#with multiple authorization forms from doctors and other relevant officials

[madtomedgar]

Reading the employee handbook and just. Screams in autism.

[pathwaytoecomeapharmacistin]

Pathway to Become a Pharmacist in Ireland After B.Pharm or Pharm.D

Planning to move to Ireland as a pharmacist with qualifications from outside the EU? Each country requires foreign-trained pharmacists to meet local standards before allowing them to register and work. In Ireland, this process is managed by the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland (PSI) through the Third Country Qualification Recognition (TCQR) system. This article outlines the latest steps and requirements for overseas pharmacists based on recent PSI updates.

Step 1: Get Your Pharmacy Degree Recognized

Before applying for registration, your academic and professional credentials must be assessed by the PSI to determine if they align with Ireland’s M.Pharm qualification (a five-year degree). Your Bachelor of Pharmacy (B.Pharm), Master of Pharmacy (M.Pharm), or Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D) will undergo a detailed comparison to this standard.

Eligibility Criteria Include:

Your qualification must be equivalent in length and content to the Irish M.Pharm degree.

You must already hold a license to practice pharmacy in the country where you completed your degree.

A certificate from the licensing authority in your home country confirming your registration status is required.

Initial Step: Submit a Pre-Application Form

To initiate the TCQR process, you need to fill out a pre-application form, which collects essential details such as:

Your personal and contact information

Your country of qualification and university name

Your eligibility to practice in your home country

Any other countries where you are or were previously licensed

Once PSI reviews this information, they will send you the actual application form via email.

What Happens Next?

After submitting the full application, your documents will go through several assessment stages depending on the outcome of each review. The TCQR process is structured as follows:

Stage 1: Preliminary Eligibility Check

At this stage, the PSI will:

Verify whether you meet the basic eligibility requirements.

Confirm that all necessary supporting documents and third-party verifications are provided.

Stage 1 Outcomes:

File Complete: All documents and requirements are satisfied, and your application proceeds to Stage 2.

Incomplete: If documentation is missing, you will be asked to submit the outstanding items within six months.

Invalid: If your qualifications do not meet the PSI’s basic criteria, the application will be deemed invalid, though you may reapply later.

Stage 2: Comprehensive Qualification Review

This is a thorough evaluation conducted by external assessors appointed by the PSI. They examine your educational background, training, licensing status, and work experience to judge if your credentials meet Irish pharmacy standards.

Aspects Assessed:

University curriculum and practical training

Accreditation status of your degree in your home country

Relevant work experience and continuing professional development (CPD)

You are also required to submit a Regulatory Data Form (TCQR4), filled and sent directly to PSI by your home country’s pharmacy regulator via official email noneuroute@psi.ie.

Stage 2 Outcomes:

Path A (Direct Certification): If your credentials meet Irish standards, you can proceed without further exams.

Path B (Equivalence Exam Needed): If gaps are identified, you must take an aptitude test to prove competency.

Stage 3B: PSI Aptitude Test

If you fall under Path B, you’ll be required to sit for the PSI Equivalence Exam, which includes:

MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions): Covering topics like pharmacology, pharmaceutical calculations, medicine properties, and professional practice.

OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination): A hands-on test simulating real-world pharmacy scenarios.

Depending on the gaps in your training, you may be asked to complete just one of the above or both. The exam is benchmarked against the Level 9 Irish M.Pharm program.

Stage 3A & 4B: Certificate of Recognition

After successfully passing the exam (if required), you will receive an official certificate from the PSI confirming that your qualifications meet Irish standards.

Step 3: Register as a Pharmacist in Ireland

Once you’ve been awarded the qualification certificate, you’re eligible to register with the PSI. This process includes:

Submitting final documents

Paying the registration fee

Providing evidence of English language proficiency

Upon completion, you will receive full licensure to work as a pharmacist in Ireland.

Final Words: Start Your Pharmacy Journey in Ireland

The pathway to becoming a licensed pharmacist in Ireland as a non-EU graduate is rigorous but clearly defined. It involves the evaluation of your qualifications, possible completion of an aptitude test, and finally, formal registration.

If you're preparing for the MCQ/OSCE or navigating the TCQR process, Elite Expertise offers dedicated support and expert coaching to help you through each phase with confidence.

For the latest details, always consult the official PSI website and take the next step toward your career as a pharmacist in Ireland!

[nicotrainjurylawrochester]

Why Preserving Evidence is Crucial in a New York Personal Injury Lawsuit

When you face a personal injury lawsuit in New York, preserving evidence becomes essential. Evidence helps tell your story. It supports your claims and strengthens your case.

In New York, the legal system places a high value on factual evidence. This means that the more evidence you have, the better your chances of success. This article explores why preserving evidence is crucial and how you can effectively manage it throughout the legal process.

The Role of Evidence

Evidence comes in many forms. It can include photographs, medical records, witness statements, and physical items. Each type of evidence plays a unique role in your case.

Photographs capture the scene of the accident. Medical records document your injuries. Witness statements provide an outside perspective. Collectively, they build a strong narrative around your experience.

The Importance of Timeliness

Timing is crucial when it comes to preserving evidence. The sooner you gather evidence after an incident, the better. Memories fade, and physical evidence can deteriorate.

For instance, a broken sidewalk may be repaired quickly. If you wait too long, you might lose the chance to document the scene as it was. Act promptly to secure your evidence.

Types of Evidence to Preserve in Your Personal Injury Case

When preparing for a New York personal injury lawsuit, it’s crucial to gather and preserve various types of evidence. Each piece of evidence plays a vital role in establishing the facts of your case. Here’s a detailed list of the types of evidence you should consider preserving:

Photographs

Capture images of the accident scene from multiple angles. Include close-ups of injuries and any property damage. Photographs can provide context and help illustrate the severity of the incident.

Take note of any relevant road signs, weather conditions, and other environmental factors that may have contributed to the accident.

Medical Documents

Gather all medical records related to your injuries. Keep detailed records of doctor visits, treatments, diagnoses, and prescriptions. These documents not only validate your injuries but also track your recovery process.

Include bills and receipts, as they can demonstrate the financial impact of your injuries.

Witness Statements

Speak with anyone who witnessed the incident. Collect their contact information and ask for written statements detailing what they saw.

Witness accounts can corroborate your version of events and add credibility to your claims. Ensure you gather statements soon after the incident, as memories can fade over time.

Physical Evidence

Retain any physical items related to the case. This can include damaged personal belongings, clothing, or equipment involved in the incident.

Physical evidence can provide tangible proof of the accident's impact and support your claims about the circumstances.

Communication Records

Preserve all relevant communications, including text messages, emails, and social media posts.

These records may contain important details about the incident, your injuries, or any interactions with involved parties. They can also show how your injuries affected your daily life and relationships.

Accident Reports

Obtain copies of any official accident reports filed by authorities. These reports often contain critical information, such as names of involved parties, descriptions of the accident, and any citations issued. They can serve as an official record of the incident.

Expert Testimony

Consider consulting with experts who can provide professional opinions relevant to your case.

For instance, a medical expert can testify about the extent of your injuries, while an accident reconstruction expert can help clarify the sequence of events. Their insights can bolster your case significantly.

Legal Implications of Evidence Preservation

In New York, failing to preserve evidence can have serious consequences. The court may view the missing evidence unfavorably. This could weaken your case. It may even lead to dismissal.

Legal rules require parties to preserve evidence once they anticipate litigation. Ignoring this duty can result in sanctions.

How to Organize Your Evidence

Organizing your evidence is crucial for managing your personal injury case effectively. A well-structured system helps you present your information clearly. Here are key steps to organize your evidence:

Create a Dedicated Folder: Set up a physical or digital folder specifically for your case. This keeps all relevant documents in one place.

Use Digital Tools: Utilize cloud storage services like Google Drive or Dropbox to store and categorize your documents. Digital files are easily accessible and shareable.

Label Everything Clearly: Clearly label each document and piece of evidence. Use descriptive titles such as “Accident Photos” or “Medical Records” to avoid confusion.

Create a Timeline: Develop a timeline of key events, including dates and descriptions. This helps track the sequence of incidents related to your injury.

Categorize Your Evidence: Organize your evidence into specific sections like photographs, medical records, and witness statements for easy access.

Back Up Important Files: Keep backups of crucial documents in both digital and physical formats to protect against data loss.

Maintain a Checklist: Create a checklist of evidence you need to collect. This ensures you don’t overlook anything important.

Review Regularly: Regularly review your organized evidence to keep everything up-to-date and properly categorized.

The Role of Legal Representation

Consider hiring an attorney who specializes in personal injury cases. A knowledgeable personal injury lawyer from The Nicotra Law Firm, PC - Rochester Personal Injury Lawyers understands the nuances of evidence preservation. They can guide you on what to collect and how to present it.

Legal representation ensures you don’t overlook critical evidence. Your attorney will help you navigate the complexities of the legal system.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Preserving evidence is critical in a personal injury case, but certain mistakes can undermine your efforts. Here are common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Assuming Someone Else Will Collect Evidence

Take responsibility for gathering evidence yourself.

2. Delaying Evidence Collection

Don’t wait too long to collect evidence after the incident.

3. Relying Solely on Digital Evidence

Physical evidence, like clothing or damaged items, is equally important.

4. Overlooking Important Details

Keep everything relevant to your injury case, no matter how minor it may seem.

5. Failing to Document Witness Information

Always gather contact information and statements from witnesses promptly.

[destroyyourbinder]

two articles on psychiatric medication

I'm planning on writing a bigger psychiatry-critical piece soon about how the overwhelming majority of both leftists and trans people that I know believe themselves to be necessarily reliant on either psychiatric medication or therapy or both, and permit themselves (rather, semi-deliberately evacuate themselves of agency in identification with those harming them, I do not wish to victim blame) to be extensively abused by the psychological-psychiatric medical system in a fruitless search of validation for their malaise in some horrible cycle of iatrogenic dependence.

In particular, I know at least two transgender people personally (one male, one female) who are so heavily medicated that I have few compunctions about calling what is being done to them a kind of chemical lobotomy. They have both been left minimally functional and dramatically changed in personality by their "treatments", but both still seek out psychiatry to endorse their transgender interpretation of themselves, despite the fact their doctors are brutally and with little humanity "re-adjusting" them out of inconvenient behavior through repeated hospitalization, high and probably inappropriate doses of lithium alongside multiple other medications, and of course their whole gender treatment paradigm.

So I am continually startled by not only the distinct lack of modern leftist criticism of psychiatric medical institutions but outright collaboration with these institutions. Many people in the broader community-- whether radical queers or lesbian feminists-- purport to value self-reliance and peer support networks, distrusting well-funded and politically undermining officially-sanctioned institutions, but I am not sure I know a single gay person in my everyday life who is not regularly attending counseling sessions of some variety or another or who is not taking psychiatric medications-- prescribed by a psychiatrist that they see monthly or sooner-- that they believe they cannot live without.

One of the reasons I am so critical is that I was once one of these people: I have been on at least fourteen different psychiatric medications in various combinations throughout my life, and both I and many of my doctors believed that I was so critically ill that I could not live a meaningful or even minimally functional life without them. I, or my depression-- we were coextensive, inseparable, my personhood was inconvenient to assessment, I suppose-- was considered so deeply treatment resistant that I had multiple psychiatrists tell me to my face that it might not be possible to help me (of course, while still holding the prescription pad). I was lucky to never have been on lithium or Lamictal, nor subjected to electroshock, but all were floated as an unfortunate but potentially necessary part of my treatment plan. I was indeed considered such a hopeless case that I was actually approved for disability payments for mental illness, without appeal, an extreme rarity in the United States, especially at such a young age (23). I do not know for sure or not whether I could have set the grounds to get my shit together without the intervention of psychiatry-- I did survive long enough to leave an abusive home, after all-- but I do not consider it a coincidence that I did not get my shit together until I stopped having a therapist whispering in my ear and stopped having these substances in my body.

I don't think you can understand the modern transgender movement-- whether the push to identify various gender-distressed people as having a disorder or just niche lifestyle in need of medicalized affirmation, or the ideology that demands we believe that gender identity is an essential characteristic of human beings-- without understanding the history of psychiatry as a coercive practice attempting to normalize the socially abnormal, often in service to extremely oppressive interests, and the history of therapy as inherently individualizing and anti-political, an authority-laden substitute for discernment and appropriate and healthy social feedback.

In any case, I want to keep it short today, and it's with this context I want to share with you two articles, one from the New Yorker and the other from NPR.

