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Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
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* Nivolumab (Opdivo)
* Nivolumab (Opdivo)
* Pembrolizumab (Keytruda)
* Pembrolizumab (Keytruda)
* Granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (
* Granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (-)
* Interleukin-2 (IL-2)
* Interleukin-2 (IL-2)
Revision as of 01:33, 6 November 2017
My name is Marc Perkel, and I am not a doctor. I am a cancer patient with a diagnosis of stage 4 adenocarcinoma of the lung (NSCLC). I have personally devised a treatment that seems to have worked by taking advantage of The Abscopal Effect. I'm a computer programmer and electronics designer; and I have 45 years of electronic repair experience - all self-taught - so devising novel solutions to these kinds of difficult problems is not new to me.
A claim of a cancer cure, especially by a non-doctor, is an extraordinary claim, and should be treated as such. However, before you judge who I am or if this is possible, I encourage you to actually read and think through what I propose here on its own merits. I think I'm definitely onto something. Even if this ultimately doesn't work for me, I think the fundamental concepts are correct. If this protocol were tried on 100 patients who otherwise had no hope at all, I think that some would walk away cancer-free. I'm convinced that if this method is fine-tuned and perfected, it has the potential to cure a wide variety of cancers.
My goal in writing this is to give a step-by-step instructional manual that is detailed enough so that any oncologist can understand and implement this treatment protocol. If:
- You are an oncologist who has a patient that you that you have exhausted treatment options for, and
- There's nothing for that patient to lose, and
- You think that what you read here makes medical sense...
Then I encourage you to give it a try. The actual protocol involves:
- Standard drugs that are already commonly used in oncology, combined with
- Radiation used in a way that is a bit unusual, but easier to set up and safer than a standard radiation treatment.
- A process that should involve no discomfort to the patient and should at least not make things worse.
If you are a patient or caregiver, and you or someone you care for has no other options, then take this plan to your oncologist and ask for this. If your oncologist refuses and doesn't offer anything better, then change oncologists until you get a "yes." Even if it doesn't work and you die, you are no worse off than you were.
This is experimental. There are no guarantees.
However, your success, if you ARE successful, will inspire further development and refinement of the protocol. I am sure there is a lot of room for improvement.
So... if you will... read on!
The Abscopal Effect references a process that effectively cures cancer - even incurable cancers - by triggering the immune system to recognize the cancer, identify it as "other," and fight it. It has been observed for decades retrospectively when it happens. However, no one has really figured out WHY it happens, or even more importantly, what to do to MAKE it happen. It's obvious to me that figuring out how to reliably trigger the abscopal effect would be The Holy Grail in the treatment of cancers, and therefore a worthy goal, one that I set out to achieve.
Typically, The Abscopal Effect occurs in patients receiving immunotherapy drugs in combination with radiation. A typical scenario begins with a patient receiving chemo, then then trying immunotherapy, without success. As the disease progresses, a lung tumor begins bleeding, and palliative radiation is performed to stop the bleeding. Then, instead of dying, the patient starts to improve. Not only does the irradiated tumor die, but all other cancer in the body dies as well. This is a rare scenario, and it takes a long time to realize that it HAS happened.
I looked at the problem - how to trigger The Abscopal Effect - not from the perspective of an oncologist, but rather an engineer and a troubleshooter. As anyone with my job will tell you, often you CAN fix things without really knowing anything about the device you are fixing. It's more about patterns and processes and persistence; and solutions don't always come from the places you would expect. So, even though figuring this out was a long shot in the extreme, as Elon would say, "success was at least one of the possible outcomes."
- In cases where The Abscopal Effect was triggered, what were the common conditions?
- What is The Abscopal Effect really?
- And, more importantly, what steps need to happen for The Abscopal Effect to occur?
But before I get deep into the theory, I want to tell you about my treatment, so we all know what we are talking about. Then I'll go into more detail as to why it works.
The Treatment
First - a little background. On August 1, 2016 I was diagnosed with stage 4 adenocarcinoma of the lung (NSCLC) at the age of 61... Kind of a shock for a non-smoker and anti-smoking activist. According to Google, the mean life expediency was 8 months.
I started off with an unconventional treatment that I also came up with myself, but it was in part a copy of a phase 1 study that seemed promising. That treatment involved combining six drugs, and it was somewhat successful for a while. I had always thought that the immune system was the key, but wanted to buy time for the technology to develop. I'm still taking 4 of these drugs, Metformin, Melatonin, Niagen, and Pterostilbene. The last three can be purchased without a prescription on Amazon. Metformin is a prescription adult-onset diabetes drug that is fairly easy to get.
My oncologist was impressed with the results. The combination stopped the cancer's growth for a while. Then in April of 2017, scans indicated that the tumors were growing again. That was to be expected. At that point I was out of acceptable options as I am someone who puts quality of life ahead of quantity. My oncologist said if I had any ideas to let him know. Two days later... I had an idea.
My solution was to start with an infusion of immunotherapy drugs followed by radiation. We chose Ipilimumab (Yervoy) being PD-L1 negative. Ipilimumab had been involved in a lot of abscopal cases. It's an older drug, which is likely the reason it has the highest case count. I think it is likely many similar drugs would work just as well, or maybe even better.
Two days after the infusion, I got the radiation. The treatment was something that I designed, and was rather unusual. Rather than trying to kill the tumor with radiation, the idea was to burn a hole in the center of the tumor, leaving most of the surrounding tumor undamaged. My target tumor was 7.6 cm, and the radiation target was about 3 cm in the tumor's center - a region that was shaped like a hockey puck or small can, a cylinder at the core of the tumor. The size was about 1/3 or less of the tumor's total volume. This was done with a rectangular beam on a rotating head so that all the beams crossed in the center. The Varian x-ray machine was set to 9 million electron volts. I received 9 gy per fraction, three fractions per day, for three days in a row.
The reasoning behind this geometry is that by only hitting the center of the tumor, the collateral radiation is still mostly inside the tumor. It is very important to have a large ratio of radiation exposure of cancer tissue to normal tissue and this geometry provided this contrast. And because only the center of the tumor is targeted the total radiation exposure and risk to the patient is greatly reduced.
It is important to understand that we are not counting on the radiation itself to kill the tumor. The goal is to turn the immune system against the cancer and let the immune system do the killing. What we are doing is creating a school inside the tumor so that the immune system will learn the cancer. It is important to understand this is a school and not a battlefield, so the radiologist is being asked to go against their instincts and to not fry the whole tumor.
It is important that dead cancer be in contact with live cancer to trigger the abscopal response. After the tumor is damaged, but not killed, the tumor will attempt to heal itself. The healing is a good thing because it brings in the immune system. The damage needs to be extensive enough to overwhelm the local TILs and require lymphocytes from the outside be brought in to the fight. When the immune system arrives to try to heal the tumor, it finds necrotic cancer, what is called "bad death," and this is a signal to the immune system to classify this tissue as enemy. The dead cancer reveals its antigens, and the immune system picks that up.
Four days after the radiation I came down with a fever of 101. I thought, "Is this the fever I was hoping for?" A fever is caused when the immune system is going after something. In this case, it's the immune system attacking the cancer. Two days later the fever broke, and most of my cancer symptoms - but not all - were gone.
I don't have any final images yet that indicate success or failure, but I am still alive and feeling pretty good right now, almost seven months after my "median death date." If I have not and do not succeed - even if this doesn't end up working for me - the process makes so much sense that it should work for some people, and if it is perfected, should work for A LOT of people.
The important points here are:
- 1. This process itself isn't that unusual, and
- 2. Any oncologist has access to these drugs, and
- 3. The radiation is actually easier to configure and safer than a normal treatment.
Therefore, this protocol is something that can be tried now. If you are an oncologist, perhaps you have ideas about how to improve it. My goal here is to encourage people to build on these ideas and beat cancer. I might not be out of the woods either, so maybe when I need something else, something else will be available to me.
Asking for this Treatment
If you are a patient you might be wondering, "How do I get this treatment?". First of all it isn't likely that your oncologist is going to just offer it to you. And this isn't part of a trial group that you can join. You are going to have to ask for it, and perhaps insist on it. You may need to fire your oncologist and find one who is willing to think a little outside the box.
Not all oncologists are alike. Many of them will only give you what's on the menu, no variations. They have essentially a script and you're only going to get what everyone else gets based on current standards of care. They also might be working for an institution that doesn't allow variation, in which case you might have to change medical plans.
What you minimally need is an oncologist who is willing to do a little creative thinking, understand what I'm suggesting, agree that the idea looks promising, and be willing to give it a go. And it should be not too hard to do in the context of:
- You are out of options, you are facing short term certain death, and you have nothing to lose.
- This procedure uses standard drugs and radiation equipment and nothing oncologists aren't familiar with.
- You should go into this assuming you are going to die anyway and this is not a miracle cure.
If you are already receiving radiation, especially palliative radiation, ask for an infusion of immunotherapy drugs just before radiation.
If you are already on immunotherapy drugs, ask for a radiation treatment just after an infusion. Tell them to find a nice big tumor and burn a hole in the middle.
The question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to die because of someone's policy? For me the answer was - hell no!
If you are an oncologist and you have patients and this treatment makes sense to you then - why not give it a try. I don't even think any of this is off label. What's new is the combination and sequencing and the radiation is a little unusual.
If you are a radiologist and you are reading this it is important to realize that this is counter intuitive to your training. The important concept to keep in mind is that the goal is to create a sample of dead tumor for the immune system to learn and not think of the radiation being the mechanism that kills the tumor. My radiologist did 3 fractions of 9gy over 3 days. My friend at Varian recommended a single 24gy fraction with a 2-3cm target in the center of a 7.6cm tumor using flattening filter free mode. This is with the head rotating so that all the beams cross in the middle. Imaging a can shaped tumor that is in the center of the real tumor and that imaginary tumor is your target.
I also recommend using oxygen with the treatment to reduce tumor motion and the O2 improves radiation response. I didn't get that but I think it would have been better if I did.
The Details
The above should be enough information to try it, but I'd like to share more details that might help doctors understand the process on a deeper level, and figure out how to improve it. I will also share ideas on how it might be modified to be used for other types of cancers.
