside the clinical research system start taking experimental drugs on their own, the likelihood of something going wrong is greatly magnified. And if something does go wrong—something that may not have been caused by the drug at all—entire drug development programs could be shut down prematurely.

Stephen Byer of ALS Worldwide, an ALS support and advocacy group he founded with his wife Barbara, experienced firsthand the industry’s hesitancy to support the use of unapproved drugs outside a formally designed clinical trial. In 2010, 2 years after their son Ben lost his fight with ALS, the couple tried to convince Knopp Biosciences and Biogen Idec to initiate a compassionate-use program that would give ALS patients early access to their experimental compound dexpramipexole (“dex”), then in Phase 2 trials. “They listened very thoughtfully—it took almost an entire day for this meeting—and [in] the end, they said no,” Byer recalls. “They didn’t want to impinge upon their clinical trial.”

(Byer did eventually succeed in connecting a limited number of patients with the drug through an investigator-sponsored trial led by the drug’s inventor, James Bennett of Virginia Commonwealth University, who still holds the drug’s patent. And despite the recent failure of the formal Phase 3 dex trial, Byer and Bennett plan to carry on, citing differences in trial design. “We have a number of ALS patients who have stabilized or even improved on the drug, with responses lasting many months,” Bennett says—“very atypical for placebo responses.”)

Another concern is that patient self-experimentation will hurt enrollment in FDA-sanctioned trials, particularly Phase 2 and Phase 3 trials that include a placebo group to strengthen the analysis. Due to the risk of being randomly assigned to the placebo group, patients may be more inclined to obtain that drug on their own, so they can ensure that they get the active compound, than to join a trial.

In addition to the risks, critics argue that the data produced by patient-driven endeavors are unlikely to be of significant value. Innumerable biases can sully data that are self-reported by a self-selected population. Desperate patients may be more likely to unknowingly exaggerate their improvement, or see improvement where there is none, simply because they expect the treatment to be effective—the notorious placebo effect. Additionally, patients who choose to participate in such experiments are not necessarily a fair representation of the entire ALS population. “For instance, if the only patients who are taking sodium chlorite are patients that are very smart, and generally likely to be wealthier,” says Heywood, “[then] that population of patients is different than the rest of the patients”—they may have greater access to drugs, for example, or better supportive care. Patients resorting to self-experimentation may also, on average, be more progressed, skewing the data toward later stages of disease.

Patient-led trials diverge even further from scientific norms in their lack of placebo control groups—the gold standard of randomized controlled trials. Instead of placebo groups, both Felzer’s and PatientsLikeMe’s analyses of the lithium data matched treated patients with ALS patients in the PatientsLikeMe database who showed similar patterns of disease progression but did not take lithium. Such historical controls are often thought to be weak, as clinical care has changed over the years and other unknown factors inevitably influence analyses done on data collected for other purposes. But some ALS researchers argue that historical controls shouldn’t be so readily dismissed.

We gave patients the
tools to evaluate things
that are not going through
the formal review process
or are not approved or on market, so, at some level,
you could be accused of empowering dangerous self-experimentation.—Jamie Heywood, PatientsLikeMe

Neurologist Robert Miller of the California Pacific Medical Center, head of the Western ALS Study Group and principal investigator on both the NP001 Phase 1 and Phase 2 studies, has been collecting placebo-group patient data from ALS trials conducted over the past 12 years. He first pulled controls from this placebo database of more than 1,200 patient records to analyze Phase 2 trial data on lithium for ALS. Miller then used the database to generate matched controls to analyze data from the NP001 Phase 2 trial, the promising results of which were announced in October.

“When you have a small group of patients, [especially] with a disease like ALS that has a lot of variation, and you have a lot of noise, then you have an imprecise measure of rate of decline,” Miller says. “When you add in historical controls, you get a much more precise placebo rate of decline, and it increases the power of the trial.” Though the FDA did insist on having a placebo group, the agency permitted Miller to use the historical controls to supplement those data.

Bedlack agrees that historical controls can be a powerful tool when used correctly. “We’ve got thousands of patients that we could use to adequately match every new subject and at least get an idea—is this safe, is this tolerable, is there any kind of borderline efficacy signal that means that this would be worth taking forward into a Phase 3 trial,” Bedlack says. “I don’t think we need a placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial to answer those questions.”

Still, he cautions, “you cannot go from [patient-organized] studies directly to a Phase 3 study. Diagnoses need to be properly validated; outcome measures need to be properly validated. . . . I think there needs to be a more traditional study.”

Equivocal success

On August 15, 2011, after his sixth dose of sodium chlorite, Valor recorded his first positive effect. “Seemingly clearer speech,” he wrote in his openly shared patient log. He did note that “observations at this point inconclusive as no clearly documented baseline available,” and that the effect would have to be much more dramatic to convince him that it was indeed working—but he was “intrigued,” he recalls.

Others noted similar improvements. Excitement stirred on the group’s forum when one of the more curmudgeonly patients, Ron Schaffer, reported mild improvements in his energy level. “No placebo needed,” one commenter quipped—“if in the end Ron says the stuff works, that’s a 99.9 percent confidence level with N = 1.”

That September, Valor, using only his right eye, finished building the project’s website where those taking sodium chlorite could post their results. “Now we’re a year into it, and it looks like it does help,” says engineer Tom Poast. So far, however, the evidence is purely anecdotal. Because most are more interested in the success of NP001, which they suspect will be more effective than ingesting sodium chlorite, the patient community hasn’t yet completed any formal analyses of the data. And troublingly, NP001’s inventors say that sodium chlorite taken orally should not work at all because the chemical will be quickly converted to chlorine dioxide, which is not only ineffective at quelling macrophages, but could even be toxic.

Indeed, a report published by PatientsLikeMe investigators last October on found that “sodium chlorite has a potentially negative effect; we have more than 80% confidence that it is worsening patients’ progression rate.” A second report by ALS Untangled, an organization Bedlack founded to review alternative and off-label ALS treatments, came to a similar conclusion. NP001, on the other hand, continues to impress: in October 2012, Neuraltus researchers announced that the high dose notably slowed disease progression, and even stopped it altogether in a subset of patients.

While the company seeks a Big Pharma partner to launch a Phase 3 trial, Valor continues to push for early access to the drug. “Because of my late stage, how much [of the chlorite] response would translate to useful improvement [from NP001] is a large question,” he says. “Still, I am excited to try.” For Valor, there is no conflict in playing both researcher and patient. “As some people can attest, I have an ability to be a cold bastard,” he says. “I just treat myself as another lab rat.”

Read about some of the initiatives and copmanies that are taking advantage of the patient data deluge. JPG | PDF© ARTVEA/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMAlthough fully organized patient-run trials are still few and far between, patients are taking a more active role in clinical research. Now, more than ever before, patients have access to scientific knowledge as it’s reported, and advocate communities are flourishing, thanks to the wide-ranging, faster, and more accurate communication provided by the Internet. This increasing patient activism, and an accompanying willingness to share personal stories, has resulted in a veritable deluge of patient data.

“When you have gigabytes of data, perhaps hundreds of gigabytes, for each patient, that’s more data than has existed in all clinical trials combined up until a couple of years ago,” says Marty Tenenbaum, who in 2010 founded Cancer Commons, a database that collates real-time patient data and up-to-the-moment basic medical research to inform cancer treatment.

The online networking site PatientsLikeMe, for example, has accumulated more than 175,000 users who are recording information about hundreds of diseases, treatments, and outcomes. Of the 200,000 customers of direct-to-consumer genetics company 23andMe, some 85 percent have contributed their genomic and phenotypic information to research—totaling more than 80 million phenotypic data points for more than 60 conditions. And the Personal Genome Project, launched by Harvard Medical School’s George Church in 2006, has accumulated about 200 full genomes and 400 partial sequences, with some 1,500 additional volunteers who have already made trait data available online and are willing to share their whole genomes.

But the availability of such data is only one side of the coin. Without expert analysis, patient-generated data would be useless to the drug development community. Fortunately, initiatives and companies are cropping up left and right to support and take advantage of this movement.