The first article, by the amazing writer Rachel Aviv, who has previously covered dense and thorny ethical issues regarding psychiatric treatment and the construction of mental illness, is a critical article about how many modern psychiatric patients come to take consecutive strings of multiple psychiatric medications, coming to have and then losing faith in their doctors and medications to fix their ills. It follows a woman who decided to withdraw from her medications and the people she meets as she must build her own support network during her process of withdrawal, given her unhealthy dependence on the psychiatric network treating her and the psychiatric industry's public denial that medication discontinuation symptoms even occur, nonetheless can have severe and life-disrupting effects. Aviv gives a contextual history and science of the use of several classes of modern psychiatric medications, including their incredible limitations given psychiatry's practice and value system; in a description that will read eerily familiar to any detransitioned woman, she states that "there are almost no studies on how or when to go off psychiatric medications, a situation that has created what he [Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-4 committee] calls a 'national public-health experiment.'"

An important excerpt relevant to both general psychiatry and the practice of transgender medicine and health care:

A decade after the invention of antidepressants, randomized clinical studies emerged as the most trusted form of medical knowledge, supplanting the authority of individual case studies. By necessity, clinical studies cannot capture fluctuations in mood that may be meaningful to the patient but do not fit into the study’s categories. This methodology has led to a far more reliable body of evidence, but it also subtly changed our conception of mental health, which has become synonymous with the absence of symptoms, rather than with a return to a patient’s baseline of functioning, her mood or personality before and between episodes of illness. “Once you abandon the idea of the personal baseline, it becomes possible to think of emotional suffering as relapse—instead of something to be expected from an individual’s way of being in the world,” Deshauer told me. For adolescents who go on medications when they are still trying to define themselves, they may never know if they have a baseline, or what it is. “It’s not so much a question of Does the technology deliver?” Deshauer said. “It’s a question of What are we asking of it?”

The second article, which also contains a longer-form audio interview with the author, is about a new book by Harvard historian of science Anne Harrington called Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. What I found particularly striking about her interview is Harrington's assertions about the state of psychiatry and psychiatric pharmaceutical research now-- she claims that the psychiatric medication market has stalled because of research finding that many common antidepressant medications work no better than placebo versions, and that pharmaceutical companies therefore are de-investing from psychiatric medication research and development because they can no longer use their previous strategy of slightly tweaking the chemical components of previously monetizeable drugs. She states there have been very few innovations in finding new classes of antidepressant medications in particular (the most easily marketed psychiatric drugs, for whom the target population can easily be expanded).

I think her points here are crucial to understanding exactly why pharmaceutical companies and psychiatry have become increasingly invested in transgender health care and in expanding the market for hormones and transgender-related surgeries through promoting interventions like HRT and "top surgery" as elective procedures suggested as ways to "affirm a patient's identity" rather than "treat a disorder". The gender critical blogger Brie Jontry, a mother of a formerly trans-identified female teen, calls this practice and ideology "identity medicine", a term I find useful to describe the unholy conglomeration that is the individualized medicalization of gender-related distress and the advertising of medical treatments (particularly those provided by cosmetic surgeons) as ways to facilitate self-expression and authenticity. Given increasing attempts by gender doctors to create patients permanently dependent on exogenous hormones (those children left with non-functional gonads after treatment with GnRH agonists like Lupron and cross-sex hormones, or those transgender people who have had theirs removed) or to convince patients that gender dysphoria is a life-long, inescapable condition that they had already failed in not treating/affirming earlier (because you Always Were A Boy), I have to note parallels with psychiatric medicine's anti-recovery, anti-patient-autonomy assertions about other recently marketed drugs such as atypical antipsychotics, on which patients are also purportedly permanently dependent, or antidepressants (as above) where withdrawal symptoms purportedly prove that a patient is doomed to relapse should she cease psychiatric treatment. "Informed consent" and the formation of transgender resources outside a "gatekeeping" paradigm, where patients need not seek insurance approval nor the opinions of several doctors of different specialties for transgender medical interventions, nor wait a set period of time prior to transitioning, is often lauded as progressive and anti-institution by radical transgender activists, who can rightly see issue with a psychiatry put in charge of policing the intimate personal beliefs, coping mechanisms for misogyny or homophobia, and individual gender expression of its patients. However, I can't but see this as part of a new and terrifying medical strategy regarding transgenderism, where a loss of patient agency is replaced with the false sense of consumer choice; we have seen this in other realms of psychiatry, where forms of psychiatric incarceration were rebranded as the choice to take a break or "finally" seek help after self-negatingly denying it for so long, where tranquilizing drugs were rebranded as assistive devices for women struggling to have it all, and where high-risk, heavily sedating antipsychotic medications were rebranded as ways to give other psychiatric medications a "boost" should you still experience unhelpful emotions after complying with psychiatric treatment. "Gender dysphoria" is increasingly nebulous, something you might have had all along if you experienced various forms of generic malaise or failed to have your suffering sufficiently validated and thereby dissipated by psychiatry; funny that we've seen this before with other conditions and their treatments, and psychiatry somehow always comes up with a money-making solution for its own problems.

[onlinemedicalmarijuanacard]

With the legalization of medical marijuana in Arizona, more and more individuals are seeking MJ evaluations and/or getting their Arizona medical marijuana card. There are multiple steps involved with obtaining a medical marijuana card and it is important to understand the process before beginning. The following guide will help you understand what’s involved in applying for your medical marijuana card in Arizona. The Qualifying Conditions In order to receive a medical marijuana card, you must have one of the twenty qualifying conditions as determined by the state of Arizona. These include HIV/AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, PTSD, seizures or chronic pain related to a qualifying condition. You can find a full list of qualifying conditions on the state’s website.

Obtaining Your Medical Marijuana Card Once you have determined that you meet one of the qualifying conditions outlined above, the next step is to obtain your medical marijuana card. In order to do so, you must first schedule an appointment with an authorized doctor who specializes in cannabis evaluations. During this appointment, they will assess your health condition and determine if you are eligible for a medical marijuana card. Once approved, they will provide you with documentation that includes your doctor’s recommendation and other details about your health condition that may be relevant for obtaining your medical marijuana card. Applying for Your Medical Marijuana Card After receiving documentation from your doctor that confirms you meet the criteria for a medical marijuana card, you can then apply online through the Arizona Department of Health Services website or through mail-in applications available at any local county health department office. You will need to provide all necessary documentation as outlined on their website including proof of residency such as two forms of identification and proof that you are over 18 years old (if applicable). All documents must be up-to-date and valid from when they were issued until now. Once all documents have been submitted and approved, your application will be processed within 7 days and once approved, you will receive your official Arizona Medical Marijuana Card via regular mail or email depending on how quickly it is needed; both methods require additional fees that may vary depending on where you live and when it needs to be delivered by.

[jovandawkins]

Music, Economics, and Beyond

"The whole point of digital music is the risk-free grazing" --Cory Doctorow Cory Doctorow, Canadian journalist together with co-editor and of the off-beat blog Boing Boing, is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent in the Creative Commons nonprofit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon lawfully and to share. Doctorow and others continue to write prolifically about the apocalyptic changes facing Intellectual Property in general along with the music industry in specific. In this article, we will explore the cataclysm facing U. S. industry in the portal example of the music industry, a simple industry in comparison to those of automotive or energy. However , within the simplicity of this example we may uncover some lessons that apply to all industries. In his web-article, "The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free, " Michael Arrington tells us that music DVD sales continue to plummet alarmingly. "Artists like Prince and Nine Inch Nails are flouting their brands and either giving music away or telling their fans to steal it... Radiohead, which is not any longer controlled by their label, Capitol Records, put their new digital album on sale on the Internet for no matter what price people want to pay for it. " As many others have iterated in recent years, Arrington reminds us that with regard to effective legal, technical, or other artificial impediments to production can be created, "simple economic theory dictates that the price of music [must] fall to zero as more 'competitors' (in the following case, listeners who copy) enter the market. " Unless sovereign governments that subscribe to the Universal Copyright laws Convention take drastic measures, such as the proposed mandatory music tax to prop up the industry, there pretty much exist no economic or legal barriers to keep the price of recorded music from falling toward zero. With response, artists and labels will probably return to focusing on other revenue streams that can, and will, be exploited. Especially, these include live music, merchandise, and limited edition physical copies of their music. According to author Stephen M. Dubner, "The smartest thing about the Rolling Stones under Jagger's leadership is the band's workmanlike, corporate method to touring. The economics of pop music include two main revenue streams: record sales and traveling profits. Record sales are a) unpredictable; and b) divided up among many parties. If you figure out how to tour efficiently, meanwhile, the profits--including not only ticket sales but also corporate sponsorship, t-shirt sales, etc ., --can be staggering. You can essentially control how much you earn by adding more dates, whereas it's hard to overpower how many records you sell. " ("Mick Jagger, Profit Maximizer, " Freakonomics Blog, 26 July 2007). In order to get a handle on the problems brought about by digital media in the music industry, we turn to the data the majority relied upon by the industry. This data comes through Neilsen SoundScan which operates a system for gathering information and tracking sales. Most relevant to the topic of this column, SoundScan provides the official method for tracking gross sales of music and music video products throughout the United States and Canada. The company collects data on a every week basis and makes it available every Wednesday to subscribers from all facets of the music industry. Like for example , executives of record companies, publishing firms, music retailers, independent promoters, film entertainment producers and their distributors, and artist management companies. Because SoundScan provides the sales data used by Billboard, the leading trade magazine, for any creation of its music charts, this role effectively makes SoundScan the official source of sales records inside the music industry. Quo vadis? According to Neilsen Soundscan, "In a fragmented media world where technology is usually reshaping consumer habits, music continues to be the soundtrack of our daily lives. According to Music 360 2014, Nielsen's third annual in-depth study of the tastes, habits and preferences of U. S. music listeners, 93% of the country's population listens to music, spending more than 25 hours each week tuning into their favorite songs. " For most Americans, music is the top form of entertainment. In a 2014 survey, 75% of respondents claimed that they actively chose to listen to music over other media entertainment. Music is part of our lives across all times of the day. One fourth of music listening takes place while driving or riding in autos. Another 15% of our weekly music time takes place at work or while doing household chores. It has end up no surprise over the past five years that CD sales have diminished while download listening and sales get increased. Bob Runett of Poynter Online comments, "Start waving the cigarette lighters and swaying aspect to side--the love affair between music fans and their cell phones is getting more intense. Phones with audio capabilities will account for 54 percent of handset sales globally in five years, according to a report talking to firm Strategy Analytics Inc. The report suggests that we keep watching the growth of cellular tunes decks (CMDs), devices that deliver excellent sound quality and focus on music more than images. " ("A Few Notes About Music and Convergence, " 25 November 2014) Stephen J. Dubner summed in the mess quite well almost a decade ago. "It strikes me as ironic that a new technology (digital music) can have accidentally forced record labels to abandon the status quo (releasing albums) and return to the past (selling singles). I sometimes think that the biggest mistake the record industry ever made was abandoning the pop sole in the first place. Customers were forced to buy albums to get the one or two songs they loved; how many albums can you claim that you truly love, or love even 50% of the songs--10? 20? But now the people have talked: they want one song at a time, digitally please, maybe even free. " ("What's the Future of the Music Sector? A Freakonomics Quorum, " 20 September 2007). Like many of us, I (Dr. Sase) also have worked for a musician/producer/engineer/indie label owner releasing esoterica since the 1960s. While occasionally made an adequate living off my movies, I also developed my talents as an economist, earning a doctorate in that field. Therefore , I thought from this dual perspective of an economist/musician. The post-future, as many music pundits call it, does not really change that much from the past. How and why folks obtain their music continues to reflect at least three linked decision drivers. We can summarize the three most relevant as 1) Content, 2) Durability, and 3) Time-Cost. Let us explain further. 1) Content When I started to record music in the early 1960s, the market has been filled with "one-hit wonders. " It was the age of AM (amplitude modulation), DJ radio. It was also the age of this 45 RPM record with the hit on the A Side and usually some filler cut on the M Side. It was not uncommon for anyone with a 2-track reel-to-reel to "download" the one hit desired from their favorite broadcast station. There were few groups that offered entire twelve-inch LPs with mostly great songs. The first these LP that I purchased was Meet the Beatles by those four lads from Liverpool. Click here Jovan Dawkins During the late nineteen sixties, the industry turned more to "Greatest Hit" collections by groups that had previously turned out a archipelago of AM hits and to "concept" albums. During this golden age of LP sales, the Beatles, your Stones, the Grateful Dead, Yes, King Crimson, and numerous other groups released albums filled with sound content. Bottom line: consumers don't mind paying for product if they feel that they are receiving value. 2) Durability How come would someone buy a twelve-inch LP when they could borrow a copy and tape record the tunes to a reel-to-reel or, later on, to a compact cassette? The answers at that time were simple. First, it was "cool" to have a great album collection, especially one that a member of the opposite gender could thumb through in your dorm room. Let us simply say that one's album collection could inform another party about people's tastes and possible sub-culture and personality. Therefore , an attractive collection provided a certain degree of social currency. May well this account for the resurgence of vinyl in recent years? The second part of the equation came in the form of actual product flexibility. Like current downloads, self-recorded reel-to-reel and cassette tapes generally suffered from some loss of fidelity in the change. More importantly, the integrity and permanence of the media also left something to be desired. Thirty to $ 40 . 00 years ago, tape would flake, break, and tangle around the capston. Unless one backed up their collection for a second-generation tape, many of one's favorite tunes could be lost. Today, computer hard drives crash. Without the expense of additional hard drive and the time involved to make the transfer, the same durability issues ensue. What about CDs? Since several of us who use CD-Rs for multiple purposes know, the technology that instantly burns an image actually leaves a product that remains more delicate and subject to damage in comparison to a commercially fabricated CD, stamped with a metal master. Will the Internet clouds provide the same level of comfort for music producers and listeners? We might just have to wait and see. 3) Time-Cost This third element basically reflects the old "tape is running/time-is-money" economic argument and may explain why younger music-listeners prefer to download songs either legally or illegally. The idea echoes the same economics that led listeners in the 1960s to record their favorite hits off of the radio. That substance of the argument has to do with how an individual values his/her time. If music-lovers works for a low per hour wage (or often no income at all), they will value the time spent downloading, backing up, and switching cuts in terms of what they could be earning during the same time. Let us consider the following example. Assuming that twelve packages or a comparable CD costs $12. 00, a baby-sitter earning $6 per hour could afford to spend even though two hours of time ripping music to achieve the same value. However , someone with a skilled trade or a degree may be earning $24. 00 or more per hour. Spending more than one half hour at ripping would exceed the worth derived. The counter-argument of the time-cost of travelling to a brick-and-mortar music store gets offset by a persons ability to log-on to Amazon or elsewhere in less than a minute and possibly receive free shipping. The market will constantly change as the primary market demographic ages. It happened with the Baby-Boomers of the 1960s and 1970s therefore will happen with Generation X, Y and Z in the current century. The bottom line of all of this debate rests on the fact that a consumer will choose the mode of deliverable that optimizes his/her bundle of values. The following bundle includes quality and quantity of content, durability, and time-cost effectiveness. These remain the lessons that will music makers and music deliverers must understand to survive. The more things change, the more they continue to be the same. "When I'm drivin' in my car, And that man comes on the radio, He's tellin' me more and more, Approximately some useless information, Supposed to fire my imagination, I can't get no, oh no, no, no . inch -Michael Philip Jagger, British Economist, London School of Economics In conclusion, we recognize that certain values inspire consumers as well as businesses. These values include content, durability, and time cost. It does not matter whether the good and service under consideration exists in the form of real, personal, or intellectual property. The premise remains the same for making favorite songs, building automobiles, teaching economics, and providing legal services.

