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P.R.O. Kids Group Can Assist With Your Fundraising Efforts!mailtoinquiry

TyRone “Hollywood” Brown performs at Carl Sandburg Elementary School, San Diego, California.

Let P.R.O. Kids Group Organize Your Next Fundraiser!mailtoinquiry

Swish! Imagine if the values and messages educators want to impart to their student body hit the mark every time. When P.R.O. Kids visits schools, it’s unique brand of motivational edu-tainment always delivers the game-winning shot with kids and youth!

P.R.O. Kids was founded over a decade ago by Harlem Globetrotter alumni who, out of their concern as parents and role models, joined in an effort to combat problems affecting children. Their mission was, “to positively influence children and youth to reach beyond peer pressure, to encourage education and to stress the importance of good health and nutrition.” Today, these P.R.O. Kids ambassadors continue to visit schools and other organizations around the country and Canada to effectively spread these messages.

The foundation of every P.R.O. Kids program is relevant character education combined with ball handling wizardry.  The P.R.O. Kids Celebrity Basketball Game that features Harlem Globetrotter Alumni is the only basketball fundraiser sanctioned by the Tournament of Roses Parade. All of the assembly programs provide character emphasis and value for youths.

P.R.O. Kids has reached over 8 million children; and the number continues to grow through in-school assemblies, school district field trips, celebrity basketball games, and basketball camps and clinics!

Tyrone “Hollywood” Brown is an intricate part of the Harlem Globetrotter’s History and the Harlem Globetrotters All-Time Roster!

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  1. Angie Messner

    Good morning! My family was fortunate enough to see Hollywood in action at a local event in West Fargo, ND. My kids loved him and the positive energy he had. Could you let me know what the price would be for him to come and speak at an assembly at our school, Northern Cass School in Hunter, ND?

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Engineers of Victory by Paul Kennedy

This book was certainly an interesting surprise.  I was expecting something more specific about equipment and weapons development during the Second World War.  The subtitle is about “Problem Solvers”.  It might have been better called something like “How Things got Done”; or a “celebration of mid-level leaders”.

The 370 pages of text are broken into five lengthy chapters examining different critical campaigns from January 1943 to July 1944, and looking at the nuts and bolts of how they were won by the allies.  It certainly isn’t a narrative history, more of a deep analysis.  And that may be the very thing that kept it interesting for someone who has read far more on this period of time than I can even remember.  The five campaigns, or specific challenges, dealt with here are The Battle of the Atlantic, Winning Air Superiority over Western Europe, Stopping the Wehrmacht, Amphibious Operations in Europe and Conquering the Vast Distances of the Pacific.

In each of these chapters the author weaves together all the details, the complexity, the interconnectedness of things needed to make things work.  I found that fascinating from beginning to end.  It is so often true when we read campaign or battle histories we come up short on greater context, but this book provides context in abundance and helps us keep track of how all the details come together. Whether its the cavity magnetron, T-34 testing at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, mating the Merlin to the Mustang or ambhibious theory by Pete Ellis; there is just a staggering level of stuff here.  As is so often the case with “big picture” stories like this there are several detail errors on little things, naturally I most notice it on aircraft but I’m sure other readers will have some other little nits to pick.  But it really is just in the little stuff I have some complaints.

Fascinating and fun book.

~ Dave

About atcDave

I'm 54 years old and live in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I'm happily married to Jodie. I've been an air traffic controller for 31 years; grew up in the Chicago area, and am still a fanatic for pizza and the Chicago Bears. My main interest is military history, and my related hobbies include scale model building and strategy games.
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16 Responses to Engineers of Victory by Paul Kennedy

  1. jfwknifton says:

    Sounds an excellent book. I always enjoy a book with a new angle on what you think are well known historical events.

  2. Sounds good, I tend to enjoy the technical and factual books and an analysis of these events is always an interesting read.

  3. Ernie Davis says:

    I’ve never followed the history of the pacific as much as Europe, but I have always thought that the staggering scale of the Pacific war and the logistics of how to support it was something I needed to look in to at some point.

    • atcDave says:

      Yeah the Pacific has a very different dynamic to it. In terms of fighting men and weapons it was a much smaller war, at least until about mid ’44. But the logistics of it are staggering; and more than anything else that was the decisive factor. I’ve always loved it as a war gamer; having to pick fights all about distances, supplies, routes…
      I would normally hesitate to recommend an analytical type history before a good narrative one; but the writer here does a great job of dealing with the scope of it all. And that may actually make it a terrific introduction.

    • Ernie Davis says:

      I do have a pretty good general knowledge of the narrative history of the Pacific theaters (Except CBI is still pretty much a mystery outside “Bridge on the River Kwai or Flying Tigers”). I am aware of the major sea and land battles and their consequences. I may give it a try while on vacation.

      • atcDave says:

        Cool. Let me know if you have any other thoughts on it. Unless, you know, you think I’m a total idiot for liking the book. Keep that to yourself.
        CBI is interesting, even if not much is written about it. The period covered here was mostly stagnant though. But one thing, many analysts consider William Slim the best British general of WWII and he fought in the CBI.

      • Ernie Davis says:

        It has always struck me, and I may have said it before, that by 1941 China had ground to a stalemate for Japan, and aside from the burst of post Pearl Harbor in the Burma and India parts of that theater, it remained so for the majority of the war. Plenty of brutal fighting and heroic efforts to break the stalemate mind you, and some very brave and innovative efforts to break the supply chain problems, but it seems to me everyone was pretty much stuck with their situation and what they had as resources by early 1942.

      • atcDave says:

        There were campaigns and movement. It was actually alarming how, in China, Japan was able to wage effective offensives almost the end. There were significant operations, including regular and irregular, in India and Burma too. But it was significantly a backwater and an area of some dispute between Americans and British (Churchill was worried about “Empire”, which FDR did not want anything to do with; while Americans were more interested in China which the British considered hopeless and corrupt).
        And hey, it’s the one place where M3 Grant/Lee tanks were in use to the end of the war.

      • Ernie Davis says:

        Just to let you know, I got it and as I near the end of the Battle of the Atlantic, I’m pretty impressed. Only drawback was the slight snarkiness about those who bought the Bletchley Park meme that make for a far better movie than a realization that 4 escorts and prayer won’t protect a convoy.

      • atcDave says:

        He does get snarky at times!
        I think his main objection, on several levels, is towards those who push one issue as the thing that won the war. And there have been several such claims about Ultra in recent years.
        And a lot of that is just typical with academics, kind of a snarky group.

        I’m glad you’re liking it so far!

      • Ernie Davis says:

        No, I get it, he has a point. A couple of Canadian Aircraft mechanics adding an extra fuel tank to a B24 contributed just as much to that eventual victory, as did the change in doctrine and improved radars. Just thought it could have been done with a more generous tone for those of us who don’t read original source material for fun.

      • atcDave says:

        Yeah I do agree about that.

      • Ernie Davis says:

        I do love books that break a few myths. One of my favorites was that RAF pilots wore silk scarves out of some sort of vanity, when in fact it was just because they had to have their heads on a constant swivel, and their woolen uniforms chafed their necks.

      • atcDave says:

        Or that Sherman tanks just explode as soon as they see a panzer…

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Managing Adolescent Moods Forum

By on January 26, 2012

I’m only staying long enough to eat the Bubba’s BBQ and post to my blog.  My daughter will kill me if I’m late picking her up from Hebrew school.

About Judd Grossman

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Westwing Group AG

Westwing is your online interior style guide. Get inspired and enjoy our unique home & living sales every day!
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The Outcast

The Summoner Trilogy

Book 4
Sold by Feiwel & Friends
Free sample

The thrilling extension of the eBook novella Origins, The Outcast continues Arcturus's story into a feature length novel.

When stable boy Arcturus accidentally summons a demon and becomes Hominum's first common summoner, he becomes the key to a secret that the powerful overlords would do anything to keep hidden.

Whisked away to Vocans Academy so he can be kept watch over, Arcturus finds himself surrounded by enemies. But he has little time to settle in before his life is turned upside down once again, for Hominum Empire is in turmoil.

Rebellious intent simmers among the masses, and it will not be long before it boils over. Arcturus must choose a side . . . or watch an Empire crumble.

