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IN A LARGE, low-lit room is a triangle-shaped table arranged with 39 place settings, the site of a distinguished gathering. It is laid with plates that rise a few inches off the table, as if levitating, each one sumptuously painted with wings or petals or licks of flame emanating from a glowing center: variations on the vulva. As you move along the table, which is 48 feet long on each side, the plates become small sculptures, bulbous and gleaming. Beneath them are runners embroidered with elaborate designs and names in gold thread — women of accomplishment who are familiar and unfamiliar, mythical and rarely spoken of: Sappho, the ancient poet; Anna Maria van Schurman, the 17th-century artist, thinker and theologian; Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States. The whole assemblage stands on a floor of luminescent triangular tiles covered in more gold — 999 names of other heroic women written in curling letters. The room is like a temple — a holy place, distinct from the everyday.
When Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party" opened on March 14, 1979, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, no one had ever seen anything like it. It was theatrical, audacious and definitively feminist: a work of stark symbolism and detailed scholarship, of elaborate ceramics and needlework that also nodded to the traditional amateurism of those forms, a communal project that was the realization of one woman's uncompromisingly grand vision, inviting both awe and identification. It caused an immediate sensation. But that was only the beginning of its tumultuous life.
One cold day in December, I met Judy Chicago, who is 78, at the Brooklyn Museum, where "The Dinner Party" is now permanently installed. Her style, like "The Dinner Party," is flamboyant and groovy and uncategorizable. She wore jeans, a leopard-print silk shirt under a black vest embroidered with sequins and a double strand of gold beads. Her lipstick was purple, her curly hair dyed a reddish-pink, with tinted glasses to match, giving her a dreamy, psychedelic look. But the eyes peering out from behind those glasses were sharp and commanding.
We walked into "The Dinner Party" accompanied by Chicago's husband and constant companion, the photographer Donald Woodman, who that day played the part of a benign bodyguard. Chicago regarded her creation with the fierce and slightly bemused love of a parent for a grown child. The work is so thoroughly assimilated into art history that its authority feels like a given, but Chicago remains protective of it. She vividly remembers its difficult birth — the years of painstaking labor, the organizing, over five years, of a volunteer force of 400 to help her, the doubt about whether it would ever be finished and the eventual triumph of its debut. Chicago's intention, she told me — with a mixture of self-deprecation and utter seriousness — had been to rededicate the history of Western civilization to the women who are often left out of it. She wanted to make a work so large that it could never be erased. When I asked her what it was like to be in the presence of the piece now, sadness crept into her voice. She said she felt relief. "From the beginning, you know, I was determined — it needed to be permanently housed, because if it hadn't been, it would have simply reiterated the story of erasure it recounts. It just — I had no idea it was going to take this long."
WHEN "THE DINNER PARTY" was first shown in San Francisco, over 100,000 people came to see it in the three months it was on display. Chicago was feted in national magazines and interviewed on the radio. She received letters from women all over the country telling her how moved they were by the piece, how it had changed their lives. But a backlash was brewing. Colleagues whispered that it was not a work of art but a piece of clumsy political rhetoric. A Los Angeles Times art critic cruelly bashed it, calling it "a lumbering mishmash of sleaze and cheese." The tour of the show was canceled, with minimal explanation.
Chicago was shocked. To be rejected by the art world was a refutation of her identity. She'd studied art since she was 5 years old, and had been one of the few women to gain recognition in the 1960s L.A. art scene. For her, "The Dinner Party" was the culmination of a process of radical self-transformation. She retreated to her modest studio in a small town outside San Francisco, $30,000 in debt from loans she'd taken out to pay for the work's completion, and spent the rest of the summer alone. "The Dinner Party" was taken apart, boxed up and put into storage.
For years, the gulf between popular adulation and critical dismissal of "The Dinner Party" persisted. Over the next two decades, it was largely ignored by American art institutions. (An exception was the Brooklyn Museum, which showed it in 1980, prompting a nasty review in The New York Times by Hilton Kramer, who plainly disdained the work's vaginal imagery.) But thanks to the strenuous efforts of Diane Gelon, who had been the project coordinator on "The Dinner Party," it was shown all over the country in alternative venues — the top floor of an office building in Chicago, the Cyclorama in Boston — and supported by donors, from the Rockefellers to women who sent Chicago five dollars because they thought the work was revolutionary. Slowly, "The Dinner Party" was reinscribed into art history. In 2002, when it was acquired and again shown at the Brooklyn Museum, Roberta Smith, an art critic for The Times, pithily summarized its jagged reception. "Call it what you will: kitsch, pornography, artifact, feminist propaganda or a major work of 20th-century art," she wrote. "It doesn't make much difference. 'The Dinner Party' … is important."
When I first saw "The Dinner Party" several years ago, I regarded it with a mixture of reverence and suspicion. I had somehow absorbed two contradictory ideas about it — that it was major and that it was kitsch. Its symbolism had come to supersede its status as a made thing, the product of a particular brain. Standing next to it alongside its creator, the plates glinted with a new meaning. It was a repository of women's history, but it was also an archive of Chicago's evolution as an artist.
I started to imagine how different the fate of "The Dinner Party" would have been if it had been shown for the first time in 2018. The opening with Solange and Patti Smith and Oprah and maybe even Hillary Clinton in attendance; the scores of Instagram posts — loving shots of the plates accompanied by hashtags: #JudyChicago, #Vaginachina, #Herstory — the winking references to it during fashion week. The work's populism, I suspect, would have been instantly embraced by artists and thinkers; no critic would have dared to dismiss it out of hand, though the small number of women of color included in the work might have prompted a heated discussion on social media of an alternative canon of names who could have been listed on the floor. It would have penetrated the culture so deeply that it would have been impossible to reject.
The audacity of "The Dinner Party," its rhetorical energy, its humor (the vulva plates are, among other things, a play on what it might be like if women took as much pride in their anatomy as men did) would be obvious to us now. Chicago anticipated this generation's style of feminism — pugilistic, sincere, frank and unapologetically grandiose. Her investigation of "domestic" forms was also prescient: Artists as different as Swoon, Cindy Sherman and Emma Sulkowicz are indebted to her. Her vision reached beyond the art world as well: She saw how identity could be the locus of larger structural change, how the fury women felt at being left out could be channeled to dismantle the fortified institutions men have built to retain their control. She anticipated the very question at the core of the #MeToo movement: What would the world look like if women held power?
But Chicago seems doomed to a lonely clairvoyance. Of course, she doesn't mind that her nearly-60-year career is finally being considered as a whole — she has upcoming or current shows at the Brooklyn Museum, Salon 94 in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D. C. For a long time, she has chosen to work outside familiar methods and institutions — a path that promised little recognition or attention. She has always taken the long view. Now she has posterity in mind: What will happen to her work once she's gone?
JUDY CHICAGO WAS born Judy Cohen to a progressive Jewish family in Chicago in 1939. Her mother was a former dancer and medical secretary, and her father was a labor organizer who adored his daughter and encouraged her precocity. The house was often full of friends debating books and Marxism, and Chicago was invited to participate. As she writes in "Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist," the first volume of her wonderfully earnest 1975 autobiography, her father instilled in her a lasting sense that she was a match for any interlocutor. Throughout her childhood, she spent Saturdays at the Art Institute of Chicago, taking figure drawing and painting classes, and then wandering through the museum alone, studying Seurat, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec. When Chicago was 13, her father died suddenly — the great loss of her life.
In 1957, she enrolled as an undergraduate at U.C.L.A., eventually earning a master's in painting and sculpture. Through her roommate, she met her first husband Jerry Gerowitz, a rebellious free spirit who was killed in a car accident. At 23, she was a widow, and one of the few women to participate in the burgeoning scene around the Ferus Gallery, a locus of West Coast cool whose artists included Edward Kienholz, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses and Ken Price. This storefront on La Cienega Boulevard represented an irreverent hyper-masculinity. (A 1959 photograph showed four Ferus artists draped over a motorcycle.) Chicago would join "the boys" at the bar where they jousted with one another, teased her and talked about cars and their "joints." She often went home and cried, but told herself to suck it up. This was the world she wanted to be part of.
To fit in, Chicago cultivated her own brand of machismo, shearing her hair, wearing big boots and smoking cigars. She moved away from the biomorphic, feminine imagery that her graduate school professors had ridiculed, and pushed herself to do work that was increasingly abstract and technically difficult. She went to autobody school to learn to spray-paint, making a series of four pastel-colored paintings on car hoods; she created an enormous fiberglass sculpture modeled on freeway pillars and environmental sculptures she called "Atmospheres," setting off flares of colored smoke in the desert, in the mountains and on the beach.
One day, Walter Hopps, an owner of Ferus, visited the Pasadena studio Chicago shared with her second husband, Lloyd Hamrol. Her 1965 sculpture "Rainbow Pickett," a series of brightly colored wooden beams, each progressively larger in size, leaned against the wall. Rather than look at the work, Hopps literally turned his back on it and started talking with Hamrol and another male artist. (In 1966, it was included in "Primary Structures," a major Minimalist show at the Jewish Museum.) Years later, she ran into Hopps and he explained that he'd been paralyzed by the fact that her work was better than that of the men in her circle, and he didn't know how to respond. She was demoralized and increasingly angry. She hated being ignored by critics. She hated constantly being told her ambition made her a bitch and a dyke and that women couldn't be artists.
These experiences of misogyny radicalized her, a stance that was reinforced by literature from the women's movement that was reaching the West Coast — Valerie Solanas's "SCUM Manifesto" (1967), Kate Millet's "Sexual Politics" (1970) and Shulamith Firestone's "The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution" (1970). "If these women could say how they felt," she writes in "Through the Flower," "so could I." Rather than distort her ideas to suit the male-dominated art world, she wanted to invent a new art world, and a new way of being in it. In 1970, she decided to divest herself of her married name. Together with Jack Glenn, the owner of a local gallery, she created an announcement of a solo show that was a spoof on the brawny posters of the Ferus boys. She posed in a boxing ring — one where Muhammad Ali had once trained — wearing work boots, satin shorts and a sweatshirt emblazoned with her chosen name: Judy Chicago. In the ad, Glenn crouches in the background, a skulking manager, and her friend's girlfriend, who was pulled into the shoot at the last minute, poses alongside her. Chicago's expression is confrontational and cocksure.
Her paintings from this period, however, tell a different story. They suggest she was struggling, frightened, trying to invent an image-language that reflected her vulnerability and the bruises she'd sustained trying to wedge her work into the rigid strictures of the art world. She asked herself the question, "How do you fit a soft shape into a hard framework?" and made a series of paintings that tried to answer it. Her painting "Flesh Gate I" from 1972 has a repetitive grid structure painted in gentle oranges and pinks; inside each cell is a dark opening that seems to pulse or beckon. In another series from the same period called "Fresno Fans," pinks and yellows fade and flicker. The paintings are tense and luminous, forceful and delicate. You can feel Chicago breaking out of the cage of abstraction, teaching herself to become the artist who could make work that was declarative and explicit.
Chicago began immersing herself in art made by women, reading literature (Jane Austen, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf and others) and studying generations of female artists (from Judith Leyster to Mary Cassatt to Barbara Hepworth), trying to locate in their work an iconography that reflected the female body and its particular sensations. She painted round forms, shapes that opened and closed and seemed to pulsate or wriggle. She became a teacher of studio classes on feminist art, the first of their kind, at Fresno State College and then at CalArts in Valencia. She pushed her students to create work based on consciousness-raising sessions in which they investigated their experiences as women, including being harassed by men.
In the summer of 1971, along with Dextra Frankel, a curator and professor of art at California State University, Fullerton and Miriam Schapiro, a painter whose work was a model for Chicago's, she toured the West Coast to find pieces for a women's art show. Many of the artists they encountered were self-taught, working in cramped spaces in their bedrooms, on porches, or in the back rooms of studios belonging to male friends or partners. Chicago was struck by the way their art-making was tucked between laundry and cooking, their work displayed among toys and family curios. Some of it was excellent — like the paintings of a woman who worked on scraps of her husband's canvas — but Chicago had to overcome her own snobbery to really begin to see it. Her idea of what it meant to be an artist was changing: It was no longer being alone, making large paintings in a studio; it could be something more improvisatory and intimate.
During this time, her New York contemporaries, feminist artists like the sculptor Lynda Benglis (famous for her nude 1974 Artforum ad — inspired by Chicago — in which she posed with a dildo) or Judith Bernstein (who outraged critics and gallery-goers alike with her large-scale phallic drawings) were establishing themselves as deliberate provocateurs: Their goal was to make men uncomfortable. Chicago was more interested in how feminism could be cultivated within a community. Frustrated by the lack of cohesion among feminist artists, she began to seek a way to create it herself. That, as well as the idea of taking work made at a small scale and enlarging it, of mingling the domestic and the personal, became the basis of an installation, "Womanhouse" (1972), that Chicago and Schapiro undertook with local artists and students at CalArts. (This predated the first all-female cooperative gallery — New York's A.I.R., which counted Bernstein among its members — by about eight months.)
"Women had embedded in houses for centuries and had quilted, sewed, baked, cooked, decorated and nested their creative energies away," Chicago wrote in "Through the Flower." "What would happen, we wondered, if women took those same homemaking activities and carried them to fantasy proportions?" Along with 21 of their students, Schapiro and Chicago renovated a dilapidated 17-room mansion in Hollywood, turning each room into a sculptural environment — Chicago's contribution was the "Menstruation Bathroom," a pristine white-tiled space with a garbage can overflowing with bloody tampons. The living room became the site of performance pieces in which the women enacted births, or engaged in mundane domestic tasks like ironing. Ten thousand people came to see it during its one-month run.
Chicago was becoming convinced that in order for her work to be seen and understood, she would have to create an alternative canon, placing herself in a lineage of powerful women. In 1972, she began a series of biographical portraits called the "Great Ladies," dedicated to historical queens: Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria. They were still abstract: spirals of undulating lines radiating from a taut center, painted in subtly graded pinks, yellows and blues that seemed almost to breathe. She told an interviewer that she "tried to make my form-language and color reveal something really specific about a particular woman in history, like the quality of opening and blockage and stopping, the whole quality of a personality." Eventually, to make her meaning even clearer, she began to write on her paintings, documenting her fears, her methods, her daily experiences, in a cursive that is touchingly neat and girlish. ("I put my finger in my pants and up my vagina, pulling out a bit of leftover menstrual blood," she wrote on a 1973 painting called "The Liberation of the Great Ladies.") The writing unleashed in her a sense of freedom. She began to study the craft of china painting (the decoration and glazing of porcelain) and to wrestle it into the realm of high art with "The Dinner Party." Chicago had to unlearn everything she knew in order to teach herself how to make something so bizarre and original.
FOR THE PAST 23 years, Chicago and Woodman, who were married in 1985 after knowing one another for only three months, have lived and worked in a large brick building in Belen, N. M., 35 miles south of Albuquerque. Their street has an edge-of-the-world quality: It's a few blocks away from one of the largest rail yards in the state, and an old train is parked across the street, near a few scattered buildings squatting in the brilliant sun. The Belen Hotel, as they call their home, a 1907 boardinghouse for railroad workers that Woodman renovated himself, bristled with rugs and objects and artworks, but Chicago's office was spartan, with tall, rigorously arranged bookshelves, framed awards and certificates, and photographs of friends, including one of her mentor Anaïs Nin, whose best-selling diaries, first published in 1966, were an inspiration. The orderliness of Chicago's space spoke to the discipline required to produce works of art that are direct, personal and exposing.
In the dining room, Chicago pointed out a study for a 2012 piece from a series called "Retrospective in a Box," a painting-on-photograph of Chicago's naked body floating against a red background and surrounded by words: "Aging Woman, Artist, Jew. Everyone Would See Who She Really Was." Chicago has continued her restless pursuit of difficult techniques; for her, the effort is synonymous with the emotional risks she has taken as an artist. She has worked on canvas, glass and porcelain, in oils, spray paint, china painting and needlework. She has made sculptures that fill rooms and tiny cookies shaped like vaginas; she has used dry ice and fireworks; she has mounted performances in houses, in parks, at universities and in museums; she has engaged in collaborations and labored, alone, on large series. After "The Dinner Party," she made other enormous works that took many years to complete, on the subjects of birth ("Birth Project," 1980-85), the Holocaust ("Holocaust Project: From Darkness Into Light," 1985-93) and violent masculinity ("PowerPlay," 1982-87). Much of this work is only now being widely shown and studied.
In a 1,800-square-foot warehouse behind the Belen Hotel, Chicago's uncollected work was stacked in crates. In the back room is her personal archive. She has meticulously documented every piece she's made since the early 1960s on some 6,000 index cards, which she and her assistant are organizing for her eventual catalogue raisonée. Meanwhile, what she calls "my major estate plan" is underway: the Judy Chicago portal, a website that will combine the holdings of three institutions: her paper archives at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard, her art education archive at Penn State University Libraries and her visual archive at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. The completion of the portal will follow the opening of the show of her newest series, "The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction," at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in June 2019.
I told Chicago that I was struck that, though she had often struggled in her career — overcoming the disapprobation of critics, the indifference of institutions and overt and tacit misogyny — she had managed to hold onto a sense of her work's importance. She said, with her usual matter-of-factness, that it was simply a matter of pragmatism.
"I know the history of what's happened to women artists' work," she said. "A lot of women artists believe that everything has changed. I don't believe that that is true. Like, when we were in Paris the last time, there was an exhibition of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. You know who she was?" I didn't.
Vigée Le Brun, Chicago told me, was a court painter in 18th-century France and a superb technician. Marie Antoinette was her patron. "She was the most prolific woman artist who had ever lived, up to her time," she said. And her 2015 retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris, almost 200 years after her death, was her first major career survey. Chicago looked at me seriously. "One of my goals was to make sure that my work would not be lost. And I did not make an assumption that all would be taken care of." It was her responsibility, her legacy to protect.
We walked into one of her three studios on the ground floor of the house, the one devoted to her glass and china paintings. She showed me panels from her most recent series, "The End," 37 paintings on black glass and porcelain and two bronze reliefs comprising an investigation of death: her own and the planet's. The panels include 13 self-portraits imagining herself dying in different scenarios — painfully, peacefully, in one of them with Woodman at her side. Getting color to affix to black glass is exceedingly difficult, requiring multiple firings at very high temperatures; the result has a hard clarity. The paintings were spare and haunting, like folk songs.
I thought of a conversation I'd had with the curator and gallerist Jeffrey Deitch about a common misunderstanding about Chicago. "Those who haven't seen this amazing history of her work in the 1960s and '70s, they wouldn't classify her as an artistic heavyweight, because 'The Dinner Party,' though it has tremendous intellectual structure, it is meant to be very accessible," he told me. This is a central tension of Chicago's life and work: She masters unyielding materials, immerses herself in the intellectual history of a major subject and flays her insides to get at powerful emotion. The result is work that is simple and comprehensible. Paradoxically, this simplicity may be the primary expression of her grandeur. She wants everyone to see her art and to understand it, so that it might change them and the world.
And it has. Once your eye is trained to see Chicago's imprint, it is everywhere, and unmistakable. It's in Petra Collins's menstruation-positive T-shirts; in the forthcoming installation on Sunset Boulevard in L.A. by Zoe Buckman of a huge uterus drawn in neon tubing crowned with boxing gloves; in the pink "pussy hats" that are worn in opposition to Trump's election. Images like these — symbolically overt, politically and anatomically in-your-face, forcing a public confrontation with sexism — are all descended from Chicago's imagination.
Over our time together, I asked her several times, in several different ways, to tell me who she thought her inheritors and peers are. If she had a seat at "The Dinner Party," which names would flow from her? But she didn't want to answer the question. She has always felt out of step with the present. "Look, you know, before I get interested in somebody, they have to have a long, sustained career. Because that's what real art grows out of." Not the "make-it" dream, not bursts of youthful ingenuity, not critical acclaim — just continuing, no matter the circumstances, to make art. "That," she said, "is what I admire."


