text:
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Supermarkets chains took a beating in London on Thursday after Wm. Morrison Supermarkets PLC issued its second profit warning in three months, while home builders declined after disappointing housing data.
The FTSE 100 index UKX, +1.10% slumped 1% to 6,553.78, marking a fifth straight day of losses, the longest losing run since early February.
• Bull market's biggest winners and losers
• Market is up 170% since 2009 — and you?
• How to prepare for the next bear market
• Never forget 2009: Be an elephant, not a bull
• ETFs to bet on as the bull market turns 5
• What to get a bull market that has everything
• What this bull market needs to live a 6th year
• CHARTS: If the S&P 500 repeat past bull runs
Morrison MRW, -0.41% posted the biggest losses in the London benchmark, down 12%, after the food retailer said underlying profit for the fiscal year of 2014/2015 would drop to between 460 million pounds ($766 million) and £510 million. Analysts had expected profit of about £732 million for this year, according to the Guardian.
For the 2013/2014 fiscal year, the company reported a 13% drop in underlying profit to £785 million. Morrisons also said it plans to reduce its cost base and invest £1 billion over the next three years.
The broader U.K. supermarkets sector was also spooked by the profit warning, with shares of J Sainsbury PLC SBRY, +0.00% falling 8.5% and Tesco PLC TSCO, +2.74% off 5%. Tesco shares were eyeing its lowest closing level since June 2012 after falling for seven days straight. The company dropped 1.8% on Tuesday when data from Kantar showed the supermarket chain's market share fell to the lowest level since 2004.
In other news in London, data from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed demand for homes in the U.K. eased back in February, with the monthly house-price survey sliding to +45 from January's revised balance of +52.
Rob Wood, chief U.K. economist at Berenberg, said the housing market may have been disrupted by the harsh weather in February, but that it is still "a very strong reading."
"It seems that the deluge of rain has cooled the market from white hot to red hot, while underlying pressures continue to build as low interest rates and government stimulus boost demand. Now the rain is passing, this survey could well heat up again next month," he said in a note.
House builders dropped after the data, with shares of Barratt Developments PLC BDEV, -0.02% down 2.2% and Taylor Wimpey PLC TW., +0.75% off 2.6%.
Among other notable movers, National Grid PLC NG., +1.11% lost 1.3% after HSBC cut the utility firm to neutral from overweight.
More must-reads from MarketWatch:
George Soros: Germany botched crisis response and EU may not survive
Warren Buffett to heirs: Put my estate in index funds
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.


text:
March 4, 2008
Nashville, TN - The Lady Bucs of Charleston Southern University narrowly defeated the Lady Bisons in a 4-3 decision on Tuesday afternoon.
The Lady Bisons scored three runs off of five hits but committed two errors early in the game that allowed Charleston Southern to score four runs in quick succession.
The Lipscomb comeback was lead by senior left-fielder Sara Simons with a solo shot in the fourth inning to put the Lady Bisons on the board.
Sophomore shortstop Abby Keese would add one run in the sixth inning, and senior catcher Jennifer Allsup would score in the bottom of the seventh on a fielding error by the Lady Buc left fielder
Sophomore centerfielder Lauren Dortwegt would pick up two hits, and a Sophomore designated player Kellie Sirus picked up a hit to round out the batting for the Lady Bisons.
Keese extended her hitting streak to ten games.
Due to inclement weather, the Lady Bisons only played one game of the doubleheader. Game two will be played on Wednesday afternoon at 6:15 PM.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Watch: Trailer for the Martin Scorsese-Produced 'Surviving Progress' Documents Mankind's Futile Struggle Against Itself
Martin Scorsese may be most well known for his gangster films, but the prolific director is no stranger to the non-fiction side of things. He's got a number of documentaries under his directorial belt, most recently George Harrison: Living in the Material World, with even more under his producer's hat. The latest is Surviving Progress, written and directed by Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, and instead of focusing on bands or influential filmmakers, it's a sobering examination of how far we've come as a species, and whether our collective accomplishments are forecasting our own limits.
First Run Features have begun rolling the film out on a limited release basis (it's currently playing in New York), and have recently released a trailer for the film, which is based on Ronald Wright's book A Short History of Progress. Here's the official synopsis:
Technological advancement, economic development, population increase - are they signs of a thriving society? Or too much of a good thing? Based on the best-selling book A Short History of Progress, this provocative documentary explores the concept of progress in our modern world, guiding us through a sweeping but detailed survey of the major "progress traps" facing our civilization in the arenas of technology, economics, consumption, and the environment.
Featuring powerful arguments from such visionaries as Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Stephen Hawking, Craig Venter, Robert Wright, Michael Hudson, and Ronald Wright, this enlightening and visually spectacular film invites us to contemplate the progress traps that destroyed past civilizations and that lie treacherously embedded in our own. Leading critics of Wall Street, cognitive psychologists, and ecologists lay bare the consequences of progress-as-usual as the film travels around the world - from a burgeoning China to the disappearing rainforests of Brazil to a chimp research lab in New Iberia, Louisiana - to construct a shocking overview of the way our global economic system is eating away at our planet's resources and shackling entire populations with poverty.
Providing an honest look at the risks and pitfalls of running 21st Century "software" (our accumulated knowledge) on 50,000-year-old "hardware" (our primate brains), Surviving Progress offers a challenge: to prove making apes smarter was not an evolutionary dead end.
Looks pretty fascinating, no? For a list of theaters and expansion dates, check out Surviving Progress' official site.
Movies.com, the ultimate source for everything movies, is your destination for new movie trailers, reviews, photos, times, tickets + more! Stay in the know with the latest movie news and cast interviews at Movies.com.
Copyright © 2018 FANDANGO MOVIES.


text:
Statistical Plans
Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2018 Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2017 Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2016 Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2015 Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2014 Statistical Plans
- Reporting Year 2013 Statistical Plans
Please note, the statistical plans on this link are password protected and can ONLY be accessed by licensed insurance companies with an assigned password. Usernames and passwords are newly assigned at the beginning of each year. If you have any questions pertaining to this page, please contact Leo Lara at (213) 346-6474.
Statistical Plan Login Issues: The CDI recently upgraded our web servers and software. Some companies using Internet Explorer may encounter problems accessing the statistical plans website. If you cannot access the websites with your assigned logon and password information, please download the following attachment: Internet Explorer Web Cookies Delete Information (Adobe PDF format).
These special filings are handled by the CDI's Rate Specialist Bureau which are required by the California Insurance Code or California Code of Regulations. If you have questions specific to these filings only, please e-mail us at firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
U.S. Stocks Remain in Post-Euphoric Fog
Dow Jones Reporter John Shipman joins the News Hub to discuss the euphoria U.S. stocks are in after Congress narrowly avoided the "fiscal cliff." Wednesday's ECB meeting is likely the next tangible influence on stocks. Photo: AP Images.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
... the the ... it's not me ... the markets now installing a joint lights on she did that morning ... these lies with the tech effects to any of ... the year six no reason that I well it's kind of quiet markets are leaning a little bit higher today um come off kind of a losing streak after last week's big gains the sort of a ... boy Felix is a point about poster for bond that the markets and right now ... the euphoria from the old euphoria really was the the fact that you've waited the fiscal plan ... I suppose lives kind of euphoria when exactly and it's you know that was as we know is really just somethings who have been put off but ... you know issues like the debt ceiling the fiscal cliff ... the ultimate verdict on fourth-quarter earnings season ... we're still kind of aam Wharf is intangible ... of ... elements from the market rate now ... which is which can see this meeting gratification thing so ... that there isn't a lot of fun in the impacts on the marker right now tomorrow we'll be looking ahead of ECB meeting ... did Jobless Claims so ... those issues may sway stocks little bit more but today right now ... that sort of headline driven ... you know yesterday we saw ... of all we have a pretty big impact on the stock market looks like when stock is of ... picking up a little bit premarket so that might help ... hoping to download them here at Esther Dyson to figure that out cuz things online ... basically I'm in awe in line I think the stock is blown is positive this morning because ... the commentary on the company was fairly positive about them and coming up this year on but oh why is ... there wasn't anything ... too remarkable bought the earnings ... on revenue was down about one a half percent ... on which of the good in a new story that you can see played out for the rest of the the fourth quarter exceeding Assif ... company struggling ... with topline growth ... and essentially mean were you know in some cases beating their earnings estimates ... on through cost-cutting ... consist of cookie about the TCP methinks my earning potential announcement by Marion jockey what is the market one of the market is expecting that there would be no change in the policy rate on known to change interest rates and and so with the focus really come for you know in terms of what would we hear from drawing in his press conference after the policy statement ... and ALM that it tends to be a ... cut above ... the interesting um it's a situation with respect to how the euro reacts to withdraw his comments and aam ... you know the girls from pre strong lately and I ... there is ... this ... I think there's some of the ... sense that it's going to have a hard time going higher so ... aam and and stocks you're in the U S and to the wood with it in that sense of all there ... on the news or more stimulus ... aam tend to track the euro so ... they could be a ... the all important was on stocks ... in U S weaponry that can play sink John Shipman from dad Inc's I thank you very much joining us in the West Coast capital market updates throughout the day here on WS J knife ... on Markets Hub


text:
fun., Frank Ocean and The Black Keys lead 2013 Grammy nominations
The hitmakers will compete with Frank Ocean, The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and Jack White for the Album of the Year Grammy in February (13) and Kelly Clarkson, Florence + The Machine, Maroon 5 and Pink for the coveted Pop Vocal Album prize.
Their We Are Young anthem is up for Record of the Year alongside The Black Keys (Lonely Boy), Clarkson (Stronger), Gotye (Somebody That I Used to Know), Frank Ocean (Thinkin' 'Bout You) and nominations concert co-host and six-time Grammy winner Taylor Swift (We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together).
fun. were also nominated for the Best New Artist trophy with Alabama Shakes, The Lumineers, Ocean and Hunter Hayes, who earned a nod for Best Country Solo Performance for his hit Wanted. He'll be up against Dierks Bentley (Home), Eric Church (Springsteen), Ronnie Dunn (Cost of Livin'), Blake Shelton (Over) and Carrie Underwood (Blown Away).
All 81 categories were revealed after the Grammy Nominations Concert Live, with fun., The Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, Jay-Z, Ocean, Mumford & Sons and Kanye West leading all artists with six nods each, while The Black Keys, Chick Corea and Miguel scored five and rapper Nas and producer Jeff Bhasker grabbed four apiece.
Swift and LL Cool J co-hosted the nominations ceremony at the Bridgestone Arena, where fun., Maroon 5 and Ne-Yo performed live. Rapper LL Cool J took a moment at the end of the celebration to pay tribute to jazz great Dave Brubeck, who died earlier on Wednesday.
The 55th annual Grammy Awards will be handed out in Los Angeles on 10 February (13).