[engl11ww]

Filipino Time as Normalized in Social and Professional Settings: An Effort for a More Comprehensive RA 10535

Abstract

Filipino time, a trait attributed to Filipinos being habitually late to various events and appointments, is a prevalent problem manifested by Filipinos. This trait can provide reinforcement to accept and normalize Filipino time in social and professional settings. This is evident from the account that former President Quirino was late to his own awarding of an honorary degree from Fordham University (Bernad, 2002), and many more accounts. Thus, a more comprehensive version of the existing solution of RA 10535 is proposed, which would combat the problem through awareness and prevention.

Statement of the Problem

Primary Source Published as an article in the fifth volume of the Budhi, a journal from the Ateneo de Manila University, Filipino Time, which is the habit of Filipinos to be purposefully or unintentionally tardy, is shown to be a prominent trait of Filipinos in numerous social occasions, and professional appointments by individuals in various hierarchies of the social strata. Two accounts noted by the author on phenomenon of Filipino time has shown it to be exemplified by former President Quirino in arriving exceedingly late to the awarding ceremony of his own honorary doctorate by Fordham University, and by the Marcoses’ being unhurried to occasions in which they preside in (Bernad, 2002). These instances thus promote “Filipino time” as normalized in social and professional settings.

Secondary Sources The problem of Filipino time has also been acknowledged by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) as a normalized culture of tardiness in professional settings that leads to loss in productivity. To re-instill the value of time within Filipinos, a campaign called “Juan Time”, implemented by the DOST, aims to shift the current culture by synchronizing all timekeeping devices in government offices and public spaces with respect to the official Philippine Standard Time (PST) (DOST, 2011). This is further concretized by its implementation as a law in Republic Act 10535 also known as “The Philippine Standard Time (PST) Act of 2013 (DOST, 2013) . (104 words)

Statement of the Solutions Existing Solution Showing the exact and official time in government offices and key public spaces (DOST, 2013)  to combat the prevalence of Filipino time through awareness. Institutions are required to synchronize all timekeeping devices of their offices with the Philippine Standard TIme (PST). This will ideally encourage individuals to be aware of the PST, and thus synchronize the PST with their own timekeeping devices. Furthermore, it allows them to be aware of the official time, and also the time used by other people of their correspondence. However, individuals themselves are not mandated to follow the PST, and there are no repercussions for individuals violating this.

Relatable Solution In addition, conducting studies on the prevalence of Filipino time and its impact on the productivity of individuals and organizations is another solution to combat the prevalence of Filipino time through facts and data. In a study published in “Understanding the Filipino Worker and Organization” of the Ateneo de Manila University Press, Emerald Ilac and Helen Salvosa (2017) found that it was the most prevalent counterproductive behavior in the workplace. Studies on the subject would ideally encourage organizations to realize the negative impact of Filipino time on productivity, therefore create policies to prevent this. However, it is up to the discretion of the institution on whether or not to implement these measure in the workplace. (218 words)

Execution of the Solution Context To effectively change a culture and habit such as Filipino time, a solution must start with studies about the problem, public awareness, and implemented legislation. Conducted and compiled research by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) on the subject will to be able to substantiate the prevalence of the problem and propose possible solutions to it. Public awareness and implementation is then accomplished by RA 10535, which is synchronizing all timekeeping devices in government institutions and key public spaces with the Philippine Standard Time (PST) (DOST, 2013). (88 words)

Step-by-step Process The Philippine Institute for Development Students (PIDS) can spearhead the endeavor to conduct and collect research about the prevalence of Filipino time in professional and social settings, its impact on productivity in the workplace, and propose solutions it. This can be done by allocating some of its budget of government funds to conduct its own research and incentivize other research institutions, as well as public and private universities to pursue these studies. Once it is deemed by the PIDS that there are enough published studies about Filipino time to form a prevailing consensus, it will conduct a comprehensive review of all the relevant studies on the subject. This review will highlight the major findings about the nature of Filipino time, its prevalence and impact in society, and feasible solutions proposed by the studies. To be able to effectively disseminate its findings to the public, it will be published in multiple journals and circulated in various media outlets. Implementation of the findings conducted by the PIDS can be incited by a revision of the existing Republic Act No. 10535. This law already requires timekeeping devices in government offices and key public spaces be synchronized with the Philippine Standard Time (PST) (DOST, 2013). A more comprehensive version of this law must also be made to accomodate and incorporate the findings of the PIDS from its endeavors that are proven to decrease the instances of Filipino time. This version must also be expanded to include private professional and educational institutions and within its scope of jurisdiction, provide harsher penalties to violators, and increase support for institutions that wish to penalize individuals those who violate this. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) will be tasked to provide, maintain, and disseminate the PST throughout the government and private institutions, in key public areas, and media outlets within the country. In addition to this, the law also promotes the culture and awareness of the importance of time and time management. This is accomplished by celebrating “National Time Consciousness Week” during the first week of the year. National and local governments, as well as public and private schools, are also tasked to conduct an information campaign on the value of time. Both of these initiatives would encourage awareness of the value and importance of time, as well as the time of other individuals.

[day0one]

Trump’s campaign in crisis as aides attempt August reset before time runs out      3 mins ago ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Signs that President Trump’s reelection bid is in crisis grew steadily this past week, one of the most tumultuous moments of a presidency increasingly operating with an air of desperation as it tries to avoid political disaster in November.

Campaign officials pulled television ads off the air amid a late-stage review of strategy and messaging. At the same time, Trump publicly mused about delaying the November election, airing widely debunked allegations about fraud that were roundly rejected by Republicans and Democrats.

And as the campaign aims to mount a more aggressive defense of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the president has reverted to touting unproven miracle cures, attacking public health officials and undercutting his own government’s push to encourage good health practices.

Trump briefly lamented his predicament during a taxpayer-funded event Friday in Florida that doubled as a political rally and a showcase of poor public health practices.

“We had an easy campaign, and then we got hit by the China virus,” Trump said as uniformed sheriff’s deputies stood behind him and a crowd of dozens of supporters huddled before him. Few people wore masks or practiced social distancing.

With the president unable to hold traditional rallies and his central economic message no longer relevant, campaign officials are scrambling to assemble a fresh case for his candidacy on the fly.

After a six-day pause in advertising, new ads targeting Democratic rival Joe Biden are set to begin airing Monday, according to campaign officials who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It’s the latest in a long-running attempt to define the former vice president in the eyes of voters before they cast their ballots.

But Trump himself is perhaps the greatest impediment to any successful campaign pivot, as the president has rejected calls from Republican allies and lawmakers to project a steady hand during what is shaping up to be another lost summer of self-inflicted setbacks.

The turbulent final week of July capped a month that may rank among the most ominous of Trump’s term in office, marked by erratic behavior and flashing warning signs.

A slew of public polls showed Trump falling further behind Biden, who now leads by double digits nationally; Trump demoted his campaign manager Brad Parscale and replaced him with longtime GOP operative Bill Stepien; nearly 25,000 Americans died of the novel coronavirus, and a record 2 million were infected; Trump canceled the Republican National Convention celebrations; the economic recovery from a record contraction slipped into reverse, and 30 million Americans lost their $600 weekly federal unemployment assistance after the White House and Congress struggled to negotiate a stimulus package.

Struggling on multiple fronts, Trump’s campaign launched a major shake-up that included a broader review of strategy, spending and messaging while ads came off the air, officials said.

Stepien — who officials say has impressed Trump with his command of data — is attempting to get a better sense of how the campaign has been focusing its energy and targeting its resources. Stepien told others he wanted to understand how ad decisions were made and why certain ads were being run, officials said. Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner approved the pause in ads, an official said.

Stepien is also reviewing personnel allocation to determine whether structuring the campaign they way Parscale did makes sense.

Campaign officials have denied there is any lingering tension over Parscale’s demotion. But Stepien’s elevation and swift embrace of new tactics amount to a tacit rebuke of the former campaign manager’s tenure. The Stepien-led review of spending and strategy comes as a legal complaint this past week accused the campaign and an affiliated fundraising committee of failing to properly report nearly $170 million in campaign spending through firms run by Parscale. The Trump campaign denied any wrongdoing.

Campaign officials said that when the pause in ad spending ends Monday, new television spots will aim to brand Biden as a tool of liberal extremists. The negative ads will initially target swing states that have the earliest mail-in voting dates.

Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin are among states that begin mailing out absentee ballots to voters more than 45 days before the Nov. 3 election, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Michigan, Georgia, and Texas are among states where ballots will also begin hitting mailboxes in September.

The campaign, which held an all-staff meeting at its Arlington headquarters on Wednesday that one official described as a “call to arms,” is operating under a renewed sense of urgency as it becomes clearer that a large portion of the electorate will likely cast their ballots early by mail as a result of the pandemic. That gives Trump even less time to turn things around.

But even as Stepien and top campaign aides try to impress on the staff that time is limited, Trump has done little to show he plans to change tactics. Trump’s allies say they realize the pandemic will likely be the central issue for voters heading into the election and have urged him to show he is in command of the crisis.

The president has instead opted to double down on divisive messaging, reverting to form after briefly appearing to embrace a more serious tone about the pandemic.

In recent days, Trump has used his massive social media platform to promote a doctor who falsely claimed Americans did not need to wear masks because the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for the coronavirus.

Trump continued to express support for the doctor, Stella Immanuel after a reporter informed him Tuesday that she had also claimed that alien DNA is used in medical treatments. When pressed, he abruptly ended the news briefing and walked away.

Earlier in the same briefing, Trump complained that health officials, including top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci, are popular but “nobody likes me.”

“Why don’t I have a high approval rating?” Trump asked before answering himself: “It can only be my personality. That’s all.”

The president set off a fresh round of drama Thursday when he publicly mused about delaying the election, which he claimed without evidence will be marred by historic fraud.

“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” he wrote on Twitter. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely, and safely vote???”

A chorus of Republicans and Democrats publicly rebuked him, noting that the president does not have the authority to delay an election.

On a strictly political level, Republicans are worried that the president’s onslaught against mail-in voting could hamper their efforts to turn out the vote. Trump’s attempts to draw a distinction between universal mail-in voting and individually requested absentee voting, while welcomed and encouraged by party officials, have not had the intended effect on Republican voters. GOP party officials have struggled to convince voters to request mail-in ballots.

“He has denigrated mail-in voting to the point that Democrats are dominating requests for absentee ballots,” said David Wasserman, House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Like Trump’s unsubtle attempts to appeal to “Suburban Housewives” and virus-wary senior citizens, his push to discredit mail-in voting underscores the sense of angst in his reelection bid as Biden settles into a comfortable lead.