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VAT Explained
Will's Whiteboard
For businesses planning to expand internationally, managing VAT (Value Added Tax) can be tricky. Avalara explains how to stay compliant.
Hi, welcome to Will's White Board. I'm Will. Today we're going to be talking about VAT or Value Added Tax. Many people struggle to understand what exactly VAT is and how it works, but it's extremely important. Over 150 countries use VAT including China and India, and most of Europe. So for global and international businesses it's imperative that you understand VAT. Let's take a look.
Okay, VAT is an indirect tax that is given to the government at every stage of production of an item, in other words, every time there is value added. Let's take an example from the furniture industry. Let's just say that there is a lumber company and they're selling lumber to a furniture maker and they're going to sell it for 50 euros and the VAT rate is 10%. So that means that on 50 euros there would be 5 euros VAT. Now the lumber company is going to give that 5 euros directly to the government, so 5 euros here to the government. The furniture maker buys it for 55 euros and let's say that they're going to sell it to the furniture store, but they're adding value so they charge 120 euros to the furniture store. That's 12 euros VAT. Now, the furniture maker is going to also give VAT to the government because there was value added, but they're not going to give the full 12 because the government already got 5. So they're going to give 12 minus 5 equals 7.
We'll say that again in case you missed it. The furniture maker sells it to the retail store for 132 euros and the retailer is going to sell it to the consumer and let's say they want to sell it for 150 euros, which would be 15 euros VAT. So the consumer pays 165 euros and the furniture store is going to remit that again, but a total of 12 euros is already paid. So they take the 15 and subtract the 12 coming from here and they're going to remit 3 to the government. So at each stage when value is added VAT is remitted to the government, but if there was an amount of VAT that was previously paid that gets subtracted from how much an entity remits to the government. I hope this helps you understand VAT and I'll see you next time, bye.

