Majarkeun

Mandela and Mickey Mouse

At the ceremony for Tananarive’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts, I had the great pleasure of meeting Antoine Fuqua, director of “Training Day” and “Olympus Has Fallen” among other terrific films.  And I had the great pleasure of speaking with him at some length about his work.  A phrase he used caught my interest: that successful artists in Hollywood must be “smugglers of meaning.”

“Smugglers of meaning.”    An evocative phrase, yes?  What he meant by that is that the studios want entertainment.  But once you have pitched the story, and made the deal, you have to find a way to make the story personally relevant to you.  It has to MEAN something to you in some way, find an emotional entry point, or it is just hack work.

“Training Day” was a battle between good and evil for the soul of Ethan Hawke, Denzel as Mephistopheles.   “Olympus Has Fallen” is “merely” a Hero’s Journey riff, a character who needs redemption descending into the belly of the beast and emerging with a healed heart.    The question of whether such “mere entertainments” are substantive is a valid one.  Isn’t this just self-deception and justification on the part of a commercial artist?
I say no. 

1)  There are researches suggesting that people sitting in emergency rooms waiting to hear life-and-death news concerning their loved ones cope better if reading fiction than non-fiction.  I believe that the patterns of fiction allow us to take perspective on our lives.  That any valid dramatic structure has to reflect some perspective we have on life itself.  And that in watching others struggle and either win or lose we see ourselves, and can learn without actually suffering the trials.

2) The classic movie “Sullivan’s Travels” deals with a comedy director who wants to write something “of substance.”  His agent and studio tell him he doesn’t have any damned substance to write about, so he gets into a lavish motor home   and sets off on a motor-trip across America to “connect with the people.”  Hilarity ensues…until he loses his memory and identification and ends up on a chain-gang, where he is hip-deep in “substance” and “the people.”   While there, the only respite is a Friday night movie, a Micky Mouse film, and these tormented lost men roar with laughter at the animated hijinx, Sullivan along with them, for just a moment forgetting his problems.

A Hollywood justification?  Not according to comedian Chris Tucker.  While in South Africa, he had the honor of meeting Nelson Mandela.  Humbled by this great man, he mourned aloud that he had done so little in his own life and career.   Mandela would have none of it.  While imprisoned on Robben Island for 27 years, he said, one of the only rays of light sustaining them was…American comedies, especially those with black performers.  Seeing people like Chris Tucker being successful and free, thriving and making people laugh, gave them hope that their own world might change.
“Mere” entertainment lightens stress, gives hope, allows the “heavy lifters” we admire find the strength to keep going.   Don’t ever criticize the work you create, if you are doing your best.  Give it all the heart you have, and you are helping to heal a heart, give hope.  Perhaps free a soul…or a nation.

Namaste,
Steven Barnes?

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Market exclusivity data exclusivity and S 3921

There has been some confusion lately regarding the distinction between “data exclusivity" and "market exclusivity.” For most newly approved drugs, US law only provides "data exclusivity," five years for small molecule drugs and 12 years under the newly enacted biosimilar legislation. During the period of data exclusivity, generic competitors are prevented from relying on data generated and paid for by the innovator to secure FDA approval for a generic or biosimilar version of the innovator drug. This is not the same as market exclusivity, because a generic company is free to generate all of its data from scratch to obtain marketing approval for their generic version of the drug, although in practice is rarely if ever happens. True market exclusivity would completely preclude generic competition, while data exclusivity simply provides a period of time during which generic competitors are not permitted to rely on innovators data to obtain marketing approval.

In contrast, the Orphan Drug Act provides a period of true market exclusivity for certain orphan drugs, which precludes FDA from approving a competing version of the same or highly similar drug product to treat the same orphan disease for a period of seven years. The key difference between marketing exclusivity and data exclusivity is that a competitor cannot circumvent marketing exclusivity by generating its own data and submitting a new application for FDA approval, it is an absolute bar to FDA approval of the same drug for the same indication.

Recently, members of Congress sent a letter to the FDA seeking to clarify this point. In the letter, signed by four Senators including Orrin Hatch and John Kerry, the Senators point out that in a recent notice published by FDA seeking comments on the newly enacted biosimilar legislation, FDA incorrectly states that the biosimilar legislation provides a 12 year period of “marketing exclusivity.” The letter quite correctly point out that the biosimilar legislation in fact that does not include any marketing exclusivity period, but rather a 12 year period of data exclusivity.