text:
Caught On Security Cam: Inmate Attacks Officer & They Messed His Shxt Up!
"An Elyria police officer was attacked while booking an inmate at the city jail on Sunday. Security footage shows Anthony Thomas, 29, of Cleveland, jumping over the desk and punching officer William Witt. Witt eventually gains control by placing Thomas in a choke."/ Submitted by Newid
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
Rachel Naomi Remen
Listening Generously
Rachel Naomi Remen
is founder of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (RISHI), clinical professor of family medicine at UCSF School of Medicine, and professor of family medicine at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University. Her books Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings have been translated into 24 languages.
July 29, 2010
KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Listening Generously," with physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen. Her own lifelong struggle with chronic illness has shaped her practice of medicine. We speak this hour about her art of listening to patients and other physicians, the difference between curing and healing, and how our losses help us to live.
DR. RACHEL NAOMI REMEN: You know, sometimes what appears to be a catastrophe, over time, becomes a strong foundation from which to live a good life. It's possible to live a good life even though it isn't an easy life. And I think that's one of the best-kept secrets in America.
MS. TIPPETT: This is On Being. Stay with us.
MS. TIPPETT: This hour, we revisit my 2005 conversation with a wise physician and lyrical author Rachel Naomi Remen. She's known for books that intertwine stories from her life with Crohn's disease and her work with people with cancer. Looking at the world "from the edge of life," as she puts it, Rachel Naomi Remen has wisdom for our individual lives and our common life. She says that the way we deal with losses, large and small, shapes our capacity to be present to all of our experiences.
I'm Krista Tippett, from American Public Media, with conversation about meaning, faith, ethics, and ideas. Today, "Listening Generously: The Medicine of Rachel Naomi Remen."
Rachel Naomi Remen is a leading figure in the field of integrative medicine, bringing together the best of modern knowledge, both scientific and spiritual. As a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco's School of Medicine, she's drawn attention to the emotional needs of both patients and physicians. Living well, she says, is not about eradicating our wounds and weaknesses, but understanding how they complete our identity and equip us to help others.
From her earliest years as a doctor, Rachel Naomi Remen loved medicine but questioned its limits. At the age of 15, she was diagnosed with a progressive gastrointestinal disorder, Crohn's disease, and she lived for years believing that she would be dead by the age of 40.
Later, when she had become one of few women on a medical faculty in 1960s America, Dr. Remen cultivated a professional mode of objectivity and attachment, but almost against her will she found herself drawn into the stories of the people she was treating. She began to assign clinical importance to the details of patients' lives, details that made every illness different and every course of healing unique. "At first," she has written, "I was surprised that people with the same disease had very different stories. Later, I became deeply moved by these stories, by the unsuspected strengths, the rich and human tapestry initiated by the pathology I was studying and treating."
DR. REMEN: So you may be an expert, let's say, in diabetes or cancer or Crohn's disease, and every time you meet a new person who's struggling with this disease, that person has a completely different story. It has a completely different meaning for that person. And a story, of course, is the container for meaning.
MS. TIPPETT: Such insights changed Rachel Naomi Remen's approach to medicine and to life. Stories are now the medium of her teaching and her two best-selling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings. She reflects on life by way of her experiences as a doctor, she reflects on medicine through the story of her life, and she revisits the stories that she first learned from her rabbi grandfather, a student of the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. She grew up, she writes, surrounded by doctors and one mystic.
DR. REMEN: Doctors, a few nurses, and one mystic. It's true.
MS. TIPPETT: That would have been your Orthodox rabbi grandfather?
DR. REMEN: Mm-hmm, and student of Kabbalah.
MS. TIPPETT: Student of Kabbalah before it was a fashion trend.
DR. REMEN: Very much so. Oh, and he was a flaming mystic, and he was also a magnificent storyteller.
MS. TIPPETT: What do you mean when you say he was a flaming mystic? I mean, describe that to me.
DR. REMEN: What that means? Oh, it means many different things. It can mean a scholarly thing, like the study of a school of mysticism like Kabbalah, but it's also a way of seeing the world. My grandfather felt that the world was in constant communication with him, that there was a spirit in the world, a God in the world that could be spoken to and could respond at all times, that there was a presence in the world that was holy and sacred and that he was in constant dialogue with this as he went through the events of his day. I think mysticism can be defined in many different ways. I didn't know that my grandfather was a mystic.
MS. TIPPETT: No?
DR. REMEN: I just knew that the world that he lived in was the world I wanted to live in, too.
MS. TIPPETT: You recount this idea of the Kabbalah, which I had known, but — I don't know, I think maybe because you're a storyteller, it was very vivid for me. That — this idea that at the beginning of the creation, the holy was broken up, right?
DR. REMEN: Oh, the story of the birthday of the world, yes.
MS. TIPPETT: Is that how he told it to you?
DR. REMEN: Yes, exactly. Actually, Krista, this was my fourth birthday present, this story. In the beginning there was only the holy darkness, the Ein Sof, the source of life. And then, in the course of history, at a moment in time, this world, the world of a thousand thousand things, emerged from the heart of the holy darkness as a great ray of light. And then, perhaps because this is a Jewish story, there was an accident, and the vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into a thousand thousand fragments of light, and they fell into all events and all people, where they remain deeply hidden until this very day.
Now, according to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident. We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, to lift it up and make it visible once again and thereby to restore the innate wholeness of the world. It's a very important story for our times. And this task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew. It's the restoration of the world.
MS. TIPPETT: Right.
DR. REMEN: And this is, of course, a collective task. It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive, all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world. And that story opens a sense of possibility. It's not about healing the world by making a huge difference. It's about healing the world that touches you, that's around you.
MS. TIPPETT: The world into which you have proximity.
DR. REMEN: That's where our power is, yeah. Yeah. Many people feel powerless in today's situations.
MS. TIPPETT: Right. I mean, when you use a phrase like that just out of nowhere, "heal the world," it sounds like a dream. Right? A nice ideal, completely impossible.
DR. REMEN: It's a very old story, comes from the 14th century, and it's a different way of looking at our power. And I suspect it has a key for us in our present situation, a very important key. I'm not a person who is a political person in the usual sense of that word, but I think that we all feel that we're not enough to make a difference, that we need to be more somehow, either wealthier or more educated or somehow or other different than the people we are. And according to this story, we are exactly what's needed. And to just wonder about that a little, what if we were exactly what's needed? What then? How would I live if I was exactly what's needed to heal the world?
MS. TIPPETT: My son, who's seven, I told him this story about the beginning of the universe and, you know, about the sparks and the holy flying out. And he just listened to me so raptly, and he said, "I like that."
DR. REMEN: I was told this story, let's see, 63 years ago. And my response to it was exactly the same. And that's very important about stories. They touch something that is human in us and is probably unchanging. Perhaps this is why, you know, parables — the important knowledge is passed through stories. It's what holds a culture together. Culture has a story, and every person in it participates in that story. And so story, and not facts, are the way the world is made up. The world is made up of stories; it's not made up of facts.
MS. TIPPETT: Although we tell ourselves facts to piece together the story.
DR. REMEN: Well, the facts are the bones of the story, if you want to think of it that way. I mean, the facts are, for example, that I have had Crohn's disease for 52 years. I've had eight major surgeries. But that doesn't tell you about my journey and what's happened to me because of that, and what it means to live with an illness like this and discover the power of being a human being. And, you know, whenever there's a crisis, like 9/11, do you notice how the whole of the United States turned towards the stories in order to…
MS. TIPPETT: You mean, 'Where I was…'
DR. REMEN: Where I was, what happened, what happened in those buildings, what happened to the people who were connected to the people in those buildings. Because that is the only way we can make sense out of life, is through the stories. And the facts are a certain number of people died there, but the stories are about the greatness of being a human being and the vulnerability of being a human being.
MS. TIPPETT: I think you make such an interesting contrast also with the fact that we live with all kinds of stories in our culture, forms of entertainment as well as information, but that those stories always have beginnings and endings. And you say that the stories of our lives, stories as they function in life, take time. Real stories take time.
DR. REMEN: There's a powerful saying that we tell each other stories — sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. They tell us about who we are, what is possible for us, what we might call upon. They also remind us we're not alone with whatever faces us and that there are resources, both within us, and in the larger world, and in the unseen world, that may be cooperating with us in our struggle to find a way to deal with challenges. And when I say a story doesn't have an ending, for example, part of my story is you telling your little boy the story of the birthday of the world. That's also part of my grandfather's story, right? And your little boy has never met my grandfather, but perhaps my grandfather will be woven into his life in some way. It may be a very small way or it may not, I don't know, but in that sense no one's story is ever finished.
MS. TIPPETT: I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being from American Public Media.
Rachel Naomi Remen began her medical career as a pediatrician and then began to focus on cancer patients. Listening to people's stories is at the core of her understanding of the doctor/patient relationship. She founded the Commonweal Cancer Help Program in the Bay Area of San Francisco, one of the earliest cancer support programs in the U.S. She also became a medical educator, designing and implementing curricula that enabled doctors nationwide to discover what she calls the "soul, mission, and calling" in their work. I asked her how this happened.
DR. REMEN: We had grants to study the doctor/patient relationship. And then a new administration came in, and we couldn't get the final piece of funding to finish this work. And I spent six months writing grants and then ran out of money. And people had been calling me up — because I'd been writing about these things — and saying, 'Can I come and talk to you about my problem?' And I'd say, 'No, no, no. I don't do that.'
MS. TIPPETT: Other physicians, right?
DR. REMEN: 'I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist. I don't do that.' No, these are people, sick people, friends, friends of friends, all sorts of people. Then when I ran out of money I said, 'Well, I guess I do this.' So I found a little office on a houseboat in Sausalito, the first office, and a few people came by. And I decided I would go and speak to my colleagues in the medical community and tell them that I wanted to work with sick people and with their emotional issues and their struggle to live with disease and also to recover from disease. Most of the physicians in the community said, 'Terrific. Who has the time to talk to these people?'
MS. TIPPETT: Right.
DR. REMEN: You know, 'Once I run out of treatments I have nothing more to offer anyone' — and that's another whole story in and of itself, of course — and 'let me send you over my patients.' And within months I had a completely full practice and most of the people were people with cancer, and I began to work as a person who focused my efforts on working with people with cancer.
MS. TIPPETT: Why do you think that most of the people your colleagues ended up sending you were people with cancer? Was that a particular life experience they weren't equipped to handle in its fullness?
DR. REMEN: The hospice movement is fairly recent in all of this.
MS. TIPPETT: OK. So this was before hospice.
DR. REMEN: This is before that.
MS. TIPPETT: Right.
DR. REMEN: I mean, you knew how to treat the cancer. That's what we were trained to do in medical school. We're trained differently now. The issues of the person with the cancer was something that — we would refer people to psychiatrists but, you know, these aren't people who have psychological illness. These are people who are confronted with a very, very challenging life situation and who need to mobilize their full strength and the strength of their families in order to meet with these things, to live well despite cancer.
MS. TIPPETT: It seems, as you say, you probably didn't plan this. I'm sure you didn't plan this. But what you said earlier about how we're all given the lives we have and that that's good enough, and even what's wrong with us is part of what we have, it seems like it's been really important in your medical practice and also in how you've helped other physicians, how you've reflected on your profession, that you also have struggled in your life with this debilitating illness of Crohn's disease, which you were told was fatal also earlier.
DR. REMEN: Mm-hmm. But, Krista, I don't think it's what's wrong with us. I don't see, you know, sometimes what appears to be a catastrophe, over time, becomes a strong foundation from which to live a good life. It's possible to live a good life even though it isn't an easy life. And I think that's one of the best kept secrets in America.
MS. TIPPETT: You say that the pursuit of perfection has become a major addiction of our time. I mean, we throw that word "addiction" around a lot, but I've never heard anyone talk about our pursuit of perfection as an addiction.
DR. REMEN: Well, I think perfection is the booby prize in life, actually. It's very isolating, very separating, and it's also impossible to achieve. So you're always struggling to become something you're not. But, you know, this is one of the great — it sounds funny. I was going to say the great joys of working with people on the edge of life. The view from the edge of life is so much clearer than the view that most of us have, that what seems to be important is much more simple and accessible for everybody, which is who you've touched on your way through life, who's touched you. What you're leaving behind you in the hearts and minds of other people is far more important than whatever wealth you may have accumulated.
MS. TIPPETT: Now, what is your understanding of why that simple truth that we've all heard said, and it makes so much sense; why is that hard for us, for human beings to take seriously before we get to that edge of life, or for many of us?
DR. REMEN: I think we get distracted. We get distracted by stories other people have told us about ourselves, that we are not enough, that we will be happy if we have material goods, that material goods will keep us safe. None of these stories are true. What is true is that what we have is each other.
MS. TIPPETT: And again, you know, that's so — it's lovely and it's clearly true, and yet we don't…
DR. REMEN: We don't live there.
MS. TIPPETT: We don't live there.
DR. REMEN: And this is why I see people with cancer and other people who have encountered very difficult experiences in their lives as teachers, teachers of wisdom. It's as if the wisdom to live well is — at the moment, the repository of this wisdom are the sick people in our culture, the ill people in our culture.
MS. TIPPETT: Physician and storyteller Rachel Naomi Remen.
Here's a story from her book Kitchen Table Wisdom about a man in one of her cancer support groups. Dieter had escaped from Communist East Germany, and after many years as a refugee had made a new life for himself. Now he was living with cancer.
KATE MOOS: [READER] For some time now Dieter had suspected that the chemotherapy was no longer helping him. Convinced at last of this, he spoke to his doctor and suggested that the treatments be stopped. He asked, if he could come every week just to talk. His doctor responded abruptly, 'If you refuse chemotherapy, there's nothing more I can do for you.' And so Dieter had continued to take the weekly injection in order to have those few moments of connection and understanding with his doctor. The group of people with cancer listened intently. There was another silence. Then Dieter said softly, 'My doctor's love is as important to me as his chemotherapy, but he doesn't know.'
Dieter's statement meant a great deal to me. I had not known either. Medicine is as close to love as it is to science, and its relationships matter even at the edge of life itself.
But I had yet another connection to Dieter's story. His oncologist was one of my patients. Week after week, from the depths of chronic depression, this physician would tell me that no one cared about him. He didn't matter to anyone. He was just another white coat in the hospital, a mortgage payment to his wife, a tuition check to his son. No one would notice if he vanished, as long as someone was there to make rounds or take out the garbage.
So here is Dieter bringing the same validation, the same healing to his doctor that he brought to me. But his doctor, caught up in a sense of failure because he cannot cure cancer, cannot receive it.
MS. TIPPETT: Rachel Naomi Remen writes about recapturing the soul of medicine in great detail on our website. She urges medical professionals, as she puts it, "to pursue something stronger than science," namely to restore a sense of meaning and service through human relationships. You can read that essay and the many other passages we featured in this production at onbeing.org.
And while you're on our site, be sure to check out our blog, Pertinent Posts from the On Being Blog, and read a lovely essay by Susan Carpenter Sims. She listens to our podcast in Taos, New Mexico. She writes about how the power of multiple translations has given her new ways in to thinking about story as "poetic truth" over "hard fact." Share your thoughts with her. Find a link on our home page, onbeing.org.
Coming up, more conversation on how Rachel Naomi Remen is helping new doctors combine science and technology with a sense of medicine as a healing art. I'm Krista Tippett. Stay with us. This program comes to you from American Public Media.