What's different about this treatment
If you google immunotherapy and radiation together and abscopal effect you will see a lot of material on other people trying to do something similar. This is part of why I think I'm on the right track as the smart people are trying to do the same thing. The main aspect of what makes my suggestion different is partial radiation of the tumor.
There a 2 reasons to only partially irradiate the tumor. They are:
- High contrast in radiation exposure of normal tissue to to cancer tissue.
- The tumor will attempt to heal, and the attempt to heal triggers the abscopal effect.
The high contrast is achieved because you avoid the edges of the tumor where normal tissue is. That prevents the autoimmune side effect that can happen when you burn the whole tumor. This makes the treatment safer than a normal radiation treatment. Remember the goal isn't to kill the cancer with the radiation. It's to kill the cancer with the immune system.
If you kill the whole tumor then the tumor won't try to heal and there will be no abscopal effect. There has to be physical contact between the immune system and the necrotic cancer. And if by killing the whole tumor you get pneumonitis or other autoimmune response then you have to give the patient steroids to shut down the immune system which kills any chance of an abscopal effect.
I think that the reason that other oncologists are less successful than they would like is because they are irradiating the whole tumor, and that's their mistake. I think partial radiation is a key piece to the puzzle.
2 Step Process
The beauty of this process is in its simplicity. It's just 2 steps.
- Jack up the immune system with drugs.
- Damage a tumor by killing about 1/3 of it while leaving normal tissue undamaged.
Then you wait for the fever which might occur a few days tater. I also followed up with 3 more infusions of immunotherapy drugs in case there was an abscopal effect in progress and it needed a boost. I have no idea if this is necessary - but that's what I did.
The Immune System
Other than the brain, there is probably nothing in the body more complex and less understood than the immune system. Many of you who are not doctors reading this might be wondering why I'm so fixated on the immune system. I'm fixated because the immune system is what keeps everyone from getting cancer.
Cancer isn't a foreign disease like getting the flu. Cancer is you. It grows from your normal cells. And because it is you, it is harder for your immune system to distinguish it from healthy tissue. Even though this is the case, the immune system is both very smart and very sensitive, and it is generally capable of seeing the difference. It smacks down cancer all the time. Everyone gets cancer, but the immune system gets rid of it, at least until it doesn't.
When you get cancer it is because a cancer formed and your immune system failed to stop it. This failure to stop it could be because;
- your immune system is too weak to defeat the cancer, or
- your immune system doesn't see the cancer and can't distinguish it from normal tissue. or
- your immune system sees the cancer, but has incorrectly classified the cancer as "self" or "friend."
This treatment is based on the last condition, that the immune system has wrongly classified the cancer as friend. Therefore the objective of this treatment is to reprogram the immune system to reclassify the cancer as enemy. Once the immune system sees the cancer as enemy it clears the cancer everywhere, down to the very last cell.
Most people's immune systems are capable of killing the cancer, it just chooses not to for some reason. Thus, if one could get the immune system to see the cancer and classify it as "enemy," then the immune system can cure the cancer - everywhere - down to the very last cancer cell.
I am in the spam filtering business. I block junk email for thousands of people and with very good accuracy. It's fortunate that I'm in this business because the way my spam filter works and the way the immune system works are very similar. Both have the same tasks. They have to evaluate email messages or cells and make a binary determination as to friend or foe. Since they are doing the same thing, then it wouldn't be unusual for then to share some of the same processes, even though they are completely different technologies. For example, hydraulics and electronics are completely different but they share the same formulas as do a great many things. In this case, realizing that the immune system is really an information processing engine allows one to see the problem in a different context. We have a programmable weapon and all we need to do is change the programming.
The Adaptive Immune System
The adaptive immune system is the part of the immune system capable of learning. How it learns is beyond my pay grade. It is completely different than computer technology, but it shares some of the capabilities. One doesn't have to understand how it works if you can imitate the processes than make it work. "Monkey see, monkey do."
For example, doctors learned that for many diseases, if you recover from it, then you never get it again. Once your body learns a disease, it remembers it. If it shows up a second time, the immune system knows what it is, and what to do. From this observation, a doctor injected a weakened form of an infection into patients, creating a vaccine. Vaccines teach your immune system what the enemy is, so that when it come along, your immune system attacks and destroys it, without you ever knowing it.
The important thing to know about vaccines is that vaccines are not a form of medicine in the same way that antibiotics are. Vaccines don't kill anything. When you receive a vaccine, you are downloading data. It's just new information. It's a database update. It's programming.
If you have a computer and you're running antivirus software, and you download a virus which it doesn't recognize, the virus runs. But then you download an update to your database of virus definitions, and now the antivirus programs "sees" the virus software, and eliminates it. What I'm doing is essentially the same thing. When things go wrong, it's because the immune system doesn't see the cancer, or sees it and misclassifies it as "friend." The goal of this process is to update the database and reclassify the cancer as "enemy." so that the immune system attacks the cancer and eliminates it.
Thus - the problem is - how do we take the identifying information that is in the cancer and extract it in a way so as to expose it to the immune system with a classification signal that tells it, "This is the enemy?" How do we produce an in situ vaccine that will cause the immune system to attack the cancer?
Understanding Autoimmune Disease
What is autoimmune disease? Autoimmunity happens when your immune system starts attacking normal, healthy tissue. It's sort of the opposite of cancer, in that cancer should be killed and it's not, and autoimmunity causes the killing of something that shouldn't be killed.
One of the side effects of radiation treatment - especially when done concurrently with immunotherapy drugs - is an autoimmune response against normal tissue, especially normal tissue damaged by radiation. Often when radiologists burn out a whole tumor they partially irradiate the surrounding normal tissue, and the immune system goes after that. Does this sound familiar? It should, because that's in part my inspiration for my treatment protocol. I basically took the process that causes autoimmunity and applied it against the cancer.
It turns out that the abscopal effect and the autoimmune response are the same thing. It's like the difference between weeds and flowers. Instead of trying to avoid an autoimmune response, my process tries to create it. And because the radiation target is small inside the tumor, exposure to normal tissue is minimized.
Improvements and Variations of my Treatment
Here are things I haven't tried but might be useful to oncologists who might experiment with this treatment.
Because I had a large lung tumor, we used Varian's equipment, but there was still movement from breathing. I trained myself to do fast shallow breaths to the motion, but a better way, in my opinion, would have been to give me pure oxygen. This would have allowed even shallower breathing or very long breath holds, which would allow more precision for smaller targets. Oxygen also has advantages in helping heal radiation damage in normal tissue and kill damaged cancer cells at the same time. But if the tumors were smaller, I would go with the cyberknife. Although I wasn't given oxygen, I did increase oxygen to the area using heat to dilate my blood vessels to carry more blood. I have a heated car seat and put it on high for the 1 hour drive to the radiologist and back.
Because I had lung cancer, freezing the tumor was not an option. However if there is an accessible tumor I think freezing the tumor might be more effective than radiation. As with radiation, you don't want to freeze the whole tumor, because if you kill the tumor then it doesn't try to heal, and you don't get the abscopal effect. But you CAN freeze the surface of the tumor to create a nice big patch of dead tumor for the immune system to learn. Freezing reduces damage to normal tissue and should be much easier to do for many cancers. Freezing has also been known to cause an abscopal response.
I would also think that an injection of the right kind of poison into the tumor could do the same thing. This would work for any tumor that can be reached by a needle. making this a very low tech treatment. . You would want something that acted very locally and didn't spread around. Again, the idea is to kill only a piece of the tumor so that the tumor tries to heal, without damaging normal tissue that could lead to an autoimmune response. I haven't heard of anyone trying this but it seems like it should work. Perhaps a vaccine adjuvant can be added to the poison to help classify the cancer as enemy.
I chose Ipilimumab, and I have no idea if I made the best choice. It might be that I got lucky. It might be that any immunotherapy drug would have worked. It may be that through future trials we can test and tune for the best drug for each patient. Perhaps using multiple drugs together is even more effective. In fact, if my first attempt hasn't worked, I'm going to try some combination to amp up the immune system even more. Hopefully I won't kill myself in the process. I'm looking at some combination of these drugs:
- Ipilimumab (Yervoy)
- Nivolumab (Opdivo)
- Pembrolizumab (Keytruda)
- Granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CFS)
- Interleukin-2 (IL-2)
I'm going to have to guess as to the amount and the sequencing of these drugs, and then how long to wait afterward administration/infusion to do something to damage the tumor(s). The idea here is to figure out what you have to do to put the immune system in learn mode. Perhaps the use of vaccine adjuvants would help?
Follow Up
This treatment might not be a one shot event. I got 3 more infusions of the drugs after the initial treatment. There may be some optimum post treatment protocol to make sure the treatment sticks. And there will be imaging scans and dealing with scar tissue that needs to be dealt with. It is also possible that this process needs to be repeated several times to make it stick. And there's the psychological treatments. Going from terminal to cured is not as easy as one would think.
My Status
As of this writing, I do not know if my first attempt at the protocol I created succeeded, and if so, to what extent. There is a possibility that I have completely beaten the cancer, and it's just a matter of time (probably a lot of time) to be declared cancer-free.
It is also possible that nothing happened... That I'm delusional, and have a very slow-growing cancer, and would be no worse off had I attempted nothing. It is, of course, extremely easy for a person to fool himself into believing anything comforting when confronted with a fatal diagnosis. I understand this, so I can't rely on my own perception to determine my status.
It is also possible that I still have cancer, but that I triggered a partial immune response, but didn't achieve a sustained response. Perhaps I started an abscopal effect, but I ran out of the right kind of T-cells before they finished the job. I might have to repeat the process in order to succeed.
I still might die
There is no guarantee that this process will work for me. I am convinced that I'm on the right track, and that if this process were applied to a lot of people, that it would work for some of them. If I do die, it doesn't mean it doesn't work. It only means it didn't work for me. Regardless, I'm still facing having to survive complications from the cancer. I've had pneumonia at least twice (possibly three times) since I was diagnosed; and the pneumonia may get me eventually. I'm also still coughing up some mucus, and that is not a good sign.