Perhaps FDA should be excused for the lapse. Reporters and commentators routinely refer to the data exclusivity provided for biologics as "market exclusivity." To see what I mean, just do a Google search for “Obama budget biologic marketing exclusivity,” and you will pull up numerous reports from leading news agencies and bloggers reporting that the Obama budget proposes reducing the market exclusivity period for biologics from 12 years to seven years. In fact, there is no market exclusivity period for biologics, only data exclusivity, they should all read the letter from the Senators and stop propagating the misperception that the biosimilar legislation provides a period of market exclusivity.

I suspect part of the reason people have taken to characterizing data exclusivity as market exclusivity is because it suits the purposes of those who would like to speed to market entry by generic competitors by lowering the barrier to entry of generic competition. When you characterize it as market exclusivity, it sounds like market competition has been completely blocked for 12 years, which is very different from a 12 year period in which competitors cannot free ride on data paid for by the innovator.

For example, in a report on biosimilar legislation prepared by the FTC in 2009, a report of which Ive been highly critical, the FTC repeatedly refers to the data exclusivity provisions of biosimilar legislation as marketing exclusivity. FTCs mischaracterization of data exclusivity as marketing exclusivity might have been an attempt to strengthen its argument by implying that no biosimilar product could enter the market during the 12 year data exclusivity period, when in fact this is not the case. But this mischaracterization has spread, apparently leading to confusion even at FDA, and thus necessitating this letter from the Senators.

Related to this debate is the "Ethical Pathway Act of 2010," (S. 3921), a bill introduced into the Senate by Senator Sanders on September 29, 2010, which would effectively eliminate any data exclusivity period for both conventional drugs and biologics. Under this proposed legislation, as I read it, an innovator would be forced to share its clinical and animal data with a competitor, to be used by the competitor to obtain FDA approval for a generic or biosimilar product. The bill includes provisions for a "cost-sharing arrangement," pursuant to which the generic company would be required to compensate the innovator for some of the costs incurred in generating the data. If the innovator and generic company cannot agree on the amount, they are required to submit the matter to an arbitrator who is to determine a "reasonable and fair fee.”

The bill identifies specific factors to be considered in determining the "reasonable and fair fee," including "actual out-of-pocket costs of the applicable clinical investigations, the risk of the investigations, as reflected in the probabilities that similar investigations result in successful applications for marketing, any federal grants, tax credits, or other subsidies that reduce the net cost of the investigations, the expected share of the global market for the product involved, by the party seeking to rely upon the investigations for marketing approval, and the amount of time the holder or holders of the relevant applications for licenses has benefited from exclusive rights, and the cumulative revenue earned on the products that relied upon the regulatory tested at issue."

I think it is reasonable to predict that innovators are highly likely to be undercompensated by this imposed "cost-sharing arrangement." Essentially, after the innovator company has taken on a huge amount of risk bringing a drug to patients, and then establishing a market for the drug, this bill would allow a competitor to free ride off all of this risky investment by simply paying some fraction of the cost for clinical trials. As reported last Monday in Reuters, a survey has found that traditional small molecule drugs have only a 7% chance of making it from phase I through FDA approval. The success rate is even lower for some of the most important drugs-4.7% for cancer drugs, and 5.7% for cardiovascular drugs. There needs to be powerful financial incentives to invest huge amounts of money when there is such a low probability of a payoff, which I think helps explain why we are seeing such a dramatic drop-off in pharmaceutical R&D spending and in the rate of new drug approvals.

When generic competition hits the market, the innovator does not just lose a piece of the pie, the pie shrinks dramatically. Innovators need some substantial period of exclusivity on the market in order to bring in the profits that ultimately drive innovation. Patents play an important role in this regard, but patent protection is unpredictable and not always available, even for important and innovative life-saving drugs, and this is particularly true in the case of biologics.

To me, this is analogous to me going to the racetrack with a friend, and deciding to bet $1000 on a longshot horse. If the horse comes in, and I win $25,000, it is certainly not fair for my friend to wait until the race is won and then demand that I accept $500 (half the price of the bet) in exchange for half of the winnings ($12,500). But this is essentially what the "cost-sharing arrangement" under the proposed legislation would entail. In fact, its even worse than that, because to take the analogy further, since generic competition reduces profits for everyone, were not talking about sharing $25,000 anymore, but substantially less than $25,000.

While the legislation would hurt innovators, and ultimately innovation, it is premised upon a quite legitimate ethical concern, i.e., conducting clinical trials on human beings when we presumably already know the product is safe and effective raises substantial ethical issues. While I agree this is an entirely valid concern, I dont think it should be addressed in a manner that substantially reduces incentives for future innovation.