The Summoner Trilogy
The Novice
The Inquisition
The Battlemage

Also in the Summoner series

The Outcast (Summoner: The Prequel)
The Summoner’s Handbook (coming Fall 2018)
A Fine Welcome: Othello’s Journey (A Summoner Short Story)

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18 January 2013 @ 02:56 pm
Prehistoric Autopsy; Wartime Farm
The second episode of Prehistoric Autopsy was all about Homo erectus, and they were building a model of Nariokotome Boy. This is a 1.5 million year old near complete Homo erectus skeleton & the most complete one ever found. They started off with context, again - Homo erectus only died out relatively recently, but was around for 2 million years, which is the longest of any human species. It's also one of the first hominids that can be thought of as human, and we and all the other ones that were around in the recent (geologically speaking) past are descended from them. They also lived outside Africa, and were the first hominids to do so.

Homo erectus co-existed with several different hominid species over time - they talked in detail about one, Paranthropus boisei. The skull they showed had a massive jaw, a skull ridge and very flared cheekbones to fit the chewing muscles behind. A diet of particularly solid things seems plausible, like nuts and seeds. As well as that sort of food there's evidence of wear from grasses on their teeth.

They showed us research into the climate over the time period - I loved this bit, there's just something so neat about being able to find out what the world was like so long ago with such a simple concept. They do it using samples taken of the sediment on the ocean floor. It's laid down layer upon layer over time, and you can look at things like the sort of mud it is and the sorts of plant seeds/pollen you find in it to build up an idea of what the weather and landscape was like on nearby continents. We got shown a particular example of a core where you could see a colour change in the mud from top (~5000 years ago) to bottom (~10,000 years ago), and told us that the changes correspond to a change in the nearby climate (East Africa, if I remember right) from wetter to more dry. Over the 2 million years that Homo erectus existed the climate seems to've undergone lots of swings between hotter & colder or wetter & dryer conditions and they speculate that why Homo erectus survived and the other hominids didn't is that Homo erectus was more adaptable.

And that they were more adaptable because of their bigger brains and because of the different way they interacted with the environment around them. There's evidence that Homo erectus used fire, and they cooked their food (at least at the end of the time period, I wasn't clear if there was no evidence from earlier on or if they hadn't done the analysis (yet)). Their tools are more sophisticated than earlier hominid tools - instead of just breaking rocks for a sharp edge their tools are carefully shaped and show evidence of being planned and involving skill to make. So Homo erectus seems to've had the cognitive ability to shape the environment to suit themselves, rather than put up with the environment they find themselves in. There's also evidence that they took care of older members of their groups - a skull has been found where the individual lost their teeth a few years before death, and quite clearly wouldn't've survived without help.

Because of the model building the programme also spent some time discussing the probable physique of Nariokotome Boy. Homo erectus show many adaptions for running, and were probably lean and hairless (to the extent that modern humans are hairless, I mean). Because of the lack of hair they'd've had dark skins to protect themselves from the UV of the African sun - and this limited their spread north, they don't seem to've got the low melanin mutation that permitted us to live in more northern climates. Also in this section they showed us evidence that Homo erectus may've suffered from tuberculosis, which is astonishing - it is a disease that we get from cattle originally, and was assumed to've become a human disease only more recently when modern humans started living in close proximity to cattle because they'd become herders. The marks and signs on the Homo erectus skull they were looking at (not Nariokotome Boy, another one) were very similar to the ones on a modern human who'd died of TB, so seemed convincing evidence. Which raises all sorts of interesting questions.

We also watched the last episode of Wartime Farm, which unsurprisingly covered 1945 and the immediate aftermath of the war, as well as wrapping up with a "what we've learnt" segment. So they were mostly concentrating on the fact that once the war was won, that didn't mean life returned to how it had been pre-war - not only did people still need fed, but in some ways the situation was even more precarious because Britain was close to bankrupt and couldn't afford to import food yet the fields were becoming less fertile due to a lack of manure and from being over-farmed. They also talked about the celebrations that people had (and the thing they dramatised was a firework elephant, which was awesome :D ). And they harvested the wheat crop they'd spent the year growing, using a brand new combine harvester (well, 70 year old one ...).

This was a good series, although I've struggled to write more than a paragraph per episode. I'm not quite sure why, but I guess partly because there was a lot of "look at how we did things" which isn't easy to transform into text. I did feel that they spread it all too thin, perhaps they couldn't do it half the number of episodes, but I do think they could've cut it down a bit. The format of half-dramatising, half-telling still feels like it shouldn't've worked, but they pulled it off very well.


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Geomorphometric delineation of floodplains and terraces from objectively defined topographic thresholds

Citation data:

Earth Surface Dynamics, ISSN: 2196-632X, Vol: 5, Issue: 3, Page: 369-385

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Clubb, Fiona J.; Mudd, Simon M.; Milodowski, David T.; Valters, Declan A.; Slater, Louise J.; Hurst, Martin D.; Limaye, Ajay B.
Copernicus GmbH
Earth and Planetary Sciences
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article description
Floodplain and terrace features can provide information about current and past fluvial processes, including channel response to varying discharge and sediment flux, sediment storage, and the climatic or tectonic history of a catchment. Previous methods of identifying floodplain and terraces from digital elevation models (DEMs) tend to be semi-automated, requiring the input of independent datasets or manual editing by the user. In this study we present a new method of identifying floodplain and terrace features based on two thresholds: local gradient, and elevation compared to the nearest channel. These thresholds are calculated statistically from the DEM using quantile-quantile plots and do not need to be set manually for each landscape in question. We test our method against field-mapped floodplain initiation points, published flood hazard maps, and digitised terrace surfaces from seven field sites from the US and one field site from the UK. For each site, we use high-resolution DEMs derived from light detection and ranging (lidar) where available, as well as coarser resolution national datasets to test the sensitivity of our method to grid resolution. We find that our method is successful in extracting floodplain and terrace features compared to the field-mapped data from the range of landscapes and grid resolutions tested. The method is most accurate in areas where there is a contrast in slope and elevation between the feature of interest and the surrounding landscape, such as confined valley settings. Our method provides a new tool for rapidly and objectively identifying floodplain and terrace features on a landscape scale, with applications including flood risk mapping, reconstruction of landscape evolution, and quantification of sediment storage and routing.


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Plumbing Council PCA logos
312-563-9526 | Email

About The Plumbing Contractors Association of Chicago and Cook County

As one of the oldest trade associations in the United States, the mission of the Plumbing Contractors Association of Chicago and Cook County includes representing our members in Labor Relations and Legislation, assisting our members with education and safety training, and supporting an apprenticeship system that provides for the effective training of apprentices.

The Association will promote and encourage the highest standards and ethical practices in providing plumbing and drainage construction and promote positive relations and sophisticated business practices among plumbing contractors. We will work to improve the service provided to the public and promote the enforcement and enactment of modern scientific and practical laws as well as improved design and standardization of plumbing materials and tools related to providing complete plumbing installation and drainage construction.

Continuous and effective communication will enable us to accomplish our mission and enhance our role as a leader in the field of plumbing contracting.

The PCA...we are at work for you!

  • Keeping members up-to-date on the latest trends, industry news, labor and legislative issues that impact our businesses through hard copy newsletters, weekly e-news, association functions, and telephone town hall events.
  • Involving contractors through meetings to network with peers, interact with industry colleagues, discuss pertinent industry topics, and learn from cutting edge speakers and presentations.
  • Leading efforts to effectively represent members in labor relations through experienced and dedicated leadership and staff.
  • Offering business-oriented education, state-approved CEU classes, and skills training to improve competitiveness.
  • Utilizing practical technology to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and make it convenient for members through the regularly updated website and our "You Tube" Channel.
  • Instituting practical and bottom-line focused "Employee Safety Incentive" programs to protect the well-being of those we count on to perform our work, while keeping costs (and injuries) down.
  • Printing and posting (online) resources for members including regularly revised Safety Manual and the annually updated Regional Code Book (covering nearly 240 municipalities in Northern Illinois).
  • Promoting our industry through an extensive and consistent advertising/marketing brand awareness.
  • Helping our contractors with services, savings, information, education, and events so they can focus on running and growing their business.

Want to know more? Contact the PCA by using the information below.

  • E-Mail: Send A Message
  • Phone: (312) 563-9526
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There is considerable interest in the topic of divine healing amongst Christians of most any denomination. While there are those Imagethat disagree with God’s desire to heal people here and now, in times of crisis I have rarely seen a Christian person NOT pray for healing, suggesting that it is not a theologically sound idea.