Among the benefits of such stockpiles of data is the ability to sift through the challenging heterogeneity of patients, their diseases, and their case information. “Clinical trials, especially as they’ve been traditionally constituted—large randomized trials—just are a disaster in cancer, because of the nature of the disease,” says Tenenbaum. “Every tumor is unique at some level.” Databases that collate genetic data, such as patient genomes or the genomes of their tumors, could facilitate the identification of biomarkers to help differentiate responders and nonresponders, speeding a drug’s path to the clinic. “It could literally slash years, if not decades, off the normal process,” Tenenbaum says.

Platforms that support patient input can also help researchers develop better benchmarks for assessing disease progression and more accurate measures of patient health, as well as point to novel indications for existing drugs and promising drug combinations. “We’re enabling a new partnership between the patients and the physicians,” says Jamie Heywood, cofounder and chairman of PatientsLikeMe, “and that new partnership should produce outcomes at lower costs with lower risks and better innovation.”

Editor's Note: The author of this article, The Scientist editor Jef Akst, has launched a blog about her research into this story. Read more about Eric Valor and other patients taking a more active role in their own care at DIY Medicine.

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Avatar of: HappyPhysicist

Posts: 1

March 1, 2013

Fantastic article!!

What I find astonishing is that in the minds of academics and medical professionals there is still a debate over whether terminally ill poeple should experiment on themselves, or even healthy people for than matter.

There never has been such a debate. People have always experimented on themselves and they always will, but they rarely share this with their physicians for fear of criticism.

The only debate is whether we want to capture this information and learn from it.

Avatar of: ENV

Posts: 1

March 1, 2013

the reason we are forced to do this is the glacial pace at which development progresses. We can't wait 10 years for the process to play out. and with the Lithium project, we had first urged the powers that be to take action. When that request was refused we took it into our own hands. What we found, aside from the futility of lithium, was that we forced quick action from the clinical community. We won't hesitate to do it again. The paradigm of helpless patients quietly dying is OVER.

Avatar of: Yogi

Posts: 1

March 6, 2013

What a great article. The same thing is happening with autologous stem cell treatment. The FDA is regulating our own stem cells if they are manipulated so as to make them clinically relevant as drugs. Terminally ill patients are being denied access to potentially life saving therapies even though there is very little risk.

The dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about is that billions of dollars are at stake. Those in research, Big Pharma, FDA, politicians, charities, all have conflicts of interest. They stand to lose a lot of money if patients can be treated by a doctor  with something as simple as their own stem cells or something such as sodium chlorite that Valor was was self administering. Look what they've done to fish oil. $130 a bottle for Omacor because it's FDA approved. Sick people are worth a lot of money.

The public is gullible. They still believe that the FDA, academia, medical professionals, charities are all working to help find cures. It simply isn't so and sick people are paying for it with their lives.

Avatar of: Zchick1836

Posts: 1

March 6, 2013

Excellent article Jef Akst! Eric Valor is a true warrior in the ALS battle.  ALS is cruel and unusual as far as diseases go. In reading his story you can't help but place yourself in his shoes and think "what would I do?" The Multiple Sclerosis disease community finds itself in a similar situation. I was diagnosed with MS in 2004. We only have FDA approved drugs to treat the 1st stage of MS (Relapsing Remitting) There are up to 3 more types/stages of MS that have NO FDA approved treatment (other than 1 chemo drug that treats PPMS) How is the MS community handling this? We are becoming medical tourists and seeking Adult Stem Cell therapy in other countries by the thousands. We have been criticized by many for taking matters into our own hands, but "what would you do," when a nursing home or death might be in the near future?!   Some of the FDA approved MS drugs available carry a black label warning, and side effects can be things like leukemia, and herpes!  Being treated with our own cells is far safer then the FDA approved drugs for Multiple Sclerosis.

Avatar of: Susan Worley

Susan Worley

Posts: 2

March 13, 2013

This is such an important issue right now. Thank you for addressing the issue.

Avatar of: sgreene24

Posts: 1

March 13, 2013

Congrats on this story! (and blog, Jef!).  Participatory medicine is indeed blossoming despite maddeningly inaccessible patient data and patrician attitudes in the healthcare system.

One correction: we at Cancer Commons (sidebar) are pooling data from labs (omics), the clinic, and from patients themselves.  Indeed, in your groovy graphic, we should be blue, signifying "partially patient-contributed" data, rather than orange "not patient contributed".  We've initiated a Donate-Your-Data project, working with patient advocacy groups --  to encourage cancer patients and survivors to submit info on their biomarkers, treatments and progress. The data is de-identified for machine learning on our rapid learning platform, with the hope of discovering exceptional responders. We are fully transparent regarding who studies the data, and we return to patients the latest relevant news and researcher insights.  We believe there will be no 'rapid learning' without a crowdsourced revolution, as Michael Nielsen describes eloquently in his book, "Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science."

Avatar of: Skow

Posts: 1

March 14, 2013

I am very impressed; this is an excellent step in starting to recognize the self imposed barriers by government and academics which limits the speed of new treatment to patients.  As cost continue to rise a great percentage of this increase is due to a regulatory system more concerned about their role in over seeing clinical research  then allowing clinical research to work on the problems at hand, perhaps the system in place now will stand up and take notice.

Avatar of: Dockell

Posts: 8

March 21, 2013

I agree, we can only hope that system will stand up and notice. The most important thing that we could ever get across is that NO ONE is ever too far gone to receive treatment.

Patients helping patients. Great for Valor, his family, and anyone suffering from ALS.

Avatar of: BadDoggie

Posts: 1

March 28, 2013

Thank you for a wonderful article.  Having suffered chronic pain due to cervical stenosis for the majority of my life I'm appalled at how few physicians actually listen to their patients.  Many also have preconceived notions too, especially in the field of pain management and like to accuse patients of drug seeking.  Of course I'm drug seeking I'm in pain you idiots!  Enough of my rant though this article isn't about me or my problems.

I find it unfortunate that one thing many forget during their education is to keep an open mind.  Don't forget to question things either whether they make sense to you or not.  I have a hard time believing.....well believing anything!  When you look at the fact that our own government has made marijuana into a schedule 1 drug with no possible medical use you have to think.  When has any government determined a plant to be a drug and then claimed it has no medical use even while they are prescribing it to former patients from their own medical trials?

What really caught my eye in this article was how many say they are so concerned about the safety of people trying to treat themselves.  Many of these people are either near death or they're suffering to the point that they have either lost or will lose their will to live.  How very nice to be so concerned about their safety.   Maybe it would be better to worry about their quality of life and their personal wishes....

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Home   >   Education   >   Article

TAFE gears up to offer degrees

By Rebecca Scott
July 24 2002

It came from left of field. While the university sector was busy pitching for new sources of revenue and ways of attracting more feepaying students, the boundaries of the playing field were redrawn by the State Government.

TAFE, previously the provider of vocational education and training, got the green light to offer degree courses - with provisos.

Unlike universities, which have autonomy to design and offer their own degree courses, TAFE must have each course approved by an independent Higher Education Accreditation Committee (HEAC).

It's a further step in the evolution of higher education. Students completing certain TAFE courses are now routinely eligible for credit when enrolling in a related subject at university. More recently, TAFEs have been offering degrees in partnership with individual universities.

The initial study is at TAFE, with the final subjects taught by the university partner.

But the announcement by state Education Minister Lynne Kosky last month sets up an element of competition between the two types of providers, blurring the distinction between vocational and higher education.

Some of the bigger TAFE institutes are expected to offer degrees in subjects such as aquaculture, equine studies, hospitality, tourism, information technology and biotechnology.

Some of these, however, are already on offer at Victorian universities.

La Trobe for example, offers a bachelor of viticultural science and wine production. Judy Tisdall, coordinator of the La Trobe program, expects that the proposed degree in viticulture at Northern Melbourne Institute of Tafe (NMIT) ``will be different from ours. Theirs will be vocational, while ours is sciencebased,'' she says.