I would suggest that perhaps the best way to deal with these concerns is to provide drug innovators with an actual period of marketing exclusivity, independent of patent rights and independent of data exclusivity. This would give innovators a period of market exclusivity in which to recoup profits that incentivize innovation, without having to worry about patent challenges, and without subjecting human subjects to unnecessary clinical trials.

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LSGWebinar Influencing stakeholders and marketing your L D capability

Paul Trueman is posing a few challenging questions to us today:

• How do you get learning buy-in?
  
• How do you ensure that individuals want to learn, that managers give them the time to learn and that executives give you the budget to make it happen?
  

Paul says it takes more than just smooth marketing talk to make this work for you and today hell tell us about how we can influence stakeholders and make our L&D abilities visible. Very interesting, and something I really need to learn. Do remember, these are unedited, live-blogged notes.

Pauls in the middle of some interesting research that I guess leads to this talk. Paul does a whole heap of work, ranging from internal consulting to good old, face to face training. Paul is starting off asking what our biggest concerns are about promoting our L&D departments. Here are some of the responses we saw:

• Mindsets
  
• Budgets
• Balancing quality and value
• Tailoring content to demand
• Getting mangement to understand where were coming from
• Resistance to change
• Getting management to understand the value of investing in learning

Given some of those responses Pauls moving into the agenda for his presentation.

1. How can we promote learning and development as a beneficial investment?
2. What are the key drivers for different stakeholders?
3. How can we articulate the value learning and development adds to the business?
4. How do we communicate the benefits to learners?

A background of Pauls Case Study

Pauls work is with his company, Eaga Plc. Eaga is a Newcastle company, partner owned since 2007. They have about 4500 partners and they manage the governments warm front scheme and the BBC digital switchover scheme. Their culture is about empowering people, ensuring they look out for new ideas and to find new ways of delivering services in an innovative fashion. The culture sounds like what most companies claim to be like, and what ThoughtWorks is like!

The Eaga people development team has 22 people and currently invest 2 million GBP in training each year. They have heaps of face to face delivery with the support of their LMS.

They seem to have a strong set of values focussing on embracing change and continuous improvement. Thats a win for the L&D team because people are keen to keep improving and they dont have to drag people into initiatives and embracing change helps them to keep turning around soon to respond to the organisations changing skill needs.

Promoting L&D

Paul and his team promote L&D by conducting an annual partner engagement survey. Eaga has also has five key divisions with a key L&D partner assigned to work with each division. They support all their partners with additional academic funding options. They fund 50% of any external courses if that is relevant to their business.

They listen to their internal customers and take training evaluation very seriously. They also ensure that each partner has a personal development plan with the support of their line managers, L&D and HR.

Managing Stakeholders

Each partner wants skills development and career growth. So if the L&D teams dont invest in training approaches, this pushes the partners back. Pauls showing us several quotes and testimonials from his partners proving his point.

Paul also mentions that his department level stakeholders are looking for ways to make their groups more efficient. Again, hes showing us several testimonials from the managers that show their satisfaction.

Senior level management wants to know their skills base to be able to make effective business decisions on partner allocation. Paul and his team need to keep the senior management informed about this current state of the world so they can use this information to decide how theyll drive the business.

The key that Paul is trying to drive is that we need to go from the value that each individual stakeholders looking for and communicate in a language that makes sense for them.

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I thought Pauls messages were quite simple and very common-sensical though I didnt get heaps out of it. In any case, you are welcome to carry on this discussion with Paul on his email address. It takes heaps to come out and tell your story, so I congratulate Paul on that! And btw, if you wanted to learn about more influence patterns, please do look through Mary Lynn Manns work in this area.

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Magnesium Deficiency and Childhood ADHD

Magnesium Levels and the Connection to ADHD
In the last blog post, we talked about how an iodine deficiency in pregnant women can lead to ADHD and other cognitive dysfunctions in children. Iodine is just one of the many key nutrients that have been correlated with a worsening of ADHD-like symptoms. The effects of deficiencies for more well-known minerals such as iron and zinc are widely published. Low levels of both of these minerals have been associated with the onset of ADHD, and will be discussed in later posts. However, a lesser-known but equally important mineral relevant to ADHD and overall brain function is magnesium. There have been multiple studies linking low levels this key nutrient to an increased onset of ADHD.

Signs and Symptoms of Inadequate Magnesium Intake
Magnesium actually shares a functional overlap with iodine as far as proper bodily function is concerned. It plays a crucial role in maintaining function in a number of enzymes and other essential proteins. Additionally, like iodine, magnesium is essential for adequate bone health as well as maintaining adequate body temperature and energy levels. There are a number of signs of magnesium deficiencies which actually mask symptoms of other diseases, but some of the most distinctive signs of low magnesium levels are unexplained ulcers in the mouth area. Additionally, while allergies and asthma occur at higher levels in individuals with ADHD as comorbid disorders, the presence of ADHD, allergies, asthma and fibromyalgia (high levels of constant pain and sensitivity to touch) can be due to inadequate magnesium levels in the body.