MS. TIPPETT: Welcome back to On Being, public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. I'm Krista Tippett. Today, "Listening Generously," a conversation with Rachel Naomi Remen. She's the author of two best-selling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessings. She's been a pioneer in integrative medicine, helping to raise awareness within the medical profession of the emotional and spiritual needs of patients.
In recent years, Rachel Naomi Remen has also worked on publicizing and caring for the needs of physicians themselves. In the U.S., doctors and health care professionals have some of the highest rates of depression in the work force. Dr. Remen traces such problems in part to the structure and focus of medical training itself. Here's a passage from her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, which explores lessons from medicine and life by way of her own story.
MS. MOOS: [READER] It is not possible to be in a 24-hour-a-day intensive training program for many years and not be changed by it. We worked seven days a week, 36 hours on and 12 hours off for most of it. When we were off, we slept. Denial of the body, its needs for sleep, comfort and even food were the very foundation of the schedule. No one complained. It was just the way that we all lived. Many of the rooms I worked and studied in had no windows. Often I did not know what day it was or even the time. I remember watching the nursing shift going past me day after day. I would look up and see Miss Harrison and know it must be morning again.
…On one very rare summer afternoon off, I remember traveling home to visit my parents on the subway, realizing only after a while that I had been unconsciously scanning the veins of the bare-armed people around me, wondering whether my skills with a needle were good enough to allow me to successfully draw blood from them. This sort of training changes the way you see things, the way you think. Gradually things that had been central in my previous life became vague and faded into the background, and other things more heavily rewarded became overdeveloped. After a time, I just forgot many important things.
MS. TIPPETT: At the UCSF, the University of California at San Francisco Medical School, Rachel Naomi Remen has created a course called "The Healer's Art." It's now offered at leading medical schools around the United States as well as in Canada, Israel, Slovenia, and Taiwan. I asked Dr. Remen what this course adds to the training doctors are already receiving.
DR. REMEN: It is validating for students the human agenda in illness. It reminds them that healing is a different relationship than a curing relationship. And it reminds them of their power to make a difference through their human response and connection to their patients. It basically reminds the students of the lineage of medicine. You know, I happen to see medicine as a spiritual path. That's my personal thing, that medicine is a spiritual path, which is characterized by compassion, harmlessness, service, reverence for life, courage and love.
The basic qualities of the Hippocratic Oath are not scientific qualities. They are the qualities of human relationship, and they are spiritual qualities, very profound spiritual qualities. We remind the students of the lineage, and this is young students, and we enable them to see that they belong to it exactly as they are, that they are already the right people to become physicians. All they need to do is learn the science and learn the facts, without allowing themselves to be changed by that process in any way.
MS. TIPPETT: What is it in that process, I mean, it seems ironic, and the stories you tell about how destructive medical school can be seem ironic. We do think of people who go to medical school, as you say, as extraordinary…
DR. REMEN: They are.
MS. TIPPETT: as people who are giving themselves over to this profession that is about healing. And what you describe is an experience that is…
DR. REMEN: We learn how to cure.
DR. REMEN: Yeah. Now, that is changing. I mean, obviously, 10 years ago this course would not be in any of these schools. UCSF was forward-looking enough to give it a home, you know. But I think the world is changing. I think we're recognizing the limitations of our science. Our science, you know, that little phrase, 'living better through science,' there's no question that we live better through science. But to live well is going to take something more than that. I mean, if I look at myself without the eight major surgeries and the many medications — and I still take many medications — that keep me alive, I wouldn't be here. But with only these things, I'd be an invalid.
MS. TIPPETT: Right. I wanted to ask a minute ago when you said you think about medicine as a spiritual path, and yet it seems that — medicine is also a science, at least in our culture, and it seems that at some point and somehow the science overwhelmed — or the scientific mindset, even among those of us who are outsiders, how we view science overwhelmed whatever spiritual element there is in that.
DR. REMEN: Well, you have to understand how natural that is. I mean, I'll tell you about myself. When I was a child, I had severe otitis media…
MS. TIPPETT: OK, an ear infection.
DR. REMEN: …and developed an abscess in the bone of my skull, and sulfa drugs were available in the nick of time. And that power was a very heady power. We could do — there was insulin for people with diabetes. I mean, you just have to think about what this meant for people.
MS. TIPPETT: All of this — you've seen all this in your lifetime.
DR. REMEN: Oh, my God. Yes. This meant a huge amount for people. We thought we could cure everything, but it turns out that we can only cure a small amount of human suffering. The rest of it needs to be healed, and that's different. It's different. I think science defines life in its own way, but life is larger than science. Life is filled with mystery, courage, heroism, and love. All these things that we can witness but not measure or even understand, but they make our lives valuable anyway.
MS. TIPPETT: I would say the destructive aspects of life are also mysterious and unmeasurable, right? I mean, we can also observe evil and…
DR. REMEN: I think that's true. Of course it's true. But, you know, the issue is not to eradicate evil. I'm not sure evil can be eradicated. I think it's part of the human condition. The issue is to commit yourself to what's important to you.
MS. TIPPETT: Here's a reading from Rachel Naomi Remen's Kitchen Table Wisdom.
MS. MOOS: [READER] People who are physicians have been trained to believe that it is a scientific objectivity that makes them most effective in their efforts to understand and resolve the pain others bring them, and a mental distance that protects them from becoming wounded by this difficult work. It is extremely demanding training. Yet objectivity makes us far more vulnerable emotionally than compassion or a simple humanity. Objectivity separates us from the life around us and within us. We are wounded by that life just the same; it is only the healing which cannot reach us. Physicians pay a terrible price for their objectivity.
MS. TIPPETT: You question the term "objectivity," that it's part of a scientific framework. I think that word — as a journalist, I'll say, it's also — you know, it's a value that's been held up in many disciplines in our culture. And it's coming into question in many disciplines. You know, 'Is it enough?' Or, you know, 'Are we kidding ourselves when we say we're objective?' And if we're kidding ourselves, then do we need to look at it all over again?
DR. REMEN: Objectivity's cognitive in a funny kind of way, isn't it? But the thing that seems important is that in order to understand life we need to look at it through many different dimensions. And sometimes we understand another person the best and know how to help them the best when we are not objective. You know, when we're just…
MS. TIPPETT: Well, there's another simple statement for you, but we don't always act on it, yeah.
DR. REMEN: But look, objectivity is a bias like anything else. I mean, the funniest story in — I think this one is in Kitchen Table Wisdom — is — this happened at Sloan-Kettering many, many years ago when I was an intern, first-year doctor. We had a man come into the hospital to die. And, you know, people use to come into the hospital to die. There wasn't a hospice movement then, so that if your care was too difficult to achieve at home, you were admitted to the hospital to die. And this man came in riddled with cancer. He had an osteosarcoma and his bones looked like Swiss cheese. All these lesions were cancer, and there were big snowballs of cancer in his lungs. And in the two weeks or so that he was with us in the hospital, all of these lesions disappeared and they never came back, Krista.
Now, were we in awe? Certainly not. We were frustrated. Obviously someone had misdiagnosed him. So we sent the slides out to pathologists all over the country, and the pathologists sent back the slides saying classic osteogenic sarcoma, you know? So then we had a grand rounds, and the slides were shown, the X-rays were shown, the man himself was shown. And the conclusion of this large group of doctors was that the chemotherapy, which had been stopped 11 months before, had suddenly worked.
Now, the embarrassing part of this story is that I believed this. For the next 15 years I never questioned this conclusion. I think too great a scientific objectivity can make you blind.
MS. TIPPETT: What do you think now?
DR. REMEN: I think that that was one of the purist encounters with mystery that I have ever had in my life. It makes me wonder about who we are, what's possible for us, how this world really operates. I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find.
MS. TIPPETT: Physician and storyteller Rachel Naomi Remen. I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being from American Public Media. Today, a conversation with Rachel Naomi Remen on her pioneering work on the needs of patients, physicians, and other human beings. She works with doctors, for example, on the common experience of loss and disappointment. Physicians typically experience many disappointments every week, she says, from the failure of a medication to the blow of a patient dying. Here's a passage of her writing.
MS. MOOS: [READER] I teach a course now at our local medical school to the first and second year students. At the close of one of these evenings, a woman student stood and told me that her class had already been given two lectures on grieving by the department of psychiatry. I had not known this, and I apologized, saying that it might have been better to choose another topic for the evening's discussion. 'Oh, no,' she said. 'It was different. They taught us grief theory and how to recognize when our patients are grieving a loss and be respectful of that. They just didn't say that we would have anything to grieve.'
The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life. We burn out, not because we don't care, but because we don't grieve. We burn out because we have allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.
MS. TIPPETT: Rachel Naomi Remen's book Kitchen Table Wisdom. Now back to our conversation.
DR. REMEN: No one is comfortable with loss. Being that we're a technological culture, our wish or our first response — let's put it this way: Our first response to loss is try and fix it. When we are in the presence of a loss that cannot be fixed, which is a great many losses, we feel helpless and uncomfortable and we have a tendency to run away, either emotionally or actually distance ourselves. Yeah. And fixing is too small a strategy to deal with loss, you know.
MS. TIPPETT: Right.
DR. REMEN: What we teach the students is something very simple.
MS. TIPPETT: The medical students?
DR. REMEN: Yeah. We teach them the power of their presence, of simply being there and listening and witnessing another person and caring about another person's loss, letting it matter. Letting it matter. We do six hours on loss, two three-hour sessions, and the students have a very simple instruction, which is, they are asked to remember a story of loss from their own lives, and loss — let's put it differently — a time when things didn't go their way, when they were disappointed, when they lost a dream or a relationship or even a family member, a death, you know?
MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm.
DR. REMEN: They get to choose that, and then they spend six hours in small groups talking about their loss. And the group has one instruction: Listen generously. Now, prior to this exercise, we do another exercise with them where we ask them to remember a time of disappointment and loss and to remember someone who helped them. What did that person do? What did they say? What message did they deliver that was helpful to them at a hard time in their lives? And they write these things down very concretely. And then we ask them to remember a time of loss in their lives and remember someone who wanted to help them but was not of help to them. What did that person do and say, and what message did they deliver, and how did they deliver the message? And they write that down.
And then we make a big list. 'What are all the things that helped?' Right? 'Listened to me for as long as I needed to talk.' 'Talked to me in the same way after my loss as they did before my loss.' Right? 'Sat with me.' 'Touched me.' 'Brought me food.' Right? What were the things that didn't help? 'Gave me advice without knowing the full story.' Right? 'Made me feel that the loss was my fault.' So we gather up the wisdom about what helps loss to heal from a group of about a hundred students and faculty, and it's all very simple stuff. And the only instruction is: Listen generously.
MS. TIPPETT: Again, it takes me back to how we began talking about the power of stories in human lives, and your analogy that the stories are the flesh we put on the bones of the facts about our lives. You know, I also hear — I think it's so powerful just to think about this obvious fact, but again one of these obvious facts we don't name very often, that loss is not just catastrophic death. It's that there are many different kinds of losses in our lives all the time, and then this kind of stunning idea that you bring forth that the way we deal with those losses, large and small, can really help or get in the way of the way we deal with the rest of our lives, with what we have. Right? Not just what we've lost.
DR. REMEN: I think this is so. I really do. I feel--how do I put this? Most people try to hold on to the thing that is no longer part of their lives, and they stop themselves in their lives in that way. I have come to see loss as a stage in a process. It's not the bottom line. It's not the end of the story. What happens next is very, very important. And, you know, people respond to losses in different ways. When I first became ill, I was enraged. I hated all the well people. I felt that I was a victim and this was unfair. Right? I was angry for about 10 years. I think all of that anger was my will to live expressed in a very negative way.
And people often are angry in the setting of a terrible loss. They often feel envious of other people, and this is a starting place. But over time things evolve and change. And at the very least, people who have lost a great deal can recognize that they are not victims, they are survivors. They are people who have found the strength to move through something unimaginable to them, perhaps, in the past. And just asking people that question, 'You have suffered a really deep loss. What have you called upon for your strength?' Most people haven't even noticed their strength. They're completely focused on their pain.
MS. TIPPETT: On their loss.
DR. REMEN: On their pain. And isn't that natural, Krista?
MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm.
DR. REMEN: Yeah.
MS. TIPPETT: There's something very hopeful all the way through your writing, even when it is about loss and the hard, dark side of being human. I mean, you do insist — and I'm not sure that modern psychiatry insists on this — that integrity is achievable for everyone, that you see it come to people, and sometimes it comes to people in crisis. You say wholeness is never lost, it is only forgotten.
DR. REMEN: Wholeness includes all of our wounds. It includes all of our vulnerabilities. It is our authentic self, and it doesn't sit in judgment on our wounds or our vulnerabilities. It simply says, 'This is the way we connect to one another.' Often we connect through our wounds, through the wisdom we have gained, the growth that has happened to us. Because we have been wounded allows us to be of help to other people. So it's not a moral judgment. Integrity simply means what is true, to live from the place in you that has the greatest truth. And that truth is always evolving as well.
MS. TIPPETT: Rachel Naomi Remen is medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program and a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. Her books include My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging and Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal. Here, in closing, is another reading from that work.
MS. MOOS: [READER] The most important questions don't seem to have ready answers, but the questions themselves have healing power when they are shared. An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering. Life has no such stopping places. Life is a process whose every event is connected to the moment that just went by. An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.
As a freshman in medical school, I had been randomly selected as class photographer and given a camera to take pictures for the yearbook. I took pictures for four years. At first I felt burdened by the responsibility, the need to carry the heavy camera with me to class, to remember to look at things. But in time the camera caused me to see my ordinary surroundings far more clearly, to become aware of beauty around me in some very unlikely places. It had given me new eyes. A good question is like that Zeiss camera.
In some fairytales, there is a magic word which has the power to undo the spell that has imprisoned someone and free them. When I was small, I would wait anxiously until the prince or the princess stumbled on the formula and said the healing words that would release them into life. Usually the words were some sort of nonsense like 'Shazam.' My magic words have turned out to be 'I don't know.'
MS. TIPPETT: Rachel Naomi Remen has spent a lifetime listening. And in my unedited interview with her, she shares many more of these stories than we could include in this show. We offer several ways for you to download free MP3s of that 90-minute conversation and this produced show — just subscribe to our podcast, our w-mail updates, or visit the show page at onbeing.org.
And we need you to participate in a community narrative we're producing over the summer. We'll be taking your stories about new realities emerging in sustainability as it is being lived — we're creating an illustrated essay out those stories. What causes for renewal and hope do you see before us? Share your perspective about something concrete that makes you contemplate the deeper meanings of themes we've recently been exploring here, of land and the care of land. Look for that Share Your Story link on our home page — onbeing.org.
This program is produced by Colleen Scheck, Chris Heagle, Nancy Rosenbaum, and Shubha Bala. Anne Breckbill is our Web developer. Trent Gilliss is senior editor.
Kate Moos is our managing producer. And I'm Krista Tippett.
Next time, Joanna Macy, a philosopher of ecology and exquisite translator of the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. We explore her sense, after eight decades of life as a thinker and activist, of the grief and promise of our age. Please join us.