"Whether they call it a degree or not, people will know. Theirs will be a bachelor of viticulture, whereas ours will be a bachelor of viticultural science and wine production. Like wine, its all about quality,'' she says.

But NMIT chief executive Brian MacDonald points out that NMIT is already running the practical aspect of La Trobe University's viticulture degree and has identified a niche market for a more applied degree in the subject.

"I'm not putting ourselves head to head with La Trobe,'' he says. ``They use our vineyards and our staff as part of their program. But our degree course would be far more applied - from preparation of the vineyard, development, trellising, planting, irrigation, care, (to) picking, processing in our own winery, marketing and labelling for export and so on. It will be more than just a science degree with some viticulture subjects.''

One of the significant differences between TAFE undergraduate degrees and those delivered through a university is that the TAFE courses will be fullfeepaying and will not be eligible for either the HECS subsidy or HECS loan. Depending on the course, the degree programs are expected to come with a price tag of about $8000 per student per year.

For TAFE - struggling financially to fulfil its charter and provide public education and training - this opens up a potentially lucrative new source of revenue. William Angliss CEO David Riley sees the open market in higher education as an opportunity which can be turned to public benefit. ``We are all (universities and TAFEs) running education and training businesses,'' he says.

"This (degree) initiative is about creating viable education and training opportunities that will bring in revenue and that way we will be able to expand the types of courses on offer. Any net surplus we make won't be paid out to shareholders. It will be reinvested to create more training opportunities.''

Victoria is not the first state to allow TAFE institutes to offer degree programs. In South Australia, for example, undergraduate degrees in business, dance performance and visual arts are obtainable through TAFE.

Theological institutions and bible colleges across Australia have for many years offered undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in theology and the arts. Other nonuniversity providers include the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia, the Australian Institute of Public Safety, the Securities Institute of Australia and natural therapies schools.

TAFE is simply joining the list as the educational market expands.

David Riley says the net result will be that the higher education system, which now turns down thousands of applicants a year, will be able to provide more degree places. But not everybody is so gungho. The national vicepresident of the National Tertiary Education Union, Matthew McGowan, opposes the TAFE degree initiative. Universities, through their focus on teaching, scholarship and research, are at the cutting edge of higher education. TAFE, he says, is not.

"TAFEs are not set up to engage in any of that,'' Mr McGowan says. ``They offer a competencybased process. In allowing TAFEs to offer degrees we are devaluing the currency of a degree.''

In response, Ms Kosky insists that scrutiny by the Higher Education Accreditation Committee will ensure the quality of any TAFE degree course.

"If TAFEs are considering offering degrees, they will have to go through a rigorous process,'' she says. ``The Higher Education Accreditation Committee will assess applications on three grounds: Does the credential meet the academic standards of a degree in that particular area? Are the teaching staff going to be of the required standard and have the required qualifications? And can the institution prove that the degree has the appropriate support structure in place for students, including things like proper library facilities?''

The minister expects that only a small number of TAFEs will embrace the degree option "and then only in niche markets, in areas specifically focused on industry needs, which is what TAFE is good at responding to''.

One of the areas she cites is equine studies, where NMIT has already established itself with the horseracing industry in Hong Kong.

The Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee's chief executive, John Mullarvey, says that the AVCC is not opposed to the initiative ``as long as the degrees are properly accredited as higher education awards''.

But he questions the potential impact on TAFE's existing responsibilities. "The real issue in this proposal is the potential impact the provision of degrees could have on TAFE's prime responsibility to provide highquality vocational education and training. It is essential that this role remains at the forefront of TAFE activity,'' he says.

At this stage, none of the TAFE institutes can say when the first degree courses will commence. It depends on how long the approval process takes. But NMIT hopes to offer its own degree programs - in aquaculture, equine studies, information technology and viticulture - from 2003.

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Vanishing Point

Reviewer Hilary Crampton
August 13, 2004

Compagnie Philippe Genty, Comedy Theatre, August 10

Philippe Genty's return to Melbourne features his usual mix of illusion, Gallic whimsy, and fantastical indeterminacy. All his ingredients are transformation from human scale to the minute or the gigantic, and the clever use of lighting to conceal the mechanics and reveal the magic.

Vanishing Point is a journey undertaken by a disparate group who serendipitously find themselves swept into an unknown domain - an abyss, as the laboriously manipulated floating letters finally spell out.

Vanishing Point begins at the meeting point of lines of light - a figure emerges, prognosticates on the mysteries and possibilities of what might occur in this indeterminate place while becoming entangled in a web - and sets the agenda for the performance, undermined by unpredictability.

Other performers rush from the auditorium, a motley collection clad in somewhat formal street wear who find themselves floating on a pond into which each inevitably sinks. They have entered the abyss. Various illusions follow, emerging and disappearing into billowing folds of fabric.

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One particularly masterful apparition is the confrontation between two men ejecting objects from their mouths that turn into floating symbols and messages; the precision and lack of apparent technology delights and demands our attention. Other appealing illusions include the delicate use of diminutive replicas of the performers who find themselves both confronted and judged by these appealingly vulnerable puppets. The whirling, snapping, disembodied head clad in a giant hooped plastic sheet has echoes of other uses of wind-whirled plastic bags, and the gigantic billowing Buddha-like ogre is affectionate and callous.

This technical skill is part of what keeps audiences engaged with Genty's work. We are challenged to function on two levels; to enter into the fantasy, pondering the metaphorical allusions, and to try to perceive just how the effects are achieved.

The performers and the technicians/manipulators are excellent. But the material is over-extended, as if the creators feel the need to reinforce their message when it has begun to pall. Rene Aubry's music is pleasant, drawing on a multiplicity of ethnic influences, but has a sameness of pace. The performance relies rather too much on gentle punctuation, but lacks dynamic variety and energy.


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[The Age | Text-only index]

Tony Charlton, master of his craft

Date: December 17 2012

Martin Flanagan

In 2007, I had the pleasure of spending several hours with Tony Charlton, the veteran sports broadcaster with the elegant diction who passed away on Monday morning.

Afterwards I wrote, "You could talk sport with Charlton all day. Give him a name. If he saw them play or got to know them – and usually, it seems, he did both – there's a story, expertly told. Crafted, in fact. He is, if encouraged, a walking radio documentary. He said that if he had to describe his life in one word it would be 'lucky'. 'I'm so grateful. That's why I have to put back in.'

"And put back in he did. We met at the Alfred Hospital where Charlton worked five days a week as a volunteer, as he had been doing for the previous 15 years. The day after we met, he was officiating at a funeral. The following week, he was to be the voice that co-ordinated the dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance, followed by an Essendon pre-match luncheon at the MCG, which he was compering. He was then 78.

Charlton's father, a New Zealander wounded in World War 1 during the Battle of the Somme, was a radio broadcaster, reading the evening news in a dinner jacket even though no one could see him. He also called the races.

As a youth, having captained the First XI of Scotch College in Perth, Tony Charlton's sole ambition was to be a cricketer but he arrived at South Melbourne Cricket Club to find it had 14 players of Test and Shield standard. His father "thrust" him into radio.

His first call was of the World Professional Footrunning Championships at the Melbourne Showgrounds. In the final, however, a runner called Stoney slipped and fell and the young commentator was so excited he cried out: "Stoney's down in centre ring!" Afterwards, he shrank with shame. He'd mixed his sporting metaphors.

He called his first game of footy for radio at the showgrounds in 1949. It was an experimental night game. The showgrounds, being a trotting track, was lit at the rim, meaning most of the match was played in a grey gloom.

His senior partner, Norman Banks, had poor sight. Banks called the game when the ball came near; Charlton did the rest. In 1957, he started calling the footy for Seven.

Charlton's call of Peter Norman's silver medal at the Mexico Olympics is well remembered but his favourite sporting memory was Betty Cuthbert winning her fourth gold medal in Tokyo in 1964. As she went through the tape, Charlton declared: "My God, she's won it!" He was accused of blasphemy. Telling me the story, he added: "Today they'd use the f-word and no one'd notice." Charlton acknowledged that others would see his values as old-fashioned. "Yes," he told me, "I'm one of those who believe you should stand to attention during the national anthem."