Frequency of Magnesium Deficiencies and Recommended Daily Amounts
Like iodine, magnesium deficiencies are relatively common in industrialized countries. In children, these trends are even more ominous, with some estimates placing up to 90% of children in the magnesium deficient category. Recommended amounts typically fall within 280 to 400 mg per day, with men requiring slightly higher amounts than women. Seeds and nuts are among the best sources of this vital nutrient, with one of the best options being pumpkin and squash seeds (1 ounce provides about a third of the recommended daily amount).

**Please keep in mind that the recommended magnesium levels of 280 to 400 mg are for adults and older children. For newborns (around 30 mg/day) to children under 9 (130 mg/day), the requirements are lower. While there are no "food-based" upper limits for magnesium, there are for supplements. This is due to in part to different absorption patterns of the different magnesium forms in supplements as opposed to foods. Please click here to see some tables for recommended and upper limits of magnesium for children. Also, keep in mind that certain antacids and laxatives contain high levels of magnesium already, so please follow the upper limit max for supplements.

Treating ADHD with Magnesium Supplementation
Given the relatively low consumption of these foods by individuals in westernized countries, as well as the prevalence of nut allergies, supplementation with magnesium is another good option.
While both of the main components of ADHD (inattention and impulsivity/hyperactivity) are both associated with low levels of magesium, it appears that the hyperactivity factor is even more pronounced. The effectiveness of magnesium treatment is boosted by another key nutrient in the family of B vitamins, namely Vitamin B6. My next blog post will go into more detail about this treatment combination for ADHD.

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Maaveeran Kittu 2016 Tamil Movie Watch Online And Download

Maaveeran Kittu Tamil Watch Online



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Cast : Vishnu Vishal, Radhakrishnan Parthiban, Sri Divya
Director : Suseenthiran
Genre : Drama
Year Released : 2016

Maaveeran Kittu (English: Warrior Kittu) is a 2016 Indian Tamil period drama film written and directed by Suseenthiran.The film stars Vishnu and Sri Divya in lead roles while R. Parthiepan and Soori in important supporting characters. The movie is about a warrior who struggled to uphold the rights of the Tamil people in this land.

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Love Life and Math My Life Story

It has been my drug, my meditation, my weapon and my best friend. It fed and dressed me, led to travel, men, lavish parties and even Cuban cigars. It has placed my name on a movie screen, put my work in museums, and allowed me to manipulate cells deep inside the human brain. It is called Math.

In Russia, where I was a child in the 80’s, math was respected and celebrated as a tool of progress and technological advance. It was presented to school children as a toy with tricky wrapping that one had to outwit to open. We were challenged and encouraged to tackle it. Indeed, math has become the toy of my life, my key to the world, leading me across continents, opening doors to exciting projects and people, and even assisting in the realm of romance.

I was in high school, when I applied math to my love life for the first time. I fell in love, and barricaded in the heavy, still vacuum of my room, was desperately counting clock ticks, waiting for “the call” from the only person whose existence mattered. My brain was justifying the silence by devising elaborate excuses for why he hadn’t called “yet.”

It suddenly occurred to me that insecure, self-pitying anticipation could be turned into a confidence-boosting calculation of the probability of his call. What are the chances of his call, given the rumors of another girlfriend he may have had? I played with the concept of conditional probability in my mind. How does the likelihood of him being interested diminish with each passing day without a call? The results did not look promising. My attention, however, was diverted from the lost "love of my life" to a world of quiet concentration where I was queen, which significantly shrank his importance. Mathematically directing myself away from loveless depression, I tuned in to the world again and realized there would be many more love adventures to enjoy.

Immigrating to Israel, I discovered that math, more so than my religion, connected me to the young people in my new country. We spoke and read different languages, we lived through different histories, had very different worries, but we all studied math with Hindu-Arabic numerals and learned the same rules of logic. I met my future husband in a graduate math class. At that time we did not speak a common dialect but shared the language of math. Life was easy.

A rainbow of hip vocations presented themselves after I attained my math degree. The first came with delicious benefits. I was creating a product database at a chocolate factory. They had an “all you can eat at work” policy...

The coolest job of all was in movie special effects. The setting was like a dream: on the ocean side of Los Angeles, in a quiet nightclub atmosphere, in an abandoned military hangar, lit by a web of Christmas lights and lava lamps, surrounded by a life-size Princess Leah statue and old Star Wars spaceships, accompanied by a pet parrot. We, computer graphic programmers and animators, were making Hollywood history and immortalizing characters on the big screen.