Going public with this treatment early
Why am I going public with this and recommending it before it has been proven? Because I'm convinced that I'm on the right track, and I'm also fully aware that there might not be a happy ending for me. If I wait until I'm positive, I've lost valuable time when this could have been helping others. If this is a good idea but fails for me, then I've wasted a good idea. If I'm totally wrong and it ultimately doesn't work at all, the idea is still good enough right now to be worth trying and testing. In research there are often dead ends, and this could be one of them. Someone reading this might try it and die anyway, possibly even sooner. Life isn't always fair. I'm an anti-smoking activist and I have lung cancer. How unfair is that?
So, my disclaimer is this:
I'm not a doctor, but it's my opinion that this is worth trying. If you read this and you think that I am onto something, and you try it, I wish you the best of luck.
How I came up with this solution
A little more about me, for those who are trying to understand how a non-doctor managed to figure out something that millions of doctors (and billions of dollars) couldn't. Seems kind of an extraordinary claim, even for me. Perhaps this is all a dream, and none of this is real, including you - the reader.
But for a more serious answer: There was a lot of luck involved. Quite frankly, the oncology community was already 99.9% of the wy there. What I did was like scoring the game-winning touchdown by finding a football on the 1-yard line. I just picked it up and walked it into the end zone. So... Do I deserve a Nobel Prize for Medicine for doing that?
Yes - I do!
My History
It is not unusual for me to solve problems that no one else can solve. I am self-educated in a great many things, and I have very broad knowledge of everything science-related. I have 45 years of experience in computers and electronics, including computer designs and electronic design. I spent many years as an electronics tech repairing a wide variety of equipment, including medical equipment. I had some knowledge of medicine, but had always avoided what I called the "gooey sciences". It's hard for me to watch the needle stick when I get a blood test.
I am someone who thinks outside-the-box to the extreme. I'm so far outside-the-box that I don't even know what the box is, or how people get inside it. I also don't have any self-imposed limits regarding being able to do things that most people think are impossible. This is not the first time I've done something that no one else has done before.
When I got the cancer however, I did not expect that I would beat it. I thought I would likely do a little better than average, and I'd get a year (rather than the median 8 months). I fully expected to be dead by now. All of my longtime friends thought I'd figure out a way to beat it. I did not share that belief. I was prepared to be dead. I lived a really good life, and did more than most people do in 100 lifetimes, so I felt like I got more than my share. After all, I was never going to have to live in a world without me in it, so I felt sorry for the rest of you. (I still secretly believe that the universe is 62 years old and when I die - the universe dies with me.)
Having accepted the inevitable, my life became more of a game. I love solving puzzles, and I wanted to see how far I could get before the clock ran out. Just because no one else could solve it, didn't mean that I couldn't. I'm used to doing that, so I wasn't intimidated. And as a Star Trek fan, I found myself identifying with the Klingons. When a Klingon is fighting a hopeless battle, the quality of the fight becomes the most important thing. If I am to die, then let me die with my hands around my enemy's throat.
This background is important to understand how I think, because I think differently than most people. I am not burdened with the junk that goes through the minds of most people, and being self-educated, no one was there to teach me what I can't do. If there's anything to be learned, this is it. It is also possible I have a better than average memory, and I can process more variables at once.
Crafting the Solution
Sometimes I think backwards from the solution to the problem, working it at both ends simultaneously:
- "This is where I am."
- "This is where I need to get to."
- "This is what I have to work with to get there."
At the solution-end for stage 4 cancer, immunotherapy was the only possible complete cure I saw. When you understand the immune system, it's easy to see why that's the case. But when I found out about the abscopal effect... Well, that's it! Here's another complete cure, but one that was happening incidentally and accidentally. My mission was to make it happen purposefully: To find the method of triggering it.
The first task was to understand as much as possible about the abscopal effect. It was clearly the end result of a sequence of events. My reasoning was: If I do every step of the sequence, then it will happen for me. That's the key: Getting all of the steps right. I asked myself, "What was everyone else missing?"
As a tech fixing equipment that I didn't know how to run, I had learned that I didn't need to know everything. All I needed to know was how to fix it. I didn't need to completely understand it. Also, sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know. I educated myself in oncology by reading a lot of stuff from Google searches and watching countless hours of YouTube videos. One of the things I learned from past experience is that a lot of important people will answer your email questions, especially if they are interested in what you are trying to do. So I started emailing important people in YouTube videos I watched. I explained my goal to them, told them how I wanted to get there, and asked them for their advice. Almost everyone I emailed responded with very helpful information.
So, this wasn't me figuring this out from scratch. I had a lot of really smart people helping me. But everyone else was focused on a narrow piece of the picture, and I needed to put all of the pieces together into a sequence, combining all of the the knowledge and experience from experts in each and every step of the process.
Solving the problem backwards
Sometimes I solve problems backwards, starting at the end and working my way back to the beginning.
Imagine that it is sometime in the future, a time when cancer is cured. In the future, we are remembering the process that made the breakthrough happen. What was it that finally worked? Was it hard or obvious in retrospect?
Let's start with who is being cured now. It's very rare when a stage 4 cancer goes to cured. Most often, the best a patient can hope for is to control it, and only for a while. But when we look at those who go to completely cancer-free, it's almost always an immune response that did it.
The immune system is also the obvious choice. It is capable of identifying every cancer cell and distinguishing it from normal tissue, and it's capable of killing it. Like a bloodhound, all the immune system needs is a whiff of the cancer's scent, and the attack order.
So, how to we get the scent? The identifying proteins (antigens) the immune system needs to learn are out of reach, inside the cancer. What we need is to expose those antigens, to get them out of the cancer mass, put them in contact with CD-8 T-cells, and yell, "attack!". How do we do that?
That's where the abscopal effect comes in. These are the cases of people being cured. But when does that tend to happen? The most common scenario involves a combination of immunotherapy drugs and radiation. I'm convinced that it doesn't have to be radiation - you just need deads cancer cells. It's the dead cancer that is half of what makes it happen.
So we need to find some cancer, and we need to make it dead. Then what?
We know that the immune system has to learn from the dead cancer. So there has to be physical interaction between the dead cancer and the immune system. How is that possible? Where does the actual contact occur?
I did notice in abscopal stories that many involved palliative radiation, radiation to ease discomfort or stop a tumor from bleeding.I pictured in my mind this radiation-induced dead spot on a live tumor and I realized - that's where it happens! The tumor has blood vessels carrying white blood cells, and the tumor is going to attempt to heal the damage. THAT is what triggers the abscopal effect.
Then next thing I considered was autoimmune responses. What are they? What cause them? Why does it happen? Well, you take immunotherapy drugs and you kill a tumor with radiation, but during the radiation treatments, you burn a lot of lung tissue, and then the immune system starts attacking the lungs. The lungs were fried and then the lungs tried to heal and you trigger an autoimmune response. It was then that I realized that an autoimmune response and the abscopal effect are the same thing. What I really needed to trigger was an autoimmune response against the cancer.
Instead of looking at rare abscopal events as my template, I started looking at autoimmunity - a far more common occurrence - as my template. There's a ton of information out there about it, and how to avoid causing it. All I had to do was reverse my thinking, and translate information in how to PREVENT it, into instructions for how to CAUSE it. I needed to design a procedure to trigger an autoimmune response targeted specifically at the cancer.
Now, it's no longer a medical problem, it's an engineering problem. Now it's geometry and math. My world! I used to fix televisions back in to 1970s, when every set had a picture tube - electron beams controlled by magnetic fields, and an electrostatic field used as an accelerator. An x-ray machine for treating cancer is the same thing, just more voltage, and different beam controls. So to me, this was the easy part. But, it's been a long time since I repaired TV sets, so I emailed Varian, the makers of the machine. They replied, and were very happy to help refine the theory. Ultimately it was simple: Burn a hole in the center of the cancer mass. I was able to clearly communicate what I wanted to Dr. Millender, and she implemented it.
It is important that I talk about how I figured it out, because this isn't just a procedure. It's a new way of looking at the problem and a new process for solving the problem. One of the things I ask myself is, "How is it that a non-doctor figured this out?" And part of the answer is that you need a wide perspective, and you have to think more like a computer programmer and an engineer.
I am a broken device.
This is a repair job.
If I did figure this out by thinking differently, then how I solved the problem might be more of a breakthrough than the solution itself. You always have to ask yourself, "Is there a better way to envision the problem? Are there faster methods to get to a solution"?
Justifying taking control
The actual solution is very counter-intuitive to people in the oncology world. Radiologists, for example, are trained to kill every last cancer cell that they can possibly hit. Asking them to leave cancer tissue undamaged when they can hit it, is almost blasphemous in their world. My first radiologist couldn't make herself do it. Oncologists do everything they can do to prevent autoimmune disease, and I was trying to cause it. And last but not least, the idea of a non-doctor patient being the lead in designing the treatment is something that never happens. The hardest part was selling that concept to my medical team.
The way I saw it, I was looking at short term certain death, so there wasn't anything I could do that was worse that what they were offering me. There was nothing more to lose, and I could at least gain the Klingon death. I made that argument to them. In California I qualify for suicide pills, so I said, "If you can give me suicide pills, you can morally give me anything else, and danger is not an excuse not to. My life, my death, my choice"!
Getting Lucky
If I hadn't found Dr. Yavorkovski I would not be here to tell the story. He understood my reasoning at each step and he listened to my Klingon death wish. I think he decided that if I wanted to fight a hopeless battle, that he would support me, and since my various plans actually made sense, he respected that. He went out of his way to make it happen, and he fought for me. I could have come up with the grand ideas, but without the support of the doctors, there's no way it was going to happen. If it had been anywhere but Kaiser Permanente, it would never have been approved.
As I said, they were already very close to the solution. The final step was counter-intuitive, but because my background is different, I was able to put together the final step, which was only partially damaging the tumor, so that the tumor would try to heal, bring in the immune system, and turn the tumor into a school for the immune system. Although this all seems like my idea, and I do deserve some credit, there was a lot of luck involved. But... Since there was bad luck to start with (I got cancer in the first place), it stands to reason that I deserve to get lucky.