One top Biden campaign official acknowledged that the Democratic campaign strategy is often to stay out of the news when Trump’s behavior is particularly inflammatory. Biden’s team didn’t respond until Thursday evening to the president’s early morning missive suggesting that the election should be delayed.

“It is absolutely a strategic decision,” said a Biden official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign tactics. “We don’t let him pull us off of our message and we don’t play his game.”

But some Biden campaign allies believe that the former vice president’s operation is being too selective about how it responds to Trump’s attacks.

Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said that he’s been begging top campaign officials to punch back at Trump’s ads that wrongly suggest that Biden supports defunding the police. The spots had been playing in high rotation in key swing states before the Trump campaign’s recent pause.

“Obviously the Trump people have very few arrows in their quiver,” Rendell said. But the “law and order” message could work with some voters, he said.

Trump, as he often does when he feels under pressure, is preparing to go more aggressively into attack mode. Campaign officials expect a ruthlessly negative race in the final months.

“We are doing a new ad campaign on Sleepy Joe Biden that will be out on Monday,” Trump wrote Friday on Twitter. “He has been brought even further LEFT than Crazy Bernie Sanders ever thought possible.”

Stepien has told allies he wants attacks going forward to focus on the liberal figures trying to influence Biden. Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and self-described democratic socialist, has featured heavily in Trump’s messaging against Biden.

But it’s not clear that the strategy is working. Several campaign aides and allies admitted that they have struggled to negatively define the former vice president in the eyes of voters — a long-standing goal for the summer that is quickly slipping out of reach. As Biden has largely remained in his Delaware home due to the pandemic, many of Trump’s attacks on his mental acuity, liberal policies and approach to public safety have not broken through.

“One thing that we have found in our focus groups is that people just don’t know anything about Joe Biden,” said Kelly Sadler, the communications director for America First, the official pro-Trump super PAC.

America First, which is currently running ads painting Biden as weak on crime, is conducting polling to test which messages might work best against the former vice president in the final stretch of the race.

Trump campaign ads set to run in the coming days are also aimed at turning up the pressure on Biden, who the president has tried to brand as “sleepy” before switching to more ominous descriptors such as “corrupt” and “puppet of the militant left.”

As it goes on the attack in the political realm, Trump’s campaign is in a defensive crouch when it comes to the electoral map. Polls show Biden leading across the battleground states and competitive in Republican strongholds such as Texas and Georgia.

Trump’s campaign, which has already spent $1 billion, is using its hefty war chest to defend Republican territory, including Arizona.

America First, the super PAC, has stopped running ads in Michigan, acknowledging that its less likely than other swing states to remain in Trump’s column in November, an official said. The group is currently running television spots in North Carolina, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Stepien has also sought to focus the campaign on securing the most direct path to 270 electoral votes. The campaign, which has also pulled back advertising in Michigan, has gamed out scenarios where Trump loses some of the states he won in 2016 and still ends up victorious.

“We only need to win either Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania to win this thing again,” Stepien told reporters on July 24.

But news that Trump’s campaign had paused to reassess its messaging was welcomed by Biden's team, which viewed the move as a validation of the Democrat’s more low-key strategy.

T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s campaign, said Trump is losing because “he abandoned the American people” and lacked “any coherent strategy” to address a pandemic that has cost 150,000 lives and millions of jobs.

“There,” he said in a statement. “Message assessment complete.”

[myeducar]

Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Scholarships for International Applicants in Germany, 2020 (Fully Funded)

About KAS:

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) is a political foundation, inspired by Christian democratic values, committed to fostering democracy and the rule of law, to implementing social and market-economic structures and to promoting human rights in Europe and worldwide. In line with these principles, our Foundation awards scholarships to international master students and graduates in order to enable study and research at universities in Germany. This way, we actively promote intercultural dialogues, the formation of international networks as well as the internationalization of universities and science.

After finishing their studies in Germany, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung expects its former scholars to contribute actively to the development of their home country’s relations with the Federal Republic of Germany.

Who are we looking for?

Our Scholarship Program for International Students is aimed at international students and graduates who have acquired a university degree and who intend to complete postgraduate or master studies, doctoral studies or a research stay of at least three semesters at a university in Germany.

The guidelines

· Have a university degree, as we do not provide support for bachelor studies,

· prove above average academic performance,

· be no older that 30 when applying,

· have good knowledge of the German language (B2-level),

· be actively engaged in voluntary work,

· plan to study a minimum of three semesters at a university in Germany,

· possess a broad general education and distinct interest in political issues,

· have a positive attitude towards democracy and human rights,

· be open to develop their personal points of view and practice tolerance,

· be highly motivated and able to convince us of their goals in life.

Further specifications

· Students in Medicine or Pharmacy can only apply after having completed their intermediate exam in Germany or when having achieved a comparable stage of their studies.

· Human or dental medicine specialist training or post graduate research stays in Germany cannot be supported.

· Persons having already achieved a doctorate are not eligible for a scholarship.

Benefits of our scholarship program

Our scholarship program consists of financial assistance, personal guidance, a wide seminar program and access to the worldwide KAS-network. After the successful completion of studies, we remain in contact with our alumni and involve them in our national and international activities.

Financial assistance

The duration and level of funding varies for different types of studies. Graduates (master or postgraduate students) receive a monthly scholarship of € 850 ( € 861 as of August 1, 2020). The standard funding period is two years. After having obtained unconditional admission to doctoral studies at a German university, PhD-students receive a monthly scholarship of € 1.200. The standard funding period for PhD scholars is three years. We also fund research stays in Germany for the minimum of three semesters.

Beside the monthly stipend, we offer multiple subsidies for our scholars. Upon request, we subsidize health care insurance up to the amount of € 120 per month. We also offer a family allowance of € 276 provided that you and your spouse live together in one place in Germany for at least three months and that his/her income does not exceed the amount of € 450 per month. Additionally, we grant children’s allowance of € 194 per month for children living with you in Germany. Prerequisites are the submission of an official German translation of the child’s birth certificate and the official rejection of your demand for public child allowance.

In addition, PhD-scholars can apply for financial assistance for research stays abroad. However, we do not fund participation in congresses or symposia.

Fees resulting from courses at the university in Germany that are directly related to your studies can be refunded up to the amount of € 1.500 per semester. However, we do not refund regular semester fees resulting from enrollment or annual re-registration.

Network and Seminars

Being a scholar of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung means much more than just receiving financial assistance. Our scholars benefit from a broad program of ideational support. They become part of an active and living network. The program is based on three pillars: 1. Personal contact and mentoring. 2. A wide seminar program – with over 180 activities per year - for all of our app. 3.000 scholars in Germany. 3. Regional and local activities of our more than 140 different university groups.

1. Mentoring by our staff and representatives at the universities

Our staff members and representatives at the universities supervise and consult our scholars personally. They monitor the progress of your studies as well as your participation in the seminar program and the activities of your university group. Our foundation attaches great importance to the continued development of your social commitment. The overall objective is to support you in identifying and in improving your individual strengths.

2. A manifold seminar program

The objective of the seminars, which are held exclusively for our scholars, is to expand the general education of our scholars. The seminars provide opportunities for an interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and information with other scholars and acknowledged experts. The ranges of topics include historical, political, economic and social issues on a national, European and international scope. Furthermore, training and coaching seminars help our scholars to strengthen their soft skills and to facilitate the transition from studying to professional life.

3. Being part of a local university group and of our Buddy-Program

The local university groups, “Hochschulgruppen”, are managed independently by our scholars along with the representatives of our foundation at the universities, the so called “Vertrauensdozenten”. Each semester, they create a program of diverse activities for themselves. These local groups also help you with settling in and getting used to your new surroundings. Furthermore, we invite our foreign scholars to take part in our Buddy-Program. On request, we identify an experienced German scholar to support you during the settling in period at your university in Germany and to facilitate your connection with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and your local university group.

Our network of former scholars

It is a matter of particular interest to the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung to encourage networking between our current and former scholars. Over 14.000 alumni form a vibrant and global network of former KAS scholars who play active roles in politics, economics, science and society all over the world and who, at the same time, remain committed to our foundation and its current scholars. More than 50 regional alumni groups worldwide and several specialized sub-networks give great opportunities to our former scholars and allow them to remain connected to our foundation. This alumni network also provides practical assistance: its members finance a Social Fund which provides help to current and former scholars in cases of need. Moreover, the network promotes scientific and social projects.

Support, advice, networking

Our speakers as well as the liaison officers look after and advise you personally. In dialogue, we accompany the progress of our scholarship holders in their studies or doctoral studies, their participation and participation in the university group, and their participation in our seminars. The further development of your social engagement is also important to us. This is about recognizing and promoting your individual strengths.

University group and buddy program

In the university groups, our scholarship holders set their own impulses and organize a semester program with different event formats. Your fellows will also help you get started at your new university location in the first few weeks and months. As part of a buddy program, an older German scholarship holder can be provided to you, if you wish. Your buddy will then show you the university campus and the library, accompany you to the authorities and help you with any questions. He or she also introduces you to life in the university group.

International Fellows' Network (NIS)

The primary purpose of the NIS is to network international scholarship holders. It offers an additional platform for the exchange of knowledge and experience on topics that are particularly relevant for international students. Furthermore, the NIS supports the scholarship holders when they arrive in Germany, i.e. especially with tips and tips for integration into student and social life. In addition, the network is intended to strengthen the scholarship holders' ties to the foundation and to provide additional space for dealing with current political issues.

Alumni network

Networking with the old scholarship holders begins during the funding period. It continues to work beyond the scholarship holder period and strengthens cohesion - even across borders. The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung's alumni form an active network of over 14,000 former scholarship holders at home and abroad. They are active in all areas of politics, state, economy, science, research and society and feel connected to the goals of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and the current scholarship holders. Over fifty regional groups in Germany and abroad as well as numerous thematic networks form a contact point for our alumni even after their studies have ended and promote contact with the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation. The network also provides concrete help: scholarship holders and alumni are supported in personal emergencies with funds from the aid and social fund of the old fellows. Activities in the scientific and social field are also promoted.

How to apply

There are two ways to apply for our scholarship program.

Each year new focus countries or regions are determined for our selection procedures. In 2020 the focus regions will be Central Europe, Southeast Asia, Near East and Western Africa. Interviews will be conducted in Budapest, Seoul, Amman and a capital city in a West African country (yet to be determined). If you are living in a country or region close to these cities, you may send your written application directly to the responsible KAS office – please check their web-sites for the exact procedure and addressee. Students living in countries that are not listed cannot apply for the international selection procedure in 2020.

In case you are already living or studying in Germany, you are welcome to apply for a scholarship via the domestic selection program using our online procedure. Please fill out the application form online and upload all required application documents. Please do not send in any documents by mail as these will not be considered. The application period ends on July 15th (12:00/noon) each year for the domestic procedure.

Necessary documents for the application

Please download and fill out the application form and attach the following documents if you are applying for a MA-Scholarship.

· A meaningful CV in tabular form including details about your previous voluntary work or social commitment.

· Motivation letter.

· Copies of your examination certificates in German translation if the originals are not in English.

· Copies of your studies performance records if you have been studying at a University in Germany.

· Proof of German language skills (B 2).

· An informal academic letter of recommendation: This letter should provide information about your academic qualifications and potential; it should not be older than two month. The author has to be a university professor or teacher holding a doctoral degree.

· An informal letter of recommendation concerning the applicant’s personality: This letter should focus on your personality and interests as well as on your understanding of values and your social commitment. The author cannot be the same as the one providing the academic letter of recommendation.

· Certificate of admission or matriculation from your university in Germany.

· A photo.

If you are applying for a PhD-Scholarship, please add the following documents:

· A detailed description of your doctoral thesis: This exposé, written in German or English (4-5 pages), should outline the central research question of your proposed project, its scientific relevance, your theoretical approach and the motives behind your choice of the research subject. It should also contain a work and time schedule and a bibliography.

· A second academic letter of recommendation: This second letter should be written by the supervisor of your doctoral thesis, providing you already have one. It replaces the letter of recommendation concerning the applicant’s personality.

To know the detailed instructions on how to apply, please visit KAS

Thanks!

[kathleenseiber]

How to defend yourself from COVID-19 myths and lies

Use the following techniques to ward off COVID-19 myths, conspiracy theories, disinformation, and false news.

As the new coronavirus has spread across the globe, so has speculative and deceptive information about its origins, how it infects people, and what can be done to protect against it.

Many people have found themselves engulfed by a maelstrom of false news, unsubstantiated home remedies, conspiracy theories and propaganda seemingly overnight. That may be due, in part, to the fact that lies travel faster and reach more people than the truth, according to a study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who investigated how rumors spread on Twitter.