When I asked his favourite footballer, he gave the name in one word because two words would detract from its power: "Coleman." Essendon's John Coleman played fewer than 100 games, his career ending prematurely through a knee injury. His high marking is legendary. "How can you explain to anyone today who didn't see him? He had it all - intelligent, good-looking. He had an extraordinary hold on the public imagination." He was also dead at 42 from thrombosis, and as Charlton recounted the fact he visibly altered.

Tony Charlton retained the reverence for sport he had as a boy. As a sports caller, his style was slightly ornate, but his sincerity compelled attention. One of his contemporaries, Harry Gordon, described him as "unflappable and authoritative".

Charlton's death was the result of bowel cancer. He is survived by his wife Loris and three children.

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.

[ The Age | Text-only index]


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Eco Tourism Holidays in South Australia

River life ... the Murray in South Australia.

South Australia

Life is but a stream

Sue Williams takes a drive along the mighty Murray on its stately journey to the sea.

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Great white sharks no cold-blooded 'Jaws'

Shark diving South Australia

"I hope the cage is as strong as a it looks," says diver James Hay, before jumping into an aluminium frame to swim with the ocean's most feared predator, the great white shark.

Flinders keepers

Outback spectacular ... a Cazneaux tree with Wilpena Pound in the background.

While settlers have come and gone, leaving only ruins behind, Carmen Michael finds the harsh landscape and uncompromising beauty of Wilpena Pound endures.

Kangaroo Island

Island paradise abounds with wildlife

Christian Roewekamp A kangaroo is not the first thing visitors to Kangaroo Island usually see.

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Shining light ... Cape du Couedic Ligthouse.

Bruce Holmes discovers a holiday of splendid isolation on Kangaroo Island.

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David Sly rugs up against the Antarctic blast to watch whales in their winter sanctuary.

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1986 Baseball Draft

+    Round #33 [June-Reg]
This section allows you to filter through all historical drafts since 1965. This includes all phases of every draft including every pick. Filtering can be done by just about any draft-related category (see below) including whether or not the player is recently active and by school attended. There is a display limit of 300 records for this tool.

Each player has their own player page with their historical statistics (where available). Stats displayed on this page are Major League stats.
Major Leaguers are always shaded (if they were signed).

Notes about the draft data

Todd Nace is highlighed in blue in draft results below.
Share this report:
Year Round Overall Drafting Team Position Player College High School State Highest Level Active Signed Source Submit
YearRndOvlPhasePlayerDrafting TeamPosHiLvlPlayedSrcDrafted FromSFStateAB2B3BHRRBISBBAVGWLERASVIPSOGS
198633776June-RegMike Mordecai **Pittsburgh PiratesSSMLB1987-2005HHewitt-Trussville (Trussville,AL)SF AL----------------------------
198633777June-RegJonathan KingCleveland IndiansSS-HYork (York,PA)SF PA----------------------------
198633778June-RegRobin RiemerSan Francisco GiantspA-1986-1986CMonroe Community CollegeSF NY----------------------------
198633779June-RegByron MageeAtlanta BravespA+1989-1990HShippensburg Area (Shippensburg,PA)SF PA----------------------------
198633780June-RegCraig StefanMilwaukee BrewersOf-CNorth Central CollegeSF IL----------------------------
198633781June-RegTim PeekPhiladelphia PhilliespAAA1987-1995HElkhart Memorial (Elkhart,IN)SF ----------------------------
198633782June-RegTom Popplewell **Chicago CubspAAA1987-1995HFairfield (Fairfield,OH)SF OH----------------------------
198633783June-RegAndy RuscittoHouston AstrosCRK1987-1988HValencia (Placentia,CA)SF CA----------------------------
198633784June-RegVencent FultzMontreal ExpospA1991-1992HSalinas (Salinas,CA)SF CA----------------------------
198633785June-RegChris KlyczekBaltimore Orioles2BRK1986-1986H--SF ----------------------------
198633786June-RegTodd NaceCincinnati RedsOfA-1991-1991HHattiesburg (Hattiesburg,MS)SF MS----------------------------
198633787June-RegAnthony ColemanNew York MetspNCAA1988-1990HLeflore (Mobile,AL)SF AL----------------------------
198633788June-RegTom Urbani **Kansas City Royals1BMLB1987-1998HHarbor (Santa Cruz,CA)SF CA----------------------------
198633789June-RegSherman Collins **Toronto Blue JayspA+1984-1987CUniversity of OklahomaSF OK----------------------------

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Sheri Joseph signs "Where You Can Find Me"

06/15/2013 2:00 pm
06/15/2013 3:21 pm

A week after his eleventh birthday, Caleb Vincent vanishes with hardly a trace. After a three-year search, he is found living a seemingly normal life under a new name with a man he calls his father. While outwardly stunned with joy at his safe recovery, Caleb's parents and sister are privately scrambling to gather together the pieces of a shattered family. To escape the relentless media attention surrounding her son's return, Caleb's mother, Marlene, decides to flee the country and seek refuge in Costa Rica with Caleb and his younger sister, against her estranged husband's wishes. There Marlene forms a makeshift household with her husband's expat mother and his charming, aimless older brother, all residing in a broken-down hotel perched at the blustery apex of the continental divide. In the clouds of their new home, the mystery of Caleb's time gone unfolds while new dangers threaten to pull him back toward his former life. Where You Can Find Me, a darkly incandescent novel that progresses with page-turning suspense, is sure to establish award-winning author Sheri Joseph as a household name.

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ISBN-13: 9781250012852
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The Camera Site

Olympus Optical Co.,Ltd. (Japan)

Olympus OM-10

Olympus OM-10

Olympus OM-10 was introduced in 1979 as the first camera in Olympus OM "two digit" series. Because of the small size, stylish design, friendly pricing and known Olympus quality it became one of the most popular Olympus models. It is a typical 35mm single lens reflex camera with electronic control, automatic exposure and focal plane shutter. As a basic consumer model it has only the Aperture-priority Automatic Exposure but it is still able to take advantage of the whole (almost) Olympus System accessories. The OM-10's circuits are powered by two 1.5V alkaline-manganese or silver oxide batteries. Without them, the shutter will not function. With the Olympus Electronic Flash T32 (or T20) camera turns to a auto flash mode. When turn the flash off, it reverts the camera to AE photography mode. The flash ready light is visible in the viewfinder.

To an OM-10 Owner: (from OM-10 Manual)
We appreciate very much that you have acquired an OM-10, a camera designed to allow you to take good pictures automatically and with the greatest ease. The Olympus OM-10 is a single lens reflex camera of the finest quality in which the automation of photographic functions has been made possible by employing the most advanced electronics. To its acceptability of Olympus interchangeable lenses, a special film winder, a flash, and a host of other accessories are added to make it a complete system of photography. With the OM-10 you can gradually widen your enjoyment of the photographic art. We sincerely wish that it will become for you a source of unending satisfaction. To this effect please read this instruction manual carefully be fore using the camera, so that you may be sure of taking correct, beautiful pictures every time you use your OM-10.

The Manual Exposure Adapter was provided as an option and with it, it is possible to set shutter speeds from 1 sec. to 1/1000 sec. When photographing fast moving subjects, when there is a possibility of camera shake, or when you want to capture the subject in its natural tones no matter what the illumination may be, this accessory proved to be very useful and you may guess, that it was also the most popular accessory (except the flash) to the OM-10. With an electronic flash T32 or T20 and the Manual Adapter attached on, the flash unit automatically synchronizes the shutter speed of the camera. True or not but there is a warning in the camera instruction book which says: "If an electronic flash other than the T32 or T20 is used with the Manual Adapter, sometimes the shutter is not released at the speed you set on the Adapter due to the noise of the flash." Anyway, like it´s "big brothers" the single number OM cameras the two digit OM-10 has proved to be a reliable instrument even in the hands of the serious amateur.