subset: commoncrawl


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Note: I'm going to risk a bit of copyright infringement today, which is generally unlike me. However, I am not gaining anything from this – and in fact, hopefully I'm giving some publicity to the estate of Issac Asimov, rather than diminishing the value of the works. If the publishers would like to make another run of this particular book, I'd be more than happy to take it down from the Internet.
Isaac Asimov has always been one of my favorite authors. I've never been certain how serious he was about doing research science as a career, but I've always been inspired by the idea of a scientist becoming an author to publicize the value of science. There's something noble about it. Although, like me, Asimov may have had a passion for science, but struggled in the lab. As he phrased it, "Whatever gifts I have, none of them includes deftness in experiment work." (The Magic Isle, 1977) I've always just said that glassware and I don't get along, but I'm pretty sure we're on the same page.
In any case, Asimov worked in an age before computers, so my solution of moving into bioinformatics wasn't an avenue open to him – and unfortunately, neither was blogging. Asimov, however, was a prolific writer in the age before the internet and his style lends itself beautifully to the blogging format. Although his pieces are slightly longer than the average blog, they have a format that has inspired me – and which I have always tried to emulate. No surprise, though, Asimov has been a hero of mine almost since I was able to read.
Frankly, if he had lived during the age of the Internet, I think he'd not only have a blog, but he'd be one of the most prolific bloggers around. In a tribute to him, I'd like to republish one of his essays – it's eerie how well it transcends the generations. It's one of his most timeless pieces, in my humble opinion. Asimov, like me, always starts his pieces with some preamble or a short story. The one used here is a bit dated, but please stick with it, the rest of the piece makes up for it, charting out a manifesto for skeptics, for good science and for rational though. Without further ado, I'm going to republish the full piece here. Please keep in mind that he wrote this 35 years ago – before I was born, before atheism was acceptable, and while skepticism was just taking off.
Isaac Asimov, you are my hero.
The following piece is reprinted without permission from Chapter seventeen of Isaac Asimov's book Quasar, Quasar burning bright, originally printed in the February 1977 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. (I believe neither book nor magazine are in press anywhere – and if they are, I highly recommend you pick up a copy just to have this essay on hand.) Mistakes in the text below are undoubtedly mine.
I have just come back from Rensselaerville, New York, where, for the fifth year, I have led a four-day seminar on some futuristic topics. (This time it was on the colonization of space.) Some seventy to eighty people attended, almost all of them interested in science fiction and all of them eager to apply their imaginations to the posing of problems and the suggesting of solutions.
The seminar only runs from a Sunday to a Thursday, but by Thursday there is a mass heartbreak at the thought of leaving and vast promises (usually kept) to return the next year.
This year we managed to persuade Ben Bova (editor of Analog) and his charming wife, Barbara, to attend. They threw themselves into the sessions with a will and were beloved by all.
Finally came the end, at Thursday noon, and, as is customary on these occasions, I was given a fancy pseudo-plaque testifying to my good nature and to my suave approach towards members of the opposite sex. [footnote: See my book The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, (Walker 1971).]
A charming young woman, not quite five feet tall, made the presentation and in simple gratitude, I placed my arm about her waist. Owing to her unusually short height, however, I didn't manage to get low enough and the result brought laughter from the audience.
Trying to dismiss this embarrassing faux pas (though I must admit that neither of us budged), I said "I'm sorry, folks. That's just the Asimov grip."
And from the audience Ben Bova (who, it seems appropriate to say in this particular connection, is my bosom buddy) called out "Is that anything like the swine flu?
I was wiped out, and what does one do when one has been wiped out by a beloved pal? Why one turns about and proceeds to try to wipe out some other beloved pal. – In this case, my English colleague Arthur C. Clarke.
In Arthur's book, Profiles of the Future(Harper & Row, 1962) he advances what he himself calls "Clarke's Law." It goes as follows:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Arthur goes on to explain what he means by "elderly." He says: "In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties."
Arthur goes on to give examples of "distinguished but elderly scientists" who have pished and tut-tutted all sorts of things that have come to pass almost immediately. The distinguished Briton Ernest Rutherford pooh-poohed the possibility of nuclear power, the distinguished American Vannevar Bush bah-humbugged intercontinental ballistic missiles, and so on.
But naturally when I read a paragraph like that, knowing Arthur as I do, I begin to wonder if, among all the others, he is thinking of me.
After all, I'm a scientist. I am not exactly a "distinguished" one but nonscientists have gotten the notion somewhere that I am, and I am far too polite a person to subject them to the pain of disillusionment, so I don't deny it. And then, finally, I am a little over thirty and have been a little over thirty for a long time, so I qualify as elderly by Arthur's definition. (So does he, by the way, for he is – ha, ha – three years older than I am.)
Well, then, as a distinguished but elderly scientist, have I been going around stating that something is impossible or, in any case, that that something bears no relationship to reality? Heavens, yes! In fact, I am rarely content to say something is "wrong" and let it go at that. I make free use of terms and phrases like "nonsense," "claptrap," "stupid folly," "sheer idiocy," and many other bits of gentle and loving language.
Among currently popular aberrations, I have belabored without stint Velikovskianism, astrology, flying saucers and so on.
While I haven't yet had occasion to treat these matters in detail, I also consider the views of the Swiss Erich von Däniken on "ancient astronauts" to be utter hogwash; I take a similar attitude to the widely held conviction (reported, but not to my knowledge subscribed to, by Charles Berlitz in The Bermuda Triangle) that the "Bermuda Triangle" is the hunting ground of some alien intelligence.
Doesn't Clarke's Law make me uneasy, then? Don't I feel as though I am sure to be quoted extensively, and with derision, in some book written a century hence by some successor to Arthur?
No, I don't. Although I accept Clarke's Law and think Arthur is right in his suspicion that the forward-looking pioneers of today are the backward-yearning conservatives of tomorrow, [Footnote: Heck, Einstein himself found he could not accept the uncertainty principle and, in consequence, spent the last thirty years of his life as a living monument and nothing more. Physics went on without him.] I have no worries about myself. I am very selective about the scientific heresies I denounce, for I am guided by what I call Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's Law. Here is Asimov's Corollary:
When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right.
But why should this be? Why should I, who am not an elitist, but an old-fashioned liberal and an egalitarian (see "Thinking About Thinking" in The Planet That Wasn't, Doubleday, 1976), thus proclaim the infallibility of the majority, holding it to be infallibly wrong?
The answer is that human beings have the habit (a bad one, perhaps, but an unavoidable one) of being human; which is to say that they believe in that which comforts them.
For instance, there are a great many inconveniences and disadvantages to the Universe as it exists. As examples: you cannot live forever, you can't get something for nothing, you can't play with knives without cutting yourself, you can't win every time, and so on and so on (see "Knock Plastic," in Science, Numbers and I, Doubleday 1968).
Naturally, then, anything which promises to remove these inconveniences and disadvantages will be eagerly believed. The inconveniences and disadvantages remain, of course, but what of that?
To take the greatest, most universal, and most unavoidable inconvenience, consider death. Tell people that death does not exist and they will believe you and sob with gratitude at the good news. Take a census and find out how many human beings believe in life after death, in heaven, in the doctrines of spiritualism, in the transmigration of souls. I am quite confident you will find a healthy majority, even an overwhelming one, in favor of side-stepping death by believing in its nonexistence through one strategy or another.
Yet as far as I know, there is not one piece of evidence ever advanced that would offer any hope that death is anything other than the permanent dissolution of the personality and that beyond it, as far as individual consciousness is concerned, there is nothing.
If you want to argue the point, present the evidence. I must warn you, though, that there are some arguments I won't accept.
I won't accept any argument from authority. ("The Bible says so.")
I won't accept any argument from internal conviction. ("I have faith it's so.")
I won't accept any argument from personal abuse. ("What are you, an atheist?")
I won't accept any argument from irrelevance. ("Do you think you have been put on this Earth just to exist for a moment of time?")
I won't accept any argument from anecdote. ("My cousin has a friend who went to a medium and talked to her dead husband.")
And when all that (and other varieties of nonevidence) are eliminated, there turns out to be nothing. [Footnote: Lately, there have been detailed reports about what people are supposed to have seen during "clinical death." – I don't believe a word of it.]
Then why do people believe? Because they want to. Because the mass desire to believe creates a social pressure that is difficult (and, in most times and places, dangerous) to face down. Because few people have had the chance of being educated into the understanding of what is meant by evidence or into the techniques of arguing rationally.
But mostly because they want to. And that is why a manufacturer of toothpaste finds it insufficient to tell you that it will clean your teeth almost as well as the bare brush will. Instead he makes it clear to you , more or less by indirection, that his particular brand will get you a very desirable sex partner. People, wanting sex somewhat more intensely than they want clean teeth, will be the readier to believe.
Then, too, people generally love to believe the dramatic, and incredibility is no bar to the belief but is, rather, a positive help.
Surely we all know this in an age when whole nations can be made to believe in any particular bit of foolishness that suits their rulers and can be made willing to die for it, too. (This age differs from previous ages in this, however, only in that the improvement of communications makes it possible to spread folly with much greater speed and efficiency.)
Considering their love of the dramatic, is it any surprise that millions are willing to believe, on mere say-so and nothing more, that alien spaceships are buzzing around the Earth and that there is a vast conspiracy of silence on the part of the government and scientists to hide that fact? No one has ever explained what government and scientists hope to gain by such a conspiracy or how it can be maintained, when every other secret is exposed at once in all its details – but what of that? People are always willing to believe in any conspiracy on any subject.
People are also willing and eager to believe in such dramatic matters as the supposed ability to carry on intelligent conversations with plants, the supposed mysterious force that is gobbling up ships and planes in a particular part of the ocean, the supposed penchant of Earth and Mars to play Ping-Pong with Venus and the supposed accurate description of the result in the Book of Exodus, the supposed excitement of visits from extraterrestrial astronauts in prehistoric times and their donation to us of our arts, techniques and even some of our genes.
To make matters still more exciting, people like to feel themselves to be rebels against some powerful repressive force – as long as they are sure it is quite safe. To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social establishment is very dangerous and very few people dare do it, except, sometimes, as an anonymous part of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific establishment," however, is the easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave, without risking as much as a hangnail.