I also am self-employed, and I work from home. I make good money with very little effort, so I had a lot of free time to work the problem. Most people wouldn't have had the money and time to do what I was able to do.
I'm also persistent. I don't take no for an answer. I don't accept limitations on what is possible. I also have a lot of friends and smart people helping me. That's the kind of environment where what we call "luck" happens. Without the support I got, this wouldn't have happened.
Nobel Prize?
OK - getting ahead of myself here but if I survive and I did figure out a cure for cancer, or even a process that leads to the cure for cancer, don't I deserve a Nobel Prize in Medicine? And should it matter that I'm not a doctor? If you don't get a Nobel Prize for curing cancer, that do you get a Nobel Prize for? After all, I enjoy bragging and I promised my cancer support group that if I figure out how to cure cancer, that I will spend the rest of my life bragging about it, and that I will be insufferable! So - I have to keep my promise. (I'm the class clown of cancer support group.)
I was teasing my oncology nurse at Cancer Group meetings saying that I felt guilty that I was going to cure cancer and she would lose her job! Maybe she can go back to China and assemble iPhones for a living. She said it would be worth it.
People who helped me come up with this treatment
There are a lot of people who have been helping me. I have a lot of friends. But I want to acknowledge the people who helped me figure this out, and allowed me to actually get the treatment to make this happen.
First of all, I think that if I wasn't a member of Kaiser and living in California, I would likely already be dead. Since Kaiser is both the hospital and an insurer, they have given their doctors real power to make decisions, and get patients the care they need very quickly without having to call an insurance company to get every step approved.
I also want to thank Varian Medical Systems for their help and ideas relating to designing and advising me on the radiation protocol, and their ideas and encouragement to try to trigger the abscopal effect.
Kaiser Permanente
- Dr. Leonid Lavar Yavorkovsky (MD) - My oncologist who lets me do anything I ask for, as long as it makes sense.
- Dr. Laura Ellen Millender (MD) - Radiologist who cooked my tumor, and roasted it the way I wanted it roasted.
- Brandon Hoang Nguyen (LCSW) - Counselor at Kaiser Oncology
- Grace Sun Daun (NP) - Oncology Nurse who catches it when I get pneumonia. (And I don't mean gets the infection from me.)
- Dr. Vasumitha Alamelu (MD) - My general Doctor.
Varian Medical Systems
Varian makes the x-ray radiation equipment used in my treatment.
- Dr. Corey Zankowski - Chief Innovation Officer
- Dr. Deepak "Dee" Khuntia, M.D. - Chief Medical Officer
Other Professionals
- Dr. Polly Matzinger - National Institute of Health, Chief, T-Cell Tolerance and Memory Section - Dr. Polly is the one who developed the "Danger Model of Immunotherapy" which is the new most advanced model of how the immune system works and how to program it. She took the time to share advice with me by email that allowed me to fine-tune this process.
- Dr. Silvia Chaira Formenti, M.D. - Sandra and Edward Meyer Professor of Cancer Research, Chairman, Department of Radiation Oncology, Associate Director, Meyer Cancer Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, Radiation Oncologist in Chief, New York Presbyterian Hospital - Dr. Silvia spent a lot of time discussing my plans by email, and was also helpful in giving me a deeper understanding of the process. She was part of a team that also cured a patient using the abscopal response, that was similar to what I did.
Education in Oncology
- YouTube
- The Great Courses
Friends and Family
I can't possibly list all the friends and family who have supported me through this. I'm going to put together a short list of people who were critical to my survival.
- Leslie Lacour
- Phil Case
- Joyce Main
- Marian Sanders
- Tammy Talpas
- Junko Bordelon
- Blair O'Malley
- Michele Kaeder
- Atia Schreiber
- Ron Dutra
- Roy Perkel
- Rachel Perkel
- Shawn Becker
- Aaron and Abigail Becker
- Matt, Mary, and Ben Drummond
- Paul West
- Michael Dowd
- Becky Carol
- Sue Ferguson
- Lisa Rein
- Angel Raich
- Andrea Chiang
- David Proulx
- John Kovac
And everyone else who helped me who I might have forgot to mention by name.
More Information
If you want to get more detail and additional information, visit my cancer index, and read my other writings. There are also links to other articles and videos that were important to my research. I give fantastic interviews.


text:
We haven't had much to say about the biggest story of the week — the fires in southern California. This is a topic that falls well outside of any expertise I might have, and perhaps the same is true of my colleagues. Hugh Hewitt, on the other hand, is an environmental lawyer, and he has been all over the subject of the fires in his blog and in his Daily Standard column. According to Hugh, the environmental disaster we are witnessing stems from federal species protection policy and the aggressive displacement of local authorities when it comes to land use policy. He points out that "species protection prohibits many ordinary fire precautions. You cannot clear coastal sage scrub, no matter how dense, if a gnatcatcher nests within it–unless the federal government provides a written permission slip which is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. The same prohibition lurks behind every species designation, and can even apply to land on which no endangered species has ever been seen but about which allegations of 'potential occupation have been made. The land that has passed into 'conserved' status is at even greater risk of fire than private land that is home to a protected species because absolutely no one cares for its fire management policy. The scrum of planners, consultants, and G-11s that put together the plans should be monitoring these areas closely. Instead, they regulate and move on to savage the property rights of the next region."
Hugh also notes that Senate Democrats, including California's Barbara Boxer, have obstructed President Bush's healthy forest initiatve, which calls for a thinning of the forests. Now, suddenly, the Senate Democrats have changed course. We hope that the voters, particularly those represented by Sen. Boxer, will take note.
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"Arise and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time." Winston Churchill
"Proclaim Liberty throughout All the land unto All the Inhabitants Thereof." Inscription on the Liberty Bell

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Online portal AOL has agreed to acquire technology news outlet TechCrunch for an undisclosed amount. TechCrunch—founded by the ever-controversial Michael Arrington—operates a portfolio of Web sites centered on technology news; the company also operates industry events, such as the "Crunchies" and the TechCrunch Disrupt event currently taking place in San Francisco, where the acquisition announcement was disclosed.
AOL plans to integrate TechCrunch content offerings into its AOL network of sites and technology properties, which also includes the popular Engadget, Switched, and TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog). TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington says he looks forward to working with everyone at AOL, and some reports have Arrington bound to AOL for three years as a provision of the deal. AOL and TechCrunch have not outlined a role for Arrington once the acquisition is complete.
"TechCrunch and its team will be an outstanding addition to the high-quality content on the AOL Technology Network," said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, in a statement, "which is now a must-buy for advertisers seeking to associate their brands with leading technology content and its audience."
For AOL, the deal seems to be about eyeballs: adding TechCrunch and its traffic to the AOL stable of content offerings is a way to increase the number of users looking at AOL content, and thus the number and price of advertisements AOL can sell alongside that content. However, while AOL CEO Tim Armstrong lauds TechCrunch for its "reputation for top-class journalism," TechCrunch has long been a controversial presence in online technology news: the site famously refuses to honor non-disclosure agreements and has been roundly criticized for publishing inaccurate, accusatory, and inflammatory information. Founder Mark Arrington was also involved in the development of the JooJoo tablet—currently the subject of litigation between TechCrunch and Fusion Garage.
TechCrunch will remain in is San Francisco headquarters as fully-owned subsidiary of AOL.
Update: Business Insider is putting the value of the acquisition in the $25–40 million range, with the possibility that $25 million was cash up front, with another $15 million as a possible performance-related earn-out.


text:
Start: 12:07:06
vicky: hello 3rd!
3rdthawkins: hello vicky
vicky: did you have any trouble coming into the room hello alt!
3rdthawkins: no
alt: Hi 3rdthawkins & vicky
3rdthawkins: hello alt
alt: welcome back 3rdthawkins
vicky: How was your day yesterday alt?
3rdthawkins: thy alt
alt: okay vicky,,, saw 3 of the 4 kids and talked with the 4th on the phone
3rdthawkins: hello vkn
alt: hello vkn... how do you do?
vicky: I see it was enjoyable.. oh yes 3rd, I had forgotten you went to see your grandmother
vkn: Vicky TERRIFIC post on writers!!! How was your trip 3rd
3rdthawkins: yes vicky, it was a good experience to meet a lot of my cousins and some of my aunts and uncles for the first time
alt: I saw vicky say why she enjoys AfriGeneas.. was that Writers?
vicky: I know that feeling 3rd
vkn: Alt only one URL had a prob the other two worked fine
ProfessorDru: Greetings from Hanover County, VA! Am at the county library doing reseach.
3rdthawkins: my mother's step dad, we call him papa, had an article of my mother and her first husband when they married
vicky: great ProfessorDru! Have you had any success yet?
vkn: Great ProfessorDru
3rdthawkins: I'm trying to find that newspaper, I believe it was called the Arizona Tribune, are you familiar with that vicky
vicky: thanks vkn
ProfessorDru: Just found the first marriage surname and maiden of a "Miss Catherine" who owned James A. Fields' family.
3rdthawkins: my mother said it was an AA local newspaper
alt: oh, okay vkn... I used URL's because they were too large for the Chat Upload feature and the Posting size on the Forums
vicky: yes I am 3rd it is an AA newspaper. The publishers were friends of my moms
alt: okay ProfessorDru
vkn: We can work on that together alt and come up with a fix
3rdthawkins: I tried googling it, but nothing came up, East Valley Tribune kept coming up
alt: no problem vkn.. I can do it like I'm 'posed to and stop causing trouble LOL
vicky: The Arizona Tribune is no longer.. It is now the Informant
3rdthawkins: oh, ok, I saw that too and wondered if that was it
vkn: Dru is this library a new experience for you
3rdthawkins: they said they started in 1971 but my mother married in 1963
vicky: The Tribune was owned by Edward and Eloise Banks
ProfessorDru: yes, the library is very small, but they have good stuff.