So Little Money has never bought so Much SLR

Film Format : 24mm x 36mm
Type: :TTL auto-exposure 35mm SLR camera
Lens mount : OLYMPUS OM Mount. About 50 different Zuiko interchangeable lenses.
Shutter : Electronically controlled cloth focal plane shutter. Manual exposure: B, 1 - 1/1,000 sec. with adapter.
Synchronization : X type contact, hot shoe.
Automatic exposure control : Aperture preferred automatic exposure control electronic shutter type. TTL Direct Light Measuring System, center-weighted average light measurement. Measuring range: ASA 100 from F1.2, about 60 seconds to F16, 1/1,000 second.
Programmed Automatic Exposure : TTL direct, measuring range : approximate. -5 EV ~ 18 EV , 50mm F 1.4
Manual exposure : With a Manual Adapter
Self timer : 15sec. delay
Metering system : Olympus direct metering in body. Full aperture center weighted metering.
Measuring range : EV1.5 - EV17 (ASA 100 with F 1.2 standard lens).
Film speed Setting : ASA 12 - 3200

Olympus OM-10 (black)

To gain more professional look a black version was also offered. It has the same problem as most of the black cameras. Compared to chrome versions the black body shows often much more marks of use. I was lucky enough to get this black item. It looks like new and brings only one problem to me. I don´t want to use it because of the pristine finish. Specifications are exactly the same. Some OM-10 cameras are marked : OM-10 QUARTZ, marking is not only for the commercial reasons thus the noun quartz was "cool" in early Eighties.

Actually there was more to it than just giving the camera a "cool" name! OM10 Quartz had a hard-wired databack - the equivalent of the Olympus Databack 3, available for the single-digit models at that time. (THX to John Orrell )

OM 10

Oly adapter
Power source : Two 1.5V silver oxide batteries Eveready S-76
or equivalents or alkaline manganese batteries LR 44
Viewfinder : Pentaprism type finder.
Finder view-field : 93% of actual picture field.
Reflex mirror : Quick return type (without lockup).
Manual film advance : Lever type with 130° angle for one long
or several short strokes, pre-advance angle 30°
Exposure counter : Progressive type with automatic reset.
Film rewind : Rewind crank
Weight : 430g , body alone
Dimensions : 136 x 84 x 50mm, body
Olympus OM707

Olympus OM707 (1986)

The first and last Olympus autofocus SLR. As you can see the Sigma Mini-Wide lens is not an autofocus lens. This combination was on the table of a local rummage sale. The camera is not working. The shutter release push button was poked in with force. This could be the only fault.
I made a quasi-repair to get it look better in the picture.

This camera is excellently introduced on the Unofficial Olympus Pages (external link)

Olympus Evolt Kit

Logo E-500 (2005)

A long waited "new"E-1 was changed to a beginner model E-500 (Evolt in U.S.A.) Announced in September 2005, the E-500 was the world's lightest interchangeable lens SLR body. It is equipped with an 8-megapixel CCD and an excellent dust reduction system.
E-500 is the third E-Series digital SLR from Olympus. My choice was a two lens kit and this is what I got:

  • The 8.0 effective Megapixel Olympus E-500 camera body
  • 14 - 45 mm, F3.5-5.6 Zuiko Digital lens
  • 40 - 150 mm, F3.5-4.5 Zuiko Digital lens
  • BLM-1 lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack
  • Battery charger, BCM-2
  • Shoulder strap
  • USB cable
  • A/V cable
  • CD-ROM featuring Olympus Master software
  • 215 page camera manual
  • Plenty of pleasure and satisfaction (except the rather high noise level with high ISO settings.)

Unlike the previous E-300, the E-500 is a conventionally-styled digital SLR. Camera body material is fibre reinforced polycarbonate and steel. The camera supports both xD and CompactFlash memory cards, which were not included in the kit. An 8 Megapixel CCD sensor (Mfg by Kodak) which measures 17.3x13mm (Max 3264 x 2448 pixels) conforms to the FourThirds format.
So, the 14 - 45mm kit lens with this factor (2) gives you a 3x optical range equivalent to 28-90mm on a 35mm camera. The E-500's powered by a single Li-Ion battery pack, rated at 7.2V 1500mAh. Although E-500 can take 400 shots per charge when it's time to recharge It takes a sluggish five hours to fully charge the battery.

Review and Specs at :

©2008 Reijo Lauro


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Aaron Jones on Rumble In The Jungle (20) - Aaron Jones on an early repeat - taken 14 years ago

Photo record
20 Rumble In The Jungle
Tour photos uploaded by Lee Cujes
Tour photos taken by Lee Cujes
Aaron Jones
Tour photos of Aaron Jones
Sat 30th Oct 1999
Mon 12th Apr 2010 4 years ago


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Shooter ID'ed as Wade Michael Page

    Scott Olson / Getty Images

    Police identified the suspect in the Wisconsin shooting that killed six as Wade Michael Page on Monday - Page was killed by first responders outside the temple on Sunday. A law-enforcement source told CNN that the shooter was an Army veteran, and police searched a duplex in nearby Cudahy on Sunday for clues. The shooter reportedly only lived at the address in Cudahy for two weeks before the deadly shooting. “Nobody has really seen him,” a neighbor told CBS. “We heard here and there that they’ve been doing a lot of arguing, between him and another female, but I haven’t seen him.” The shootings are being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism, and the FBI will take the lead on the case, local law enforcement said Sunday.

    Read it at CBS


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'DP' scores fourth consecutive Pacemaker award

Highly coveted national award recognizes college publications for quality coverage

· November 8, 2004, 5:00 am

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NASHVILLE -- The Daily Pennsylvanian was recognized on Saturday as one of the top college newspapers in the country for the fourth consecutive year.

The newspaper received the coveted Pacemaker award -- widely regarded as the "Pulitzer Prize of the college press" -- which is given by the Associated Collegiate Press in recognition of outstanding journalism. Twenty-five publications were recognized this year out of 60 finalists.

Including this year, the DP has won the award six of the last eight years.

This year, other winning newspapers included the Drexel University Triangle, which publishes once weekly, and daily publications The Harvard Crimson and the Washington Square News, published by New York University. Each year, the contest is judged by professional journalists from the town hosting the organization's national convention. This year, editors and writers from the Nashville Tennessean were in charge of the selections for each of the three categories, which include four-year college dailies, four-year college weeklies and two-year college papers.

The publications are judged for coverage and content, design, depth of reporting and opinion page quality.

"I feel superb," DP Executive Editor Chris George said. "It's a very encouraging sign, to be recognized nationally in this way."

He added, "We take our jobs here at the DP very seriously, and I think an award like this attests to that."

ACP members submit several issues from the previous year to be judged in the competition. The bulk of those issues come from designated time periods, and one issue is any of the staff's choosing.

For the individual issue, the DP submitted its coverage of the selection of President Amy Gutmann in late January.

"I think it's a great honor to be recognized for the fourth consecutive year as one of the elite college newspapers in the nation," Senior Sports Editor David Burrick said.

"I'm proud of the staff for putting in the time and energy necessary to produce an award-winning newspaper," Managing Editor Haley Shapley said.

"I don't think you can ever expect an award like this," she added, "but it certainly is a great honor to receive it."

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Eyewitness to war's worst -- and its best Add to ...

A Writer at War:

Vasily Grossman with the Red Army,

Edited and translated

by Antony Beevor

and Luba Vinogradova

Knopf Canada, 416 pages, $39.95

The Second World War was lost and won not at Normandy or at Iwo Jima, as important as those battles were, but on the Eastern Front in Europe. It is there that the decisive encounters took place, on the outskirts of Moscow, at Stalingrad and at Kursk. It is there, amid the smoke and fury of battle, that incredible horrors took place, the genocide of the Jews and the mass murder, by the millions, of civilians.

As two brutal regimes, those of Hitler and Stalin, confronted each other, all rules of civilized engagement were abandoned and a new barbarism, germinating since the devastating inferno that was the First World War, became the norm. In this war of extermination ( Vernichtungskrieg) launched by Hitler, Russian losses were stunning, approaching 30 million. The Russians, many of them prodded by the heartless violence that had accompanied Bolshevism and Stalinism, responded in kind.