[Footnote: A reader once wrote me to say that the scientific establishment could keep you from getting grants, promotions, and prestige, could destroy your career, and so on. That's true enough. Of course, that's not as bad as burning you at the stake or throwing you in a concentration camp, which is what a real establishment could and would do, but even depriving you of an appointment is rotten. However, that works only if you are a scientist. If you are a nonscientist, the scientific establishment can do nothing more than make faces at you.]
Thus, the vast majority, who believe in astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group of astronomers denounce it.
Again, when a few astronomers denounce the Russian-born American Immanuel Velikovsky, they lent the man (and, by reflection, his followers) an aura of the martyr, which he (and they) assiduously cultivate, though no martyr in the world has ever been harmed so little or helped so much by the denunciations.
I used to think, indeed, that it was entirely the scientific denunciations that had put Velikovsky over the top and that had the American astronomer Harlow Shapley only had the sang froid to ignore the Velikovskian folly, it would quickly have died a natural death.
I no longer think so. I now have greater faith in the bottomless bag of credulity that human beings carry on their back. After all, consider Von Däniken and his ancient astronauts. Von Däniken's books are even less sensible than Velikovsky's and are written far more poorly, [Footnote: Velikovsky, to do him justice, is a fascinating writer and has an aura of scholarliness that Von Däniken utterly lacks.] and yet he does well. What's more, no scientist, as far as I know, has deigned to take notice of Van Däniken. Perhaps they felt such notice would do him too much honor and would but do for him what it had done for Velikovsky.
So Van Däniken has been ignored – and, despite that, is even more successful than Velikovsky is, attracts more interest, and makes more money.
You see, then, how I chose my "impossibles." I decide that certain heresies are ridiculous and unworthy of any credit not so much because the world of science says, "It is not so!" but because the world of nonscience says, "It is," so enthusiastically. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
I admit, by the way, that my confidence in scientists being right is somewhat weak. Scientists have been wrong, even egregiously wrong, many times. There have been heretics who have flouted the scientific establishment and have been persecuted therefor (as far as the scientific establishment is able to persecute), and, in the end, it has been the heretic who has proved right. This has happened not only once, I repeat, but many times.
Yet that doesn't shake the confidence with which I denounce those heresies I do denounce, for in the cases in which heretics have won out, the public has, almost always, not been involved.
When something new in science is introduced, when it shakes the structure, when it must in the end be accepted, it is usually something that excites scientists, sure enough, but does not excite the general public – except perhaps to get them to yell for the blood of the heretic.
Consider Galileo, to begin with, since he is the patron saint (poor man!) of all self-pitying crackpots. To be sure, he was not persecuted primarily by scientists for his scientific "errors," but by theologians for his very real heresies (and they were real enough by seventeenth-century standards).
Well, do you suppose the general public supported Galileo? Of course not. There was no outcry in his favor. There was no great movement in favor of the Earth going round the Sun. There were no "sun-is-center" movements denouncing the authorities and accusing them of a conspiracy to hide the truth. If Galileo had been burned at the stake, as Giordano Bruno had been a generation earlier, the action would probably have proved popular with those parts of the public that took the pains to notice it in the first place.
Or consider the most astonishing case of scientific heresy since Galileo – the matter of the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin. Darwin collected the evidence in favor of the evolution of species by natural selection and did it carefully and painstakingly over the decades, then published a meticulously reasoned book that established the fact of evolution to the point where no rational biologist can deny it [Footnote: Please don't write me to tell me that there are creationists who call themselves biologists. Anyone can call himself a biologist.] even though there are arguments over the details of the mechanism.
Well, then, do you suppose the general public came to the support of Darwin and his dramatic theory? They certainly knew about it. His theory made as much of a splash in his day as Velikovsky did a century later. It was certainly dramatic – imagine species developing by sheer random mutation and selection, and human beings developing from apelike creatures! Nothing any science fiction writer ever dreamed up was as shatteringly astonishing as that to the people who from earliest childhood had taken it for established and absolute truth that God had created all the species ready-made in the space of a few days and that man in particular was created in the divine image.
Do you suppose the general public supported Darwin and waxed enthusiastic about him and made him rich and renowned and denounced the scientific establishment for persecuting him? You know they didn't. What support Darwin did get was from scientists. (The support any rational scientist gets is from scientists, though usually from only a minority of them at first.)
In fact, not only was the general public against Darwin then, they are against Darwin now. It is my suspicion that if a vote were taken in the United States right now on the question of whether man was created all at once out of the dirt or through the subtle mechanisms of mutation and natural selection over millions of years, there would be a large majority who would vote for dirt.
There are other cases, less famous, where the general public didn't join the persecutors only because they never heard there was an argument.
In the 1830s the greatest chemist alive was the Swede Jöns Jakob Berzelius. Berzelius had a theory of the structure of organic compounds which was based on the evidence available at that time. The French chemist August Laurent collected additional evidence that showed that Berzelius' theory was inadequate. He himself suggested an alternate theory of his own which was more nearly correct and which, in its essentials, is still in force now.
Berzelius, who was in his old age and very conservative, was unable to accept the new theory. He retaliated furiously and none of the established chemists of the day had the nerve to stand up against the great Swede.
Laurent stuck to his guns and continued to accumulate evidence. For this he was rewarded by being barred from the more famous laboratories and being forced to remain in the provinces. He is supposed to have contracted tuberculosis as a result of working in poorly heated laboratories and he died in 1853 at the age of forty-six.
With both Laurent and Berzelius dead, Laurents's new theory began to gain ground. In fact, one French chemist who had originally supported Laurent but had backed away in the face of Berzelius' displeasure now accepted it again and actually tried to make it appear that it was his theory. (Scientists are human, too.)
That's not even a record for sadness. The German physicist Julius Robert Mayer, for his championship of the law of conservation of energy in the 1840's, was driven to madness. Ludwig Boltzmann, the Austrian physicist, for his work on the kinetic theory of gases in the late nineteenth century, was driven to suicide. The work of both is now accepted and praised beyond measure.
But what did the public have to do with all these cases? Why, nothing. They never heard of them. They never cared. It didn't touch any of their great concerns. In fact, if I wanted to be completely cynical, I would say that the heretics were in this case right and that the public, somehow sensing this, yawned.
This sort of thing goes on in the twentieth century, too. In 1912 a German geologist, Alfred Lothat Wegener, presented to the world his views on the continental drift. He thought the continents all formed a single lump of land to begin with and that this lump, which he called "Pangaea," had split up and that the various portions had drifted apart. He suggested that the land floated on the soft, semi-solid underlying rock and that the continental pieces drifted apart as they floated.
Unfortunately, the evidence seemed to suggest that the underlying rock was far too stiff for continents to drift through and Wegener's notions were dismissed and even hooted at. For half a century the few people who supported Wegener's notions had difficulty in getting academic appointments.
Then, after World War II, new techniques of exploration of the sea bottom uncovered the global rift, the phenomenon of sea -floor spreading, the existence of crustal plates, and it became obvious that the Earth's crust was a group of large pieces that were constantly on the move and that the continents were carried with the pieces. Continental drift, or "plate tectonics," as it is more properly called, became the cornerstone of geology.
I personally witnessed this turnabout. In the first two editions of my Guide to Science (Basic Books, 1960, 1965), I mentioned continental drift but dismissed it haughtily in a paragraph. In the third edition (1972) I devoted several pages to it and admitted having been wrong to dismiss it so readily. (This is no disgrace, actually. If you follow the evidence you must change as additional evidence arrives and invalidates earlier conclusions. It is those who support ideas for emotional reasons only who can't change. Additional evidence has no effect on emotion.)
If Wegener had not been a true scientist, he could have made himself famous and wealthy. All he had to do was take the concept of continental drift and bring it down to earth by having it explain the miracles of the Bible. The splitting of Pangaea might have been the cause, or the result, of Noah's Flood. The formation of the Great African Rift might have drowned Sodom. The Israelites crossed the Red Sea because it was only a half mile wide in those days. If he had said all that, the book would have been eaten up and he could have retired on his royalties.
In fact, if any reader wants to do this now, he can still get rich. Anyone pointing out this article as the inspirer of the book will be disregarded by the mass of "true believers," I assure you.
So here's a new version of Asimov's Corollary, which you can use as your guide in deciding what to believe and what to dismiss:
If a scientific heresy is ignored or denounced by the general public, there is a chance it may be right. If a scientific heresy is emotionally supported by the general public, it is almost certainly wrong.
You'll notice that in my two versions of Asimov's Corollary I was careful to hedge a bit. In the first I say that scientists are "probably right." In the second I say that the public is "almost certainly wrong." I am not absolute. I hint at exceptions.
Alas, not only are people human; not only are scientists human; but I'm human too. I want the Universe to be as I want it to be and that means completely logical. I want silly, emotional judgments to be always wrong.
Unfortunately, I can't have the Universe the way I want it, and one of the things that makes me a rational being is that I know this.
Somewhere in history there are bound to be cases in which science said "No" and the general public, for utterly emotional reasons, said "Yes" and in which it was the general public that was right. I thought about it and came up with an example in half a minute.
In 1798 the English physician Edward Jenner, guided by old wives' tales based on the kind of anecdotal evidence I despise, tested to see whether the mild disease of cow-pox did indeed confer immunity upon humans from the deadly and dreaded disease of smallpox. (He wasn't content with the anecdotal evidence, you understand; he experimented.) Jenner found the old wives were correct and he established the technique of vaccination.
The medical establishment of the day reacted to the new technique with the greatest suspicion. Had it been left to them, the technique might well have been buried.
However, popular acceptance of vaccination was immediate and overwhelming. The technique spread to all parts of Europe. The British royal family was vaccinated; the British Parliament voted Jenner ten thousand pounds. In fact, Jenner was given semidivine status.
There's no problem in seeing why. Smallpox was an unbelievably frightening disease, for when it did not kill, it permanently disfigured. The general public therefor was almost hysterical with desire for the truth of the suggestion that the disease could be avoided by the mere prick of a needle.
And in this case, the public was right! The Universe was as they wanted it to be. In eighteen months after the introduction of vaccination, for instance, the number of deaths from smallpox in England was reduced to one third of what it had been.
So there are indeed exceptions. The popular fancy is sometimes right.
But not often, and I must warn you that I lose no sleep over the possibility that any of the popular enthusiasms of today are liable to turn out to be scientifically correct. Not an hour of sleep do I lose; not a minute.