text:
Slax author's Blog (RSS)
Taskbar problems in Slax
I got several notices about the taskbar in new Slax. For some users it is really broken. I can reproduce the problem only when I resize screen to a bigger resolution, but for some people it happens even on clean Slax startup.
Will have to digg into it somehow deeply, this should really never happen.
User comments
Yes i have this problem
This issue popped up for me. Resizing to full width fixed it and it stayed fixed, so I am happy. This new version is gorgeous (haven't used it since Slax 6).
I am getting used to the fancy task bar and accidentally removed the system tray. It's easy enough to add back, but the taskbar and desktop go black and restart when I try to add it. Think it could be related? I am going to keep investigating.
Actually the KDE plasma thingy is somehow mysterious for me even after all the warming time I had with it :) I'll release 7.0.7 with the taskbar fixed since this is really annoying bug. Half of the files are mirrored already, but I'm going to sleep, so estimate release time (update of the download page at Slax website) is scheduled when I wake up :)
It really is weird. I have Opera and Skype on it. If either is running, I can't add a new System Tray to the panel or the desktop.
If I close Opera and completely remove Skype, I can add a system tray to the desktop. When I add it, the device notifier messes up and shows the contents of its popup window without it being inside a window. The info (different actions you can take on the mounted device) is just hovering over the desktop.
I am disabling any automount things to see if that changes how it works.
The taskbar always sizes itself slightly differently on each boot even though I don't use changes and don't change anything. The clock toolbar applet can get randomly scrunched for no apparrent reason.
X still cannot figure out my machine has 800x480 screen resolution at startup. It can't figure out that the lid is closed at startup. Slax 6 could be booted, the lid closed, then properly go into the specified sleep mode when the loading was complete.
Interestingly, Porteus has similar confusion with the lid, but not the display resolution...
How (and why:) the heck do you start your laptop with the lid closed? /confused
Read it as
Slax 6 could be booted,
the lid closed,
then properly go into the specified sleep mode when the loading was complete.
Its booted (with lid open)
While still booting the lid is close
Then when booting / loading is completed (lid already closed( it goes to sleep
( I assumed he peek to make sure it goes to sleep).
(and why:)
Well I can imagine a scenario
Before entering a conference room for some hard negotiating , he wants to make sure his laptop is turn on , prime and ready (sleeping to conserve battery).
At critical moment , he jumps up and says "a ha you are wrong". A few click to wake up the laptop , he gleefully shows some hard data to back his argument !
If he were to jump up and then turn on the laptop , the booting time takes away his advantage, as the other side will have time to gather their thoughts!
Jcsoh's reading of the sequence of events is correct.
The eeepc's power-on light flashes when it is suspended, so I know when it is complete. This works in Slax 6. In Slax 7 I must wait for the music, open and reclose the lid.
Jcsoh's *scenario* isn't one I have encountered, though. It is just easier to boot the machine up before heading out to the internet cafe. Then open it and wake it up.
"Boot Linux in Five Seconds" is possible with extensive kernel hacking but it is not a practical reality with most distros.
" It is just easier to boot the machine up before heading out to the internet cafe. Then open it and wake it up."
But is it really safe to physically move the machine around in a sleep state.?
jscoh writes: "But is it really safe to physically move the machine around in a sleep state.?"
Funny. I never considered it a risk. The eeepc has a solid state HDD and I have the default setting for wifi as off.
Linux is stable enough to wake up without any issues. I have done this trick for years.
" The eeepc has a solid state HDD" -Should be no issue here.
But for conventional hard disk there is a danger of the laptop accidentally becoming awake . I had also read case of overheating due to laptop becoming awake when packed in backpack. Probably something pressed against the laptop cover (possibly owner leaning on the bagpack) and the laptop overheat since it was stuff along side the other stuffs in the backpack.
Guess I could do a long blues about sleeping issues, a steaming backpack may well do for a refrain :)
But good to hear it works for someone as advertised.
I too deleted the taskbar by mistake. But when rebooting and unticking Persistent I get the original taskbar. How can I copy that configuration to the usr configuration?