We in the West appreciate little about that war. We know a good deal about the Holocaust, but less about its broader context: life and strife, ethnic, religious and ideological, in the borderlands of Eastern Europe. But those conflicts bear lessons for us today, as similar confrontations now occur on a global scale, as the microcosm that was Eastern Europe has been transposed to the world stage. Our world has become one huge borderland.

This is why Vasily Grossman, who is virtually unknown in the West, is so important. His life amounted to a remarkable journey through the hell of what Osip Mandelstam called "the wolfhound century" to a spiritual transcendence by the end of his life. Born in Ukraine in 1905, Grossman moved to Moscow in 1923 to study chemistry. He then worked as an engineer in the Donbass coalfields in eastern Ukraine, but in 1932, having decided to become a writer, he returned to the Russian capital. His early work was tentative and conformed broadly to the rules of socialist realism. He played the game. When friends were arrested during the terror of the mid-1930s, he held his tongue. If not exactly a hack, he was an intellectual apparatchik.

His greatest work, Life and Fate, about the battle of Stalingrad, he would complete only in 1960. A work of Tolstoyan grandeur, it is luminous in its humanity, the exact reverse of his early work. Grossman had moved from subservience to revolt. The KGB under Nikita Khrushchev, who incidentally had been chief commissar for Stalingrad during the war, confiscated what it thought were all copies of the manuscript, including notes and drafts, and told Grossman that he would have to wait two centuries before he could publish his epic novel. He died a non-person, in 1964, of stomach cancer, in poverty and great pain.

The turning point for Grossman was the Great Patriotic War, as the Second World War was called in the Soviet Union. When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941, Grossman volunteered for the army but was turned down for health reasons. He became a war correspondent instead, writing mainly for the army newspaper Red Star.

Next to Ilya Ehrenburg, he became the reporter most cherished by Russian soldiers because he told their story with honesty, literally from the front line -- the smell of which, he said, reminded him of both a morgue and a blacksmith's. He covered the early German assault on Moscow, the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the entry into ruined Warsaw and then, in 1945, the victorious march of the Red Army, with its rape, pillage and random revenge, on Berlin. His was also the first extensive report on a Nazi death camp, Treblinka. He saw it all, and he wrote about it from the point of view of the common soldier whom he came to venerate, indeed love, and therefore occasionally scolded.

There was personal loss as well. In 1944, he learned that his mother, who had remained in Ukraine, had been murdered during the initial German onslaught in 1941.

In this world of incomprehensible violence and inexpressible grief, all categories seemed to be reversed: Victims became heroes and heroes victims. The only constant, anywhere, it seemed, was the individual human being, with his or her basic instincts and longings. No political system, no matter how merciless, and no war could ever destroy this humanity, with its potential for compassion, courage and love.

With help from Grossman's daughter and stepson, the irrepressible British historian Antony Beevor and his assistant in this project, Luba Vinogradova, have pieced together selections from Grossman's wartime notebooks and correspondence. It's a fascinating and rewarding compilation, accompanied by helpful editorial interjections. No one, of late, has done more than Beevor, with his popular books on Stalingrad and the fall of Berlin, to stress the importance of the Eastern Front in the Second World War.

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A cheesy stock photo of Santa Claus singing a song. (Getty Images/Ingram Publishing)
A cheesy stock photo of Santa Claus singing a song. (Getty Images/Ingram Publishing)

Russell Smith: On Culture

The true meaning of Christmas? It's bad art Add to ...

You are probably right this second within earshot of a radio playing the song Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by John Lennon (the one with the chorus, “And so this is Christmas”). And so let me say for you what we all secretly know: This is the worst song ever written, recorded or imagined by John Lennon, or, for that matter, by anyone else in the history of the world.

Previous columns by Russell Smith

I’ll tell you the true meaning of Christmas: It’s bad art. Bad art seems to be its primary function. Every seasonal ritual has its specific role, usually cathartic, and corresponding to one of the seven deadly sins: Halloween is for the temporary suspension of sexual inhibition, for example; Thanksgiving is for a brief societal sanction of gluttony. Christmas, strangely, serves a non-Christian sin: It is a temporary rupture in the fabric of civilization through which the worst music hisses out like a great blast of sweetened steam from the dark core of the Earth.

Why do we require this sudden relaxation? Why is it that Christmas music must, as if by statute, be bad? Why do we turn down our taste meters toward the end of December, dully accepting that we now tolerate a daily soundtrack of Lobby Jazz and Soul Carols, of ever-softer, ever more saxophone-heavy, vocal-trilling, R&B versions of Santa Baby? I’ll tell you who is the Grinch here, who is the Great Satan in this nefarious and insidious attack on your temperament – it’s the C Bloody C.

The CBC believes that Christmas demands such fanatical innocuousness, such a passionate national drive for inoffensiveness that every radio program must be punctuated with a kind of elevator music with words sung in the international deep-south voice of the U.S. blues singer. When my local CBC Radio drive-home show did its annual fundraising drive for a food bank, live from the lobby of its national headquarters, they broadcast such a queasy fanfare of melismatic Muzak I couldn’t listen, much as I supported their cause.

Why jazz music specifically is thought to be somehow representative of this season is something the most sophisticated of sociologists have yet to decipher, and yet here it is, everywhere, jazz trios in giant supermarket lobbies, jazz pianists in every hotel bar, all of them wearing red Santa caps as a uniform of the genre itself, a white-fur-trimmed consumer universe of jazz: jazz as Christmas.

The jazz thing might I suppose be explained by the popularity of A Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon that has been broadcast on TV every year since 1965 and famously featured unbad music by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. But please don’t try to tell me that all the new schlock is for kids. I have a kid, and he likes Jingle Bells as much as the next two-year-old, but he’s really not interested in a hip-hop version of it.

No, this is not the infantilizing of grown-up entertainment, it’s the inverse: It’s the adultizing of infants’ entertainment. We seem to want all our songs to have a rap break in them, so we apparently want our Christmas songs to have that as well.

Are all the Christmas movies – the Home Alones and the Miracles – that play on all the channels round the clock also aimed at children? They can’t be: They’re playing in the middle of the night as well as after school. The Top-40 dance-music radio stations that generally pump out the Auto-Tuned Katy Perry all day are aimed at grown-ups too, but since the beginning of December they’ve been playing the John Lennon song that you are probably hearing now for a second time since beginning this column.

And the groovy hairy downtown people who are hosting “ugly Christmas sweater” parties are adults too, just that particular sort of adult who has lost all track of what’s ironic and what’s deadly earnest.

It’s grown-ups who crave ugliness at this time of year, in the darkness and stress, as they crave sugar and fat. I told you it had a cathartic role: The ritual of bad art is a winter solstice emesis, a hysterical expression of our yellowest innards. Bad art is cultural eggnog: an instant but very short-lived sugar high with a nasty mouth-feel. I very much hope it makes us all feel happier while it is so dark, or at least relieved once it is out of us.

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Drawn Off Topic: Gerry Dee on 'boutique' schools (Anthony Jenkins/The Globe and Mail)
Drawn Off Topic: Gerry Dee on 'boutique' schools (Anthony Jenkins/The Globe and Mail)

Comedian Gerry Dee on 'boutique' schools Add to ...

Gerry Dee stars in Mr. D , which airs Monday nights on CBC.

Where did you go to school?

I went to De La Salle [“Oaklands”]in Toronto. It was high school when I went and Grades 5 to 12 when I taught there.

Could it be classed as a boutique school?

No. Never.

Do you support the ideal of specialized, boutique schools?

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If it is done properly. If the academic part of it is suffering just to get athletes or musicians in there, then I think that is weak – if it takes away from the kid’s experience of school. You go to a school where it’s just athletes, I don’t know how that helps you expand your horizons in other fields. But some of them do it very well. Unless they are focusing on the academic side as well, I think they are doing a disservice to the kids because the odds of them making it in sports or music or whatever are slim.

Boutique schools are a growing trend. Are they a fad?

Let’s be honest, boutique schools are there to create money. If somebody owns a school, they are a businessman.