3rdthawkins: ok
vicky: no the Tribune was way before 71...
alt: that's were the "good stuff' is ProfessorDru .... locally, where it happened
3rdthawkins: that's what threw me off vicky
vkn: To all please check these sites http://www.african-american-genealogy.com/
3rdthawkins: I went to their site and they never mentioned the Tribune
ProfessorDru: The plantation where the Fields family were enslaved is across the street from where I am now.
vicky: The Informant was started by the first black senator from here Clovis Campbell. His son now runs it
3rdthawkins: I wonder if there are still articles remaining from the Tribune
vicky: Thats because it is a different paper 3rd yes there are
alt: How long will you be where you are ProfessorDru? a day, a week?
vkn: and give this one to ayw when she comes in http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/oklahoma/tribes/
3rdthawkins: where would they be vicky? do I have to go back to AZ?
vicky: Some are housed in the State Capitol and some are in a museum located in the basement of the New Times
ProfessorDru: alt, until this afternoon. I've been in the area since Saturday.
alt: oh okay, ProfessorDru
vicky: were they open on saturday Dru or is this your first day
AYWalton: Good afternoon, all.
3rdthawkins: I also was happy to come home and find that my grgrgr grandmother's death Certificate was in the mail
AYWalton: Hello 3rd, alt, Ms. Vicky, Greetings VKN!!!
alt: you're on a 'roll' 3rdthawkins
vicky: hello AYWalton!
AYWalton: how is everyone today?
3rdthawkins: Yes alt, ..................happy to learn her father's name but still have yet to find her in 1870
ProfessorDru: hey angela--I'm in Hanover County now--finding stuff on the slaveowners of the Fields family.
vkn: I am wondering if this is ancestry playing tricks alt and dru and vicky and 3rd or who is Access Genealogy? What do you think AYW http://www.african-american-genealogy.com/
3rdthawkins: I'm also starting research on my mother' step dad's family, Lindsey and Everett in Tennessee not sure vkn
vkn: another for you ayw http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/oklahoma/tribes/
AYWalton: I have seen that weird site before. Strikes me as one of those template sites that have very little content of any kind.
alt: vkn,,,, I thought I remembered the Access thingee... everybody is trying to get in on the action ... and they all advertise as 'bigger & better' LOL
AYWalton: true, alt.
3rdthawkins: I've always run into access genealogy when googling, they are one of those very misleading sites
vkn: Well they have a lot on OK Indians AYW
ProfessorDru: Gotta run now so I can concentrate on my research.
alt: yep 3rdthawkins, they are VERY misleading
AYWalton: Access Genealogy is often cited, but I find it full of errors and don't use their databases.
alt: okay Dru... go concentrate LOL LOL
AYWalton: yes, they do have a lot.
3rdthawkins: I started getting upset being led to that site through search engines, it's basically like a dead end site
AYWalton: I think that they have made some transcriptions, and they never have any originals. Lots of human error.
alt: some of those sites that 'pop up' think we all just fell off of the Turnip Truck and don't know diddly about Genealogy. and they are the first ones to come up with whatever it is they are trying to sell usually a subscription where's vicky?
vicky: here
alt: mighty quiet in your corner LOL LOL
vicky: I was just looking at that site that vkn gave I think I have seen it before also
alt: finding stuff from 15-20 years ago.. gotta get me a couple of archival boxes for storage... I hate to throw out some of those handwritten notes & log books
AYWalton: I know what you mean. It is hard to discard paper.
vicky: I hear you alt. I have to throw anything away
3rdthawkins: speaking of throwing away, I think I threw away some information about my step dad's mother's marriage to one of her first husbands, can't find it now that I know that person was the RIGHT person
alt: you get sentimental & attached to that stuff LOL that's why I keep stuff 3rdthawkins... later on you find those insignificant pieces of paper are really important.
3rdthawkins: don't know why I would throw it away, I had it written down but can't remember where, I saw it recently, just don't know where familysearch doesn't have that marriage rec on their site yet
vicky: AYWalton, my grandaughter had to write a paper last night about the Trail of Tears. Do you think she needed my help lol and I was willing alt and 3rd, I have tiny pieces of scrap paper that I have saved lol
alt: are there images . or just hard copies of the record for your marriage sites she "off-ed" you, huh vicky.... these kids and the 'Net are sumpin' else... they can find 'stuff"
vicky: lol sure did alt just wish she had the genealogy bug. I told her I was leaving her my papers she said no thx lol
Spivey: Hello 3rdthawkins and everyone!
alt: I'm listening to a couple of CD's one of my granddaughters made for me.. Father's Day gift.... she got into her Dad's Jazz collection and burned some good stuff LOL
vicky: got them all mixed up just right for you alt
alt: really did vicky
vicky: alt where does your daughter live Is she still in the service sup with you Spivey?
Spivey: Hee hee hee. My daughter is visiting and I just turned to her and gave her a dirty look and said 'Where my CDs you were 'posed to burn for me?"
vicky: lol @ Spivey
alt: no, this is granddaughter vicky... daughter is out of the service , bought a home and lives here in springfield.
Spivey: Now she trying to pretend she don't know what I'm talking about! ROTFL.
alt: they can be that way Spivey LOL but don't you forget about sumpin' for them LOL
Spivey: You'd think you had abandoned them at birth and never did ANYTHING for them!
alt: ain't it the truth
Spivey: I don't know if I told you all about talking to my cousin whom I had not talked with in over 50 years.
vicky: are you getting anywhere with your research Spivey no, I dont recall that
alt: no Spivey... how did that go?
Spivey: Even though we didn't talk, our mothers kept in touch. His mother is 85 and don't wanna talk 'bout 'nothin' 'cause it might get on the Internet. lol
3rdthawkins: is it the one about the marriages?
Spivey: I didn't know he was doing a bit of research off and on. Now I have a whole new problem. LOL.
vicky: how so
Spivey: I always thought Coleman ADAMS was the patriarch of my Adams family branch. Coleman had a son named Jessie. My cousin says there was another Jessie ADAMS who started the family in Georgia.
vicky: oh!!! thats interesting
Spivey: This Jessie ADAMS, my cousin says, went to Georgia from one of the Carolina states. Very, Miss vicky, especially since COLEMAN was the owner of the family farm along with his wife Violet. I am wondering if Jessie was a sibling of Coleman who was born in Virginia.
alt: Is the "new' jesse older than your Coleman?
Spivey: He doesn't know for sure alt but thinks the date of birth I gave him for Coleman made him around the same age as Coleman.
alt: okay,, so they could have been Bros, Uncle/Nephew ar sumpin' like that
Spivey: What I lack is records of Coleman's birth in Virginia. I know his mother's and father's names from the death certificate of his sister who lived on the family farm with him.
vicky: 3rd did you get any new pictures from your trip?
Spivey: Right alt. I speculate that Coleman was a slave and was sent or taken to Georgia by his owner. It is possible that this 'other Jessie' was taken or sent to the Carolinas.
3rdthawkins: yes vicky, a few
vicky: have you started down that road yet Spivey
alt: that's great tho' spivey cause there does seem to be a familial connection
3rdthawkins: one we are hoping my mother's cousin make a copy of it......it is a pic of my mother, her cousin, their grandmother (my great grandmother Hannah Hughes), and one of my aunts
Spivey: -Years ago Miss vicky. I can't find hide nor hair of Coleman before he appeared on the 1870 census.
vicky: did you see the pic 3rd
Spivey: I got his mother's and father's names from his sisters death certificate, and know that Coleman was a Jr.
3rdthawkins: yes vicky, that would be the only pic I have of Hannah, save her photo on her obit
alt: pre 1870 is 'sleeve-rolling-up" time
vicky: wow, and you didnt have a digital camera either
3rdthawkins: I barely got a hand on it, my brother took it and was going to go to wal-mart or somewhere to blow it up, but never did
Spivey: I am not even sure how to go about it, alt. My efforts produced too many results [Coleman was not, as I thought, an uncommon name] and I was never able to pin any history down on him.
vicky: 49 cents at walmart
alt: me neither Spivey.. slave research is not one of my strong points Kahthu is Da Man there.
3rdthawkins: he had to pic some other relatives up to bring them over our uncles' house as we were starting our family gathering for our grandmother's birthday dinner pic-pick
Spivey: Oh, Khathu is good at finding his slave ancestors alt. You're right about that.
3rdthawkins: there was another pic my aunt had of my four older brothers when they were younger
vicky: mabe you and your cuzzie can help each other Spivey
3rdthawkins: and a pic of me when I was 8, she let us have that one, we will upload them to facebook so she can still have a copy
alt: at least he can point you to the types of record sets that may help better than i can
Spivey: But, given the circumstances, I am not sure even Khathu could help because I just don't have enough information alt. Virginia is too big to go looking for a needle in a haystack. I'll see Miss vicky. Another cousin of mine has been promising me a photo of our grandmother for the past 10 years.
alt: ah, but therein lies the joy of research Spivey... that haystack LOL
3rdthawkins: Of course there's the newspaper article picturing my mother and her first husband, along with her mother and stepfather
Spivey: lol alt.
3rdthawkins: I also saw a pic of my grandmother when she was younger, wish I could have gotten a hold of that
vicky: what was the hubbys name 3rd
alt: in lieu of a digital camera 3rdthawkins, those Kodka throwaways doing a good job of taking pictures of pictures.
Spivey: Actually alt, I was pleasantly surprised to find some Kelsey ancestors [my grandmother was a Kelsey and she married into the Adams family] on the 1870 census laboring on their former owner's plantation still.
3rdthawkins: I took a pic of that pic of my grandmother with a camera my brother had
alt: there you go Spivey... Cluster Research often helps with that haystack.
vicky: 3rd what was your mom's first hubbys name
3rdthawkins: Ronald Simms
vicky: with 2 ms'
Spivey: What does 'Cluster Research' mean alt? I've heard it mentioned here before but don't know anything about it.
alt: hahahaha just like two ss's LOL
3rdthawkins: yes vicky
vicky: wonder if he is related to some sims I know here
3rdthawkins: that's what I was speaking of a week about vicky about your Sims being from Virginia, there are a lot
alt: researching the communities where your family was located, not just relatives, but neighbors as well
AYWalton: alt that was a theme all last week at Samford. When you run out of info on your family----study the neighbors. The same laws and policies and historical circumstances affected them.
3rdthawkins: he was born in D.C. vicky I should say great grandfather
Spivey: Ouch alt! Having problems just with my family!
vicky: may be different set. lol these have been here in Az for eons
alt: but you would be surprised at how the community will direct you to your family Spivey.