As I have navigated the waters of divine healing over the years I have heard many ideas for and against and I have disagreed with some of the voices on both sides of the argument. Throughout the years I have also seen people prayed for and healed. Indeed I have prayed for people and have seen them healed. Many other times I have not seen them healed.

What do we make of all of this then? Does God heal or doesn’t he? Is it normal and expected or not? Should we ‘get people’s hopes up’ that God might heal them and risk a drastic let down? How will this affect their perspective on God after the fact?

I think that I finally have some answers for these questions. Biblically speaking, humanity was created in wholeness, without disease and decay. We were given direct access to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, as the biblical narrative tells us. Essentially, humanity had the opportunity to be perpetually renewed through access to God, the giver of life. Something catastrophic took place, and humanity was placed at a distance from this Tree of Life…at a distance positionally, relationally, and spiritually. This is where disease and death entered into human existence.

If we fast-forward to the end of all things as described in the Bible, we find a dramatic renewal of this Garden of Eden state; the coming of the kingdom of God as Scripture describes it. At this time our imperfectness will be made perfect and sickness and pain will be removed (Rev 21:4). This will be a literal heaven on earth situation where humanity’s relationship with the life giver, with God himself, will be unhindered once again. The kingdom of God (or of heaven, depending on the biblical author) will have come to stay.

Humanity finds itself today living between this “Garden of Eden” state and the complete coming of the Kingdom of God. Many important things have happened spiritually throughout the past thousands of years and it seems that we are approaching a time when death, disease and decay will be removed from all of human existence…but we are not fully there yet. So, where do we stand in terms of God’s healing here and now, even today?

Lets consider for a moment that the approaching Kingdom of God is like a movie that is highly anticipated but not yet released. For example, the sequel to the movie “Hunger Games” is highly anticipated by many people. Prior to the release we will see posters, trailers, and advertisements…all aimed to stir some measure of passion and anticipation for the movie. In fact, the purpose of a movie trailer is to give you just enough of a taste of the movie to keep you wanting and anticipating the day when the full movie will finally be released.

I believe that we are living in a day when the Kingdom of God is breaking in here and there with evidence of divine healing and a number of spiritual gifts and manifestations with the purpose of pointing us to the coming merger of the present world with the coming Kingdom of God. What we can expect from God today is a regular ‘breaking in’ of the Kingdom of God just like a movie trailer would crop up here and there to show us a little piece of what the movie will be all about once it is released. This is actually quite biblical when we read what John the Baptist said about Jesus (“…the Kingdom of heaven has come near” Matt 3:2) and what Jesus himself says in the Lord’s Prayer (“…thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”). These and many other Scriptures point to the approaching Kingdom of God that is indeed breaking in but has not yet completely arrived.

With these thoughts in mind we are better suited to answer the questions I posed earlier.

Does God heal or doesn’t he? Yes, God heals, even today.

Is it normal and expected or not? Everyone will not be healed in this present day, although we should not place limits on what God may decide to do in our life or our church.

Should we ‘get people’s hope up’ that God might heal them and risk a drastic let down? We should teach people what the Scriptures say about healing and then invite them to the truth of God in this life whether they are healed or not.

How will this affect their perspective on God after the fact? I am sure that some will scoff at the fact that all are not healed. I am sure that some will suggest that it is because God is not that great and the whole thing is a farce. I think, however, that in some matters (such as this one) God is big enough to defend himself and will do so in good time.

I have a few other thoughts on divine healing that I want to share and I will do so in the coming days. For now, think about this: when you see the Kingdom of God breaking in here and there but maybe not where you are at the moment, do not get discouraged and assume there is something defective about your faith, about your church, or about your pastoral leadership. Rather, rejoice that the Kingdom of God is active in our world. Celebrate with those who are healed and make the name of Jesus famous. And…never, ever loose the hope that God’s Kingdom can indeed break into your life and into your church at any moment of any day.

James 5:13-16

13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.


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What If I Forgot to Add My IRA Withdrawals to My Income Taxes?

by Brian Nelson ; Updated July 27, 2017

An individual retirement account is a good way to save and invest for retirement. However, the tax advantages of IRA accounts also come with some tricky tax requirements. Like all tax matters, IRA transactions must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service when you file your income taxes. Forgetting to include material information on your tax returns can cause big problems. The quicker any errors are remedied, the better.

IRA Tax Basics

All money inside of an IRA grows tax-deferred. That means that while the funds are inside of the IRA account no taxes need to be paid on dividends, interest or capital gains. However, when money is withdrawn from an IRA it counts as income and is taxed accordingly. Furthermore, withdrawals made before age 59 1/2 may be considered early withdrawals and subject to a 10-percent tax penalty.

Reporting IRA Withdrawals

The financial institution that holds your IRA account is called the custodian. Every IRA custodian must report any withdrawals from an IRA to both the IRS and the account holder on Form 1099-R each year. The IRS computers attempt to match up what is reported by the IRA custodian with what is reported on the taxpayer's income tax filings. Inconsistencies in the amounts reported may trigger an audit or other review of your taxes.

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Failure to Report Income

IRA withdrawals are considered taxable income. Failing to report an IRA withdrawal is a failure to report income. The difficulty is that many computations on various tax forms depend upon the number reported as income. In the case of forgetting to include IRA withdrawals, these computations may be incorrect throughout the tax filing.

Filing an Amended Return

Forms 1099-R reporting IRA withdrawals are sent directly to the IRS in addition to the taxpayer. This makes the likelihood of the error being flagged high. Higher income means higher taxes and the IRS may charge penalties and interest on the unpaid amount. Therefore, the taxpayer should file an amended tax return as soon as possible to avoid accumulating additional interest. To file an amended return use IRS Form 1040X. You will also have to attach any schedules that change due to the amended return. Be sure to include payment for any additional taxes due.

State Income Taxes

Many states base their income taxes on figures calculated on the Federal tax return. If your state uses numbers from your Form 1040 then you may also need to file amended return for your state taxes. Each state has a different procedure for doing so. You'll need to check directly with the agency responsible for collecting income taxes in your state.

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Poem in which the twenty words most common in heavy metal lyrics are used

Though we’re aware there are moments when the form sorrow takes will mean a reduction in our awareness of things, it is in those moments that our awareness perhaps becomes insufficient for us to counteract the effect our sorrow will have on how aware we are. My sleepy demon tells me he doesn’t mind stumping up for the pizzas, but insists we’re gonna go halves on the beer. The television plays quietly; the candles on my cake burn low.

It’s been a wet afternoon so my sleepy demon suggests a game of scream-like-you-mean-it and though, after the visit from the police has made me feel I could reasonably claim victory, my sleepy demon keeps at it until the budgie is breathing audibly, and the air smells like rusty cutlery, and the tv channels are flipping between a difficult quiz show and championship ping-pong. I get a hunch there’s something gunky in his veins. There’s a box of tissues in the kitchen, but when he cries he doesn’t use them. I’ve a hunch there’s something silty in his soul. Between us we’ve practically completed the crossword.

My sleepy demon shows me a photo of a bunch of younger demons, leaning against a wooden door in their baggy yellow sweaters. He smokes, and taps the ashes into a lemonade can. The more he stares at the candle flames, the more they appear to splutter. The notes that I told my therapist were an account of my dreams are, in reality, just some paragraphs I copied from a sci-fi novel.

My sleepy demon hands me a page from a spiral-bound notebook on which he has written ‘a mood of resignation reigns’. The takeaway menus and till receipts are already in shreds, but now we tear up our coffee-shop loyalty cards, the tv-licence renewal notice, a club-night flyer, a jiffy bag, the amaretti wrappers, the street map, some pages from his notebook and my hospital appointment letter. Sometimes when I’m queuing for coffee or picking up the phone or getting onto a train, I like to pray there’s somebody somewhere getting all this on camera.

My sleepy demon reckons I’m confusing the idea of eternity with the idea of the passage of time, and while, he says, what I’m anticipating is the continuing rotation of winters/summers, morning/evening, weekdays/weekends, what I’ve got coming is an unbudging moment sometime early in March where across the town the drizzle is consistently thickening and in the kitchen the strip lights seem particularly yellow. A small sleepy beast crawls in through the cat flap, and my sleepy demon offers it the pizza crusts and the complimentary tub of hummus.