With the pandemic moving at a pace and a scope that have overwhelmed the coping mechanisms of entire countries, it’s no surprise that individuals are left struggling with what to believe, says Jane Bambauer, a professor at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law, who is studying why the COVID-19 crisis is particularly suited to breeding bad information.

“Always ask yourself: Why is someone not accepting facts?”

“A situation like this, where even the best experts and scientists with the most critical minds are dealing with something that they still don’t fully understand, creates a low-knowledge environment,” Bambauer says. “And when people are desperate for knowledge, when we don’t have much light, we try to fill the gaps and share what we can. Even scientists are not immune to this.”

No mask and no amount of social distancing can protect people from ingesting information that could be harmful to themselves or those around them.

“When we’re forced to make decisions in an environment where much about COVID-19 falls into one of two categories—”known unknowns” or ‘unknown unknowns”—we should not be too credulous,” Bambauer says, adding that she would “take anything shared on social media with a grain of salt right now, no matter how rude it may feel in the moment.”

The timing of the pandemic has made it easy for misinformation to spread unusually fast and far, says Diana Daly, an assistant professor in the School of Information in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

“This came at a time when there were some fundamental polarizations already in place,” says Daly.

She notes that studies have shown the more politically divided a society is, the more fertile ground it provides for the seeds of flawed information to sprout into mistaken beliefs, false news, and conspiracy theories.

Misinformation, Daly says, typically refers to information that is widely believed to be true or is created with accidental factual errors and published or shared in good will. Disinformation, on the other hand, is used to purposely deceive. Since it’s not always easy to tell them apart, Daly prefers the broader term “bad information,” which encompasses both misinformation and disinformation, as well as what is often referred to as “fake news.”

Conspiracy theories can meet a need

When emotional turmoil is exacerbated by the rigors of social distancing, conditions are ripe for bad information to circulate, Daly says, but there is a valuable lesson to be learned.

Be wary of a piece that elicits a strong reaction, makes you angry, makes you want to buy something, or looks too good to be true.

“When people feel powerless, and if they ignore feelings of fear, worry, anger, and disbelief, they begin to search for alternatives,” she says. “And once they start looking, they will find them, or they might even begin manufacturing them. This happens on a personal level first and then within our subcultures.”

For those who have family and friends who may deny facts or spread conspiracy theories, Daly says adopting a stance of compassion is more helpful than dismissing false beliefs outright or responding in anger.

“Always ask yourself: Why is someone not accepting facts? What does that piece of bad information offer them that they’re not getting out of the mainstream sources? And just recognize that,” she says. “Try to recognize that everyone has good reasons to believe in something, and when people feel vulnerable, they may listen to things they shouldn’t. Look for the struggles they face and acknowledge them.”

Daly recommends that people look for ways to connect on a personal level, express concern for the other person’s well-being, and share tips on how to find good information. She also encourages individuals looking for reliable information to take advantage of independent fact checking sites such as Infotagion, a project “dedicated to fighting the disinformation contagion about COVID-19.”

You can be a fact-checker

To find reliable information, Jeannine Relly, associate professor in the School of Journalism, recommends using multiple dependable news sources and basic, tried-and-proven strategies of vetting of information.

“It’s always a good idea to try and track down original sources of data and other information when possible, and to double check the URLs where the information is located,” she says.

Many tools that assist with authenticating or verifying information are available online for free. (See the end of this story.)

In addition, Relly, along with professional fact-checkers, recommends watching for the following warning signs signaling potentially bad information:

Lack of sources: Reputable news organizations rely on many diverse sources, including sources that don’t show up in the final piece. A lack of sources signals trouble.

Lack of nuance: With COVID-19, there is still much that is not known, so one should be wary of portrayals of black-and-white knowledge.

Claims of quick fixes: These might come with fabricated testimonies about how to ward off the virus or promotions of a quick cure.

Something’s “off:” Subtle details can give away an otherwise flawlessly designed piece as untrustworthy. Some of the most effective disinformation campaigns bury a kernel of false information inside known truths or evidence-based information.

Strong rhetoric: Sweeping generalizations, like “nobody” or “everybody,” may indicate a piece is trying to sway opinions rather than inform. One should also be skeptical of COVID-19 posts alluding to national pride or featuring enduring symbols, such as the American flag, with no relevance to the topic.

Violations of common sense: If a claim sounds unscientific, it most likely is.

Triggering content: Be wary of a piece that elicits a strong reaction, makes you angry, makes you want to buy something, or looks too good to be true.

Discrimination: Be wary of any information that stigmatizes groups.

Clickbait: A headline that doesn’t fit the story is more likely designed to generate site visits than share information.

Misspelled words and grammatical errors: Trustworthy sources know how to correctly spell technical terms like COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2.

Fake videos and all those memes

A good rule of thumb for those who wish to err on the cautious side is to be skeptical of any information shared in the form of a meme, says Volodymyr Lysenko, an adjunct instructor in the University of Arizona School of Information who has studied Russian disinformation campaigns for decades.

Lysenko says rather than try to assess the validity of an individual piece of information by itself, especially if that information was received through social media, people should try to “triangulate news” by finding independent information on the issues in question from trusted news sources like reliable newspapers, TV, and radio stations.

Another strategy recommended by professional fact-checkers is to look for the “WWWWH”—when, where, what, who, and how. This litmus test may reveal, for example, that an otherwise convincing bit of news predates the COVID-19 pandemic by years, proving it was taken out of context.

Some COVID-19 myths will die out

In a situation as fluid as the one we’re currently in, where recommendations change and targets keep shifting, even some of the most stubborn myths have a shelf life, and some eventually die of natural causes, Bambauer says.

For example, claims of COVID-19 being “no worse than the flu” soared high on social media during the early stages of the pandemic but have largely subsided.

Bambauer says there might be a “tipping-point phenomenon,” where, over time, the cognitive dissonance between what people believe and reality becomes too large, and false beliefs can no longer feed on uncertainty.

“Once people see what is happening around them, they realize they can’t maintain these beliefs any longer,” she says.

Bambauer says the spread of COVID-19 misinformation may also have been exacerbated by health authorities issuing contradictory messaging—such as advising to the public to not wear masks but later reversing that guidance—as well as a time lag between myths popping up on social media and health officials debunking them.

“Understandably, public health authorities are reluctant to make statements unless they feel enough data has been collected, but in the current situation, where people are trying to make important decisions and are desperate for information, that may not be the best approach,” Bambauer says. “Rather, the sort of qualified advice that a doctor or epidemiologist would give their own family would be more useful. Otherwise, the void is going to be filled with quackery and snake oil.”

Resources for verifying information

The International Fact-Checking Network is a unit of the Poynter Institute dedicated to bringing together fact checkers worldwide. A COVID-19 resource site includes links to fact checking resources such as the IFCN’s #CoronaVirusFacts Alliance database of 1,000-plus fact checks from more than 45 countries.

The following tools allow users to search for specific images and find where and when they appeared online. Seeing the image in question displayed in various contexts side by side makes it possible to spot whether the image was modified at any point. The date on which an image first circulated often is used as an investigative technique to ascertain its connection with the topic:

Google Images: provides an internet search of an image through an uploaded image, an image URL, or image description. The search offers similar images on the web.

RevEye: This extension for the Google Chrome browser allows one to perform an inverse image search by right-clicking onto any image on a website.

InVid: Fact checkers use this reverse image search tool to find and debunk fake video news.

TinEye: This is a reverse image search tool that allows users to upload an image, paste an image, or enter the URL of an image to find out where it has appeared.

Google’s Factcheck Explorer: This Google tool is a way to find previous fact checks through a search of a topic or statement typed into the browser.

Snopes.com: This independent fact checking site allows anyone to enter a topic or specific information to ascertain whether it has been fact checked.

PolitiFact: Operated by the nonprofit Poynter Institute, this fact checking site focuses on the accuracy of claims and statements made by elected officials or politicians. A search tool checks whether a word, topic, or phrase has been fact checked.

Factcheck.org: A nonprofit project that monitors the accuracy of information from political actors and allows the public to search the claims analyzed or to request a fact check on political information.

Source: University of Arizona

The post How to defend yourself from COVID-19 myths and lies appeared first on Futurity.

How to defend yourself from COVID-19 myths and lies published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

Your healthcare marketing questions answered

If you type in “how do you know if you have …” on Google, every single autocomplete has to do with some sort of health condition (barring bed bugs, but that could still have health ramifications so I’m letting it slide).

“What does it mean if …” also generates some pretty full-on health-related queries that I won’t repeat here.

Why am I telling you this? To make the point that there’s an abundance of online opportunities for healthcare marketers to leverage.

While the healthcare industry calls for more physical touchpoints than other industries, there is a growing need to maintain a robust online presence. As prospective patients take their health into their own hands, they turn to the internet to answer their questions, research providers and make appointments.

Thinking about putting your healthcare marketing hat on? Here’s everything you need to know:

What is healthcare marketing?

Physicians, dentists, hospitals, insurers, suppliers, advocacy groups and other providers use healthcare marketing to promote their products and services. The target audience is healthcare consumers, meaning patients like you and me. Healthcare marketers employ a hybrid subject matter expertise, understanding both traditional marketing strategies and technical health information to create engaging yet accurate marketing campaigns.

Why is healthcare marketing important?

Marketing is vital for any company to build awareness and keep customers coming through the door. Healthcare marketing is especially important for differentiating medical practices, facilities and providers that offer the same, or at least similar, services.

What’s more, the healthcare industry is in a patient-centric era, meaning consumers are more involved in their health than ever before. They want to be in control of their medical decisions, which means reaching and converting potential patients is essential to securing a strong and loyal client base.

What makes a marketer a healthcare marketer?

Much like their colleagues in other industries, healthcare marketers develop and execute strategies with the goals of attracting new business, retaining current customers and generating additional revenue. The difference is that healthcare marketers work with a specialised client base, namely hospitals, doctors’ offices, nursing homes, medical centres, health insurance companies and other healthcare companies.

Oftentimes, these specialised marketers have experience in the healthcare industry, whether it be in a marketing position or otherwise. Such experience fuels their ability to communicate about medical products and services with authority and understanding.

And, no, watching every episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” doesn’t quite cut it, unfortunately.

What goes into an effective healthcare marketing strategy?

Healthcare marketing strategies follow the same principles you most likely know by heart at this point. It takes research and planning to determine goals and highlight KPIs before topic generation, content creation, publishing and distribution can begin.

Naturally, there are some nuances to keep in mind when developing a marketing plan within the healthcare industry. Here are some of the big ones:

Understanding the patients

Every marketer knows that their audience is at the heart of all their marketing efforts. Simply put: it’s virtually impossible to effectively promote products and services without knowing who you’re marketing them to.

The need for targeted messaging is why marketers across industries focus so heavily on creating buyer personas, attempting to understand the ins and outs of our potential customers in order to reach them with more personalised and relevant messages.

The same applies to healthcare marketers. Success relies on a thorough understanding of the patients that make up the target audience. The usual demographic differentiators apply, as well as a more detailed look at medical history, current health conditions, level of involvement in personal healthcare and so on.

Healthcare marketers can assess the audience by asking questions about the current lineup of patients, such as:

What’s the typical age range?

What kind of jobs do the patients have?

How do patients tend to pay for services?

How often do patients visit the facility?

What kind of ailments or conditions do they have?

What makes them choose a practice or hospital over others?

Perfecting the website

More often than not, a patient’s journey begins with a search engine.

Where should that online search lead them? Ideally to a good-looking, informative and easy-to-navigate website.

Considering most patients will visit a website before making an appointment, healthcare providers must make sure their website makes the right first impression. The better the website, the more trustworthy and professional the brand appears to prospective patients.

Arguably the most important digital marketing asset for a medical practice, the website should check the following boxes:

User-friendly.

Mobile responsive.

Speedy loading times.

Easy-to-find services, location and contact information.

Consistent branding.

Extra credit: Online scheduling capability.

Essentially, the website should tell viewers everything they need to know, convincing them that they can consider their search for a provider officially over.

Sustaining an online presence

The same survey of U.S. adults also reported that 63% of the patients admitted that a strong online presence will lead them to choose one provider over another. In other words, it pays for healthcare companies and medical centers to invest in their online reputations – aka a strong digital marketing plan is a must-have for healthcare providers.

Along with a top-notch website, healthcare marketers can use social media to interact with patients and become a trusted source of both original and curated content.

Online reviews also help consumers differentiate between providers, so strategies to utilise patient feedback are also worthwhile.

Some providers even have mobile apps that allow patients to make appointments, submit payments and communicate with their doctor remotely. The convenience of an app can boost the online patient experience, adding to high satisfaction and retention rates.

Educating through content marketing

Content plays an essential role in health marketing, namely because it’s an effective way to educate, motivate and inform the public on health-related matters.

When the symptoms begin to show, for instance, patients turn to Google in an effort to diagnose themselves. Second opinions come in the form of multiple blog articles, infographics and whitepapers until they eventually decide whether their symptoms are worthy of making a doctor’s appointment.