text:
Game development is an exercise in creativity, patience, and understanding. But unfortunately, those skills in and of themselves don't keep the lights turned on or pay your mortgage. Game development - if only to earn the flexibility and freedom to build more games the way YOU want to do it - is just as much about building something that people want to give you money to play (ad model excluded). So after countless hours of development and months of tweaks, bug fixes and refinement, it's time to get paid. All your elbow grease and slick promotion results in an awesome online game and all that's left to do is to sit back and collect the 'duckets in your buckets' for all that hard work. There are a many different tools and services that allow you to integrate credit card and PayPal payments into your site so people can purchase premium membership or top up virtual currency credits. But have you considered mobile payments? If not, you should.
Mobile payments allow players of your online game to use their mobile phone account as an alternative to credit cards or online payment services to "pay to play". Simply using their mobile phone number as their payment account number, charges from you will appear directly on their mobile phone bill and the purchase can be fulfilled in real-time.
When you consider that there are nearly as many people with a mobile phone numbers as there are people who have credit cards all over the world, it makes sense to offer a mobile payment option to your gamers. With the relevance of a mobile phone number and simplicity of such a transaction, many consumers of online games and services prefer using mobile payments over alternatives. That said, while mobile payments are simple, secure, and immediate, they are very different than credit card payments. So what do you need to know to make them work for you and your gamers? Here are the top six things you need to consider.
1. User ExperienceOnline games, particularly social network apps and MMORPGs, have a point during play that requires more credits or adding more virtual currency to continue (or at least to continue without waiting for a day to make your next move). Consider this. In the heat of the battle how much time are you willing to let users take to disrupt their play? You want to monetize a gamers willingness to make a purchase now. Credit card payments typically require moving the user to a different portal (even if it's skinned to look like your website) where the gamer not only enters a name and credit card number, but also billing address, expiration date and security code. Then they are presented with an "are you sure" moment to confirm the transaction. S-L-O-W. While more streamlined, online payment services like PayPal also take people away from your website to login with an ID and password that they may not know, enter information and await confirmation. Yikes. Mobile payment options are fast and far simpler for the gamer; capturing the purchase impulse immediately and without departure from the application itself. They just enter their phone number. A unique confirmation code is then sent via text message to ensure a secure transaction. The whole process takes seconds, and your users, depending on the mobile payment service you choose to use, allows for instant fulfillment of the purchase without the player ever losing contact with the game. In addition to the boosted conversion rates via mobile payment, consider how many gamers will think twice about upping their ante when transferred outside of your game experience and required to find a credit card or login to another online payment service - - if they even have one.
2. Conversion RatesBecause there are nearly as many people with mobile phones as have credit cards, and because it's easier to pay by mobile than to pay by credit card, you will undoubtedly find more people can and will pay by mobile than other payment options you offer. In fact, Mobile First customers have found as many as 10 times of the users willing to pay will complete the transaction using their mobile phone rather than a credit card. That's as much as 1,000 percent more people paying by mobile!
3. Mobile Carrier RegulationsCarriers and mobile operators are not credit banks, and they don't want to see phone bills become credit card statements. To protect themselves, carriers around the world have imposed pretty conservative guidelines on what can be paid for using mobile payments. Fortunately for game developers, most of what you create is able to be paid for using mobile payment; however, it should be noted that - at least for now - carriers accept mobile payment transactions only for digital goods. A digital good includes virtual currencies and products, in-game transactions and subscriptions, miscellaneous online goods and services, as well as items you can install on a phone, such as mobile games or ringtones. Excluded from this multi-billion dollar virtual goods market are gambling and adult content. Over time, these rules are likely to lighten up to include more commerce over mobile.
4. Transaction Fees and Other CostsAs I mentioned before, mobile operators are not credit banks, they're phone companies. They allow their subscribers to purchase mobile goods as an added convenience. But because of the higher conversion rates of mobile over credit cards, and because they do control this ecosystem, carriers impose a higher fee on merchants than credit card companies or online payment services do. Where credit card companies charge 1 - 2 percent, mobile operators can charge as much as 35 percent. And yes, that comes out of your bottom line. But as mentioned before, the conversion rate is ten times greater, so what you may lose in margin you'll more than make up in pure volume. Based on Mobile First data, even with the higher carrier transaction fees, you still stand to increase your bottom line revenue by 600 percent by offering a mobile payment option.
The amount of the transaction fee and your resulting net payout will vary - potentially by large amounts - by mobile payment provider. Be sure to compare the net transaction fee, factoring in both the carrier withholding and the mobile payment provider transaction fee. You'll find that the combination of these two numbers may reveal some hidden fees or hopefully an opportunity to improve your margins. When you're talking about boosting your bottom line by 200 basis points or more, that can represent a significant win. Also be wary of monthly fees or setup charges. The majority of mobile payment providers do not charge setup or monthly fees. That's good news for you because it means there is really no tangible barrier to entry for you to offer mobile payment options to your game players.
5. GeographyWhere will you develop your audience? It doesn't matter (much). Mobile payments have grown to become a widely accepted payment method for more than 2 billion mobile phone subscribers all over the world. Because we're talking about digital goods and the Internet, adding a mobile payment option to your game instantly creates a truly global payment solution in relatively short order. Knowing what countries your consumers are located in - or carpet bombing every possible market - is all it takes.
6. IntegrationYou're a game developer, so adding complex code shouldn't be a problem. But integrating a mobile payment solution shouldn't be complex either. Many mobile payment providers utilize a payment widget which is integrated simply by adding a couple lines (or less) of HTML code to your website or game. Every merchant of different digital goods and services are, well, different. It's important to find a mobile payment provider that can accommodate your needs without custom integration. Do note that reliable mobile payment providers will have to evaluate your site to make sure you're adhering to mobile operator requirements for digital goods and acceptable content; however, short of gambling and adult entertainment it's likely that you're a qualified merchant. All this being said, you should be up and running with mobile payments in as little as a day and not more than a week.
We're not advocating for the replacement of credit cards or PayPal as direct payment methods, but rather are suggesting that you consider mobile as another necessary payment alternative. With these six things in mind, all that's standing between your game today and your game MAKING MORE MONEY is the easy path to accepting mobile payments. So hit the road, go mobile, and get paid.
If you are already accepting direct payments in your games and want to get started offering mobile payments today visit Mobile First. You can expect implementation to take one or two days to fully complete and test. For other resources that aggregate multiple direct and indirect payment methods, including mobile, check out some of the "one-stop shops" like OfferPal, Offerwall by Boomerang, and SuperRewards. For payments as well as distribution assistance check out Viximo.
If you have any questions along the way, I'm happy to answer them. Just drop me a line at email@example.com.
About the author: Kevin Spector, Chief Executive Officer, Mobile First
With an extensive background in mobile content that spans both the consumer and carrier ends of the value chain, Kevin Spector understands how to unlock the commerce potential of the mobile phone. As CEO of Mobile First, Kevin is leading the team that brought to market an infinitely scalable mobile billing and payment platform that unites merchants with consumers all over the world. Kevin's vision is to help harness the international market potential merchant's can derive from mobile billing, establish mobile as a ubiquitous payment mechanism, and to deliver consumers a highly convenient and secure payment option. Kevin joined Mobile First in 2008 from Funmobile, a leading International direct-to-consumer mobile content provider. As Funmobile's vice president of business development, Kevin built industry relationships and directed the development of the company's transaction processing systems. Before Funmobile, Kevin worked in client management at m-Qube through that company's $250 million sale to VeriSign. Prior to VeriSign he spent five years in strategic business development roles at early-stage interactive marketing firms. In addition to his strong mobile and online background, Kevin has a solid foundation in finance and held investment positions at Merrill Lynch and Fidelity Investments. Kevin graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics.