No, I’m speaking of specialized schools within the public system.

If you don’t pay to go, there is definitely something there for kids that have something special and what to focus a little more on it.

Here’s the thing – parents always think their kids are gifted in something. I saw how few make it. For every parent who thinks their kids are a special singer or dancer, most of them are wrong. But for those that are correct, they are going to rise to the top, regardless of what school they are at.

There is a burgeoning demand for boutique schools. Is this the result of a yuppie, “me generation” mentality? As in, “My child is exceptional and needs specialized schooling”?

Some parents are honest and some aren’t. Watch that show Tiaras, whatever it’s called. [ Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC]It’s a perfect example of the exaggerated, worst-case scenario of parents. Do you think that kind of school is going to pop up for pageant contestants – “because my daughter is so beautiful”? That is the extreme of it. It could get out of hand.

What I like about these boutique schools if a kid gets in and they don’t behave themselves or act properly, they get kicked out. If you are in a specialized program in a boutique school, there’s some incentive to try to stay there. You are not paying, but you are in this elite program. Private schools, you don’t like the kid, you say, “Here’s your money [back] go home. Goodbye.”

In public schools it is very hard to deal with kids that curse at you, that threaten you, that are insubordinate. They get a two-day suspension and they are back. There is no deterrent. Perhaps the boutique idea puts a little more pressure on, but you have to ask, who wants them there? Do the kids want to go, or do the parents want them there?

Boutique schools have been called elitist. Some see the idea of special programs for special kids as unfair. The audition or tryout process is viewed as elitist and some schools have lotteries for admission. But isn’t ability itself elitist? Not everyone is equally gifted.

It is always going to be political. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you in.” Any school that does an audition process, they are going to need a certain amount of minorities in the program, a certain amount of girls, a certain amount of boys. It’s never based just on talent. And people don’t assess talent the same way across the board. It is always going to be a biased selection process.

But when you are good, you are good. It doesn’t matter what you do. The cream rises to the top. You get things in life because you work hard and you’re good. Nobody misses a good hockey player. Sydney Crosby was never going to slip through the cracks. You need the audition process to assess a lot of things, but you should be assessing academics as well.

I never worried about kids when I taught. They usually figure it out. You figure it out or you don’t. You can constantly instill your own beliefs and principles as a parent and as a teacher, but inevitably it comes from the kid finally being able to figure out, “I have to do something.” Some never do. Some commit to crime, some live an average life, some become successful. It’s life.

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Press release from Business Wire

ConocoPhillips Announces 2013 Capital Budget of $15.8 Billion and Outlines Investment Programs

Friday, December 07, 2012

ConocoPhillips Announces 2013 Capital Budget of $15.8 Billion and Outlines Investment Programs14:00 EST Friday, December 07, 2012 HOUSTON (Business Wire) -- ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) today announced a 2013 capital budget of $15.8 billion (including contributions to the FCCL joint venture), which is approximately flat to expected 2012 capital program spending. Investments during 2013 will target the company's diverse portfolio of global opportunities, with approximately 60 percent of the budget allocated toward North America and 40 percent toward Europe, Asia Pacific and other international businesses. “The 2013 capital budget reflects continued progress toward achieving a unique combination of growth and returns as an independent E&P company,” said Ryan Lance, chairman and chief executive officer. “Similar to 2012, next year's investments will be directed predominantly toward high-quality growth projects and programs that are already in execution mode, as well as exploration opportunities to build inventory for the future. We also expect to complete our announced strategic asset disposition program in 2013. When this program is complete, the combination of portfolio high-grading and strong ongoing investment programs will put ConocoPhillips on track to deliver on our long-term annual growth goals of 3 to 5 percent on both volumes and margins, with a compelling dividend.” The budget includes allocations for base maintenance, exploitation, major project, and exploration and appraisal spending, as well as corporate expenditures. In addition, the budget reflects assumptions regarding the timing of asset sales. The actual timing of dispositions could cause capital to be higher or lower. The key categories of capital spending are as follows: Base Maintenance Approximately 10 percent of the capital budget will be directed toward maintenance of the company's high-quality legacy base portfolio. This includes maintenance activities primarily in Alaska, the Lower 48, western Canada and the North Sea. Major turnaround activity is expected within the Greater Kuparuk Area, Greater Ekofisk Area and various fields in the U.K. North Sea. Exploitation Approximately 40 percent of the capital budget is allocated to the company's highly profitable exploitation programs in its legacy asset base, which includes 21 million net acres of onshore leasehold in the Lower 48 and western Canada. A significant portion of this leasehold is held by production. Growth from these exploitation programs offsets natural decline from the company's producing assets. Approximately two-thirds will be spent in the Lower 48, primarily focused on liquids-rich unconventional reservoir drilling programs and infrastructure development in the Eagle Ford, Bakken, Barnett and Niobrara, as well as conventional and unconventional plays in the Permian Basin. The remaining one-third is allocated for other conventional and unconventional opportunities, mainly in the North Sea, Alaska and western Canada, with focused drilling on higher-return liquids opportunities. North American dry gas plays will continue to receive minimal funding. Major Projects Approximately 35 percent of the capital budget is expected to be spent on the company's sanctioned major projects, which provide significant future production growth. In Canada, development will continue on the FCCL and Surmont oil sands projects, where the company is employing innovative technology to improve steam-to-oil ratios and improve returns. Through the company's contributions to the FCCL business venture, there will be ongoing expansion of Foster Creek as phases F, G and H advance, and at Christina Lake with phases E and F. At Surmont, the focus is on safe and efficient execution of the Phase II development with continued investment in the central processing facility, field facility and drilling activities. In Europe, spending will focus on continued development of the Eldfisk II and Ekofisk South expansion projects in the Norwegian North Sea, as well as the Clair Ridge development and Jasmine Field in the U.K. sector, with first oil expected from Jasmine in the second half of 2013. In the Asia Pacific region, capital will primarily be allocated to several offshore developments in Malaysia, including reaching full production at the Gumusut-Kakap oil field in late 2013 and construction at the Kebabangan and Malikai projects. Development will also continue on the coalbed methane-to-LNG project at the Australia Pacific LNG joint venture, as field development and infrastructure and facility construction progresses. Exploration and Appraisal Approximately 15 percent of the capital budget is planned for the company's worldwide exploration and appraisal program, which targets acquiring, testing and appraising material opportunities in both conventional and unconventional plays. In conventional exploration, activities will include drilling programs in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico on several non-operated prospects, including the Shenandoah and Tiber appraisal programs. ConocoPhillips holds approximately 1.6 million net acres in the Gulf of Mexico, and was the high bidder in the recent Western Gulf of Mexico lease sale on an additional 350,000 acres. Internationally, ConocoPhillips plans to build further on its attractive position in several material deepwater basins. In Angola, the company is analyzing recent 3-D seismic data from blocks 36 and 37, and plans to begin drilling in 2014. Appraisal activities will also continue on the Poseidon discovery in Australia's Browse Basin and the Limbayong Field, offshore Malaysia. In unconventional exploration, funding will support selective acreage acquisitions and appraisal programs across liquids-rich shale plays in the Lower 48 and Canada, where the company has added more than 750,000 acres since 2011. Activities are focused on accessing and testing several high-quality plays, including the Wolfcamp, Niobrara, Canol and Duvernay. Internationally, the company's focus is on shale plays that offer low-cost entry on material positions, such as its Baltic concessions in Poland, where appraisal drilling will continue in 2013. In Western Australia, drilling activities will continue in the frontier Canning Basin shale play. “Our 2013 capital budget provides funding for the key growth projects and programs in our portfolio and provides flexibility to capture new opportunities that may arise,” added Lance. “The budget supports our plan to increase value for shareholders through focused capital investments that deliver growth in production and cash margins, improved returns on capital, and sector-leading shareholder distributions.” ConocoPhillips will provide further details on its capital budget and investment programs at its annual analyst meeting on Feb. 28, 2013 in New York. Representatives from company management will discuss the company's strategic plans for growth and value creation. --- # # # --- About ConocoPhillips Headquartered in Houston, Texas, ConocoPhillips had operations and activities in 30 countries, $115 billion of assets, and approximately 16,700 employees as of Sept. 30, 2012. Production averaged 1.57 million BOE per day for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2012, and proved reserves were 8.4 billion BOE as of Dec. 31, 2011. For more information, go to CAUTIONARY STATEMENT FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE "SAFE HARBOR" PROVISIONS OF THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995This press release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements relate to future events and anticipated results of operations, business strategies, and other aspects of our operations or operating results. In many cases you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "anticipate," "estimate," "believe," "continue," "could," "intend," "may," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should," "will," "expect," "objective," "projection," "forecast," "goal," "guidance," "outlook," "effort," "target" and other similar words. However, the absence of these words does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking. Where, in any forward-looking statement, the company expresses an expectation or belief as to future results, such expectation or belief is expressed in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. However, there can be no assurance that such expectation or belief will result or be achieved. The actual results of operations can and will be affected by a variety of risks and other matters including, but not limited to, changes in commodity prices; changes in expected levels of oil and gas reserves or production; operating hazards, drilling risks, unsuccessful exploratory activities; difficulties in developing new products and manufacturing processes; unexpected cost increases; international monetary conditions; potential liability for remedial actions under existing or future environmental regulations; potential liability resulting from pending or future litigation; limited access to capital or significantly higher cost of capital related to illiquidity or uncertainty in the domestic or international financial markets; and general domestic and international economic and political conditions; as well as changes in tax, environmental and other laws applicable to our business. Other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements include other economic, business, competitive and/or regulatory factors affecting our business generally as set forth in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unless legally required, ConocoPhillips undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. ConocoPhillipsAftab Ahmed, 281-293-4138 (media)aftab.ahmed@conocophillips.comorDaren Beaudo, 281-293-2073 (media)daren.beaudo@conocophillips.comorVladimir R. dela Cruz, 212-207-1996 (investors)