AYWalton: indeed, plus people don't think or realize that close neighbors often provided depositions for each other and served as witnesses for each other's life events.
Spivey: I did get into cluster research in a roundabout way, I guess. A neighbor of the Adams farm married an Adams daughter, and I was able to trace him to his probable date of death.
alt: that's how my database got to be so large.. I threw everybody in there just because they were in the 'Hood with my family LOL
AYWalton: that is why one should note who the witnesses were who signed documents. that was wise, alt!
3rdthawkins: I'm trying to find a Dock Price in 1880, I only find a 7 year old Hempstead Co. AR
alt: and the software now allows up to 99K per database... throw
Spivey: I located his third wife alt and thereby estimated the date of his death because she was a widow.
AYWalton: I had better run, folks.
3rdthawkins: Dock was a witness on my grgrgr grandparents' marriage rec
Spivey: I do have his second and third wife in my database alt. So I did something right.
alt: right Spivey.. it is surprising how those neighboring families often connect into your family lines in some manner .
Spivey: That research gave me a fit. That is why you all are absolutely right about looking at the original record. On a census record, the wife of the moment is not distinguished as being the stepmother of the children in the household.
alt: those can be tricky Spivey
3rdthawkins: that's always the tricky part Spivey, because nieces and nephews are only listed as such for head of house
Spivey: But when you see that they were only married for 2 months, and he was divorced twice, then you know that she is probably not the mother of all those children.
vicky: lol
3rdthawkins: I know another hint
alt: right... you gotta look at the 'whole' thing not, just the names
vicky: even boarders can be related
3rdthawkins: sometimes the child who was born in a previous marriage, will be listed last after the other children
alt: and then match up that census data with other reocrds
3rdthawkins: my mother's uncle 5 in 1930 but his sister was listed first (3) because she was the daughter of my great grandparents, the uncle wasn't
Spivey: In this case 3rdthawkins it was the ancestor I was just talking about who was married 3 times. When I looked at the actual record, I could see where the transcribers simply reported what was there. It was obvious that most of the children were by my ?X great aunt.
alt: right 3rdthawkins, there ar all kinds of 'quirks'
3rdthawkins: a similiar instance in 1910 with a grgr granduncle so we have to look at everything
alt: BTW, I saw on a census record from PA where the kids in a family were listed as "NS" for their birth locations. think I saved it.
Spivey: I never did find out what happened to that aunt. From the census records, he was married 3 times and divorced 2 times.
vicky: not sure alt
3rdthawkins: oh yeah, mentioning that alt, I was reading somewhere where N.S. does being Not Stated
alt: I believe it was an ABBRV for not stated vicky
3rdthawkins: being-mean
Spivey: Isn't that what 3rdthawkins was talking about the other day?
3rdthawkins: yes Spivey
vicky: all of mine just say US lol
3rdthawkins: the dreaded U.S.
alt: you gotta be different vicky LOL lOL LOL
vicky: yup! lol
3rdthawkins: well, at least we know they were born in North America
Spivey: Dang, as backward as Georgia was, they did list the states of birth on the census records. lol
vicky: makes it real easy to go down the census page to see who may have been born where they were
Spivey: Used ditto marks too. No mistaking those ditto marks for anything else. You're right, Miss vicky.
3rdthawkins: oh yeah, another thing, we have to be real careful when information is given about a person who is not the head of house or even related to the head of house
alt: I think these are just particular instances Spivey .. the one I saw was a HOH, his wife & his step-children..... he was probably the one interviewed and didn't know where the step-kids were born
3rdthawkins: NOT even related to HOH
Spivey: Maybe that also fits somewhere in the cluster research alt when you see a group of people living in close proximity who were all from the same European country or the same state in the United States.
vicky: sheesh, I have two different dc's where the informant was the husband. They were married over 50 yrs and still gave the wrong information
alt: exactly Spivey.. those 'ethnic' communities after all 'birds of a feather flock together' LOL grief vicky
vicky: wrong info about the wifes parents
3rdthawkins: alt, I appreciate when the head of house puts don't know/unknown or if N.S. or U.S. is put, instead of the same state the HOH was born or were the family is currently residing...........makes me trust the information they give
Spivey: That is what made me wonder if, for example, Florida had a harvesting season where many people migrated there for work. I found a number of my ancestors in Florida when they actually lived in Georgia. Some of them stayed in Florida. Thank goodness for those states' censuses.
3rdthawkins: hello Ingrid
vicky: Texas does not have state census
alt: yep Spivey, and that is often true on counties that border State lines.
3rdthawkins: don't we know it vicky
Ingrid_Doweary: Hey 3rd, Spivey and Vicky.
Spivey: Hi Ingrid_Doweary!
vicky: hello there Ingrid!
alt: Hello Ingrid_Doweary
Ingrid_Doweary: Hey Alt. How is everyone?
3rdthawkins: doing good Ingrid
Spivey: Another piece of luck alt was me finding one of my uncles living in a town where a railroad was being built.
vicky: me Ingrid, I am grumpy
alt: where is your tardy pass Ingrid_Doweary? LOL
3rdthawkins: stay out of that heat vicky lol , I've been down there, I know lol I don't know how you do it lol
Spivey: I got the name of his son-in-law and some of his children from a census record that way. Again, that also has some of the elements of cluster research.
alt: Spivey, the old saying is the harder you work the luckier you get when it comes to those genealogy finds
Ingrid_Doweary: An extremely demanding patron was trying to hog up my time and cause me to break for lunch late, Alt.
alt: okay Ingrid_Doweary, that'll work...this time LOL LOL
Spivey: That's what makes them 'finds' I think, alt. It's like striking a gold lode in a mine.
Ingrid_Doweary: Yeah right. lol lol Yall know how it is when people see you at a desk all day. They think you have nothing to do.
alt: Y'all want to know what I was doing 20 years ago?
Spivey: Yes alt.
Ingrid_Doweary: What was that, Alt.
vicky: thats what my kids think when they see me here at this puter all day lol lol lol
Ingrid_Doweary: ?
Spivey: lol Miss vicky!
3rdthawkins: what were you doing 20 years ago alt?
alt: http://mydatabase.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=mydatabase&view=62&sort=0&albumid=2&photoindex=97&rand=993975719 couple of programs I was involved with
vicky: and I see Ms Lucas named alt
Spivey: Neat alt !
Ingrid_Doweary: You know, Spivey. I can appreciate examining a document such as a census record more than once, because I usually can identify a detail I previously missed.
alt: my lady vicky LOL lOL
Ingrid_Doweary: That was you, Alt? Way to go, Alt.
alt: in person Ingrid_Doweary
Spivey: Oh, tell me about it Ingrid_Doweary. When Ancestry 'lost' my databases, I had to upload a GEDCOM from my computer. Some things don't always transfer and it was in re-doing them that I discovered some blatant things I had missed before.
3rdthawkins: I just need to know why I cant' find my grgrgr grandmother in 1920 or 1930 I don't understand I believe there's something to it, and a reason no way people just come up missing
Spivey: 3rdthawkins is this the information you rejected before?
3rdthawkins: what do you mean Spivey?
alt: Here's a photo of my "idol, mentor & 'girlfriend' when she was in her teens
Spivey: I can remember a couple of years ago, some 'finds' were made in your family tree, but you did not want to accept them because you believed the father of the woman's child was a different man than the one she was living with.
alt: http://mydatabase.tribalpages.com/tribe/browse?userid=mydatabase&view=62&sort=0&albumid=2&photoindex=29&rand=307937156
3rdthawkins: oh, I already solved that Spivey
vicky: pretty woman alt!
3rdthawkins: nice photo
Spivey: Okay 3rdthawkins. Good. Who was the father of the baby?
alt: wasn't she vicky gotta run y'all take care
Spivey: Reminds me of Josephine Baker alt.
Ingrid_Doweary: You know I'm fond of that particular photo, don't you Alt?
vicky: bye alt
3rdthawkins: it was my mother's father, L. T. Townsend, I was fortunate to be able to find him in the SSDI, I ordered it and it gave information about his parents, I did find his paternal line, now I am working on his maternal
Ingrid_Doweary: Yes she does, Spivey.
vicky: hmmm Spivey you are right
Spivey: Great 3rdthawkins.
3rdthawkins: ty Spivey
vicky: alt has some great pictures. I am glad that he shares. I have a great fondness for those oldies Black and Whites are so dramatic
Spivey: Well folks gotta run. My daughter is going to help me solve some computer issues I have. Nice seeing you all again. 'Bye for now.
Ingrid_Doweary: Yes, Vicky. Those pictures add salient pieces to the larger story.
vicky: I remember as a teen when I passed by an older person sitting down on the porch or a bus stop. I always wished I had a camera
3rdthawkins: you're giving me ideas vicky............
vicky: I took up photography in school but should have went on with it
3rdthawkins: my younger brother has a camera and he lets me take pictures with it, I did a lot in AZ, one of my older brothers going to give me a camera, I will definitely be creative with it
Ingrid_Doweary: My brother did that too. Now he's an independent writer, filmmaker and producer.
vicky: is he in LA Ingrid
3rdthawkins: My oldest brother was into photography, my younger brother took it up and loves it. It is really something great to be into
Ingrid_Doweary: No, he's in Chicago.
3rdthawkins: If you all have seen that commercial with Ashton Cutcher advertising that camera, that's the same camera my younger brother has I think it's Nikkon
vicky: yes I have seen it
Ingrid_Doweary: He has an excellent rapport with Sam Greenlee, the author of The Spook That Sat By the Door.
3rdthawkins: really good camera, my brother shot a commercial of a young artist with that camera, came out really good
Ingrid_Doweary: That Nikkon is probably a camera I need to look into. Yes, Vicky. Mr. Greenlee was in Washington, DC last November for a visual presentation of his book and discussion period. The University of the District of Columbia Kappas hosted the program on campus.
vicky: gotta run do laundry.. I hate to leave good company but.....
3rdthawkins: very good camera vicky, took a lot of pics with that, pics came out good, he uploaded them to his laptop, nice photos, I was impressed with the photos I took
Ingrid_Doweary: Cya Vicky.