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Assuming you've already defined your target market (the kind of customers/clients you want to do business with), then your first step on LinkedIn is to get yourself noticed by that target market. That means making your profile sticky and engaging.
Your next step is to build up your connections so you can communicate and be seen by that target audience. This involves joining groups, sending requests to connect and making yourself found so people want to connect with you. It's no good playing a great game to an empty stadium!
Today I'm going to share with you some great tips on creating a sticky profile and increasing your connections to build your network. Next time I'll share with you some great lead generation tips using LinkedIn
6 Profiling Tips:
- Your name, photo and professional headline are prime real estate when it comes to online networking. That's your shop window.
- Further down, set up a decent public profile link or 'vanity URL' which doesn't have a bunch of numbers in like the LinkedIn default setting.
- Add to that some good website links to blogs, company site, personal site etc
- Ensure you're reachable through posting relevant contact details – people connect in all kinds of different ways, so make it easy for them with links to email, Twitter, Skype, phone and even postal address.
- The Summary section tells your story. If people scroll 'below the fold' of the first few sections, your personal summary should hook them right in. This is often the hardest thing to write but it's worth taking some time to craft. Mine contains a personal story element (my journey), who I help and how I help them. Check it out here. http://uk.linkedin.com/in/therobbrown
- Experience is your chance to show what you've done and are doing. Consider having multiple roles/job titles for your current position (I have seven!)
6 Connecting Tips
- Join up to 50 groups. Aside from the many other benefits, it means you can reach out and connect to those members without needing their email address.
- Use LinkedIn search to find people in particular sectors, with certain job titles, in specific geographical areas.
- Use InMails (LinkedIn's internal email system) to approach those 'hard to reach' contacts.
- Invite your contacts. LinkedIn can import people you already have a relationship with, like your Gmail or Outlook contacts, or even an Excel database.
- Follow up your networking contacts by looking for them online and saying how it was great to meet them.
- Personalise your connection requests. Using the stock LinkedIn text doesn't work well, and will likely get pushed back. If you want to connect with someone, show them you mean it!
Once you've created a good profile and built your connections, your third and final step is to engage your audience to show them how great you are (your expertise). This will hopefully help you generate leads and create opportunities. LinkedIn is great for generating leads if you know what you're doing.
The majority of SMEs (58%) are actively using LinkedIn to generate leads and promote their business. If social media is a channel to market for you, LinkedIn generates more customers than all of the others. In my next article I'll share with you my best tips to generate LinkedIn leads for your business. Happy networking!
Rob Brown is an international speaker and networking coach who helps business people make lots more money from networking and referrals. He works with leaders, entrepreneurs and senior executives who are great at what they do BUT want to 'stand out' more and sell themselves, their ideas and their 'stuff' much better! He shows them how to become powerfully CONNECTED, extremely VALUABLE and highly VISIBLE with all the right people. As a result, they soon become the compelling 'go to' choice and influential 'player' in their space, with all the kudos, wealth and opportunities that brings.
Rob is author of the bestseller How to Build Your Reputation and founder of the Global Networking Council, which comprises the world's top thought leaders on the topics of networking, referrals, connecting, relationships, trust, influence and communication. Connect to Rob on Twitter @therobbrown or pick up a free copy of Rob's great guide: 57 Tips to Build Your Reputation (VALUE £27)>>


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When I purchased my carrot seeds I could taste the earthiness of the true garden carrot. When I dropped the three different types of lettuce seeds into the earth and covered them up, I envisioned stopping by just before supper to pick up the main ingredient of a yummy and colourful salad. When Phyllis, the owner of the land my garden is on, mentioned weeding, I looked forward to having my boys frolic through the tall grass while I effortlessly pulled the little mound of weeds in my lush garden. Then reality hit. The weeds invaded fast and strong and by the time I actually got a moment to do it I had to bring help (thank you Mom, Dad, Jenna and Ryan) and it took hours...and blisters! As I planned for our vacation my mom reminded me that I needed to arrange for someone to come and pick the lettuce or it would go hard and that the carrots needed to be thinned out. What?! I was still trying to find someone to take the dog!
And the kids....well, maybe 4,2 and 10 months is a bit young for helping in a garden. Although, they did do a good job of running pails of weeds to the pit (not Baby Goo, of course). They are much too citified not to require supervision. In time.
Phyllis encouraged me by saying that at one time, she too, had no idea what she was doing. Now she is a garden whiz kid. My dad on the other hand took the other approach, "Or you could just go buy it at the grocery store". Ryan and I both grew up with gardens and long for the taste of garden beans, carrots and raspberries. Right now, the perfectionist/lazy girl in me wants to quit because it requires too many neural pathways to be created in my brain over too long of a time...but...for the bounty that is to come, I will press on! There must be a trace of my family's green thumbness somewhere in me. I will continue, I will break more blisters, endure more mosquito bites, fight for more time...all for the glorious dream of my own garden.


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Tips and suggestions from an industry leading expert regarding questions you should ask your dentist when being evaluated for full mouth dental implant restorations or All-On-4™ style treatment.
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Our course content gives you the knowledge you need to develop your idea, create a strong business model, perfect your pitch and launch and manage your business.
Good things don't come for free! Thanks to our partners, we can offer the cewas Start-up Programme at subsidised rates:
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Costs include all course materials, field trips, coaching, access to the shared workspace, free coffee, WIFI and entry to cewas events. The price of the programme does not cover travel, visa, insurance, lodging, food or access to the SWWW in Stockholm.
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Thanks to our partner Young Water Solutions, there are 10 fellowships on offer for the entire Start-up Programme (covering programme fees, board and lodging, travel costs). You will find more information on the Young Water Fellowship here.