In the goodbye note he pins to my door, my sleepy demon expresses an ethical objection to metaphor. There are, he hints, particular gods whose brief it is to make things easy for us so that when the gods whose brief is to test our resolve get on the case the test will be sterner and the results will give a truer picture. In the evening I’ll sit in the kitchen with my yo-yo and a new box of ping-pong balls, and I’ll barely even have to breathe before the candles blow out.

Matthew Welton

(The source of the data for the 20 heavy metal words can be found here).

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The Universal Selection Source:
Polymer Additives

BNX® 1249

Technical DataSheet | Supplied by Mayzo

BNX® 1249 by Mayzo is a multifunctional stabilization system. It is highly effective to prevent degradation and gel formation during polymer processing operations, especially under anaerobic conditions, also provides protection against oxidative degradation during processing and long term heat aging, is non-discoloring and exhibits low volatility. BNX® 1249 is compatible with polyolefins (polyethylene, polypropylene), polystyrene, impact modified polystyrene, and styrene-butadiene copolymers, and particularly in applications subject to high temperature and/or high shear processing operations such as film extrusion. Recommended dosage is 0.1-1% by weight, depending upon the substrate, processing conditions, end use, and other performance requirements. BNX® 1249 by Mayzo has shelf life of 2 years.

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Premium Supplements at Blow Out Prices!

Universal Nutrition Animal Glutamine 300g

Who We Are Universal Nutrition has been providing cutting edge and staple nutritional supplements to bodybuilders and hard training athletes the world over since 1977. As time passes, certain ideals never go out of style. Honesty. Integrity. Respect. These are the values we uphold and are the bedrock upon which we built our business. What It Is Glutamine Powder from Universal Nutrition provides the purest L-glutamine powder available. Glutamine is "conditionally" essential pro-anabolic amino acid and is the most abundant amino acid in muscle. Glutamine may be the most important variable in promoting optimum protein synthesis, while helping block cortisol to prevent protein breakdown in muscle. How We Back it Up What is on the label is in the bottle and what is in the bottle will help you reach your goals.

There are many supplement companies out there. Who do you trust? Most of the companies are marketing-only companies who rely on "contract manufacturers" to make their products. At Universal Nutrition, we are a GMP manufacturer. We don't just market our products, we make them too. We also stand behind every product we make with the best guarantee in the industry. This is our way of standing behind every product we sell. So whether you buy an Animal or Universal product, you can have all the confidence you need to make the right choices.

Suggested Use

Mix 1-2 rounded teaspoonfuls in 8-12 oz of your beverage of your choice. For optimal results, try using it in your favorite protein shake or meal replacement powder.

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Contains pure glutamine powder. Made in a GMP facility that uses milk, soy, egg, peanuts.

This product is not for use by any individual under the age of 18. Please consult with a physician before using this product. Do not take this product if you have or are at a risk for any medical condition or disease, including but not limited to diabetes, asthma, depression, recurrent headaches, glaucoma, difficulty urinating, prostate enlargement, seizure disorder, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, heart disease, stroke, or are suffering from any inflammatory diseases. Be sure to talk to your doctor before using this product if you are using any prescription drug, over-the-counter medication, or dietary supplement. Not for use by children, geriatric patients, pregnant or nursing women. Immediately discontinue use and consult your healthcare professional if dizziness, sleeplessness, tremors, nervousness, agitation, headache, heart palpitations, or any other side effects occur. Discontinue use two weeks prior to surgery. The use of this product may be banned by some athletic associations. Athletes should consult with their sanctioning authority before use. This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. Exercise good judgment and keep this out of reach of children. Store this product in a cool, dry place, away from heat, moisture and sunlight. Do not exceed recommended dose.

Keep out of reach of children. Before beginning any program, consult your health care practitioner.

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Popular Chips

Helping you gain traction on Instagram

See how instagram accounts rank

Social profile overview

fo_'s Profile Picture

حـمـزﮪ ☹ Instagram

Own words:
⠀⠀⠀⠀ ﴿سـقـﯡطي مـن ؏ـلامـﭑت ٱلساعهۃ☻💔

Quality Score 151 1 0 41.17 Rank: #130 ?

It indicates the influencer’s ability to swiftly increase their following while keeping the existing audience excited and captivated.

Followers 158,513 Rank: #95,298
Engagement 1,000.00 Rank: #2,068 ?

It indicates how talented a star is to keep their audience interested and active. The higher the score, the stronger is the influence on their followers.

Followers Progress

How many followers fo_ has gained in the last 14 days. Change Period

14-Day Overview

Average Likes per post 19,019
See 3 Months
See 1 Year
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Average Comments per post 202,637
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Most Liked Post

fo_ most liked post fo_

Likes: 19,019 (avg. 19,019)

Most Commented Post

fo_ most commented post fo_

Comments: 203,275 (avg. 202,637)

Most Viewed Instagram Video

fo_ most viewed video fo_

Views: 854

Audience Report

We are able to provide audience reports for any Instagram influencer. Access to audience reports is limited to pro users.

Engagement Progress

Progression of fo_'s Engagement in the last 14 days. Change Period

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How many followers fo_ needs to get a single like on a post.

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to get a like
2.41 Best Score

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How many followers fo_ needs to get a single comment on a post.

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7.14 Best Score

Fortnightly Quality Score

Progression of fo_'s Quality Score in the last 14 days. Change Period

The Popular Chips Insights are based on a unique algorithm that blends Instagram likes, comments, and number of pictures posted. The data collected from @fo_ is public and no personal information was used.

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West Bend Mutual

West Bend Mutual

The West Bend Way is to serve and support the communities the employees live and work in.

Their story

“Each and every year the company awards grants to local non-profit organizations that exceed $1 million. The officer team at West Bend Mutual models how to get involved in supporting our communities by participating in leadership roles in over 75 community and state organizations… The response and willingness of our employees to support our program by giving of their time, talent or dollars is impressive… Our officers and employees who are engaged in the program know that West Bend Mutual will support the non-profit organizations or community programs or events they are assisting…. For example, we sponsor numerous employees teams for the various non-profit runs, walks, and bike rides.”

Their advice

“…Recognize that a community support program needs to be part of the fabric of the company. It needs to be part of what makes your company special and different. Success also is the result of active engagement and participation by the company’s management team. They need to be role models and lead by example. Finally, the motive for a corporate philanthropy and community support program needs to be a strong desire to improve the quality of life for all who live and work in your community. We prefer very little recognition at West Bend Mutual for our efforts and instead take great satisfaction in watching our communities prosper.”


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You Have To Set Boundaries And That’s OKAY

Just be smart enough to know when “enough is enough.” You can’t complain about somebody crossing the line if you fail to set the boundaries. You can’t complain about somebody wasting your time when you didn’t require them to earn it. Sometimes you just have to let go. Not everything is meant to be a “forever” kind of thing. You have to be honest with yourself even if it hurts. You can’t give people too many chances to make the same “mistakes.” LEARN from it. GROW out of it. Be DONE with it.Rob Hill Sr.

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Let’s face it. Kids are active, even (or most often) when we’re exhausted.

I thought it expedient (and kinda smart too) to have a page (and a couple sub-pages and sub-sub-pages) with ideas for activities to do with kids.

Each of the activities I write about (and post) will be ones that I either have or plan to do with my kids.

I’ll try to post pictures of the activities, as well as (if I remember) reactions from the kids and which of my children liked what activities best, so that you can gear projects to your children’s ages.

A little comment about over-idealism vs. realism (ever a challenge of mine to find the balance between the two), with the busy lives we (and our children) lead, it’s not feasible to plan a constructive and exciting activity every single day (and if you have figured out how to do this, please let me know, and you are invited to take over this blog; better yet, take over the parenting of my kids–kidding). Back to the original thought, a solution (perhaps only temporary) that I have come up with is to try to do something small with the kids every day.

One day it might be reading a (or a few) stories in the evening, or the chapter of a book.

Another evening it might be making popcorn (my all-time favorite snack) and watching a video all together.

Another evening, I might not manage more than reading a Bible chapter (and praying together) before bed.

Some evenings I’m taking classes and it’s up to my husband to do something with the kids (he’s going through a Bible video series with them, and they are usually asleep by the time I get home, which is awesome!)

So as far as bigger projects, I am trying to plan one every week, on Saturday evenings.