3rdthawkins: ok vicky c ya tomorrow
vicky: bye
3rdthawkins: oops, I meant to say very good camera Ingrid
Ingrid_Doweary: It's all good. I understand.
3rdthawkins: did I tell you I received my grgrgr grandmother's DC?
Ingrid_Doweary: My phone camera isn't quite getting it for me. Was that the one you recently ordered. ?
3rdthawkins: lol oh yea, not Prof. camera yes it is Ingrid not your average camera
Ingrid_Doweary: Has your grgrgr gandmother's DC answered more questions for you?
3rdthawkins: well it answers to why her children conflicted on her birthplace...... and it gave her father's name or MAY have conflicted
Ingrid_Doweary: Now that you have further examined the DC, has it raised additional questions for you?
3rdthawkins: yes, like where are they in 1870 who was Calvin Williamson (white or black? married to her mother or not?) with Ozan being a Township in Washington, AR, it may explain why Washington, Arkansas, instead of Ozan, AR was given as her birthplace on her son's DC along with her son's, but Texarkana, AR is given as her birthplace on her DC
Ingrid_Doweary: As I experience similar results in my research, I try to identify a checklist of documents that could have been generated during that time period, such as real estate or property tax listings.
3rdthawkins: she was living in Washington, AR........... I cannot find her in 1920 or 1930
Ingrid_Doweary: You will most likely if you have not done so already, research the history of the county, the township and the community. You may be interested in looking for your ancestor in the local community newspapers.
3rdthawkins: I did check hope, AR on, I think it was newspaper archives, but no mention of her
Ingrid_Doweary: Historical and genealogical societies may be of assistance to you. Understand, 3rd. I got a checklist of brick walls, I need to break through.
3rdthawkins: ok Ingrid
Ingrid_Doweary: It's good chatting with you friend. See you next time.
3rdthawkins: ok Ingrid same here, bye


text:
Online Couponing In a Day For Dummies
Table of Contents
Author Information
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Tired of sifting through hundreds of blogs looking for coupons? Here?s an online couponing guide you can trust: Online Couponing In A Day for Dummies.


text:
Hey there!
I figured this pertained to travel..but if it's still in the wrong category sorry!!
I'm moving to japan for a year this fall and I have a question that's been bugging me..
I live in Minnesota and I eat and cook alot of korean food (in many ways it's become a comfort food for me lol).
In Japan is it easy or difficult to get your hands on korean ingredients? Does it depend on where you are? I'm not talking like stuff like the right meats or vegetables I mean stuff like Gochujang or Doenjang, even the korean style seaweed (I looked all over for this the last time I was in Japan..but couldn't find it.. :( ) Maybe this sounds strange, but in some ways not knowing where to get this type of food is going to be a bit pf a culture shock for me haha..even though I'm like minnesotan norwegian :P.. I love Japan and am excited to go, but i understand being in a different culture for a year is going to present alot more challenges than when I was there a few months. Also, I've been told it's important to find some familiar things when going through culture shock. SO yeah...if anyone can answer my strange question I would be so happy!!
Well it sort of depends a lot on where in Japan you are moving to. In the Tokyo area it is not hard to get Korean ingredients, and in general Korean food is getting more popular in Japan. There are also Korean communities in many urban areas. If you are going to a rural area though, you may find it harder.
I would really not worry too much...it's possible to get a lot of different food in Japan, from all kinds of cuisine. And like Japanese food is not too bad :)
The Big Onigiri.
- Wherever you go, there you are. -
AH cool! Thanks Maki. I do LOVE Japanese food. So I won't have a problem getting accustomed to that ^-^ . I just remember, even though I love Japanese food, sometimes I still missed certain foods that I couldn't find in Japan. I'm glad it seems I'll be able to find Korean food pretty easily.
As Maki says, it will depend on where you go in Japan. Answers appropriate to Tokyo won't help you much in Nagoya or a village in Okayama.
Perhaps my experience will reassure you. Despite the Greater London area having the largest number of South Koreans outside of Korea I knew nothing about Korean food. However, my Japanese Father-In-Law speaks Korean, loves the culture, adores the cuisine (something my husband shares) and his passion for the food was transmitted to me in Tokyo. Basically, Japan is where I was introduced to Korean food.
Gochujang (pronounced, I think, Kotsujan in Japanese) is widely used in Japanese kitchens and Korean style nori seaweed (the kind with lots of seasonings) is also very popular. In the food halls of the better department stores there are usually a few stalls specialising in kimchi and a selection of bancha (this is where I usually pick up gosari and jars of yuja/yuzu tea. I admit, I've never actively hunted out Korean ingredients in Japan, just stumbled onto them)
In Tokyo there are very authentic restaurants that get their ingredients sent directly from Korea, others that just use locally sourced foods and adapt Korean classics to the local palate and all kinds of Korean restaurants in between. Shin Okubo is the area most famous for Korean eateries, I believe the more upscale restaurants (those with the imported ingredients) are in the Azabu Juban area, which is near where the South Korean Embassy is located.
Once you know where you'll be living, let us know. We can give you some pointers then.
But don't worry, the food IS there. And if you do end up in a rural area, you can always get a Japanese mail order service to deliver to you.
Here's one of Japan's largest Korean stores: http://www.hanryukan.net/guide/index.html
labelled as 'B' here:
And a good bancha/okazu selection, I'll definitely need to come here! http://www.hanryukan.net/bbs/board.php?board=board04&page=3&command=list...
Well, right now it's still kind of up in the air. It depends on where I am needed. Right now It's looking like I'll be located in the Tokyo area though. Thanks for all the info!! it was really encouraging, and I'm super excited to check out that place!! I hope people don't think I have anything against Japanese food. I really love it. but sometimes having food that reminds you of home can really help with homesickness...I remember the last time I was in Japan, whenever I was homesick I'd go to the Mos burger or a McDonald's for a hamburger. I don't even really like hamburgers haha >.<
So yeah being there for a year, I thought I'd just be prepared to battle the homesickness ha ha! Thankyou!! ^-^
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text:
Conservation order aids Arctic ecosystem
To reduce the mid-continent light goose population, Congress recently authorized the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to issue a conservation order to increase the harvest of light geese.
The Conservation Order Light Goose Season will begin February 14 after the close of Canada goose season and will run through March 31. During the Conservation Order Season there will be no daily bag or possession limit on light geese, which includes snow, blue and Ross' geese. Hunters will be allowed to use unplugged shotguns and electronic calls. Legal shooting hours will begin 30 minutes before legal sunrise and will end 30 minutes after legal sunset. All other waterfowl regulations, including the mandatory use of federally approved nontoxic shot, remain in effect.
The Conservation Order Season is necessary because of the serious long-term damage that the overpopulation of snow geese are causing to their breeding habitat in the Canadian arctic, said Mike O'Meilia, migratory bird biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Tundra habitat in the fragile coastal lowlands of Hudson Bay has been so seriously degraded by geese foraging on arctic vegetation that it may not recover in our lifetimes, perhaps longer.
"This is one of the most serious and unique migratory bird management challenges we have faced in a long time, and hunters are being asked to play a critical role," O'Meilia said. "We do know that if light goose populations are not reduced, habitat degradation will continue and undoubtedly will seriously impact not only light geese but many other species of migratory birds and other arctic wildlife."
The Conservation Order Light Goose Season is not just an extension of the regular light goose season to increase hunting opportunity, but a management action designed to provide hunters the opportunity to help reduce the light goose population to a level that is in balance with their environment.
Goose Hunters: Please Sign Up!
Federal law requires the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation to estimate the harvest of light geese during the Conservation Order Light Goose Season. Therefore, the Department needs those participating in the Conservation Order to provide their names, addresses and telephone numbers in a letter or on a postcard and mail to:
Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation
Att: Light Goose Conservation Order
PO Box 53465
Oklahoma City, OK 73152
Participants in the Conservation Order Light Goose Season will be mailed a harvest survey questionnaire after the close of the season requesting information on their harvest of light geese during the Conservation Order.
Training tomorrow's anglers today
While fishing is a way of life for many Oklahomans, there are many young people who never experience the joys of catching their first fish, watching mom or dad battle the big un', or just spending time with friends dunking worms in the local stream.
To help expose both youths and adults to the timeless thrills of fishing, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation offers basic angling instruction through its Aquatic Resources Education Program (AREP). If you enjoy fishing and would like to share your knowledge with someone just getting started, this is your chance to become involved as a volunteer.
"Most anglers were introduced to fishing by an older family member or good friend who fished," said Colin Berg, Education supervisor for the Wildlife Department. "Today's youth aren't exposed to the same opportunities we had, so it's harder for them to take up a lifelong sport like fishing. This is especially important when you consider that more than 75 percent all anglers had their first fishing experience before the age of 12. If they don't start fishing before that age, there's a chance that they never will."
Volunteer instructors are trained to coordinate and instruct beginning anglers at fishing clinics and other educational events. A typical clinic consists of several educational stations such as fish I.D., proper casting technique, outdoor ethics, knot tying and water safety. After completing the education portion, clinic participants test their newly acquired knowledge at a local fishing hole.
The Department is always looking for new instructors to assist with clinics. If you are 18 years or older and want to share your angling skills with others, are concerned about fishing's future, or just like to work with kids, you should call and reserve a spot at the Department's volunteer training workshop. The workshop will be held Feb. 11, 6-9:30 p.m. at the Department's Oklahoma City headquarters at 1801 N. Lincoln Blvd. (one block south of the State Capitol Bldg.). Pre-registration is required. For information, call (405) 521-4636.
Volunteer instructors needed
Remember who took you fishing the first time? How about the first fish you ever caught? Many of today's youth aren't exposed to fishing, and without an initial fishing experience they may never discover the rewards of fishing.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation realizes the hurdles that potential young anglers face, and we are trying to make a difference. The Department's Aquatic Resources Education Program (AREP) strives to expose youngsters to fishing and aquatic resources through fishing clinics and educational programs.