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Designed by senior living professionals who understand the special nature of your important mission, CareSuite is easy for your staff to learn and use, no matter their level of computer skill. It offers the features you need to improve efficiency, reduce errors, and enhance profitability. This enables you to dedicate more time to resident centered care.
Our applications work both off and online. That means if your internet is down, your CareSuite is not. Many of the competitive solutions lack this vital feature. As we all know the internet is never reliable, however you can count on CareSuite.
CareSuite is more than the best eMAR.
It's a quality EHR solution that centers around care.
CareSuite Gives You the Tools You Need in the Right Order
It's impossible to scrimp on resident safety and quality care and be successful. The quality of resident safety and care ultimately drive profitability and achieve long term sustainability. Our modules are designed to keep your residents safe and improve their quality of care. What sets us apart from our competitors is that we focused on creating the best software solutions first.
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Logs and tracks behavior issues, identifies triggers and documents interventions.
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Creates resident notes from anywhere within the CareSuite system.
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The Washington Blade hosts its tenth annual summer kickoff party in Rehoboth Beach, Del., this Friday from 5-7 p.m. at the Blue Moon, an event the staff looks forward to all winter. And although the weather is so far not delivering summer temperatures, the town is ready for the season's crowds.
As always, there's plenty to do at the beach when you're not relaxing on the sand. Rehoboth's restaurant scene continues to draw crowds and attention. Among the changes this year, Blackwall Hitch, which has outposts in Annapolis and Alexandria, is opening soon at 52 Rehoboth Ave. and promises live entertainment in a setting more refined than surrounding T-shirt shops and pizza joints.
The long-popular Nage (19730 Coastal Highway) has been reinvented as Fork + Flask at Nage and features a remodeled interior with much larger bar area. There's a new menu, too, with more affordable options. Just a few doors down, is the new Jimmy's Grille opening soon next to Outlet Liquors. Down the highway in Dewey, the iconic Starboard has spun off a new joint, Starboard Raw (2000 Coastal Highway) a 48-seat raw bar that is now open. Chesapeake and Maine (316 Rehoboth Ave.) is a new high-end seafood restaurant and bar from the team behind Dogfish Head. The slick new bar is already drawing crowds as construction begins on the revamped Dogfish Head next door.
A couple of longtime favorites have closed in the off-season — the Seafood Shack on Baltimore Avenue is shuttered and was acquired by the folks who run the Blue Moon across the street. No word yet on when it will reopen or what the new concept will be. And just up the street, Ginger Breneman's popular Mixx has closed.
Two watering holes frequented by gay and lesbian visitors are under new ownership. The Rehoboth Ale House on Wilmington Avenue is now being operated by Kyle McLaughlin and Adam Newman of Dewey Beach, according to the all-knowing Rehoboth Foodie. Meanwhile, the Double L Bar reopens May 20 under new ownership but will retain its appeal to the leather crowd — and the popular Man Dance event on Saturdays. It will host a "Bear Bust" party from 3-7 p.m. on Saturday, May 21, followed by Man Dance at 9 p.m.
Coastal Living magazine just ranked Rehoboth as its No. 2 "happiest seaside town." A good bit of the credit for that distinction goes to the longtime business owners — many of them gay — who have helped earn Rehoboth such a welcoming reputation. The Blue Moon (35 Baltimore Ave.) is open seven days a week, serving some of the best food in town on one side of the building, and some of the best live entertainment on the other. The "Queen of Rehoboth" Pamala Stanley continues her residency, performing Sundays-Thursdays from 6-8:30 p.m. Saturday's "Legends Show" drag performance continues starting at 9:30 p.m.
Purple Parrot's Biergarten is now open, offering food and drinks in a beachy setting with plenty of happy hour specials. Inside, the gay-owned Parrot (134 Rehoboth Ave.) hosts karaoke Thursday-Saturday 9 p.m.-1 a.m. and the Tara Austin & the Birdcage Badgirls show Sundays at 10 p.m.
The gay-owned Dos Locos (208 Rehoboth Ave.) continues to offer some of the best fajitas and margaritas in town in a festive atmosphere. Its happy hour is among the best in town with $6 martinis and $5 house margaritas.
CAMP Rehoboth, the local LGBT community center, has a full season of events on tap. June 24-26 brings Family Pride CAMP, featuring kid-friendly activities all weekend. Visit camprehoboth.com for more information.
The Rehoboth Beach Bandstand's 53rd annual summer concert series kicks off May 28 and promises entertainment for all ages every Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening starting at 8 p.m. Don't miss the Neil Diamond tribute band Real Diamond on Aug. 6. Visit rehobothbandstand.com for a full schedule.
Looking for a ride to Rehoboth? BestBus service from D.C. to Rehoboth begins Memorial Day Weekend with two pick-up locations in the city — Union Station and Dupont Circle. One-way fare is $40. There's a VIP membership program allowing regular riders to earn reward points. Visit bestbus.com for details.
And don't forget your stylish accessories for the beach. Check out Beach Essentials (33 Baltimore Ave.) for its impressive swimwear selection and don't miss the nearby Shademakers (33-c Baltimore Ave.) for the season's most stylish sunglasses and eyewear.


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Signs of Nursing Home Abuse
Everyone wants to see their aging parents living in a healthy environment. That's why the consideration of whether or not to send them to a nursing home is such a challenging decision. Besides the fact that today homes for elderly have the much better quality of life standards and may provide best possible health environment sometimes it just doesn't work for some people. It is very often that old people want to stay in their common environment at home with their usual habits. It's one thing to find a seemingly perfect place, and another entirely to have one's parents move in with them for their final years. It's more comfortable for the parents to be surrounded by familiar faces than to work on making new friendships at an advanced age. But that comfort comes at the cost of lifestyle flexibility. And not only that but often there come much bigger problems, disagreements and unpleasant separations between members of the whole family. It is often a much less disruptive choice to see one's parents taken care of by professionals.
Even the most reputable care center can occasionally hire a bad apple. This often leads to the same result: elderly care patients who suffer abuse needlessly. Often, their pain and suffering are tolerated silently, as an embarrassment and other factors lead to silence. Spotting abuse is as easy as hiring a Los Angeles nursing home abuse attorney.
Nursing home abuse involves psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, neglecting and financial exploitation. All these sections have a wide range of abuse signs that should be carefully monitored.
Look for telltale signs to indicate things are not up to par – inexplicable bruising is one of the most obvious signs. Dissociation, in which your formerly lively parent suddenly develops reclusive habits, is another. If your parents are the strong but silent type, it's going to take a lot of questions to get them to admit that something is wrong. Their habit will be to internalize; your job as their caregiver will be to draw the answers and explanations out of them. Even though every spotted symptom doesn't necessarily lead to nurse home abuse, they should always be cause for some form of investigation. If you suspect abuse in the nursing home, speak with other patrons as well. A group of witnesses speaks louder than a sole witness.


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Hoggart, CJ; Parra, EJ; Shriver, MD; Bonilla, C; Kittles, RA; Clayton, DG; McKeigue, PM; (2003) Control of confounding of genetic associations in stratified populations. American journal of human genetics, 72 (6). pp. 1492-1504. ISSN 0002-9297 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/375613 Full text not available from this repository.


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The City of Oakland filed a petition on October 5 for rehearing en banc in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The filing follows a federal ruling in August that Oakland couldn't challenge the federal government's forfeiture action in July 2012 against Harborside Health Center. The continued court case against Harborside is in violation of last year's congressional passage of the Farr-Rohrabacher bill, which bans the use of federal funding for enforcement against state-legal medical cannabis operations.
"I am profoundly grateful for the support of the City of Oakland, and our entire community," said Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center. "The citizens of California and this country are sick and tired of having their hard-earned tax dollars spent pursuing legitimate, legally compliant medical cannabis companies who are abiding by the laws enacted by the State."
Legal experts say the en banc will likely serve to extend Judge Maria-Elena James's February 2013 stay of the forfeiture action until after the disposition of this further appeal. Meanwhile, Harborside Health Center is waiting for a response from the Department of Justice, and says that now is the time for the DOJ to dismiss the forfeiture case.
"The DOJ should not be trying to close down Harborside," said DeAngelo, "they should study us as a model of safe and responsible cannabis distribution. In any case, no matter what happens, Harborside will never abandon the patients who depend on us for the medicine their doctors have recommended."
About Harborside Health Center:
"Harborside Health Center, a nonprofit medical marijuana dispensary with locations in Oakland and San Jose, California, is looked upon as a model of how others could operate." – The New York Times
Founded in 2006 by Steve DeAngelo, Harborside Health Center is the most respected and largest medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. Harborside has 200,000 registered patients and was first in the nation to support education for seniors, veterans and families with severely ill children; first in the country to offer CBD-rich medicine; and the first to treat children with Dravet syndrome. Harborside continues to set an example of diversity and compliance, and is one of the prime advocates of diversity, sustainability and economic justice in the industry.
DeAngelo also co-founded the nation's first cannabis-testing facility, Steep Hill Labs, and the country's first cannabis investment and research firm, The ArcView Group. His debut book, "The Cannabis Manifesto: A New Paradigm for Wellness," was published by North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin/Random House on September 22, 2015; in the book's foreword, Willie L. Brown, Jr., 41st mayor of San Francisco, calls DeAngelo, "the father of the legal cannabis industry." DeAngelo was named one of the most influential people and "gatekeeper" of the marijuana industry in 2015 by the International Business Times, and one of the most influential people in the cannabis industry in 2014 by the Cannabis Business Executive.