As such, there’s a huge opportunity for healthcare providers to not only provide clear information about their services but to also publish blogs, social posts and other digital content that answers common queries and provides helpful, trustworthy medical tips.

Keyword research helps identify the terms and topics to target when creating content, helping healthcare brands drive traffic to their websites.

What’s more, sharing accurate and relevant content adds credibility to that oh-so-influential online presence. Direct mail, email newsletters and social media provide even more opportunities for healthcare companies to reach their audience and hone in on the thought leadership perspective.

Leaning on specialists

Healthcare marketers have a certain level of understanding of the treatments or topics they’re promoting, but it also helps to pick the brain of a true expert. This is especially important in healthcare, where providing accurate information is ethically and legally essential.

Quotes and insights from physicians, nurses and medical specialists will give marketing assets an authoritative underpinning, helping build a reputation that attracts and retains loyal patients.

Reaping the rewards

A thoughtfully planned and well-executed healthcare marketing strategy can be the lifeline for healthcare practitioners. We’re talking about benefits such as:

Reaching new patients with speed and efficiency.

Building brand awareness and recognition.

Developing long-lasting relationships with patients.

Establishing a trusted reputation.

Unifying messaging and objectives across all internal team members.

Should healthcare marketers work with an agency?

Marketers at agencies that work with healthcare organisations are, of course, well-versed in marketing and advertising, but they also have high-level knowledge of the healthcare space and patient audiences.

Such hybrid expertise means these marketing agency teams are up to date on the current trends, needs and expectations in both industries. Plus, they have the time and resources to conduct the necessary market research and competitor analysis that informs highly effective data-driven marketing strategies.

With a portfolio that may include physicians, dentists, and other clients in the healthcare industry, marketing agencies understand how to build campaigns and create content that achieves healthcare-specific goals. Whether it’s building awareness, driving patient engagement or launching referral programs, marketers who work with healthcare organisations know which medical marketing channels to use – as well as how to use them most effectively.

Any hot tips, tricks and trends?

As with marketing, the healthcare industry is vulnerable to seemingly daily changes. From patient preferences to new regulations to scientific discoveries, there are constant changes and trends that healthcare marketers have to follow and incorporate into their strategies.

In many ways, the healthcare industry is still adapting to changes in the power dynamic between patients and providers. Empowered by numerous options and endless information available instantly at their fingertips, consumers are pickier about the medical services and products they choose to purchase.

Together with digital conveniences, this patient-centric focus is at the heart of many current trends and overarching themes in health marketing. To name a few:

Data-driven personalisation: Healthcare marketers are culling through the massive amounts of patient data to identify needs and behavior patterns. From there, they use the insights to develop targeted campaigns.

Focusing on patient experience: Through electronic tools, advances in telemedicine and various touchpoints, improvements are being made with patients in mind.

Speaking to millennials: This younger generation is a prime audience for healthcare companies, especially because they’re at the forefront of patient demands for convenience and digital solutions.

Encouraging wellness: As wellness trends overwhelm the internet, healthcare marketers are leveraging the topic in their content.

Shooting videos: Video marketing is driving powerful results for many organisations, and the healthcare industry is no exception.

A specialised form of marketing

While healthcare marketing is cut from the same cloth as other forms of marketing, the industry focus gives the practice its distinctive nature. As with any specialist marketing, the key to success is an innate understanding of the industry and the specifics of its audience.

Newbies in the healthcare marketing world: Time to do your research! Visit credible sites and sources, learn from your fellow marketers and talk with healthcare professionals to hone the health side of your expertise.

from http://bit.ly/33fOjv5

[nrip]

Your healthcare marketing questions answered

If you type in “how do you know if you have …” on Google, every single autocomplete has to do with some sort of health condition. (Barring bed bugs, but that could still have health ramifications so I’m letting it slide.)

“What does it mean if …” also generates some pretty gnarly health-related queries that I won’t repeat here.

Why am I telling you this? To make the point that there’s an abundance of online opportunities for healthcare marketers to leverage.

While the healthcare industry calls for more physical touchpoints than other industries, there is a growing need to maintain a robust online presence. As prospective patients take their health into their own hands, they turn to the internet to answer their questions, research providers and make appointments.

Thinking about putting your healthcare marketing hat on? Here’s everything you need to know:

What is healthcare marketing?

Why is healthcare marketing important?

What makes a marketer a healthcare marketer?

What goes into an effective healthcare marketing strategy?

Should healthcare marketers work with an agency?

Any hot tips, tricks and trends?

What is healthcare marketing?

Physicians, dentists, hospitals, insurers, suppliers, advocacy groups and other providers use healthcare marketing to promote their products and services. The target audience is healthcare consumers, meaning patients like you and me. Healthcare marketers employ a hybrid subject matter expertise, understanding both traditional marketing strategies and technical health information to create engaging yet accurate marketing campaigns.

Why is healthcare marketing important?

Marketing is vital for any company to build awareness and keep customers coming through the door. Healthcare marketing is especially important for differentiating medical practices, facilities and providers that offer the same, or at least similar, services.

What’s more, the healthcare industry is in a patient-centric era, meaning consumers are more involved in their health than ever before. They want to be in control of their medical decisions, which means reaching and converting potential patients is essential to securing a strong and loyal client base.

What makes a marketer a healthcare marketer?

Much like their colleagues in other industries, healthcare marketers develop and execute strategies with the goals of attracting new business, retaining current customers and generating additional revenue. The difference is that healthcare marketers work with a specialized client base, namely hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, medical centers, health insurance companies and other healthcare companies.

Oftentimes, these specialized marketers have experience in the healthcare industry, whether it be in a marketing position or otherwise. Such experience fuels their ability to communicate about medical products and services with authority and understanding.

And, no, watching every episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” doesn’t quite cut it, unfortunately.

What goes into an effective healthcare marketing strategy?

Healthcare marketing strategies follow the same principles you most likely know by heart at this point. It takes research and planning to determine goals and highlight KPIs before topic generation, content creation, publishing and distribution can begin.

Naturally, there are some nuances to keep in mind when developing a marketing plan within the healthcare industry. Here are some of the big ones:

Understanding the patients

Every marketer knows that their audience is at the heart of all their marketing efforts. Simply put: It’s virtually impossible to effectively promote products and services without knowing who you’re marketing them to.

The need for targeted messaging is why marketers across industries focus so heavily on creating buyer personas, attempting to understand the ins and outs of our potential customers in order to reach them with more personalized and relevant messages.

The same applies to healthcare marketers. Success relies on a thorough understanding of the patients that make up the target audience. The usual demographic differentiators apply, as well as a more detailed look at medical history, current health conditions, level of involvement in personal healthcare and so on.

Healthcare marketers can assess the audience by asking questions about the current lineup of patients, such as:

What’s the typical age range?

What kind of jobs do the patients have?

How do patients tend to pay for services?

How often do patients visit the facility?

What kind of ailments or conditions do they have?

What makes them choose a practice or hospital over others?

Exhibit A: An ear, nose and throat specialist will want to reach patients in the area who have sinus problems, and may increase marketing spend during allergy season. By contrast, a children’s hospital is likely to focus on young families throughout the year.

Perfecting the website

More often than not, a patient’s journey begins with a search engine. In fact, a survey of more than 1,700 U.S. adults revealed that four out of five respondents made a healthcare-related online search in the past year.

Where should that online search lead them? Ideally to a good-looking, informative and easy-to-navigate website.

Considering most patients will visit a website before making an appointment, healthcare providers must make sure their website makes the right first impression. The better the website, the more trustworthy and professional the brand appears to prospective patients.

Arguably the most important digital marketing asset for a medical practice, the website should check the following boxes:

User-friendly.

Mobile responsive.

Speedy loading times.

Easy-to-find services, location and contact information.

Consistent branding.

Extra credit: Online scheduling capability.

Essentially, the website should tell viewers everything they need to know, convincing them that they can consider their search for a provider officially over.

Sustaining an online presence

The same survey of U.S. adults also reported that 63% of the patients admitted that a strong online presence will lead them to choose one provider over another. In other words, it pays for healthcare companies and medical centers to invest in their online reputations – aka a strong digital marketing plan is a must-have for healthcare providers.

Along with a top-notch website, healthcare marketers can use social media to interact with patients and become a trusted source of both original and curated content.

Online reviews also help consumers differentiate between providers, so strategies to utilize patient feedback are also worthwhile.

Some providers even have mobile apps that allow patients to make appointments, submit payments and communicate with their doctor remotely. The convenience of an app can boost the online patient experience, adding to high satisfaction and retention rates.

Educating through content marketing

Content plays an essential role in health marketing, namely because it’s an effective way to educate, motivate and inform the public on health-related matters.

When the symptoms begin to show, for instance, patients turn to Google in an effort to diagnose themselves. Second opinions come in the form of multiple blog articles, infographics and white papers until they eventually decide whether their symptoms are worthy of making a doctor’s appointment.

As such, there’s a huge opportunity for healthcare providers to not only provide clear information about their services but to also publish blogs, social posts and other digital content that answers common queries and provides helpful, trustworthy medical tips.

Keyword research helps identify the terms and topics to target when creating content, helping healthcare brands drive traffic to the website – and their facilities.

What’s more, sharing accurate and relevant content adds credibility to that oh-so-influential online presence. Direct mail, email newsletters and social media provide even more opportunities for healthcare companies to reach their audience and hone in on the thought leadership perspective.

Leaning on specialists

Healthcare marketers have a certain level of understanding into the products and services, but it also helps to pick the brain of a true expert. This is especially important in healthcare, where educating patients is always a priority.

Quotes and insights from physicians, nurses and medical specialists will give marketing assets a trustworthy edge, helping build a reputation that attracts and retains loyal patients.

Reaping the rewards

A thoughtfully planned and well-executed healthcare marketing strategy can be the lifeline for medical centers and healthcare companies. We’re talking about benefits such as:

Reaching new patients with speed and efficiency for a steady influx of clientele.

Building brand awareness and recognition.

Developing long-lasting relationships with patients.

Establishing a trusted reputation.

Unifying messaging and objectives across all internal team members.

Should healthcare marketers work with an agency?

Marketers at agencies that work with healthcare organizations are, of course, well-versed in marketing and advertising, but they also have high-level knowledge of the healthcare space and patient audiences.

Such hybrid expertise means these marketing agency teams are up to date on the current trends, needs and expectations in both industries. Plus, they have the time and resources to conduct the necessary market research and competitor analysis that informs highly effective data-driven marketing strategies.

With a portfolio that may include physicians, dentists, hospitals and other clients in the healthcare industry, marketing agencies understand how to build campaigns and create content that achieves healthcare-specific goals. Whether it’s building awareness, driving patient engagement or launching referral programs, marketers who work with healthcare organizations know which medical marketing channels to use – as well as how to use them most effectively.

Any hot tips, tricks and trends?

As with marketing, the healthcare industry is vulnerable to seemingly daily changes. From patient preferences to policies to scientific discoveries, there are constant changes and trends that healthcare marketers have to follow and incorporate in their strategies.

In many ways, the healthcare industry is still adapting to changes in the power dynamic between patients and providers. Empowered by numerous options and endless information available instantly at their fingertips, consumers are pickier about the medical services and products they choose to purchase.

Together with digital conveniences, this patient-centric focus is at the heart of many current trends and overarching themes in health marketing. To name a few:

Data-driven personalization: Healthcare marketers are culling through the massive amounts of patient data to identify needs and behavior patterns. From there, they use the insights to develop targeted campaigns.

Focusing on patient experience: Through electronic tools, advances in telemedicine and various touchpoints, improvements are being made with patients in mind.

Speaking to millennials: This younger generation is a prime audience for healthcare companies, especially because they’re at the forefront of patient demands for convenience and digital solutions.

Encouraging wellness: As wellness trends overwhelm the internet, healthcare marketers are leveraging the topic in their content.

Shooting videos: Video marketing is driving powerful results for many organizations, and the healthcare industry is no exception.

To learn from healthcare marketing in action, check out our roundup of inspiring examples.

A specialized form of marketing

While healthcare marketing is cut from the same cloth as other forms of marketing, the industry focus gives the practice its distinctive nature. As with any specialist marketing, the key to success is an innate understanding of the industry and the specifics of its audience.

Newbies in the healthcare marketing world: Time to do your research! Visit credible sites and sources, learn from your fellow marketers and talk with healthcare professionals to hone the health side of your expertise.

[rachelcarsoncenter]

Workshop Report (17-21 June 2019, Villa Vigoni, Italy)

By Claudio de Majo

June 2019 saw a group of German and Italian scholars come  together in the German-Italian Cultural Center of Excellence Villa Vigoni to discuss national perspectives on environmental history. The event was convened by Roberta Biasillo (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm), Serenella Iovino (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Christof Mauch and Claudio de Majo (both from the Rachel Carson Center, Munich).

