Phil Pringle from Australia, came to my church last week and did paintings while preaching. I think its acrylic on canvas. Or maybe its oil... whatever....
On Saturday night he did the Lord's supper, it has been auctioned off for S$50,000
On Sunday he did a cross, which to my knowledge has not been sold yet. This one should fetch a higher price.
Went to this new cafe in the faculty for lunch with mel, got chic chop and he got fish and chips. each cost 3.50. value for money. only problem is the number of students clogging up the place.
TCC: the coffee connoisseur, on sunday afternoon. They have this book and it teaches you how to to tell your future from coffee stains.
my uni just released office enterprise 2007 for downloading and installing onto PC's in campus, for FREE!
muhahahaha.... today is a good day to be alive.
tidbit: when you are in a state of anger, remember, it's just one small alphabet away from Danger. When you are angry, words, actions, reactions, thoughts, they all bypass the thought center and becomes more of a reflex defensive/attacking mode. And when your anger causes you to react in a wrong way by saying something and then later regretting it, or doing something that cannot be reversed, then that word/action is the danger that you have fallen into and boy, would it be a tough climb out of it to mend the situation.
sightings: found a sandwich dispensing machine in the hospital next to the uni. $2 for a tiny sandwich. not worth it, but quite an interesting distraction. one day will take a photo of it. put in a $10 note and got back 8 golden $1 coins as change.
countdown: christmas is just around the corner. one day gonna drag my camera down to Orchard Road to snap the lights. hope this year its gonna be a good light up. Christmas is indeed the celebration of light, when the wise men fallowed the bright star.
music: coming back from Stockholm, i realized that Abba was from there and won some Eurovision thingy, and now i'm trying to listen to the latter while dusting off the former from my closed-stack collection of mp3's. its too bad the group broke up and never made a comeback. its for sure to be an instant hit no matter how bad they sing on a new album.
changed my timex watch strap for $28. the new strap made in HK, not USA and feels more rigid than the old one. the old one got so brittle that it broke in two places. all that is left are stubs of it. the other side of the strap has lots of crack marks. anyway, it has been with me for more than a year and traveled half way around the world, so quite worth it. but then again, have to get the same strap model to replace, else it just wont fit. marketing ploy.
highly recomended
one heck of an amazing book. devoured it in just a couple of days. it talks of the polio vaccine, how Jonas Salk created it. He didnt discover it but took technology from other researchers, i..e. how to grow the virus, how to type the different strains, how to inactivate it by formaldehyde, how to purify it, etc... and he took all those technology and mixed them into his polio vaccine. tested and tried on hundreds of thousands of children, it was found safe and the government licensed it to 5 drug companies for production.
Then there was the Sabin vaccine, which was made from live but weakened virus. Sabin is a lifelong critic of Salk. Actually many scientists hate Salk, because he supposedly didnt have any original discovery to his name (no nobel prize,. no high government post), yet just by leaching from other's work, he came up with this wonderful vaccine. Anyway, Sabin convinced the government to change the vaccine program from using Salk's to his because of the incident narrated in this book. but years later, it was discovered that Sabin's vaccine's weak viruses could revert into dangerous strains after a short time and caused more problems than Salk's. so the government then reverted back to Salk's vaccine, but only 3 years after Salk died.
one of the vaccine companies was called Cutter, hence the name of the book. (i only know previously that Cutter made mosquito repellent). the company produced a batch of vaccines that actually contained live viruses unknowingly. this is because the vaccine produced in bulk has totally different and longer formaldehyde inactivation times as compared to the small volumes that Salk made. then the science of that time did not have enough sensitivity todetect minuscule numbers of live viruses in those liters of vaccine broth. The state of the art at that time said it was safe, but later science reviewed that.
because of that, 200 of children became paralyzed for life and 10 died. so the case went to court. the court could not find any technical fault with Cutter Labs, nothing wrong in their production or quality control, no negligence. but the courts found Cutter in fault and they had to pay damages. This ruling broke the longstanding view that in order to claim damages, you have to prove negligence, this ruling showed that the company is liable even if they were not negligent. even if you do the best of your ability using the state of the art in science today, if tomorrow your product is shown to be a problem causer, you get sued. the other important point is that the court cannot comprehend scientific data and statistics; it relies on cunning linguistic twists and the emotions of the jury to come to a conclusion.
in the aftermath of that case, cutter didnt go bust but improved itself in other fields, increasing its revenue by the millions. many other drug cases popped up, and most of them didnt have any scientific backing but the courts still backed the patients rather than the drug company even though they have not shown negligence and no scientific data support their claims. this is because the general population sees the drug companies as huge filthy rich companies that can be exploited. the other reason is that when there is a fault, it is easier and more worthwhile to blame the company than to blame the doctor, or the government or the inventor of the drug.