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Add to Calendar
September 6, 2019 @ 11:30 pm
TOX Club Privee at DESTINO
Cap Martinet s/n
07819 Talamanca
Cap Martinet s/n
07819 Talamanca
Denial Island
DENIAL ISLAND IBIZA @ TOX Club Privee at DESTINO
from 24.00 – 06.00 hrs
lineup: tba
Establishing themselves over the past three years, Denial Events have emerged from this year's Miami Music Week as Miami's premier event producers and promoters. With their sights set on a taking their dance music ethos global, they are set to land in Ibiza this summer for a collaboration with another globally recognized dance institution; Pacha.
Taking place at the Pacha owned Tox club, within the idyllic Destino resort, the Denial series kicks off on 12th July.
Set on a clifftop overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, the ultra-chic Destino resort has played hosted to some of the biggest names in dance music, such as Solomun, Marco Carola, Guy Gerber and Loco Dice.
Bringing a new creative concept to the White Isle, Denial promise a series of experimentally driven shows, billed with cutting edge entertainment and performances, along with DJ sets from a who's who in electronic music.
As the go to for line-ups with fresh and innovative thinking, Pacha proves the perfect partner for Miami's Denial.
As they invited electronic artists from across the US and Europe, including Markem, BAGGI, Fisherman and Cocodrills to give only a taste, together Denial and Pacha continue to carve new trends in Ibiza, surprising with new experiences, curating events in unexpected and historical places.


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Thank you for the great response!
Thank you for all of the great responses to the blog contest. We were very impressed with the entries that were received. There were so many great ones, it was very difficult to select only two in each category, so we selected three, bringing our total winners to six!
It is great to see so many people that share a vision for firefighter fitness and an understanding of how important it is to make physical fitness a top priority in the fire service. We received entries from all over the world and it's obvious that we share the same concerns regarding firefighter health and fitness. It is very inspiring to see so many people ready to take action!
The following people (in no particular order) have been selected to receive free editions of TACFIT Fire Fighter: First Alarm!
Kyle Condra
Kyle is a Firefighter for the Carmel Fire Department in Carmel, Indiana.
Colin Ayer
Colin Ayer is a Firefighter/Paramedic for the Portland Fire Department in Portland, Maine.
Scott Stedman
Scott Stedman is an Acting Captain with the Peterborough Fire Services in Ontario Canada.
Kevin McCullough
Kevin is a Firefighter/Paramedic with the Monarch Fire Protection District in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Felipe Niquete
Felipe is a Firefighter with the Kern County Fire Department in California.
Mike Morton
Mike Horton is the Chief of Training & Safety for the Bayou Cane Fire Protection District in Houma, Louisiana.
Congratulations to all of you and let us know how you progress with the program!
TACFIT Fire Fighter: First Alarm Goes Live Tomorrow!
We have been humbled by the responses that we have received over the past couple of weeks and are excited to be offering First Alarm as your firefighter fitness program. This project began as a conversation in a hotel room nearly two years ago and we have really come a long way with your support.
As we reflect on the development of the program, the people who have so selflessly contributed, and the potential we all have for changing firefighter health & wellness, we simply can't help but to be overwhelmed by the support and size of this movement. We would like to extend our gratitude and thank everyone involved.
First Alarm will be available worldwide tomorrow night! We will be launching with the premiere of the "TACFIT Fire Fighter: First Alarm Trailer."
Please keep in touch as you dig into the program and we can't wait to hear about your personal TACFIT journey.
Train hard, train smart, and stay safe!
With gratitude,
Christian & Ryan


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I am a member of:
- Vizsla Club of America
- Rocky Mountain Vizsla Club, The Specialty Vizsla Club of Colorado (Founding Members)
I am deeply committed to educating others on responsible breeders versus irresponsible people like puppy-millers, high-volume and backyard breeders.
Please DO NOT EVER get a dog from a puppy-miller, high-volume breeder, backyard breeder, broker, or pet store. Most of these irresponsible people and places can easily be found on the Internet or in the newspaper. Go to the Rocky Mountain Vizsla Club's website to learn If the Vizsla is the Right Breed for You and Finding a Responsible Breeder. Be prepared to do lots of research and have lots of patience in your search for a healthy, well-bred Vizsla with a strong and proven pedigree.
You can see the devastating impact irresponsible breeding has on animal shelters and rescue organizations. Irresponsible people who breed dogs usually don't care who their pups go to nor do they carefully screen the people/homes their pups go to. Once the "newness" or "cuteness" of the pup wears off, behavior or health issues arise, or lifestyle changes (decide to have children, divorce, move) the dog gets the raw end of the deal and is turned into an animal shelter or rescue organization. Reputable breeders DO NOT allow this to happen to a dog they've bred. They try to stay in contact with their homes and should, under any circumstances, take a dog back. They will care for the dog for the rest of his/her life or find a loving, forever home.
The point of this "soapbox lecture" is to impress upon you how important it is to get your dog from a responsible breeder. Responsible breeders DO NOT contribute to the problem of unwanted animals going into shelters and rescue organizations. It is the irresponsible people who breed animals that create the problem of overpopulated animal shelters and rescue organizations, and the unnecessary euthanization of so many healthy and adoptable animals.
Please consider adopting a rescue Vizsla from one of the following groups:
Colorado/Wyoming Vizsla Rescue Group
Utah/Idaho Vizsla Rescue
Show Me Vizsla Rescue
Vizsla Club of America rescue (list of regional coordinators)
Go to http://www.puppymillrescue.com/ and http://www.stoppuppymills.org/ to learn more about the horrors of puppy mills.


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Modder extraordinaire Mortem Taum put together this great looking, near-monochromatic home screen based on the looks of HTC Sense 3.0. Here's how.
Here's my setup this week. I'm using:
- Widget Locker with the MINSENSE theme
- ADW Launcher EX
- SiMi Clock Widget
- Circle Launcher
- I found the wallpaper somewhere on the web. If you know the original creator, let me know in the comments and I'll credit him.
The dock icons and dock are my own. The circle launcher icon is my own. They're all based off the HTC Sense 3.0 Ring. The lock screen icons for Widget Locker are my own as well. You can download them all in this ZIP file.


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Caregiving and Care Sharing
A Life Course Perspective
Roberta R. Greene and Nancy P. Kropf
ISBN: 978-0-87101-456-6. 2014. Item #4566. 272 pages.
Caregiving and care sharing take place across the life course and involve various configurations. Although there are similarities, families have different needs and experiences of care depending on the caregiving situation, life course issues, and unique personal history.
In Caregiving and Care Sharing: A Life Course Perspective, the authors highlight the experience of providing care in several different family situations. This book not only serves as a guide to assist those caring for older adults, but also examines the experiences of older caregivers caring for younger adults, as older parents care for adult children with intellectual and psychiatric conditions, or when grandparents are raising their grandchildren. The caregiving needs of veterans are also addressed.
As the number of older adults rises, the diversity of the population will also increase. The concept of care sharing indicates that care provision is not a solitary task. It implies that professionals are part of a caregiving collective—joining with families to promote functioning of those who require care. The chapters in this book identify various experiences of care and provide an opportunity for students and practitioners to develop their own model as professionals who will be part of a caregiving collective.
Caregiving and Care Sharing: A Life Course Perspective is not just another book on caregiving that identifies challenges and opportunities of caring for a particular population. Rather, it presents a distinctive model of social care as well as the concept of care sharing as a way to capture the intersections of the micro/macro aspects of caregiving within a broader societal context. Linked to core social work competencies, it posits an integrated practice model, which assesses and builds on resilience and is solidly grounded in social work's primary theoretical perspectives and values. These practice models and theories are applied to rich complex cases that capture a wide range of care sharing situations across the life course, such as caring for someone with mental illness, intellectual disabilities, or posttraumatic stress. Throughout, issues of cultural diversity and cultural competence are skillfully addressed, resulting in a book relevant to generalist and advanced practice courses.
Nancy R. Hooyman, PhD, MSW
Hooyman Endowed Professor in Gerontology
Co-PI, CSWE National Center for Gerontological Social Work Education
University of Washington School of Social Work
NASW Member Price: $44.09—Save 10% (print edition).
Please call
for NASW Member discount, using code MEMB15.