text: This key theme focuses on the protection and enhancement of the Rouge River lands and its tributaries as an environmental system while creating an integrated open space system. The protection of existing natural heritage features for future generations is the primary goal. A passive recreational trail network is proposed to recognize existing boundaries while affording recreational opportunities in a series of connected urban parks.


text:
Product 252/493
Oakley Sunglasses are convenient to wear, and its durable design is people's love. A lot of people like this material. Sunglasses are closely related to high-quality brands. Compact design, the lens to change the vision without affecting the clarity. All have promised these good characters. If you want to have your own unique fashion style, Cheap Oakley Sunglasses is your best choice!
Tailoring Time
It will take about 7 days to prepare the shoes.
We ship to over 200 countries worldwide!
Free Shipping on all orders.
We accept Visa, Visa Debit, Visa Delta, Electron, MasterCard, MasterCard debit and JCB Cards by Credit Card payment. Payment is only debited from your card at time of dispatch.
You can contact us to pay by Western Union or Money Gram, you will save more 8% off pay by Western Union and Money Gram.
Customer Care
Copyright © 2014
. Powered by
Oakley Sunglasses.
oakley sunglasses | oakley sunglasses cheap | cheap oakley | cheap oakley sunglasses | cheap sunglasses


text:
When I became the new owner of Bella Luna Toys in 2009, my vision was not just to operate a retail website, but also to share my experience and expertise as a teacher, mother, and author on topics such as child development, play, and parenting.
To that end, I created Moon Child in order to communicate with our customers, and to connect with parents of young children seeking a different, more natural way of raising their children.
I envisioned the toy store as a small home-based business, and a way to bring in some income to help support the work I am passionate about – writing and sharing my love of Waldorf education.
Everything was going nicely, all according to plan. For about a year.
Thanks to the support of so many of you, Bella Luna Toys grew. And Grew. And GREW!
By early 2011, it was clear that we had outgrown the confines of the small barn next to my home here in Maine from which I was operating, and, even with my family's help, I found myself trying to do at least three full-time jobs.
It was exciting seeing the business grow, but writing began to take a backseat to the day-to-day operation of Bella Luna Toys. By the spring I knew that it was time to make some big decisions.
Last April, Bella Luna Toys moved out of our cozy little barn at home and into a real warehouse in the nearby coastal town of Rockland, Maine (recently voted one of America's coolest small towns), where we can walk to Main St. for lunch, and feel the ocean breeze.
Here, we have a spacious shipping area, I have my own office, and we and lots of room to grow. My husband Max, a writer, is very happy to have his home office back to himself where he can again compose his thoughts in peace, and not find himself covered with packing peanuts at the end of the day!
I also realized I needed more help. During the course of the past year, I hired my three "Shipping Fairies" – Liz, Jessie, and Sarah – all of whom did an AMAZING job keeping up with an extraordinary number of Christmas orders last month.
Now Sarah Reilly has become my full-time, Right-Hand Angel (some might call her a "manager"), in order to free up my time to the things that I love most: writing for the blog, discovering unique new natural toys for children, promoting the importance of play, and sharing my love of Waldorf education. (We hope that two Sarah's won't be too confusing for our customers.)
So my resolution for the New Year is to post more frequently, and to engage more fully with all of you.
In addition, we have some pretty big plans for Bella Luna Toys in 2012, which marks the 10th birthday of the company! We will have more giveaways, and some very special announcements during our 10th anniversary year. If you're not subscribed already, be sure sign up for our newsletter so that you're among the first to hear!
Thanks to those of you who have been a part of Bella Luna Toys' growth this past year. We are filled with gratitude for your support and many kind words. We wouldn't be here without you.
Wishing you and your families many blessings in 2012!
What changes did 2011 bring you and your families? What are your hopes and dreams for the coming year?


text:
When ice cream is so good, it's like an orgasm in your mouth.
Guy #1: Hey bro, you want some of that cookies 'n scream?
Guy #2: Dude wtf is that?
Guy #1: It's some bomb ass ice cream.
Guy #2: Dude wtf is that?
by Eight Foot Phil December 07, 2009


text: I sat down for an evening snack with my husband tonight. It's been almost three months and it's still feels pretty crazy to call him that. MY husband. So we're having a snack and I notice the chocolate milk he is drinking. I hate chocolate milk. Jesse loves it. As much as I don't like the stuff, it will forever remind me of the first things I liked about Jesse. I can't remember his exact words, but his match.com profile mentioned something about still being an eight-year-old at heart, who still enjoys a glass of chocolate milk. Of course I wasn't feeling him on the chocolate milk front, but I loved that he referred to himself as a child at heart. It might sound silly to most, but to me it's what initially attracted me to him. The attraction continued and grew stronger after we exchanged several witty emails. It grew EVEN stronger after that first date, and it continues to grow today in how he constantly makes me laugh, and cherishes, loves, and protects me. He makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. We owe it all to Match.


text:
Akon (Feat. Keri Hilson) - Oh Africa
Akon and Keri Hilson join together to create 'Oh Africa' a song that gives back to the people of Africa. Produced by Rock City
Please click the "Report" button below if the video on this page is not working properly.
Comments will only be displayed by verified emails. No Spamming or Racism.