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Press release from PR Newswire

Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. Hosts Fiscal 2013 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Webcast

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. Hosts Fiscal 2013 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Webcast

14:00 EDT Wednesday, April 03, 2013

BATESVILLE, Ind., April 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: HRC) will release its fiscal 2013 second quarter earnings on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 after the close of the NYSE.  The company will host a conference call and webcast the following morning on Thursday, April 25, 2013, from 8:00 a.m. ? 9:00 a.m. ET.

Earnings Release:  The earnings release will be available on the Hill-Rom website at

Webcast:  To join the live webcast with audio on April 25, 2013, go to   The webcast slide deck will be posted to the Hill-Rom website prior to the webcast.

Conference Call Audio Only Dial-in information:  To participate in the live conference call, dial 877-304-8969 domestic callers / 631-291-4543 international callers.  Confirmation Code for both: 27136022.  Callers will need to provide their name, company affiliation and telephone number to the conference operator.

A recording of the webcast/call audio will be available for telephone replay through May 1, 2013.  To access the replay, dial 855-859-2056 domestic callers / 404-537-3406 international callers.  For the replay, callers will need to use confirmation code 27136022.  If you are unable to listen to the live webcast or the telephone replay, the webcast will be archived at

ABOUT HILL-ROM HOLDINGS, INC.  Hill-Rom is a leading worldwide manufacturer and provider of medical technologies and related services for the health care industry, including patient support systems, safe mobility and handling solutions, non-invasive therapeutic products for a variety of acute and chronic medical conditions, medical equipment rentals, surgical products and information technology solutions.  Hill-Rom's comprehensive product and service offerings are used by health care providers across the health care continuum and around the world in hospitals, extended care facilities and home care settings to enhance the safety and quality of patient care.

Hill-Rom...enhancing outcomes for patients and their caregivers.

SOURCE Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.

For further information: Investor Relations: Blair A. (Andy) Rieth, Jr., Vice President, Investor Relations, 812-931-2199,; Media: Larry Baumann, Director, Global Communications, 312-819-7248,

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Diagnostic and Statiscal Manual of Mental Disorders (Vincent Hevern)
Diagnostic and Statiscal Manual of Mental Disorders (Vincent Hevern)

Psychiatry ‘bible’ DSM-5 one step closer to publication Add to ...

After a lengthy and contentious revision process, the criteria for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders have now been finalized, bringing the guide – known as psychiatry’s “bible” – a major step closer to publication.

The American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees approved the final criteria for the DSM-5 in a vote on Saturday, ending nearly seven years of debate over changes to how various disorders are identified.

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While some critics worried that the new edition would increase the number of conditions that are considered psychiatric disorders, leading to excessive treatment, a statement from the association noted it will include approximately the same number of disorders that were in the DSM-IV, published in 1994.

“We have sought to be conservative in our approach to revising DSM-5,” David Kupfer, chair of the DSM-5 task force, said in the statement. “Our work has been aimed at more accurately defining mental disorders that have a real impact on people’s lives, not expanding the scope of psychiatry.”

The latest edition of the manual, which is widely used by psychiatrists to diagnose and classify mental disorders, is scheduled to be published in May, 2013.

Even though the association characterizes the DSM-5 as going “against the trend from other areas of medicine that increase the number of diagnoses annually,” it remains highly controversial. According to Bloomberg News, Allen Frances, who led the task force that produced the previous edition of the manual, called the outcome of Saturday’s vote a “disaster.”

Frances told Bloomberg that family doctors who may lack training in mental disorders will be using the new criteria to make diagnoses. “The thing I learned with DSM-IV is that if anything can be misused, it will be,” he said.

Meanwhile, psychiatry professor Michael Berk told the news agency that the manual is “very controversial” because unlike most medical diagnoses that are verified by physical signs of disease, “in psychiatry, you have syndromes – mood, anxiety, psychosis – and you have symptoms built around those,” which may be harder to measure.

Among the key changes that have been approved is a decision to incorporate several diagnoses, including autistic disorder, Asperger’s and childhood disintegrative disorder, under a single diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder.

Binge eating, which was previously mentioned in an appendix in the DSM-IV, has been moved to a section on disorders in the new edition to better distinguish the symptoms and behaviours of those who have the condition, the American Psychiatric Association said. A diagnosis called “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder” will be added to diagnose “children who exhibit persistent irritability and frequent episodes of behaviour outbursts three or more times a week for more than a year.” Excoriation (skin-picking) disorder and hoarding disorder, used to characterize people who have persistent trouble parting with possessions, are also new to the DSM-5.

While the DSM is often used in the United States to determine insurance claims and eligibility for special services, the introduction of the new edition will likely have a significant impact on how various disorders are recognized in Canada, too. Canadian experts, in fact, are among the 1,500 professionals who have contributed to the revision process.

“It’s very widely used. It’s not just in the U.S. Pretty much all over the western world, it’s the classification of mental disorders and it’s what all mental professionals – not just psychiatrists, but some social workers and psychologists – use,” says Benoit Mulsant, physician-in-chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

As has happened whenever a new edition of the DSM has been introduced, he adds, “when diagnoses disappear or change … those [new definitions] tend to be widely used.”

But while most practitioners in Canada will be using the DSM-5, Susan Abbey, past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, says it is uncertain how the new manual will change psychiatry in Canada.

“We don’t really know what the impact will be just yet,” she said. “There will be a lot more reaction from people in May when it’s finally published.”

Don Blane, chairman of the Autism Canada Foundation, says it is unclear how the changes for diagnosing autism will affect Canadians who have the various disorders that will be defined as a single diagnosis.

“It has its pluses and its minuses,” Blane says, noting that some believe the change may narrow the definition of autism, which could allow researchers to better home in on its causes and provide specialized treatment.

But, as a father of twins who have autism, he says: “From my perspective, anything that narrows the definition and would prevent families who need to get resources from getting resources, that wouldn’t be beneficial at all.

“There’s two sides to it, but I think it’s kind of too early to say at this point.”

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Video: Harper sidesteps questions on Gateway pipeline feud Add to ...

The Prime Minister is evading questions about the feud between B.C. and Alberta over the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline project. Stephen Harper says politics won't decide the fate of the pipeline

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