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Marketing Trends
Strategic on-line marketing programs tailored to maximize results. Promotions will differ relying on what stage of the product life cycle the product is in. Marketers understand that consumers affiliate a product's value and distribution with its quality, and so they take this into consideration when devising the overall marketing technique.
The "publics" you may need to handle embrace your audience (let's say low-income girls age forty to 65), the people who affect their choices like their husbands or physicians, policymakers, public service directors at native radio stations, as well as your board of administrators and workplace staff.
Social marketing seeks to influence social behaviors to not benefit the marketer, but to learn the audience and the final society." This method has been used extensively in international well being programs, especially for contraceptives and oral rehydration therapy (ORT), and is getting used with extra frequency in the United States for such diverse topics as drug abuse, coronary heart illness and organ donation.
I'm not sure how you can tackle the confusion with promoting and promotion however do think it is a matter (and do find it ironic that marketing has consciousness problem). So getting your model or products reviewed and talked about by relevant influencers in your trade generally is a fantastic word of mouth strategy.
It will not be a wanted buy, however a shopper can be persuaded with strong marketing or advertising methods. Launching the correct of product with acceptable number of variants is one of the essential selections for marketing managers.…


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Showing all 7 results
TROMBONE Mouthpiece HOLSTERS™
Torpedo Bag® TROMBONE MOUTHPIECE HOLSTERS™ are made from our World Famous "Thick as a Horse Shoe" LOREDO LEATHER™. They are made in the USA, and are lined with a plush fabric and dense foam, ensuring that your expensive mouthpieces are safe at all times. Available for 1 or 2 Mouthpieces, these are almost certainly the finest MOUTHPIECE HOLSTERS™ made, from here to Loredo.
TRUMPET Mouthpiece HOLSTERS™
Torpedo Bag® MOUTHPIECE HOLSTERS™ are made from our World Famous "Thick as a Horse Shoe" LOREDO LEATHER™. They are made in the USA, with extra high quality FaSnap brand snaps that are also made in the USA. We line them with a plush fabric, ensuring that your expensive mouthpieces never contact the snap directly. Available for 1, 2, 3, or 4 Mouthpieces, these are almost certainly the finest MOUTHPIECE HOLSTERS™ made, from here to Loredo.
Representing an entirely new design concept for Torpedo Bags, and using the most durable and lightweight materials in the world, the new VOLPE'S VELOX™ is a slim, classy way to transport your trumpet without the worry of traditional designs. The GECKO™ carries mutes and other accessories in padded spots, while the GILA MONSTER™ is perfect for overnight trips, with a computer slot and book space.
Pre-Order! The CARCAJOU™ is on the way for large bore tenor trombone! The more pre-orders we receive, the faster it arrives. Fiberglass construction ensures high durability and light weight, and the interior will be MOLDED 3-pound density foam.
Padded individual and multi-pack mute bags for trumpet and trombone, MUTE BOOTS™ and SADDLE BAGS™ are now shipping!
NEW! GAVIN BREHM MUTES™ are the best and most complex sounding mutes on the planet. Using unique materials, and modern sound spectrum analysis during the design process, these fantastic mutes are in a league of their own. You'll also find the NEW Torpedo Bag® GNATCATCHER™ felt bag mutes (like the famed "Crown Royal" bags) on this page.
Chapped Chops?™ Use our chemical-free TorpedoBALM™ for healthy chops. Made with North Dakota Beeswax and many organic ingredients, this product is gluten free and guaranteed chemical free. Custom made in the USA for Torpedo Bags, this is the MOST PURE Chop Stick you'll find anywhere on earth!


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Plain English Summary
Background and study aims
Post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN) is a condition in which a feeling of pain arises as a consequence of the herpes zoster (HZ) virus infection and it damages the corresponding neurological system. Unfortunately, existing treatments often do not work against PHN. Traditional Chinese acupuncture offers some advantages: it is simple to perform, has little systemic effect and few side effects. There is no published evidence on the effects of acupuncture on the central nervous system and this study is about the therapeutic effects of acupuncture on PHN patients.
Who can participate?
Patients admitted to the Department of Acupuncture, Massage and Traumatology of Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital (China) and diagnosed with post-herpetic neuralgia diagnoses.
What does the study involve?
Participants are randomly allocated to one of two groups: Group A (acupuncture group) receives acupuncture (Ashi point) for 3 weeks; Group B (sham acupuncture group, also called the control group) receives acupuncture (non-Ashi point) for 3 weeks. Patients and investigators do not know which treatment they receive (this is called blinding). Follow up continues for 14 days after treatment.
Oxycodone 5-30mg/day or more orally to be used as 'rescue medication' (to relieve symptoms immediately) for pain control.
What are the possible benefits and risks of participating?
There are no known risks to participants. All participants, including controls, will receive all the tests which may improve their treatment of PHN.
Where is the study run from?
The study takes place at Department of Acupuncture Massage and Traumatology at the Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital (China).
When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for?
The study will start recruiting participants between December 2011 and July 2012. Follow-up examinations will continue until October 2012.
Who is funding the study?
Chinese Traditional Medical and Drug Administration Bureau (China)
Who is the main contact?
Dr Mi Yiqun
Trial website
Contact information
Primary contact
Dr Mi Yiqun
Contact details
Department of Acupuncture
Massage and Traumatology
Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital
Shanghai JiaoTong University
600 Yishan Road
Additional identifiers
EudraCT number
ClinicalTrials.gov number
Protocol/serial number
Study information
Scientific title
A clinical study of the effect of acupuncture on fMRI and IGT in postherpetic neuralgia patients: a prospective, double-blind, randomised controlled trial
Study hypothesis
1. That functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal and Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) were different among postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) patients and control patients.
2. The acupuncture can affect the signal of fMRI, the outcome of the IGT, quality of life and reduce the dosage required of oral pain-related drugs in PHN patients
Ethics approval
Shanghai Sixth Peoples Hospital, Shanghai JiaoTong University, 16 March 2011, ref: 2011-19
Study design
Prospective, double blind, randomised controlled trial
Primary study design
Secondary study design
Randomised controlled trial
Trial setting
Trial type
Patient information sheet
Not available in web format, please use contact details below to request a patient information sheet
Postherpetic neuralgia
PHN patients were randomized to receive acupuncture (Ashi point), or sham acupuncture for 3 weeks
Rescue medication - Oxycodone 5-30mg/day orally (or more) was used as rescue medication for pain controlled at more than 3 on the VAS and the frequency of acute pain flare-ups more than 3 times per day.
Intervention type
Not Applicable
Drug names
Primary outcome measure
1. fMRI signal change, IGT results at baseline and 14 days after treatment
2. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), measured at baseline and 1, 2, 3,7 and 14 days after treatment
3. Pain flare-ups per day during days 3, 7, 14 after treatment
Secondary outcome measures
1. SF-36 at baseline, 14 days after treatment
2. Dosage of rescue drug (Oxycodone) consumed per day at 3, 7, and 14 days after treatment
3. Presence, frequency and duration of adverse effects at 7 and 14 days after treatment
Overall trial start date
Overall trial end date
Reason abandoned (if study stopped)
Participant inclusion criteria
1. Age greater than 60 years
2. Weighs over 40kg
3. History of pain is longer than 3 months
4. Pain on Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) >3 (0-10 VAS scale), with acute pain flares that occurred more than 3 times per day
5. Refractory to formal treatment such as antiepileptic medicine, antidepressants, opioids, physical treatments and epidural block
6. No history of severe liver and renal diseases
7. PHN patents whose pain area was at T1-12 level
8. Male and female participants
Participant type
Age group
Target number of participants
38 patients
Participant exclusion criteria
1. Withdraws from the study
2. Poor effect, intolerant to the study
3. Uncooperative and unable to finish the self evaluation (VAS, QOL and SF-36)
4. Coagulation disturbances
5. Allergies to drug
6. Malignancy
Recruitment start date
Recruitment end date
Countries of recruitment
Trial participating centre
Department of Acupuncture, Massage and Traumatology
Sponsor information
Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital (China)
Sponsor details
600 Yi-Shan Road
Sponsor type
Hospital/treatment centre
Funder type
Funder name
Chinese Traditional Medical and Drug Administration Bureau ref: 2009ZL23
Alternative name(s)
Funding Body Type
Funding Body Subtype
Results and Publications
Publication and dissemination plan
Not provided at time of registration
Intention to publish date
Participant level data
Not provided at time of registration
Basic results (scientific)
Publication list


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2017 Vacation Bible School (VBS)
Welcome to our VBS 2017 – Experience the Thrill of Visiting an Underground Church!
In this epic expedition through ancient Rome, your child will experience first-century Christians who meet in a dark cave, race chariots, and visit Paul for daily discoveries about God's love. Children will be excited in amazing stories, games, marketplace, music, and nourishing snacks.
During this exciting weekly camp, your child will learn to have:
- Ears that hear God's Word;
- Hearts that trust in the Lord;
- Tongues that speak in a God-honoring way;
- Hands that get to work;
- Feet that walk with the wise.
VBS Registration Details:
- Camp time: 9:30 AM – 11:45 AM July 10 – July 14, 2017
- Location: South Bay Chinese Gospel Church, 3360 Seldon Court, Fremont, CA 94539
- Children from Kindergarten through sixth grade are welcome
- Registration: $20/person, now to June 10, 2017 (Download Registration Form)
- Contact: email@example.com or call 510-440-8525
May God's grace be with you.
Children Ministry
South Bay Chinese Gospel Church
Categories: Vacation Bible School


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2019-2020 New Member Enrollment Form – Use this form to enroll in benefits when first eligible.
2019-2020 Open Enrollment Form –Use this form to enroll in or change plans during Open Enrollment.
2019-2020 Midyear Change Form – Use this form to update your benefits within 31 days of experiencing a qualified status change (QSC) event. Review the Qualified Status Change Matrix for more information.
Qualified Status change (QSC) Matrix – A Qualified Status Change is a change in work or family status that allows limited mid-year changes to benefit plans that effect eligibility for coverage. These changes are allowed outside of the annual open enrollment period. All changes must be reported to the Entity within 31 days. (or as specified in each section)
Eligibility and Dependent Eligibility – Make Sure Everyone You Cover Meets One of These Definitions
Affidavit of Domestic Partnership – To add a domestic partner by affidavit to your coverage, you must submit this affidavit to your educational entity within five business days of the electronic enrollment date or the date your enrollment form was received by your Educational Entity.
Termination of Domestic Partnership - Submit completed form to your Educational Entity.
Appeal Form- You may appeal to OEBB about dependent eligibility decisions, enrollment errors and omissions, Healthy Futures, or missed enrollment timeline.
Link to Individual Medical Plans, Dental Plans, and Vision Plans
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