During the winter season, you’ll find details on specific projects and activity ideas on the “winter evenings” page.

And yes, the numerous portions in parenthesis in this post were intentional. And if they drove you completely crazy (here’s another one), just be glad you’re not privy to my inner monologues (chock full of parenthetical thought processes).

Oh, and remind me next time to avoid posting past ten in the evening; not a good idea for a mother. 🙂

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Home > main > The image before [and after] the era of art

The image before [and after] the era of art

February 7, 2012

In Likeness and Presence, Art Historian Hans Belting, looks at the role of images in society before the era of art. According to Belting, the era of art begins when Reformation deprived the images from their religious function and the disempowered image, redefined itself in the category of art.

Luther announced that “the kingdom of God is a kingdom of hearing and not of seeing”, and urged his contemporaries to free themselves from the alleged power of images. The image which formerly represented the presence of god, now was emptied from his presence. The Reformation taught the domination of the word, and all images, signs, and symbols were suppressed under the power of the word, and became its servants. In the era of Gutenberg, the word became present everywhere as the tool of rational argument and reason. Intellectuals of the time, no longer trusted the surface appearance of the visual world, and the word became the refuge of the thinking subject. The humanists and the theologians emphasized that the painter can at best represent only their body, but their soul is expressed in words. With the iconoclast’s removal of the images from the churches, texts previously read in books took their place on the altar, and demanded the same kind of veneration. The humanist culture with the mind represented by the word, triumphed over matter and the “outward image.”

Erasmus of Rotterdam (1526), Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528) Engraving

Images, having lost their function in the church, took on a new role in representing art. Not even the Catholic church survived this upheaval of the word and not even there the holy image could escape its “metamorphosis into the work of art.” Belting writes: within the realm of art, images symbolize the new, secularized demands of culture and aesthetic experience. In this way a unified concept of the image was given up, but the loss was obscured by the label “art”, which now was generally applied. A general validity of an image independent of the idea of art became inadequate to the modern mind. Its abolition opened the way to an aesthetic redefinition in terms of the “rules of art.” Art, after becoming a discipline in itself, separated images from their previous functions, and recuperated them into its own narrative. This marked a beginning of art history, which later expanded itself beyond Medieval times (the last era before art) to the caves of Lascaux. It is from then on that a picture is no longer to be understood in the terms of its theme , but as a contribution to the development of art. Furthermore, images were ever since evaluated according to rules of aesthetics, a science that supported and explained the new formed discipline.

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3 Ways To Boost Your Performance-based Advertising

How To Improve Your Advertising ROIRemember when purchasers paid marketers regardless of whether they were able to track and measure just how effective their campaigns were? How times have changed. With the introduction of each new measuring device, it seems, comes more pressure for marketers to whip up results. The fact that most Internet ad revenue in the U.S. is now comprised of performance-based advertising only highlights this fact.

To spark some ideas, check out three key ways to do so:

Using Customer Experience to Drive Social Media Engagement

Find out what people are saying about your brand

Online reviews are among the best forms of advertising. It should be no surprise, then, that customers tend to trust each other for brand recommendations. And more of them are turning to social media to spread the word about product experiences good and bad.

MarketingProfs reported that 93 percent of consumers who write product reviews are inspired by a positive experience with a brand — while 71 percent do so after a negative experience. And reviews are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how customers convey their experiences through social media.

Find the conversations
Pay attention to what people are saying about your brand on social media. The reputation that others are spreading can have a huge effect on a brand’s image. When a customer uses YouTube to demonstrate your software, or posts photos of your new makeup line on Pinterest, they’re generating interest through likes and comments.

That customer-driven buzz often expands over time, as links are shared with friends and make their way to new communities with new fan bases. When customers are driving interest, it can take time to generate results, requiring patience and follow-through on the part of marketers.

Why Use Affiliate Management for Pay-Per-Call

Setting Up Your Pay-Per-Call Marketing

If you are preparing or have a budget for Pay-Per-Call marketing, this means you are taking investment into marketing strategy seriously. You have come to see that Pay-Per-Call is a great way to get people genuinely interested in your products or services to contact you. It’s a form of marketing that stirs action, and hopefully leads to conversion. Now, when it comes to running Pay-Per-Call, you can go directly to a network that already has an extensive range of affiliate partnerships. Partnering with another company to work as your Affiliate Manager is adding another step in the process and another point of payment.

What’s the Difference Between Affiliate Management and a Network?

A network offers you exposure and volume, for sure, and that’s what you want. However, while quantity is definitely a goal, so is quality. It is important that the calls that come in from your Pay-Per-Call campaigns and your marketing output elicits valuable responses, rather than mass response. With a high volume of calls, you may be paying for incoming calls that do not yield a high conversion rate. The priority of a network is to bring in the calls for you. The core difference between a network and an Affiliate Manager is that an Affiliate Manager prioritizes quality calls. A network fulfills call traffic, while an Affiliate Manager strategizes for call success rate.

Why Customer Engagement Is So Important

Why customer engagement is so importantMarketing is consistently becoming more personalized and targeted, focusing on smaller groups of relevant prospects instead of a single, large audience. Marketers need to focus on building closer, emotional connections with their customers to increase satisfaction, retention and revenue.

In the past, companies focused primarily on selling their products to customers without much care for expanding on the relationship and ensuring the target consumers’ preferences are met. A recent study from Marketo revealed that customer engagement is establishing itself as a top priority in digital marketing, according to Forbes. Companies are starting to emphasize the customer life cycle rather than making a one-off sale. Marketers need to provide a unique, personalized experience for customers at each touch point in the sales process. Putting this into practice will require more in-depth content, which will need to be optimized for a user’s device or the particular context of the situation.

Generate More Sales With Call Tracking

Many advertisers base their performance reviews on call tracking systems that provide analytic information about incoming phone calls. There are various ways to implement a call tracking system. Typically, it generates information about incoming calls such as the number, time and geographical location. This drives sales by informing advertisers when and where to reach their most relevant audience.

Generate more sales with call tracking
Effective call tracking can improve sales.


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Check Out: Ryan Hemsworth - "Charly Wingate" - Pretty Much Amazing

Check Out: Ryan Hemsworth - "Charly Wingate"

Publish date:

Ryan Hemsworth has a name that could easily belong to a Jersey Shore alumnus or a frat brother or Miley Cyrus’s fiancé, but nope – it belongs to a Canadian electronic musician who crafts sample-heavy (but still completely original), dark, catchy pop. Check out “Charly Wingate,” with its “only money music and family important to me” refrain, percolating, stuttering instrumentals that recall Royksopp, pounding percussion, and undulating bass pulse. The attendant visuals, by Hector de la Vallee and Octave Abaji, are monochromatic but complex and fascinating. Check it out – Hemsworth’s Last Words EP is out August 21.

Ryan Hemsworth remixes Frank Ocean "Thinkin Bout You"

Download: Ryan Hemsworth – Slowed Summer Mix


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No Office? No Right to Practice

Many attorneys are licensed to practice in multiple states.  By extending one’s practice across several jurisdictions, lawyers can expand the scope of services offered to their clients and increase their appeal.  However, in order to provide this service, lawyers must comply with certain laws requiring that the attorney maintain a physical office within the state in order to practice there.

For attorneys practicing in large firms whose footprint extends across several states, these rules may not pose a limitation. However, attorneys in smaller practices, who do not have the personnel to open several offices, could be precluded from practicing outside of their principal place of business altogether.

The Supreme Court is now considering a challenge to a New York State law that requires New York licensed attorneys to maintain an office there in order to practice.  The suit was filed on behalf of a group of New Jersey-based attorneys licensed to practice in New York, who claim that it violates their rights under the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the US Constitution.  The plaintiffs won their suit in the Northern District of New York in 2008, but were subsequently overruled on appeal by a divided panel of the Second Circuit.  Now the Supreme Court will decide the matter in a decision that could affect attorneys throughout the country.  Until the case is decided, however, attorneys must consider rules requiring an in-state office in order to practice law.  Simply being licensed in a state may not be sufficient grounds to practice there, and could lead to costly disciplinary action if violated.

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Is there a conspiracy against Self Managed Super Funds?

I’m seeing more and more investors taking control of their financial future and setting up a Self Managed Super Fund. I know I’ve run my own SMSF for over 25 years.

But lately there seems to be a conspiracy against these funds by vested interest and it’s been fanned by the media according to finance commentator Peter Switzer.