If you would like to share your fishing or outdoor knowledge with someone, you're invited to attend a FREE AREP volunteer training Feb. 11 from 6-9:30 p.m. at the Department Headquarters, 1801 N. Lincoln, OKC, OK 73105. Pre-registration is required so please call 405/521-4636.
USFWS studying cormorant control
Responding to public concerns about double-crested cormorants, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced its intention to develop a national cormorant management plan.
As part of that process, the USFWS will write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) evaluating the species' status, known and perceived impacts on other resources. The EIS will include potential management strategies. The plan will also consider the possible administrative, logistical, and socio-economic impacts of various management strategies.
Currently, the double-crested cormorant is protected under the Migratory Bird Act Treaty. However, double-crested cormorant populations are at record high levels, creating questions about the effects the birds may be having on recreational fishing, habitat and other migratory birds
"Issues concerning double-crested cormorants are of great interest in Oklahoma, especially to our state's anglers," said Kim Erickson, chief of fisheries for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. "We'll be following these developments closely, and we hope the USFWS will develop a management plan that resolves these issues."
Based on comments received during a public scoping process, the USFWS will evaluate management alternatives in the environmental impact statement. Potential management alternatives range from continuing present policies to implementing large-scale population control measures on breeding grounds, wintering grounds, and migration areas in the United States. The public scoping meetings will be held in either April or May, during which the USFWS will accept public comments about the issue.
Populations of double-crested cormorants declined dramatically during the 1950s and 1960s from the effects of unregulated hunting, the pesticide DDT and the overall declining health of many ecosystems, especially those associated with the Great Lakes. Today, cormorants are thriving due to the presence of ample food in their summer and winter ranges, federal and state protection, and reduced contaminant levels.
The resurgence of double-crested cormorant populations has led to increasing concern about the birds' impact on commercial and recreational fishery resources. Cormorants and other waterbirds such as pelicans and herons can have adverse impacts on fish populations at fish farms, hatcheries, and sites where hatchery-reared fish are released.
Because cormorants are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, their nests and eggs cannot be disturbed, and birds cannot be captured or killed unless a depredation permit is obtained from the USFWS.
Meetings to discuss resident Canada geese
To address problems associated with expanding populations of resident Canada geese, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is developing a national management plan to control these birds.
The first step of this process will begin with a series of public scoping meetings. In these meetings, the USFWS will gather public input about local and regional concerns associated with resident Canada geese. Input generated during the public comment period will be included in the agency's environmental impact statement outlining possible effects of various management strategies.
The closest scoping meeting for Oklahoma residents to attend will be held at 7 p.m., March 1 in Denver at the Colorado Department of Wildlife, Northeast Region Service Center, Hunter Education Building at 6060 Broadway.
Additional comments may be sent in writing to: Chief, Office of Migratory Bird Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of the Interior, ms 634-ARLSQ, 1849 C St. NW, Washington, DC 20240. You can also submit comments electronically to email@example.com. The public comment period will end Mar. 30.
"Over the last 20 years, populations of resident Canada geese have increased significantly in many areas," said Mike O'Meilia, migratory bird biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. "In some areas, there are considerable conflicts with human populations. Therefore, the Fish and Wildlife Service is looking at solutions to resolve these conflicts as part of a comprehensive management plan."
Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the USFWS has the authority to develop a management plan for resident Canada geese, O'Meilia added.
Many resident Canada geese are not migratory, but live year-round in very specific locations. Among the complaints associated with the birds is damage to personal and public property, as well as concerns for public health and safety.
"An adult Canada goose can leave up to a quarter-pound of droppings per day on beaches, parks, golf courses and other areas where people gather," O'Meilia said. "There's also a very significant and dangerous risk of aircraft strikes with these birds near airports."
In addition to these issues, the environmental impact statement will evaluate other factors as sport hunting opportunities and socio-economic effects of resident Canada goose populations.
Tactics for hunting snow geese
Although winter is nearly over, waterfowlers can still enjoy exciting hunting opportunities by participating in the Light Goose Conservation Order.
Passed into law by Congress in 1999, the Conservation Order Season began Feb. 14 and will end on March 31. The purpose of the Conservation Order Season is to reduce populations of snow, blue and Ross' geese before they migrate north and further damage their breeding habitat in the fragile coastal lowlands of Hudson Bay.
To increase the effectiveness of sport hunting during the season, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will allow hunters to use unplugged shotguns and electronic callers for the duration of the season, said Mike O'Meilia, migratory bird biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation. Also, legal shooting hours will begin 30 minutes before legal sunrise and will end 30 minutes after legal sunset.
"The whole purpose of the Conservation Order Season is to reduce the number of snow geese as much as possible within a relatively short time frame," O'Meilia said. "It is vitally important to reduce the number of birds that will be able to reproduce this year, and the extended season allows hunters the opportunity to impact both ends of the birds' migrations."
Although hunters may find snow geese on public lands, most of the birds will be found on private land, particularly in northeast Oklahoma. By doing a little research, hunters can find farmers and other landowners who have suffered extensive crop and property damage from large flocks of snow geese. With a courteous request, one might be able to obtain hunting permission fairly easily.
Methods vary for hunting snow geese, but hunters should remember that snow geese are highly social birds, so they're most likely to be attracted to very large decoy spreads.
Also, three or four people won't be able to make enough noise with mouth calls to convince a large flock of geese to land. Many successful hunters use portable, battery-powered stereo systems (boom boxes) to play goose call tapes at maximum volume.
If you don't have access to large numbers of decoys or stereophonic amplification equipment, you can enjoy varying degrees of success by spotting flocks on farm ponds and then approaching to within shotgun range. Snow geese on farm ponds are very wary, so camouflage clothing and stealth are necessary for hunters to be successful.
Department offers boxes for nesting birds
Oklahomans interested in helping nesting birds such as bluebirds, robins and chickadees should begin preparations now.
Mark Howery, natural resources biologist for the Wildlife Department, said nest boxes and nesting shelves should be erected and cleaned out by late February so birds can receive maximum benefit from them.
"Many birds can produce up to two or three broods per year," Howery said. "They usually start looking for a nesting site in early March, so it is important to have nest boxes and nesting shelves built and in place early in the year."
The Department's Wildlife Diversity Program offers two new nest boxes for interested wildlife enthusiasts. The Dial-A-Bird house costs $18 ($21 by mail) and attracts the widest diversity of cavity-nesting birds, including bluebirds, chickadees, wrens and titmice. The Cedar Nesting Shelf costs $12 ($15 by mail) and attracts robins, phoebes, house finches, Carolina wrens and swallows. Both boxes are fully assembled by Oklahoma veterans and made of Oklahoma red cedar.
"We're extremely proud to offer these two new items for backyard bird enthusiasts," Howery said. "The Dial-A-Bird house is especially good in urban situations, because you can exclude house sparrows simply by dialing the entrance hole smaller."
Packets inside the boxes contain additional information on choosing the best sites to erect them, what species might use them, and precautions to deter predators. Both boxes also include a survey form to rate the success of their use.


text:
To Request a Free RISE Receiver:
• Applicants must be registered with the New York State Commission for the Visually Handicapped or the Library of Congress Talking Books Program OR have a visual or physical condition which impedes access to printed material, as certified by a medical professional, social worker, librarian or rehabilitation counselor.
• Applicants must complete and submit this application form. (Note: You will need Adobe Reader to open this document.)
To Return a Receiver:
• Put the receiver back in the box it was mailed in. This box contains a "Free Matter for the Blind and Handicapped" sticker on the upper right hand corner. If you do not have the original box, use another box with ample padding. If you would like, you can request a "Free Matter for the Blind and Handicapped" sticker by calling RISE at (518) 880-3436. With this sticker, there is no shipping charge.
• Mail the old receiver to: WMHT-RISE, 4 Global View, Troy, NY 12180.


text:
Online Payments
You can pay online for a variety of city services, including business tax receipts, civil citations, construction permits, police extra duty, false alarms, fire inspections, fire permits, McKay Bay autoscale, Wastewater disposals, portable water meters, parking permits, parking tickets, police reports and utility bills. See a complete list below.
- Business License/Tax Renewal (including Foreclosed Property Registrations)
- Civil Citations - Neighborhood Enhancement (formerly Code Enforcement)
- Civil Citations - Police & Water
- Construction Permits
- Fire False Alarms
- Fire Inspections
- Fire Permits
- Hurricane Re-entry Hang Tags
- Interlocal Agreements
- McKay Bay Autoscales
- MHAC Latinos Unidos Scholarship Endowment Fund
- Miscellaneous Accounts Receivables (Police Extra Duty, Police False Alarms, Fire False Alarms, Fire Inspections, Fire Permits, Wastewater Disposals, Water Connections, Interlocal Agreements)
- Parking - Monthly Permits
- Parking - Tickets
- Parks and Recreation Online Activity & Facility Registration (RecTrac)
- Police Extra Duty
- Police False Alarm
- Police Traffic Accident Report Requests
- TECO Electric
- TECO Peoples Gas
- Utility Bills
- Wastewater Disposal
- Water Bills
- Water Connections
- Water Portable Meters
Convenient interactive services. ...no lines, no waiting! And transacting business online may save you money; try out our savings calculator to learn more.


text:
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
Cups of latte are seen on display following the Coffee Fest New York Latte Art Championships at the Javits Center in New York, March 11.
According to the Coffee Fest Latte Art Championships site:
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
Judges evaluate lattes in a number of different categories in the Coffee Fest New York Latte Art Championships, March 11.
The 64 Competitor format features head to head competition as "a match" between the competitors. The competitor receiving the highest score from the three judges advances and the loser is eliminated. Competitors are given three minutes to produce one drink for the judges which is then scored against the competitor at the facing machine.
Judging will be based on five categories:
1) Aesthetic Beauty
2) Definition
3) Color Infusion
4) Degree of Difficulty and Creativity
5) Speed
If you missed your chance in New York, there will be another "shot" in Chicago, June 8-10 at the Navy Pier.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters
Yeung Yiu-fai, from Hong Kong was the overall winner of the Coffee Fest New York Latte Art Championships at the Javits Center in New York, March 11.
New York City hosts 64 professional baristas as they compete in the Coffee Fest Latte Art Championship. TODAY.com's Dara Brown reports.