text:
In the Shadow of Organization
Regents Press of Kansas, 1981 - Organization - 157 pages
From inside the book
27 pages matching complex organizations in this book
Where's the rest of this book?
Results 1-3 of 27
What people are saying - Write a review
We haven't found any reviews in the usual places.
The Rational Model of Administration
Science Organization and Psyche
Praxis as Enlightened Action
3 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
achieve activities Administrative Behavior age of organization B. F. Skinner become bureaucratic Carl Jung Chris Argyris complex organizations concerned context Crazy Horse creative critical critical theory culture death domination E. F. Schumacher Edmund Husserl efficiency efforts Ernest Becker ethic of organization existing experience expression Freud function goals guilt Habermas Herbert Marcuse hero hierarchical Horkheimer human action Ibid impersonal important individual institutions instrumental interaction interest Ira Progoff ization Jung Jurgen Habermas justification leader leadership limited lives meaning model of administration modern organization moral norms objective organization's organizational member organizational society Otto Rank ourselves participants patterns phenomenology political praxis Press problems psyche psychology purposive-rational action quest for immortality rational model reality relationship role science and organization seek sense Sigmund Freud Simon simply social science spiritual structure symbolic technical rationality theory Thomas Molnar tion transcendence understanding values York
References to this book
All Book Search results »
Organizational culture
Peter J. Frost
Snippet view - 1985


text:
Oscar Fish Diet – What Do Oscar Fish Eat?
Let's start with a premise. The object of feeding Oscars in captivity is to duplicate or simulate the fish's diet in the wild. To provide them with nutrition that nature has designed the Oscar's body chemistry to metabolize. One thing, I assure you, a wild Oscar swimming in a tributary of the Amazon River has never eaten is a goldfish. Do Oscar's eat fish? Sure, fish are a component of their diet in the wild. But goldfish are not.
Why is this an important distinction?
Feeder Goldfish
Goldfish are cold water fish. As a result, their flesh is much higher in fats than are fish the Oscar's digestive system is designed to consume. Increased fat in an Oscar's diet can contribute to fatty liver disease. In addition, the flesh of goldfish contains high levels of an enzyme called thiaminase. Thiaminase destroys Thiamin (Vitamin B1). So by feeding goldfish to an Oscar, you are contributing to a vitamin deficiency in your fish. If you are feeding exclusively goldfish, you are slowly killing your fish through malnutrition.
HITH has many causes, but a very common cause of HITH is a diet heavy in goldfish. It's very simple, feeding an Oscar goldfish is a bad idea.
Feeding Oscars Beef (Hamburger) or Poultry
Another food a wild oscar has never seen is beef, hamburger, any poultry product, or beefheart. All of these foods are extremely foreign to an Oscar's system. Each is higher in fat content than even goldfish. So using these foods in your diet, again, is contributing (at a minimum) to fatty liver disease. An Oscar should never be feed these foods. Let alone something as vulgar as dog food or cat food. These foods should simply be rejected as an option.
Oscars should never be fed mammalian or poultry flesh. Easy rule, if it has hair, feathers, or four feet, it should not be considered as a source of food for your Oscar.
What Does a Wild Oscar Fish Eat?
The major portion of a wild Oscar's diet consists of insects and crustaceans such as freshwater shrimp and crawfish. Oscars are not piscivores (carnivorous animals which eat primarily fish.) Fish actually comprise a minor portion of their diet. Oddly enough, the primary fish prey of Oscars in the wild are catfish. Keep that in mind when selecting tankmates.
Nor are Oscar's carnivores (animals which eat only meat.) In the wild, a significant component of an Oscar's diet is fruit that has fallen into the water. As a result, Oscars have a high dietary requirement for Vitamin C.
In addition to fruit, a significant component of a wild Oscar's diet consists of algae and green plants. Not because they seek out these foods and eat them, but because these are the gut contents of their prey.
Feeding Oscar Fish?
We know this much, insects and crustaceans are preferred over fish, Vitamin C is a requirement, and vegetable matter is also necessary. So this certainly rules out goldfish, beef heart, and hamburger.
The primary component of your Oscar fish's diet should consist of a quality pellet. There are many available and each (quality pellet) will contain enough of the necessary proteins, vitamins, and plant/algae to provide your Oscar with the necessary nutrition. Cheap pellet food will not. I do not consider flake foods as acceptable foods for an Oscar. If they steal a few veggie flakes from the SDs, fine, but don't plan on flakes being the primary component of your Oscar's diet. Flake foods are nutritionally inferior to pellet foods and finding a flake big enough for an Oscar is difficult. When feeding Oscars, a quality pellet should be your primary choice, even for juvenile/baby Oscars (get a small pellet).
This requires a partial break away from the subject but it is necessary to define how to identify a quality pellet. The most significant problem with fish food is that the primary component is almost exclusively fish meal. In general, fish meal is composed of the left over's after the more desirable components of the fish are processed for all other uses (think floor sweepings….. scales, skin and bones). The good parts of the food are processed for human consumption and/or other uses and what is left becomes "fish meal".
This is not to say that all "fish meals" are evil. Some are of high enough quality for even human consumption. So just because "fish meal" is the primary component of a fish food does not mean that food is not acceptable. It can be, provided it is produced from quality ingredients by a reputable company. The fish meals used by companies such as Hikari, Dainichi, and NLS can be considered quality meals. Not many others can as the truth of the matter is that these companies, with Tetra being the poster child, purchase fish meal from the lowest bidder with limited concern of the quality, contents, or age of the product. You simply cannot compare "fish meals" contained in Tetra foods with quality meals included in the foods from companies such as Hikari.
What would be considered ideal for use in a fish food, when reading the ingredients, are the use of "whole fish" or "whole fish meal", such as "whole herring" or"whole herring meal", "whole salmon" or "whole salmon meal", etc…. Better yet, when it involves the diet of an Oscar Fish, the inclusion of "whole krill" (or "whole krill meal"), "whole shrimp" or even "shrimp meal", in the ingredient list is something to look for.
If reviewing ingredient labels, it is necessary you understand a "trick" used in labeling fish foods (any pet food, for that matter). Ingredients are listed in an order based upon their weight content in the food, so the first ingredient listed will (or at least should be) the primary ingredient (based upon weight). The trick is that when something like "Whole Salmon" is listed as the first ingredient, this will be the wet weight of the product. What it weighed before it was dried to make the food. Since water will comprise 80% of the "Whole Salmon" weight, in the final product you feed your fish, its weight is only 20% of what it was, which means it actually belongs much further down the list. If the first ingredient listed is "Whole Salmon Meal", this would be a good thing (as it relates to trusting the ingredient list). This would indicate the "fish meal" used contains the whole fish, not just the leftovers. It also means that its listing on the ingredient list is accurate as the "meal" is already dried before it is added to the food. The bad aspect of any "meal", aside from that mentioned previously, is that the creation of any "meal" involves the cooking and drying of the ingredients prior to it being added to your fish's food, an act which greatly degrades the protein and removes beneficial fats. So "Whole Salmon" is a preferred ingredient to "Whole Salmon Meal", but you cannot trust a listing of "Whole Salmon as the primary ingredient. One way to offset this concern is to judge how many other "Whole" (non-meals) are listed as primary ingredients. A series of them provides confidence that the primary components of the food are actually a nutritional product and not a fillter, such as wheat flour.
Something else you want to see in the ingredient list of your pellet food, relatively high on the list, is algae or algae meal, with "spirulina" being preferred, and/or some type of green plant material (kelp is good). In addition, the more supplemental vitamins listed, the better, especially, when considering Oscar Fish, Vitamin C and Vitamin E.
In this day and age, probiotics are becoming a major tool in the arsenal of aquarists and fish farms alike, especially when included in the diet. The use of probiotics can improve digestion and reduce waste, so the inclusion of some type of probiotic (usually a Bacillus species) in the ingredient list is an added plus/benefit.
A pellet that contains high levels of Astaxanthin will help produce those vivid red colors in our Oscars. Krill and shrimp shells (krill preferred) naturally contain high levels of Astaxanthin, so if Astaxanthin is not listed in the ingredient list but krill or shrimp are, it's covered. You can also use frozen or freeze dried krill as a supplemental food to achieve this benefit.
Finally, I prefer a floating pellet to a sinking one. I don't want anything on the substrate of the aquarium that my fish is going to eat. Why? Because I don't want to run the risk of my fish ingesting the substrate by mistake. Many Oscars are lost every year from bloat and the "unknown" cause of many of these bloat ailments is the fish ingested gravel, the gravel caused blockage and resulting death.
So, by feeding a single, carefully selected pellet food, we can simulate (not duplicate) and even improve upon the diet of a wild Oscar. Is this sufficient? No.
Supplements to an Oscar Fish's Diet
The problem with an Oscar's diet that consist exclusively of dried foods, such as pellets, is that this can contribute to constipation, which can contribute to blockage, which can contribute to bloat, which can cause death. Pellets that contain probiotics can help minimize this risk but the best option is to include supplemental foods with higher levels of moisture. If you are not one to feed live foods, SeaChem manufactures NutriDiet, which is a way to introduce "live type" foods without them actually being alive. I've use both the mealworms and the shrimp and find them to be a quality, if not stinky (yes, I said stinky, as in they smell bad), supplemental food. You can also use fresh or frozen shrimp (the same stuff you buy for yourself) as well as the myriad of frozen krill and shrimp products that are available in the hobby. A common practice amongst Oscar enthusiasts is to inject these foods with a fish specific vitamin product, such as Boyd's VitaChem (diabetic type needles/syringes can be bought online at www.drsfosterandsmith.com or purchased at Walgreens, provided they don't think you are a drug addict.) In fact, this concept can help you determine what frozen food to feed your Oscar. If it's too small for you to inject liquid vitamin with a needle, it's too small for your Oscar. This would include frozen bloodworms. Although frozen bloodworms are acceptable for baby/small juvenile Oscars, I don't consider them a good choice for adult Oscars.
Another supplement to your Oscar's diet can be different fruits and vegetables, provided your Oscar will eat them (mine never have, but other Oscar enthusiast have had more luck). Oranges, being high in Vitamin C, would be a wonderful addition to the diet of an Oscar. People have also had luck with items such as bananas, cantaloupe, water melon, zucchini, cucumbers, and green peas. Green peas are a natural laxative and we often use them when curing our Oscars of constipation and constipation caused bloat. Fruits and veggies that contain seeds should have the seeds removed prior to feeding, to prevent their possible contribution to blockage. Just remember, these foods will foul the water quickly, so either the fish eats it soon or you remove it from the tank.
So, nutritionally we have fulfilled all requirements. Is there anything left?
Feeding Oscar Fish Live Foods.
We've dealt with every aspect of a healthy Oscar fish's diet without using any form live foods. Is this sufficient? Nutritionally, absolutely, but I think something is still missing that does not involve nutrition. It involves the fish's mental state.
Use of some form of live foods stimulates your captive Oscar's mentality and "duplicates" the diet of a wild Oscar. It awakens the hunter. There is no doubt in my mind that my Oscars are healthier, more colorful, and more active when live foods are a regular, if infrequent, component of their diet.
The almost exclusive live food I use when feeding Oscars are crickets. Every so often, more in spring and summer than in winter (because I catch them in my house and yard at these times of the year) my Oscar gets live crickets, and he loves them. Crickets allow for the "hunter instinct" to kick in, providing that mental stimulation I am looking for.
The second recommendation I would have for live foods are any of the various freshwater shrimp or crawfish. If feeding large crawfish, be ready for gore and lots of cleanup. Earthworms and mealworms are other good options, although I find they do not provide the same level of stimulation as crickets or freshwater shrimp.
If feeding crickets, grasshopers, or worms you've collected yourself, just be sure they have been caught in an area where pesticides or weed killers have not been used.
The one live food I do not recommend feeding Oscars, primarily because of the hazards it presents, are live fish. We've already been through the goldfish discussion so we know that is a no-no, but nutritionally speaking, other warm water fish such as guppies, mollies, platys, sword tails, convict fry, and danios are perfectly acceptable and many pet stores sell "feeder" versions of these fish. The dangers are two fold. First, you feed your Oscar fish in the hopes you are providing them with good health, not to kill them. The introduction of any "feeder" fish purchased at a fish store carries a significant risk of introducing a pathogen (parasite, bacteria, or virus) into your tank. This risk is magnified when the fish carrying the pathogen is to be consumed by your prized Oscar. It is also necessary to remember Cortez (yes, the Spanish explorer). When he arrived in the new world his crew carried diseases to which they were immune but the South American Indians were not, resulting in the death of thousands. You run the same risk introducing any fish to your tank, with that risk being even greater when introducing "feeders" because of the bad conditions they are generally kept in. Even properly quarantined feeders can introduce a pathogen, because it may be something to which they are immune but your Oscar is not.
The second danger involved with using feeder fish is sheer ballistic destruction. Oscar's are already clumsy fish and nature has not prepared Oscars for objects such as glass heaters, filter intakes, sharp edges on castle ornaments, or the knife like sharp edge of an HOBs outflow. When you drop in a feeder, especially an athletic active one (such as Convict fry), all hell is going to break out in your tank, with your Oscar bouncing off one object to another in an attempt to capture it's prey, which always somehow winds up hiding behind that glass heater, which gets shattered and all the fish electrocuted, or behind the outflow of an HOB, which the Oscar attempts to ram through, resulting in massive gashes on its forehead or body, or hidden behind the spraybar, whose suction cups no longer hold. End result, the Oscar knocks the spraybar out of the tank and the filter is pumping water onto your floor.
You've been warned. That counts as the dog biting once. If it bites twice, it's your fault.
If you are thinking of breeding convicts and using the fry to feed your Oscar, think again. We've all tried and in each instance, it results in the inevitable over run of convicts. They are simply too athletic, your Oscar cannot catch them, and the best that will happen is your Oscar gives up. Soon you'll have several convict fry living in your Oscar tank who will start breeding there as well.
How often do you feed Oscar Fish?
There are many answers to this question but only one concept to remember.
A Hungry Fish is a Healthy Fish.
Let's say that again.
A Hungry Fish is a Healthy Fish.
This is important. If you are feeding your Oscar to a point where it is no longer hungry, you are negatively impacting your fish's health. Think again of the premise that started this article. Wild Oscar's do not get regularly scheduled meals. They get a bit of food here and there, sometimes going days between feedings. So the concept of feeding your fish two or three times per day as much as it will eat in two minutes simply does not apply. An Oscar will eat a half bag of pellets in two minutes, then regurgitate most of it, try to eat what it regurgitated, regurgitate that, then lay on the bottom of the tank in misery for the rest of the day.
The goal, as stated in the premise of this article, is to duplicate or simulate the natural diet of a wild Oscar. This involves more frequent, smaller meals, with periods of food deprivation. When you walk by the tank, throw in a pellet or two. Don't wait until 6pm and throw in 20. Once a week, skip a days feeding. This simulates natural periods of hunger experience by wild Oscars and will help prevent your Oscar from developing boring diet syndrome. Now I do not mean starve your fish. A hungry fish is a healthy fish; a starved one is just dead.
Juvenile Oscars will eat more than adult Oscars and the frequent small feedings absolutely applies to young Oscars. Nor should the skip feeding process be practiced on juvenile Oscars, they need food several times a day, each day. Grown Oscars eat much less frequently than do juvenile Oscars. My prior Oscar was only fed every other day. My current Oscar is fed two or three small meals throughout the day, with no feedings occurring one day a week and some of those "small meals" are skipped as well. Each fish has a different personality and different metabolism so one rule does not fit all. What is important is understanding your fish. You want your fish to be aggressive when going after any food. Allow this to determine how much to feed and how often. Oscar's will always play hungry, the "feed me" dance is natures con. Don't fall for it.
I understand that not all of us can perform the "feed several small meals through the day" routine. If this is the case and it is necessary to feed once per day, do not feed until your fish is full. Feed a pellet (or small number of pellets) at a time. Your fish should be aggressive in going after the food. The moment that aggression declines, stop feeding, the fish has been fed enough. I want to emphasis and clarify. I said, "the moment that aggression DECLINES, stop feeding." It's not, "at the moment that aggression ends, stop feeding." There is a difference. If you wait until "that aggression ends", you've vastly overfed your fish. If you feed your Oscar a pellet at a time and watch them eat, you'll soon know the difference.
As a global statement, as a community, we vastly overfed our fish.
The primary component of your Oscar fish's diet should consist of a quality pellet. While this article is not a "review" of different foods, I would consider NLS, Omega One, Dainichi, Hikari Bio-Gold, and (least preferred on the list) Hikari Gold as the "top line" options. Each has its own benefits; any of them will provide a good nutritional foundation for a healthy fish. My primary pellet is Hikari Bio-Gold, because of the resulting reduction in waste, although I wish I could get NLS ingredients with Hikari Bio-Gold's probiotics. When it comes to pellets, the ingredient list for NLS pellets more closely simulates a wild Oscar's diet.
In addition to a quality pellet, the inclusion of supplemental foods will provide additional benefits, with Krill/Shrimp (fresh, frozen, freeze dried) improving coloration, vegetables and fruits providing improved nutrition (if you can get your Oscar to eat them), and infrequent live foods (crickets recommended) providing mental stimulation, allowing the hunter in your Oscar to emerge. Each of these supplemental foods also helps to prevent boring diet syndrome and the onset of constipation/bloat/blockage that may occur if feeding an all dry diet.
Good luck and let us know (in the forums) your feeding experiences.
And remember.....
A Hungry Fish is a Healthy Fish.