He writes the following in Yahoo Finance:

Vested interest groups are joining with some well-meaning people who might have some reasonable concerns, but it has become a hype-fest.

There is a conspiracy against Self-Managed Super Funds and it has to stop! It’s like a fire started by those funds that fear the growth of SMSFs and it has been fanned by an easily-influenced media who are desperate for sensational stories in a post-election news drought.

It was made worse by the fact that Tony Abbott, in the early days of his election victory, was playing the cone of silence card believing that both business and consumer confidence would be better served if Government was not continually in the news for the wrong reasons. I have to confess that it sounds like a sound strategy to me.

So what we have are vested interest groups joining with some well-meaning people who might have some reasonable concerns about the wrong people in SMSFs at a time when a housing bubble could eventually happen. However, the numbers involved are so small that this has become a hype-fest. It reminds me of Bob Dylan’s old song, Hurricane, where the words go:

“Bello and Bradley and they both baldly lied,

And the newspapers they all went along for the ride.”

The facts

Okay, that’s enough for my “return fire” stuff, so let’s look at some facts to hit some of these anti-SMSF bouncers for a six.

A study by Deloitte actuaries Russell Mason and Wayne Walker found the following:

• Our current super system of $1.62 trillion will go to $7.6 trillion by 2033.
• 12% compulsory super isn’t enough for a comfortable retirement but 15% is, so you might need to make salary sacrifice or non-concessional contributions to be materially safe after you end work.
• The actuaries say the concessional caps would be better if they were higher and it would reduce the 81% of Aussies who pocket a pension — full or part.
• Aussies over 65 will increase 75% to 5.8 million by 2033.

• Delaying retirement by five years could pump up the average super balance by about $550,000 and you can thank the compound interest effect for that!

Cashflow positive

But this was the huge point from the study for anyone sick of SMSFs being bagged — Wayne Walker says the Australian super system from the Government’s perspective, which means super tax in and super concessions out, will be cashflow positive within 20 years.

So the wealthier SMSF trustees are NOT the pariahs who are breaking Treasury’s coffers, which was the Treasury-pedalled story under the Gillard Government over the past 12 months.

Deloitte says it’s average wage earners who are populating the pension system and that’s why Government should be encouraging greater contributions via bigger caps on concessional contributions or with higher compulsory contributions.

I would also argue that getting into a SMSF leads to greater engagement with your super and that will be good for the super system as well.

Housing bubble talk

Adding to the media pressure on SMSF trustees has been this housing bubble hype.

The media seems to be suggesting that SMSFs are adding to a housing bubble, which at the moment does not exist.[sam id=32 codes=’true’]

These second-rate writers ignore the small proportion of loans going to SMSFs — under 2% — and they also ignore the fact that a lot of these people would buy investment properties outside of super if it were not slightly more attractive inside super.

So the higher house price effect is marginal and it comes when the lack of first homebuyers is historically significant, which puts downward pressure on prices.

The simple story is that APRA funds — industry and retail funds run by financial institutions — are all worried that they are losing their best customers with high balances to the SMSF sector. These groups understandably would gild the lily by looking at what could go wrong with SMSFs, and the media is going along for the ride.

Spruiker concerns

Ironically while APRA has shown some concern about SMSFs getting into property, as has ASIC, and even the Reserve Bank has shown some interest in the issue, the ATO, which actually runs SMSFs, is comfortable with the sector!

All groups are worried about property spruikers and so am I, but there are also stock market and bond fund spruikers out there and I haven’t seen any newspaper articles on these groups!

A further irony is that a recent Rice Warner study showed SMSFs outperformed professional fund managers by 3% over a seven-year comparison period! These were gross of fees figures, and so when you throw in the fees, there’s a very big case for sensible people, with wise investment strategies and with good balances in their funds, to consider a SMSF. And that’s why there’s a conspiracy to bring them down.

By the way, if property spruikers are misbehaving with SMSF trustees, well, let ASIC get in and hit them for a six.

Keating’s observation

With the racing season hotting up over the next couple of months, it is worthwhile remembering what Paul Keating once observed: “In a two-horse race, always back self-interest because at least you know it’s trying.”

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Conversations With Prostate Cancer Experts

Telemedicine + Clinical Trials

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Dr. Matthew Galsky is the Director of Genitourinary Medical Oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute.

He is keenly interested in developing novel treatments for genitourinary cancers.

Prostatepedia spoke with him about his work exploring the feasibility and safety of using telemedicine to conduct clinical trials.

Not a member? Join us.

How did you become interested in using the telemedicine platform?

Dr. Matthew Galsky: Only a small portion of patients throughout the world, and in particular, the United States, enroll in clinical trials. Yet, this is really the only way that we advance the field in terms of understanding the risks, benefits, and comparative effects of new treatments. We noted that the conduct of clinical trials in the United States had several inefficiencies that could be addressed with technological solutions.

One of our initial studies looked at a large group of clinical trials that had been done in the United States and that had been captured in a large, public database. We looked at thousands of clinical trials done in the United States over a period of about a decade. About 25% of those clinical trials closed early due to poor accrual: not enough patients enrolled in the studies. The studies ultimately closed and didn’t answer the questions they set out to answer, which is a huge waste of financial and patient resources. The patients who enroll are altruistic and want to advance the field. But their participation did not accomplish what they had signed up for. This is a big problem.

Our next study was related. We looked at the zip codes of all of the sites that had open trials, we matched those to different cancers in the United States, and then we asked a very simple question. What was the average distance that a patient would need to travel to reach the nearest clinical trial? We focused on trials for some major cancers: prostate, lung, colon, and breast cancer. We found that 40-50% of the population resides greater than one hour driving time, one way to the nearest clinical trial site.

Wow! That’s far.

Dr. Galsky: It’s far and prohibitive for a large number of patients. It’s not surprising, but it’s disappointing.

We have one problem, that we don’t have enough patients enrolling, and then we have this related problem, that the studies are not geographically accessible to patients. This really hit home.

A study published in the Institute of Medicine in 2010 reported that clinical trial sites are typically opened where the nvestigators are located rather than where the patients are located.

That makes sense.

Dr. Galsky: Absolutely. But it creates barriers to enrollment.

We thought there might be a technology solution to this, and so we set out to test the feasibility of a prospective clinical trial with an intervention (studying a drug in prostate cancer), enrolling patients who lived at a distance by replacing the on-site study visits with telemedicine study visits.

It was a small study to establish proof-of-concept for this approach. The intervention was a drug called metformin, which is FDA approved for the treatment of diabetes. In various epidemiologic studies, it has been associated with potential anticancer activities and specifically anti-prostate cancer activities. For this pilot study, we had patients come to our site to enroll in the study because we figured that would require the least number of visits and at least one face-to-face interaction.

After that visit, the rest of the study was conducted by telemedicine, so patients took their pills at home. This medicine is oral. It’s a pill. We connected with them via telemedicine visits once a month to review their side effects and the numbers of pills that they had taken or missed. The patients had laboratory testing done locally with the results sent into us.

We were ultimately able to show that this is feasible in this specific context. Obviously, the deck was stacked in our favor to ensure we could do this safely, but it was possible.

Break down what you mean by telemedicine. Was this email contact?

Dr. Galsky: This involved video visits with patients. We had to use a platform that was HIPAA compliant and optimized for security, so we partnered with a company that had developed a technology they were using for purposes outside clinical trials, such as trying to prevent hospital readmissions by having nurses monitor patients remotely.

We gave patients a mobile device at that initial visit, a Samsung phone running the software for this platform. On our end, we connected with the software loaded on our desktop computers. With these tools, we were able to conduct video visits once a month.

Did you do any training for the participants?

Dr. Galsky: We did about ten minutes of training at that initial visit, and then we had prepared a pamphlet with troubleshooting questions and answers.

What can you conclude from your results?

Dr. Galsky: The primary endpoint of this study was to show that telemedicine was feasible. We defined feasibility as greater than two-thirds of the enrolled patients completing all of the eligible telemedicine visits. Each patient on the study had six planned telemedicine visits, but if they went off of the study because their cancer progressed, they had less than those six visits. Six visits per patient times 15 patients enrolled, means 90 total visits. We conducted 84 televisits with patients during the course of the study, so we met that primary endpoint of feasibility.

If patients had to go off the trial because their cancer progressed, that’s not really a failure as far as the telemedicine element, is it?