Because of that, the number of vaccines and companies producing them dropped drastically. no one wants to spend millions searching and testing a vaccine, selling one dose for $1 and then getting blasted in court for billions in damages. thats why there's always talk of flu vaccine shortage and such.... no right minded company wants to take the risk. and why make vaccines that you only need to take once in a lifetime when you can make so much more from pills that reduce cholesterol or headache? the economics dictate the demise of vaccine production for a sane company.
in the end, with all this suing going round, both the consumer and the pharma will lose out, and the laywers earn their big bucks. the public has been and will continue to be deprived of a whole range of vaccines that could have been developed safely if the lawyers brushed up on their statistics and understand the science abit, no, alot better. you can sue the pharma if a vaccine causes problems, but who do you sue when the whole world is denied of a vaccine, causing hundreds to die from the lack of protection? i smell a conspiracy.
ultimate level! my sincere apologies to whoever i spam-poked to reach poking-nirvana. YESSS!!!
now can focus on my fluff... muahahaha
read this book in a day. only the first couple of chapters of any use. the rest is intuition. it basically tells you how to create a presentation without using any bullet points by framing it in a story like fashion. it would work for marketing or business presentations but never for scientific ones. in a nutshell, this is what the book teaches:
Tell a story in a presentation
ACT I: frame a story/problem personal and relevant to the audience (emotional)
Scene 1, The setting : Where are we, and when is it?
Scene 2, The protagonist : Who are we in this setting?
Scene 3, The imbalance : Why are we here?
Scene 4, The balance : What do we want to see happen?
Scene 5, The solution : How do we get there from here? (ACTII continues of this tangent with actions)
Story variations:
ACT II: develop the action of the story, why your proposed recommendation is a good idea (reason)
Using a Logic Tree; frame main points, sub-points, and sub-sub points. At least 3 points, and each point with 3 sub-points, and again 3 sub’s per sub-point. If you have one hour, can go through all the sub-sub, if you only have 5 minutes, just go through the points. Thus you have a presentation that caters to all times.
The points should answer a why/what/how/who/when question that the audience will ask about the solution.
Sub-points should answer a how/why question raised from the main point. Insert evidence from research, papers, anecdotes, etc. here. Remember that ACT II is all about reasoning.
In the same way, sub-sub-points should reason how/why the sub-points are the way to go. But its better that the sub, and the sub-sub have different types of questions (how/why)
Before ending ACTII, recap act I scene 4 and end with a question mark to throw the question to the audience to make a decision (mixing emotion with reason). This reconfirms the audiences’ wants in ACTI
ACT III: resolution
Scene 1: The crisis (summary of ACTI)
Scene 2: The solution (last point of ACTI)
Scene 3: The climax (what you are pushing)
Scene 4: The resolution (simple slogan more for background for QnA)
some parts that i found particularly informative.
Borrowed from the school's library. Was reading it on and off for two whole weeks and at last finished it. The second chapter is best, wehre they talk about what creativity is all about, and how difficult it is to define creativity and waht creativity means in the scientific realm; i.e. patents, papers, citations and conference papers.
The other chapters talk about the publishing system in science, how papers are reviewed and types of publications, that the new trend of 'open access' just means the writers pay more so its free for everyone to access. Another chapter talks about what a paper is made up of and what to look out for when reading/writing a paper. then it goes on to talk a little about electronic publishing and bournals or jooks: a mix of journals and books. never heard of it before reading this book. Then it ends of with a short introduction to patents and what can or cannot be patented and the costs of creating one. This part was interesting as i found out you cant patent a software, but can the special code created in the program that does a special task. you cannot patent also a machine so special that only you can operate it, eg. a time machine that only you can operate. Did a little search and found this site that reviews weird patents, quite an enjoyable browse. http://www.bpmlegal.com/weird.html
Below are two leafs from the book i found amusing...'stupid question' hahaha....
Maybe will post up some more tomorrow.
kinda hooked on junk in Youtube. Go search for 'amateur transplants' on it and laugh your head off. esp like their 'live' work.
also check out the 'drug song' and 'finals countdown' and 'careless surgeon'
go youtube and search for Buffalax. friend told me to watch some of the clips. hold on to your seat....
hahahahahha
first fry a scrambled egg, add in 'tang hoon'. cut to cubes
boil water, add in cucumber and boil till soft, add in noodles and boil.
when cooked, add in egg, mix and add seasoning.
EAT!
had to use the other lift since last week, the main lift under repair. so got to lug my bicycle up one flight of stairs to get the lift and it only stops on odd number floors, so got to lug it another flight of stairs to my 8th floor apartment.
exercise is good for the body...
“Science changes with every generation and with new discoveries and God doesn't. So I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict.”
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee fails to cover all the bases in the science–religion debate.
The stupid guy never learns
The average guy learns from his mistakes
The smart guy learns from the mistakes of others
On stage nervousness:
Vincent Di Salvo, Professor at the U of Nebraska
"Your goal is not to get rid of the butterflies in your stomach, but to convince them to fly in formation."