From the first session on Monday afternoon, it was clear that the participants came from an array of diverse backgrounds. While environmental history was a trait-de-union for several German and Italian participants, with senior scholars such as Christof Mauch and Gabriella Corona representing environmental history in Germany and Italy respectively, the group also included participants with backgrounds in literary studies and the fine arts, such as leading environmental humanities scholar, Serenella Iovino.

Christof Mauch chaired the opening conversation, setting up the main ideas that would take us through the workshop: what are the common points between German and Italian environmental history and why is German-Italian cooperation a relevant discussion for the future of this discipline in the European academic context? The participants divided into groups to explore leading questions. What is the relation between nature and state? What are the limits of nation-states in the study of environmental history? Should there be an autobiographical element in environmental history writing? What are the differences between German and Italian traditions of environmental history scholarship?

The second day of the workshop took the form of a writing lab entitled “Writing History for the Future,” led by award-winning nature writer Rebecca Giggs and RCC senior editor Katie Ritson. The basic premise was to explore creative non-fiction as a way of writing to a broad readership within environmental humanities. Rebecca Giggs presented the main features of creative non-fiction: personal engagement with the topic, situated writing, and targeting a broader audience. In a more technical fashion, she explained how to present your personal voice in the text and how to begin and conclude a paragraph. Workshop participants worked on a writing exercise, producing a short text about one of their earliest memories related to the environment.

In the second part of the workshop, the group looked at the utilization of different narrative registers, learning how to adopt and interchange them according to the situation. In order to provide a practical example, the group analyzed a text excerpt from Robert Macfarlane’s non-fiction nature essay “Silt.”[1] Then the group attempted to adopt some of the techniques utilized by the author in a second writing exercise involving a personal interaction with the landscape. Finally, the group discussed writing style.

Rebecca discussed beginnings, in particular the way that creative non-fiction differs from academic writing, in the third second of the workshop: the opening paragraph has to be used as a single unit of though, and should not try to condense the whole argument of the text. Successful creative non-fiction should not use too large contextualization, or sound too instructive or didactic. Rather, it should attempt to draw the reader slowly into the narrative by intriguing her.

The seminar was brought to a close by Rachel Carson Center’s Katie Ritson, who illustrated the multiple publication venues offered by the RCC—from curated series on the blog Seeing the Woods, to RCC’s open-access journal RCC Perspectives, to special issues in conjunction with the Italian journal Global Environment. She outlined the RCC’s focus on publishing across divides within and beyond academia by adopting different writing formats and targeting multiple audiences.

The day concluded with two keynote speeches by Prof. Nadine Hee (Free University of Berlin) and Prof. Luigi Piccioni (University of Cosenza). Both speakers attempted to contextualize German and Italian Environmental History within a broader European context, discussing the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches. They discussed the discipline’s state of the art, their main accomplishments and produced a literature review of the most important works produced by the field (e.g. Christof Mauch’s Nature in German History and Joachim Radkau’s Nature and Power for Germany; Marco Armiero and Marcus Hall’s edited volume Nature and History in Modern Italy and Gabriella Corona’s A Short Environmental History of Italy). In both cases, they detected growing national movements, characterized by a disciplinary shift of structured academics from both related and non-related milieus (e.g. agrarian and industrial history, but also other disciplines such as geography, philosophy, political sciences and even the hard sciences), as well as a steep increase in young scholars trained directly in environmental history. The lack of official teaching chairs in environmental history, both in the Italian and German contexts, was interpreted by both scholars as a sign of the relatively young age of this emerging field. Both speakers noted that in Germany and Italy environmental history is attached to single individuals rather than grounded in an established academic debate; they agreed that institutional recognition will constitute a key element for the success of the environmental history in both countries.

The remainder of the workshop was dedicated to discussing the research of the early-career scholars participating in the conference. Each researcher gave a short presentation of their research project, which was followed by discussions and questions from the rest of the group. In the first session, chaired by Wilko Graf von Hardenberg and Roberta Biasillo, Ansgar Schanbacher (postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen) presented on the early modern environmental history of central Europe, assessing the relations between industrial production, demographic growth and environmental transformation. He was followed by postdoctoral researcher David-Christopher Assmann (Goethe University, Frankfurt) discussing waste in German literature from the late nineteenth century and attempting to provide a neo-materialist reading of literary accounts tackling the topic of waste production and disposal in nineteenth-century Germany.

Noemi Quagliati, doctoral candidate at the Rachel Carson Center, presented her project “Photography, Landscape, and German Visual Culture in WWI,” in which she attempts to frame photography and the history of technology within the framework of environmental history, discussing representation of environmental transformations. Astrid Kirchhof (Humboldt University of Berlin) presented her book project on East German environmental history, analyzing political issues related to waste in East Germany during the Cold War Years. Doctoral candidate (Humboldt University of Berlin) Sophie Lange’s presentation “Environmental Politics of East and West Germany” focused on the controversial history of waste disposal and trading between Western and Eastern Germany during the Cold War.

The next session saw postdoctoral researcher Giacomo Bonan (University of Bologna) discuss the industrial waterways of the river Piave in northeastern Italy during the nineteenth century, in a presentation entitled “An Alpine Energy Transition—the Piave River from Charcoal to ‘White Coal.’” He was followed by Fabian Zimmer (doctoral candidate at the Rachel Carson Center) on “Hydroelectricity in the (French and German) Alps and in Scandinavia,” addressing narratives of power promoted by industrial groups through popular media (e.g. documentaries and photography). After the break, postdoctoral researcher Flora Roberts (University of Tübingen) discussed environmental policies and power relations in “Water in Soviet Central Asia,” with a particular focus on Tajikistan. Later on, assistant professor Angelo Matteo Caglioti (Columbia University), presented his research project “The Hydro-Politics of Italian Colonialism: Science, Water and Empire in the Horn of Africa,” an environmental history of Italian colonialism between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.

The last session, entitled “Society and the Environment,” was chaired by Gabriella Corona. First, RCC doctoral candidate Claudio de Majo presented on “Writing about Multi-Species Alliances in the Ecological Mesh: An Autobiographically Neo-Materialist Perspective,” where he discussed his personal perspectives on environmental history informed by neo-materialist philosophies. Second, Gilberto Mazzoli (doctoral candidate at the European University Institute Florence) presented his research on “Migrants’ Urban Ecologies,” in which he discussed urban farming among Italian immigrant communities in New York between the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Finally, PhD candidate Marco Moschetti (University of Modena), discussed race relations and environmental injustice in late nineteenth-century Louisiana and postwar Chicago.

The conference was taken into its final session with remarks by Christof Mauch and Serenella Iovino, who thanked the participants and launched a last round of discussions in which people were asked to think about the importance of environmental history for our world and its future. The main ideas that emerged considered the groundbreaking potential of environmental history; its capacity to look at a changing world and understand its relation to past events and delineate possible futures; to look across disciplinary boundaries, involving different actors (e.g researchers from other disciplinary fields, policymakers, and local activists) in the conversation and thus negotiating transnational and transdisciplinary knowledge patterns of environmental learning. Finally, while the complexity of environmental history forces researchers to face methodological challenges at every turn, it allows the discipline to look above and beyond more traditional forms of historical research.

[1] Robert Macfarlane, “Silt,” Granta 119 (2012), 41–60, 57.

All photos courtesy of Christof Mauch

Environmental Histories—Environmental Futures: Perspectives from Germany and Italy Workshop Report (17-21 June 2019, Villa Vigoni, Italy) By Claudio de Majo June 2019 saw a group of German and Italian scholars come  together in the…

[nancyedimick]

Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

It’s one of the most vexed questions in originalist constitutional interpretation: What’s a judge to do when inquiry into original meaning doesn’t yield a clear answer? In their new paper, “The Letter and the Spirit: The Judicial Duty of Good-Faith Constitutional Construction,” Professor Randy Barnett and Assistant Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement Evan Bernick undertake to answer it. Download the first of a projected three-paper series (and projected book) on Good Faith Constitutionalism “while it’s hot”!

Today, the Supreme Court considers whether a federal agent who shot and killed a teenager across the Mexican border gets qualified immunity. We discussed the Fifth Circuit’s en banc ruling on the podcast (starting at 5:10).

Inmate slips away from Armstrong County, Penn. jail, holes up at home of acquaintance who lives nearby (and who doesn’t know he’s an escapee), and then murders the acquaintance’s girlfriend. Third Circuit: County officials, who had placed the inmate under light supervision, could not have foreseen a specific threat to the victim; her estate can’t sue.

Two Moncks Corner, S.C. detectives disapprove of superior officer’s rough treatment of suspects, urge man (who allegedly took a knee strike to the groin from the officer) to file a complaint, lawsuit. The detectives are forced to resign. Unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech? The police chief is entitled to qualified immunity, says the Fourth Circuit.

Former employees of South Carolina nursing homes sue, alleging, based on statistical sample of patient records, that the nursing homes defrauded Medicare. The DOJ declines to join the suit, but vetoes a proposed settlement. Fourth Circuit: Which DOJ has unreviewable authority to do, so keep litigating. As for the statistical sampling data, we won’t review whether that is okay to use until after trial.

Fifth Circuit: Henceforth, it is clearly established that the First Amendment protects the right to film the police, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. That not having been the case in 2015, the officers in the instant case are entitled to qualified immunity for handcuffing man who was filming a Fort Worth, Texas police station and declined to show ID — at least on the man’s First Amendment claims. His Fourth Amendment claims go to a jury.

Van Buren County, Mich. officials foreclose on tax-delinquent properties, sell them at auction for considerably more than what’s owed, and decline to turn the surplus (nearly $200k in one instance) over to the former owners. Takings sans just compensation? Sixth Circuit: The suit should have been brought in state court. Dissent: And Michigan law says it should go in federal court; “we have lost our constitutional bearings.”

Federal mine-safety inspectors inspect mining-equipment repair shop, issue violations for a dirty bathroom, among other things. Company: Our shop is not a mine; the inspectors don’t have jurisdiction. Secretary of Labor: The shop has mining stuff in it, so they do. Sixth Circuit: That is not a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statute.

At board meetings, Jackson County, Mich. commissioners direct attendees to rise, bow their heads, and listen as a commissioner gives a Christian prayer. A non-Christian files suit; commissioners call him a nitwit and his suit “an attack on Christianity and Jesus Christ, period.” Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): What we have here is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

To lower their tax burden, owners of family business transfer money to their sons’ Roth IRAs by dint of transactions that are specifically authorized in the tax code. IRS: Congress may have authorized it, but it’s improper avoidance of IRA contribution limits all the same. The family needs to pay up. Sixth Circuit: They do not.

Man calls 911, rants, threatens to kill his family. Bowling Green, Ky. police locate him walking along train tracks. He does not threaten the officers, but neither does he obey their commands. He urges the officers to shoot him. One does; he dies. Sixth Circuit: No qualified immunity.

Iowa State University officials typically allow student groups to use the school’s trademarks on T-shirts with minimal fuss but, after complaints from the governor’s office, reject multiple T-shirt designs proposed by group that advocates for marijuana legalization. Eighth Circuit: Which is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Federal agents raid family home of suspected antiquities traffickers in southern Utah. (One suspect kills himself the following day. The feds’ informant expresses remorse for his role in the sting and kills himself months later.) Does the sheer number of agents who participated in the raid by itself constitute excessive force? That might be a viable claim in some other case, says the Tenth Circuit, but not this one. (Click here for some long-form journalism on the case.)

In a blog post, doctor strongly suggests another doctor’s method for treating Alzheimer’s and other ailments (injecting a drug used to treat arthritis along patients’ spines) is quackery. Libel? Eleventh Circuit: No, the purported quack’s suit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

In 2014 and 2015, an Eleventh Circuit panel issued three decisions upholding a Florida law that made it a crime for doctors to ask patients whether they own firearms (popularly called Docs v. Glocks). The full Eleventh Circuit has now reversed (as we urged it to do via an amicus and a New York Times op-ed).

And in en banc news: The Second Circuit will not revisit a ruling that, in the eyes of the dissent, enables prosecutors to say, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime. Neither will the Fifth Circuit, despite six dissents, reconsider its dismissal of a challenge to the feds’ designation of 1,500 acres of private land as critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog. The Fifth Circuit will, however, reexamine its denial of qualified immunity to an officer whose report led to an innocent man with the same name as a suspect spending 16 days in jail. Likewise, the D.C. Circuit will reevaluate its holding that the CFPB’s single-director structure is unconstitutional (we discussed the CFPB case on the podcast) and, separately, reassess its holding that the SEC’s administrative law judges need not be appointed by the president. (Click here and here for the D.C. Circuit orders.)