Dr. Galsky: Exactly. The primary endpoint was feasibility.

The secondary endpoint was safety and effects of the drug. We saw that seven of the patients had a minor decline in PSA while on the study.

So, metformin may have some activity warranting further evaluation of the treatment.

We did questionnaires at the end of the study regarding the patient’s rating of their experience with the telemedicine approach. We asked whether they would participate in a similar type of study in the future, and the majority agreed or strongly agreed that they would.

You made it easy for them to participate.

Dr. Galsky: That’s the key; absolutely.

What does this mean going forward? Should this kind of approach be integrated into more trials?

Dr. Galsky: There is certainly the ability to integrate telemedicine into existing studies using lower toxicity oral interventions to replace some of the study visits. That’s low-hanging fruit.

In terms of expanding to more complicated areas, there is potentially a pathway for investigational sites to partner with local groups to offer trials that are monitored and conducted on a remote basis with local physicians at the bedside. This is similar to what’s happened in the intensive care unit field.

There are a huge number of intensive care units within the rural United States that are staffed and monitored by intensivists that are sitting miles away in front of computer screens and interacting with the nurses and the physicians at that hospital just to manage the patients.

If it can be done for some of our sickest patients, then certainly there is a path forward to do this in other contexts. It’s just a matter of making sure that the regulatory environment is ready for this and that there is a buy-in from all of the stakeholders involved. We have proof that we can think differently about our entire clinical trials enterprise if we want to.

What do you think about extending that towards prostate cancer care or general cancer care?

Dr. Galsky: We’re really focused on clinical trials. That’s our main interest. But we’re already seeing telemedicine in standard of care applications.

My colleagues here and at other institutions are already doing second opinions appointments via telemedicine. They’re doing postoperative visits via telemedicine. For prostate cancer and for other genital urinary malignancies like bladder cancer, where there’s been a centralization of surgeries and patients travel a distance for their surgery, then return to the care of their local teams, the ability to do postoperative checks at a distance offers the potential for significant value added. There is a range of applications for this type of technology.

Not a member? Join us to read more about clinical trials + prostate cancer.

Author: Prostatepedia

Conversations about prostate cancer.

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How to save your industry $1.9 b v3

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As an industry based lobby group we were faced with Legislation to reduce government funding by $1.9B. We needed to respond quickly and adopted an Agile approach to our digital campaign strategy in order to have a skinny version of the website up and running as soon as possible. We used a mix of Scrum and Kanban methods to prioritize widgets we required on the website and ensure our campaign remained responsive to stakeholders and built iterative changes to the site in order to respond to stakeholders and the political debate.

The session will be a short 10min talk focusing on how a mix of Agile approaches, namely Kanban and Scrum were used as a management tool to coordinate the development of a new website for the campaign. The presenter will explain how the adoption of Scrum allowed the team to iteratively build features based on weekly sprint cycles and ensured weekly collaboration and communication between product owner, designers and developers of the website.
The presenter will demnonstrate how the introduction of a Kanban board to the Scrum process helped to manage the backlog of work packages and help focus the team on the ranked priorities for the current sprint. This provided a process to manage Workflow and allowed the team to remain flexible and responsive to the changing environment and stakeholder needs when changes were required mid sprint

Learning outcomes
• The blend of Scrum and Kanban helped to focus the team on the priorities and remain flexible and responsive to the changing environment and stakeholder needs
These Agile methods are an effective management tool and can aid coordination of work effort to deliver a campaign strategy

Publicada em: Tecnologia, Negócios
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How to save your industry $1.9 b v3

  1. 1. How to Save Your Industry $1.9B Using Agile Methods
Mia Horrigan
Chief Information Officer AHIA
August 2011

  2. 2. Legislation to reduce govt funding by $1.9B
Previous mass media channels not measurable, responsive or targeted
Take debate to consumers: digital campaign
 ADKAR
Get users engaged or loose $1.9B

Awareness
  3. 3. Desire
  4. 4. Knowledge
  5. 5. Action
  6. 6. Reinforcement

ADKAR

Awareness
  7. 7. Desire
  8. 8. Knowledge
  9. 9. Action
  10. 10. Reinforcement

continuous integration
value stream
+
release 1.0
+...+
UX Design
release n
embed in
User stories
Elements of User Experience
Prioritise delivery of value in backlog
SCRUM
skinny
solution
What we did
Kanban
build knowledge
from retrospectives about ‘value’
More value = act to save the Industry

  11. 11. Sprint zero – Planning
Scrum
Elements of User Experience
Framework Elements
Strategy, Scope, Structure, Skeleton and Surface
Things to Produce
Things to Do
Things to Consider
(e.g. requirements)

  12. 12. Weekly Sprint cycles
Continuous integration to build upon skinny solution to respond to evolving needs Collaboration between product owner, scrum master and team
Needs changing so estimation of what could be done and definition of done important
Cost ($$$ vs Time vsOpportunity)
Scrum

  13. 13. Needed to prioritize widgets to ensure campaign remained responsive to stakeholder needs
Visual tool to manage the backlog, focus team on the ranked priorities
Process to manage workflow and remain flexible
Kanban

  14. 14. Pilot of Kanban on one project
Project Kanban Board
Sprint backlog in ranked priority
Features being produced
What has been produced

  15. 15. If one Board is great, why not two?
Project interdependencies
Shared resources

  16. 16. Interdependencies
Simultaneous Execution
Change
Managing Multiple Projects

  17. 17. Viewed all 3 projects within the campaign
Multidisciplinary teams across the projects
Applied learnings from one to the next
“Scrum of Scrums” Kanban Board
Three projects on the board
Three different sprints in progress
Project interdependencies
Streams of work with shared resources

  18. 18. Team identified BAU activities and these became a BAU backlog
Identified lessons learnt and suggested improvements to business processes
Learnings for BAU

  19. 19. My Favourite Board

  20. 20. What we learned
Multidisciplinary approach and blend of Agile and UX tools:
Remain flexible and responsive
Prioritise features and manage the backlog of work
Aided focus and coordination
Kanban Board was an effective visual communication tool (team & org)
Scrum effective way to continuously integrate features and keep the team on track
Value of Scrum master

  21. 21. Thank you
Mia Horrigan
Chief Information Officer - AHIA
Vice President - Women in Information and Communication (WIC )
Agile CSM, MBA, Post grad Dip Mgmt, B Comm
Mia.horrigan@ahia.org.au
Maria.murphs@gmail.com
@miahorri
www.zenagile.wordpress.com
www.miahorri.wordpress.com
Mia (murphy) horrigan


text:
I’m sorry

Thank you for being patient with me while I am working on the costumes.  I enjoyed watching Todd’s video on how often I do say I’m sorry and in the back of my mind I am feeling that I am apologizing for existing.  I am working on this.  One of my children pointed out that I apologized all the time even for things I didn’t do.  I immediately answered, “I’m sorry.”  Yes, we ended up laughing together realizing, I did it again.  I like the idea of thinking about my behavior as something I can change and improve.  I enjoyed this video and I hope you will too.

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text:
Judgments - In re S (FC) (a child) (Appellant)

(back to preceding text)

    24.  On the evidence it can readily be accepted that article 8 is engaged. Hedley J observed (para 18) "that these will be dreadfully painful times for the child". Everybody will sympathise with that observation.

    25.  But it is necessary to measure the nature of the impact of the trial on the child. He will not be involved in the trial as a witness or otherwise. It will not be necessary to refer to him. No photograph of him will be published. There will be no reference to his private life or upbringing. Unavoidably, his mother must be tried for murder and that must be a deeply hurtful experience for the child. The impact upon him is, however, essentially indirect.

    26.  While article 8.1 is engaged, and none of the factors in article 8.2 justifies the interference, it is necessary to assess realistically the nature of the relief sought. This is an application for an injunction beyond the scope of section 39, the remedy provided by Parliament to protect juveniles directly affected by criminal proceedings. No such injunction has in the past been granted under the inherent jurisdiction or under the provisions of the ECHR. There is no decision of the Strasbourg court granting injunctive relief to non-parties, juvenile or adult, in respect of publication of criminal proceedings. Moreover, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which entered into force on 2 September 1990, protects the privacy of children directly involved in criminal proceedings, but does not protect the privacy of children if they are only indirectly affected by criminal trials: articles 17 and 40.2(vii); see also Geraldine Van Bueren, The International Law on the Rights of the Child, 1994, 141 and 182. The verdict of experience appears to be that such a development is a step too far.