text:
When a band makes a showy change to their established sound – the sudden injection of a horn section, or the decision to 'go electric' – it can often come across as little more than an admission to having run out of ideas. It's interesting to note, then, that PVT (or Pivot as they were once known) decided to lose their vowels and gain a vocalist while they were still very much on an upward creative surge as an instrumental outfit, in no apparent need of a reshuffle or a spice up.
The introduction of vocals and a heavier focus on electronics on 2010's Church With No Magic has been taken even further with Homosapien but, sadly, the further PVT push in this direction, the further they stray from everything which made career highlight O Soundtrack My Heart so vital and promising.
The approach to the use of vocals on Church With No Magic was benefited by its measured application: the singing abstracted and melding into the textures as just one more component in the mix, rather than front and centre. It's a shame that PVT further amplify the vocal lines throughout Homosapien, but without the necessary leap forward in lyricism and melody to justify the approach. Almost all of the tracks on offer here move through undercooked verse refrains to a chorus based around a repeated phrase, with the instrumental backdrop drained of the band's former humanism – swirling arpeggios and drum loops lacking the vibrancy of their former set-up, playing catch up to their contemporaries.
PVT still frequently show flashes of promise and brilliance, but soon undercut themselves through the poor balance between vocal and musicianship. The brooding bass lick of 'Electric' threatens to cultivate an effective sense of menace mixed with sensuality, but gets unseated by the band's ill-chosen commitment to a vocal performance which amounts to little.
The best cuts are those which turn the vocal back into a oblique component in the mix, as well as those which most proudly display their human fingerprints – making title track Homosapien one of the highlights. Taking a vocal cut chopped into razor thin shards, fucking around somewhere over in the left speaker. Distracted and disorientated, the listener fails to notice the chugging guitars (yes, guitars!) ploughing their way into the mix, ramping up the intensity and recalling the invigorating live act which PVT used to be.
6Russell Warfield's Score