Charlestown, Ind. officials want to bulldoze Pleasant Ridge, a neighborhood of 350 homes, so a private developer can build upscale housing. To that end, officials blanketed the neighborhood with citations for trivial code violations like chipped paint and torn window screens. At $50 per violation, per day, the fines quickly ran into the thousands of dollars — in many cases before owners had even received notice in the mail. Officials offered to waive the fines, however, if property owners sold to the city’s preferred developer — for far below the tax-assessed value of their homes. Last week, Pleasant Ridge residents joined forces with IJ to put a stop to the city’s illegal plan. Read more here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/21/short-circuit-a-roundup-of-recent-federal-court-decisions-43/

[wolfandpravato]

Short Circuit: A roundup of recent federal court decisions

(Here is the latest edition of the Institute for Justice’s weekly Short Circuit newsletter, written by John Ross.)

It’s one of the most vexed questions in originalist constitutional interpretation: What’s a judge to do when inquiry into original meaning doesn’t yield a clear answer? In their new paper, “The Letter and the Spirit: The Judicial Duty of Good-Faith Constitutional Construction,” Professor Randy Barnett and Assistant Director of the Center for Judicial Engagement Evan Bernick undertake to answer it. Download the first of a projected three-paper series (and projected book) on Good Faith Constitutionalism “while it’s hot”!

Today, the Supreme Court considers whether a federal agent who shot and killed a teenager across the Mexican border gets qualified immunity. We discussed the Fifth Circuit’s en banc ruling on the podcast (starting at 5:10).

Inmate slips away from Armstrong County, Penn. jail, holes up at home of acquaintance who lives nearby (and who doesn’t know he’s an escapee), and then murders the acquaintance’s girlfriend. Third Circuit: County officials, who had placed the inmate under light supervision, could not have foreseen a specific threat to the victim; her estate can’t sue.

Two Moncks Corner, S.C. detectives disapprove of superior officer’s rough treatment of suspects, urge man (who allegedly took a knee strike to the groin from the officer) to file a complaint, lawsuit. The detectives are forced to resign. Unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech? The police chief is entitled to qualified immunity, says the Fourth Circuit.

Former employees of South Carolina nursing homes sue, alleging, based on statistical sample of patient records, that the nursing homes defrauded Medicare. The DOJ declines to join the suit, but vetoes a proposed settlement. Fourth Circuit: Which DOJ has unreviewable authority to do, so keep litigating. As for the statistical sampling data, we won’t review whether that is okay to use until after trial.

Fifth Circuit: Henceforth, it is clearly established that the First Amendment protects the right to film the police, subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. That not having been the case in 2015, the officers in the instant case are entitled to qualified immunity for handcuffing man who was filming a Fort Worth, Texas police station and declined to show ID — at least on the man’s First Amendment claims. His Fourth Amendment claims go to a jury.

Van Buren County, Mich. officials foreclose on tax-delinquent properties, sell them at auction for considerably more than what’s owed, and decline to turn the surplus (nearly $200k in one instance) over to the former owners. Takings sans just compensation? Sixth Circuit: The suit should have been brought in state court. Dissent: And Michigan law says it should go in federal court; “we have lost our constitutional bearings.”

Federal mine-safety inspectors inspect mining-equipment repair shop, issue violations for a dirty bathroom, among other things. Company: Our shop is not a mine; the inspectors don’t have jurisdiction. Secretary of Labor: The shop has mining stuff in it, so they do. Sixth Circuit: That is not a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statute.

At board meetings, Jackson County, Mich. commissioners direct attendees to rise, bow their heads, and listen as a commissioner gives a Christian prayer. A non-Christian files suit; commissioners call him a nitwit and his suit “an attack on Christianity and Jesus Christ, period.” Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): What we have here is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

To lower their tax burden, owners of family business transfer money to their sons’ Roth IRAs by dint of transactions that are specifically authorized in the tax code. IRS: Congress may have authorized it, but it’s improper avoidance of IRA contribution limits all the same. The family needs to pay up. Sixth Circuit: They do not.

Man calls 911, rants, threatens to kill his family. Bowling Green, Ky. police locate him walking along train tracks. He does not threaten the officers, but neither does he obey their commands. He urges the officers to shoot him. One does; he dies. Sixth Circuit: No qualified immunity.

Iowa State University officials typically allow student groups to use the school’s trademarks on T-shirts with minimal fuss but, after complaints from the governor’s office, reject multiple T-shirt designs proposed by group that advocates for marijuana legalization. Eighth Circuit: Which is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

Federal agents raid family home of suspected antiquities traffickers in southern Utah. (One suspect kills himself the following day. The feds’ informant expresses remorse for his role in the sting and kills himself months later.) Does the sheer number of agents who participated in the raid by itself constitute excessive force? That might be a viable claim in some other case, says the Tenth Circuit, but not this one. (Click here for some long-form journalism on the case.)

In a blog post, doctor strongly suggests another doctor’s method for treating Alzheimer’s and other ailments (injecting a drug used to treat arthritis along patients’ spines) is quackery. Libel? Eleventh Circuit: No, the purported quack’s suit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.

In 2014 and 2015, an Eleventh Circuit panel issued three decisions upholding a Florida law that made it a crime for doctors to ask patients whether they own firearms (popularly called Docs v. Glocks). The full Eleventh Circuit has now reversed (as we urged it to do via an amicus and a New York Times op-ed).

And in en banc news: The Second Circuit will not revisit a ruling that, in the eyes of the dissent, enables prosecutors to say, “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime. Neither will the Fifth Circuit, despite six dissents, reconsider its dismissal of a challenge to the feds’ designation of 1,500 acres of private land as critical habitat for the dusky gopher frog. The Fifth Circuit will, however, reexamine its denial of qualified immunity to an officer whose report led to an innocent man with the same name as a suspect spending 16 days in jail. Likewise, the D.C. Circuit will reevaluate its holding that the CFPB’s single-director structure is unconstitutional (we discussed the CFPB case on the podcast) and, separately, reassess its holding that the SEC’s administrative law judges need not be appointed by the president. (Click here and here for the D.C. Circuit orders.)

Charlestown, Ind. officials want to bulldoze Pleasant Ridge, a neighborhood of 350 homes, so a private developer can build upscale housing. To that end, officials blanketed the neighborhood with citations for trivial code violations like chipped paint and torn window screens. At $50 per violation, per day, the fines quickly ran into the thousands of dollars — in many cases before owners had even received notice in the mail. Officials offered to waive the fines, however, if property owners sold to the city’s preferred developer — for far below the tax-assessed value of their homes. Last week, Pleasant Ridge residents joined forces with IJ to put a stop to the city’s illegal plan. Read more here.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/21/short-circuit-a-roundup-of-recent-federal-court-decisions-43/

[cctspring2017-blog]

Spring 2017 Syllabus

California Institute of the Arts

School of Theater

Conversations on Contemporary Theater

Course Number: TAIC-100-01

Semester: Spring 2017

Course Credit: 2

 Meeting Time: Wednesday 4-5:50

 Room: E197

 Instructor:

 Zoe Aja Moore: zmoore@calarts.edu

 Office Hours: Email to schedule an appointment

 Teaching Assistants:

 Yonit Olshan: yonitolshan@alum.calarts.edu

 Brian Gilmartin: briangilmartin@alum.calarts.edu

 Morgan Camper: morgancamper@alum.calarts.edu

   Course Purpose and Learning Goals

 The CalArts theater program is by nature experimental and embodies a polyphony of experiences, aesthetics, and approaches. The primary goals of this course are

to bring each student into dialogue with CalArts’ unique design, performance, and production ecosystem; to critically and creatively examine foundational principles in one’s creative practice; to survey the diverse artistry and aesthetics within the contemporary theater landscape; to inspire an idea of the theater that has the capacity for great possibility and relevance.

 Using the CalArts School of Theater productions and a series of core themes (inquiry, attention, context, collaboration, and technique) as a shared lens, this course will engage all incoming BFA 1 Theater students in conversation, contextual research, writing, critical response, and artistic practice.

 The course will be highly interactive. Each session will be structured around the massive artistic energy brought forth by the School of Theater and REDCAT season productions and related themes.

 Students will engage in direct conversations with those involved in the creation of the shows, including students, faculty and guest artists.

     Learning Outcomes

 Students will develop the tools and vocabulary to engage in critical and thoughtful response to the work in the CalArts community and beyond. Students will cultivate a deepened understanding of various theatrical forms, aesthetics, and creative processes within a larger contemporary performance landscape and how those apply to one’s own theatrical practice.

 .

Methodology

 Students will be asked to creatively, critically, and thoughtfully respond to the productions and related topics in multiple modes, including full class discussions, small group discussions, readings, and small projects/exercises. This approach is intended to give the students multiple tools for expressing their point of view, as well as to build a peer-to-peer dialogue within the BFA 1 class.

 Additionally, the class will act as a laboratory for developing critical vocabulary and writing practices. Readings will occasionally be assigned. Students will be required to regularly submit written responses to topics covered in class.

 Assignments

 Assignments for this class will be given regularly throughout the semester, and will include a combination of short-form response, both analytical and creative, and one longer form essay due towards semester's end. To receive credit, assignments must be submitted by the date and time specified. After grading, all assignments will be returned to you via your student mailboxes.

 Theater School Productions

 Students are required to see at least THREE (3) of the School of Theater season productions (see complete list on course website). Seating is often limited, so it is your responsibility to reserve tickets early before the shows are sold out. Crew assignments count towards your production viewing credits.

 In order to receive credit for seeing the required performances, you must turn in the program from the show with your name and date of attendance clearly written on the front. Please turn these into TA’s for credit. Programs will be returned to you via student mailboxes.

 Institute Performances

 Students are also required to see at least ONE (1) official Institute performance happening outside of the School of Theater (Dance, Music, Art, Film/Video, Critical Studies, Integrated Media).

 Off-campus Productions

 Students are also required to see at least ONE (1) off-site production, i.e. at REDCAT. The course website includes a list of all shows eligible for credit. This list is carefully curated to contribute to the dialogue in class, and while we encourage you to see as much theater as possible in the greater Los Angeles area, the viewing requirement for this class must come from the list of approved productions. You must turn in your program to receive credit for these productions as well.

 Due Dates

 All assignments are due by the dates and times specified. Late assignments will be accepted, however with a 50% late penalty.

 Final Paper

 Students will write a longer form final essay reflecting their measured critical reaction to text, context (research), and performance. The essay prompt and due date will be announced mid-semester.

 Readings

 All required texts must be read before the specified class meeting. Always come to class prepared to discuss and share your response to the readings. There are no required texts you must purchase for this class. All readings will be provided in the form of downloadable PDF’s, online links, or paper copies distributed during class. Select readings may also be placed on reserve in the library.

  Grading Policy:

 Small Assignments: 30%

 Essay Paper: 20%

 Attendance: 25%

 Participation: 25%

  CalArts assigns High Pass (HP), Pass (P), Low Pass (LP) and No Credit/Fail (NC) grades.

 Units

 For undergraduate students, one semester unit is assigned on the basis of 3 hours of work each week. “Work” is the sum of in-class and out-of-class work. This does not include time seeing shows.

 Your workload will vary over the course semester depending on assignments.

 Preparation

 Come to each class with a notebook and pen/pencil to write with. When readings are assigned, come prepared to participate in discussion with a copy of the text and your notes.

 In Class Etiquette

 No food

 No cell phones

 No headphones

 No laptops, tablets, etc. (unless permitted by instructors)

 Attendance Policy

 Show Up.

 Come to each class ready to learn, discover, and consider.

 More than TWO (2) unexcused absences automatically results in an NC for the semester. Absences due to illness can be excused only if you submit a note from your mentor, doctor, or the CalArts nurse's office to a TA. If you cannot make it to class for any reason, please make every effort in advance to notify the instructors via email.

 If you miss a class it is your responsibility to find out what happened and to make up any work that was assigned.

 Arriving to class late, or returning from breaks late will count against your participation grade

  Institute Policies

 Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the use of ideas and/or quotations (from the Internet, books, films, television, newspapers, articles, the work of other students, works of art, media, etc.) without proper credit to the author/artist. While the argument in a paper can be enhanced by research, students are cautioned to delineate clearly their own original ideas from source material. Students should introduce source material (either quoted or paraphrased); note when the source material ends; and provide citations for source materials using standard documentation formats.

 According to CalArts policy, students who misrepresent source material as their own original work and fail to credit it have committed plagiarism and are subject to disciplinary action, as determined by the faculty member, the dean of the student’s school and the Office of the Provost. If you have questions regarding plagiarism or would like direction on how to credit source material, there are reference guides on permanent reserve in the CalArts library. Please contact one of the CalArts reference librarians for more information.

 Students with Disabilities: Students who have documented disabilities and who want to request accommodations should first go to the Student Affairs office in A207. The Dean of Students will meet with students and communicate with their faculty about appropriate classroom accommodations. Students are encouraged to use these procedures early in the semester, so that the proper arrangements can be in place throughout the course.

 Resources

 Writing Tutors are available on a drop-in basis in the Writing Center in the Library. The Institute

 Academic Advisor can help you understand your academic progress and Critical Studies requirements: http://calarts.edu/academics/academic-advising