    27.  The interference with article 8 rights, however distressing for the child, is not of the same order when compared with cases of juveniles, who are directly involved in criminal trials. In saying this I have not overlooked the fact that the mother, the defendant in the criminal trial, has waived her right to a completely public trial, and supports the appeal of the child. In a case such as the present her stance can only be of limited weight.

X. Article 10.

    28.  Article 10 is also engaged. This case is concerned with the freedom of the press, subject to limited statutory restrictions, to report the proceedings at a criminal trial without restriction. It is necessary to assess the importance of this freedom. I start with a general proposition. In Reynolds v Times Newspapers Limited [2001] 2 AC 127 Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead described the position as follows (200G-H):

    "It is through the mass media that most people today obtain their information on political matters. Without freedom of expression by the media, freedom of expression would be a hollow concept. The interest of a democratic society in ensuring a free press weighs heavily in the balance in deciding whether any curtailment of this freedom bears a reasonable relationship to the purpose of the curtailment."

These observations apply with equal force to the freedom of the press to report criminal trials in progress and after verdict.

    29.  The importance of the freedom of the press to report criminal trials has often been emphasised in concrete terms. In R v Legal Aid Board ex parte Kaim Todner (A firm) [1999] QB 966, Lord Woolf MR explained (at 977):

    "The need to be vigilant arises from the natural tendency for the general principle to be eroded and for exceptions to grow by accretion as the exceptions are applied by analogy to existing cases. This is the reason it is so important not to forget why proceedings are required to be subjected to the full glare of a public hearing. It is necessary because the public nature of the proceedings deters inappropriate behaviour on the part of the court. It also maintains the public's confidence in the administration of justice. It enables the public to know that justice is being administered impartially. It can result in evidence becoming available which would not become available if the proceedings were conducted behind closed doors or with one or more of the parties' or witnesses' identity concealed. It makes uninformed and inaccurate comment about the proceedings less likely . . . Any interference with the public nature of court proceedings is therefore to be avoided unless justice requires it. However Parliament has recognised there are situations where interference is necessary."

These are valuable observations. It is, however, still necessary to assess the importance of unrestricted reporting in specifics relating to this case.

    30.  Dealing with the relative importance of the freedom of the press to report the proceedings in a criminal trial Hale LJ drew a distinction. She observed (at para 56):

    "The court must consider what restriction, if any, is needed to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of CS. If prohibiting publication of the family name and photographs is needed, the court must consider how great an impact that will in fact have upon the freedom protected by Article 10. It is relevant here that restrictions on the identification of defendants before conviction are by no means unprecedented. The situation may well change if and when the mother is convicted. There is a much greater public interest in knowing the names of persons convicted of serious crime than of those who are merely suspected or charged. These considerations are also relevant to the extent of the interference with CS's rights."

I cannot accept these observations without substantial qualification. A criminal trial is a public event. The principle of open justice puts, as has often been said, the judge and all who participate in the trial under intense scrutiny. The glare of contemporaneous publicity ensures that trials are properly conducted. It is a valuable check on the criminal process. Moreover, the public interest may be as much involved in the circumstances of a remarkable acquittal as in a surprising conviction. Informed public debate is necessary about all such matters. Full contemporaneous reporting of criminal trials in progress promotes public confidence in the administration of justice. It promotes the values of the rule of law.

    31.  For these reasons I would, therefore, attribute greater importance to the freedom of the press to report the progress of a criminal trial without any restraint than Hale LJ did.

XI. Consequences of the grant of the proposed injunction.

    32.  There are a number of specific consequences of the grant of an injunction as asked for in this case to be considered. First, while counsel for the child wanted to confine a ruling to the grant of an injunction restraining publication to protect a child, that will not do. The jurisdiction under the ECHR could equally be invoked by an adult non-party faced with possible damaging publicity as a result of a trial of a parent, child or spouse. Adult non-parties to a criminal trial must therefore be added to the prospective pool of applicants who could apply for such injunctions. This would confront newspapers with an ever wider spectrum of potentially costly proceedings and would seriously inhibit the freedom of the press to report criminal trials.

    33.  Secondly, if such an injunction were to be granted in this case, it cannot be assumed that relief will only be sought in future in respect of the name of a defendant and a photograph of the defendant and the victim. It is easy to visualise circumstances in which attempts will be made to enjoin publicity of, for example, the gruesome circumstances of a crime. The process of piling exception upon exception to the principle of open justice would be encouraged and would gain in momentum.

    34.  Thirdly, it is important to bear in mind that from a newspaper's point of view a report of a sensational trial without revealing the identity of the defendant would be a very much disembodied trial. If the newspapers choose not to contest such an injunction, they are less likely to give prominence to reports of the trial. Certainly, readers will be less interested and editors will act accordingly. Informed debate about criminal justice will suffer.

    35.  Fourthly, it is true that newspapers can always contest an application for an injunction. Even for national newspapers that is, however, a costly matter which may involve proceedings at different judicial levels. Moreover, time constraints of an impending trial may not always permit such proceedings. Often it will be too late and the injunction will have had its negative effect on contemporary reporting.

    36.  Fifthly, it is easy to fall into the trap of considering the position from the point of view of national newspapers only. Local newspapers play a huge role. In the United Kingdom according to the website of The Newspaper Society there are 1301 regional and local newspapers which serve villages, towns and cities. Apparently, again according to the website of The Newspaper Society, over 85% of all British adults read a regional or local newspaper compared to 70% who read a national newspaper. Very often a sensational or serious criminal trial will be of great interest in the community where it took place. A regional or local newspaper is likely to give prominence to it. That happens every day up and down the country. For local newspapers, who do not have the financial resources of national newspapers, the spectre of being involved in costly legal proceedings is bound to have a chilling effect. If local newspapers are threatened with the prospect of an injunction such as is now under consideration it is likely that they will often be silenced. Prudently, the Romford Recorder, which has some 116,000 readers a week, chose not to contest these proceedings. The impact of such a new development on the regional and local press in the United Kingdom strongly militates against its adoption. If permitted, it would seriously impoverish public discussion of criminal justice.

XII. The decision of Hedley J.

    37.  In agreement with Hale LJ the majority of the Court of Appeal took the view that Hedley J had not analysed the case correctly in accordance with the provisions of the ECHR. I do not agree. In my view the judge analysed the case correctly under the ECHR. Given the weight traditionally given to the importance of open reporting of criminal proceedings it was in my view appropriate for him, in carrying out the balance required by the ECHR, to begin by acknowledging the force of the argument under article 10 before considering whether the right of the child under article 8 was sufficient to outweigh it. He went too far in saying that he would have come to the same conclusion even if he had been persuaded that this was a case where the child's welfare was indeed the paramount consideration under section 1(1) of the Children Act 1989. But that was not the shape of the case before him.

XIII. The Disposal.

    38.  I would dismiss the appeal. The effect of the opinions delivered in the House today is that there is no injunction in respect of publication of the identity of the defendant or of photographs of the defendant or her deceased son.

My Lords,

    39.  I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend Lord Steyn. For the reasons he gives, with which I agree, I would dismiss this appeal.

My Lords,

continue previous


text:
Yellowstone Park Research Wolves Killed by Hunters

An estimated 10 wolves from Yellowstone National Park have been killed by hunters this month, adversely affecting the park’s wolf research program, one of the longest studies of its kind.

“Losing the wolves has been a big hit to us scientifically,” says wildlife biologist Douglas Smith, leader of Yellowstone’s wolf project, which has tracked the wolves since their reintroduction in 1995. The killings came just as researchers, who are partly funded by a 5-year U.S. National Science Foundation grant, were set to begin the wolf project’s annual winter survey of the canids’ predatory habits.

Continue reading the story at the Science Magazine

The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are – a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus.

On this day of July 7, 2012, a prominent international group of cognitive neuroscientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists and computational neuroscientists gathered at The University of Cambridge to reassess the neurobiological substrates of conscious experience and related behaviors in human and non-human animals…

We declare the following: “The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Nonhuman animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.”

Author | Cambridge Declaration –  Philip Low

Source | The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness

Link | Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us

Link | Scientific American – Octopuses Gain Consciousness (According to Scientists’ Declaration)