With math I have helped move Godzilla through the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, and created a Monet-style animation of rap singer Puff Daddy, while experimenting with painting-by-numbers. Inspired by a brilliant talk at a SIGGRAPH conference, I tried to digitally erase the cats whiskers for the movie “Stuart Little.” An affair with another novel technology led me to use a reflective ball to capture the direction of the sun in a vast South Carolina field when shooting the movie “Patriot.” Some experiments worked and some did not, but the math behind them was thrilling, adventurous and playful.

I earned my Green Card by meticulously planning a hi-jack attempt on Air Force One. It was returning from a summit in Moscow and carrying Harrison Ford as President of the United States. Our team of animators and engineers helped all the explosions look realistic, simulated Air Force One refueling in the air, and made everyone believe that the President had escaped from the plane in a computer-generated pod we created for him, which was dropped through computer-generated doors at the bottom of the plane. I even had a chance to meet the President, I mean Harrison Ford, at the Sony stage, along with other actors who were practicing jumping from a plane in front of a giant air blower. We celebrated the movie opening with an extravagant Hollywood party that included Cuban cigars.

After 9/11 I thought I could help defend my third homeland, the U.S., from terrorism by teaching computers to recognize suspicious behaviors. I abandoned the idea when I realized that my system would have detected me as one of the false-positives, when after a 15 hour trans-atlantic flight with two little kids, sleep-deprived and afraid of admitting to smuggling an apple in my bag, I would be nervously avoiding a gaze of security men.

Instead, I joined forces against an even broader insidious enemy – cancer. In radio surgery, we use nifty math algorithms to target the cancer tumor with the precision of a single hair, radiating and killing the cancer cells while minimizing the damage to surrounding tissue. Math also offered a horrifying thrill when I assisted with brain surgery procedures on a death row inmate known to have killed his cell-mate back in 2005.

Now, ensconced in the mature days of parenthood, I am titillated by entertaining mathematics in our daily family routines. When figuring out the meaning of a double-negation note from school: “Please mark yes or no below if your child will not attend school on Friday.” When convincing myself to buy $250 winter boots because their cost-per-wear appears reasonably small: $250 / (100 cold days x 3 years ) = less than $1 per wear. When advising my son when to jump from the swing in order to enjoy the longest flight into the sand. Or, when finding an optimal home location that will minimize our familys combined commute time.

I am trying to pass on my math infatuation in the same manner that one passes traditions and language through generations. My 5-year old daughter runs around playing super girl and sings, “I can be anything I want to be.” I believe that the love of math may be the real super power that I can share with her, that will bring magic to her life journey.

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London Summer and some photos

Here are some photos from that gig a few weeks ago. That one where I nearly died of heat exhaustion and then managed to sustain a rather humiliating head injury. In the following photos you will witness the boiled look I was sporting that evening.

London bakes today. People in the office are pushing boundaries by wackily eating ice-lollies at their desks. Sometimes they pause between licks to make the obligatory hilarious comments about global warming.

This week I am going to go Belated Birthday Shopping with my Dad. I will try to steer him towards the pony shop, but if that fails I am going to settle for a microphone and P.A. As in public address, not a personal assistant. Actually, though, if I could combine the pony with the personal assistant I would really feel Id hit the jackpot. Then I could give it orders down my microphone. "Eat that hay!", or "Swish your tail!". Stuff like that.

Impish Sophie Sister was over from Paris this weekend, which was delightful. She stayed with me in Brixton, something I am very keen for her to do on a more regular basis.

Anyway, here are some pictures. Please remember that it was eighteen hundred degrees in there. I am not normally that neon.

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Marco Rubio We Are A Nation Of Haves And Soon To Haves

Rubio: "We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it. And thats who we need to remain."

During a Senate floor speech on December 16, 2011, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio offered his perspectives on his first year in office and the challenges that remain unsolved.  Excerpts from the speech and a link to his full remarks can be found her:

http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=66bd09d9-2acc-41c0-b853-b43ee6f27ad2

Rubios views may reflect the popular opinion that upward economic mobility is primarily just a matter of working hard.  We love a good rags-to-riches story.  But perhaps we tolerate vast income and wealth inequality in the U.S. because we think these success stories happen more than they actually do.

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MAPs and FAST Testing Done!

Besides a few students who were absent or need to finish, almost all of 3B has completed the MAPs assessments over reading, language, and math as well as the FAST assessments for the state of Iowa that cover fluency and reading.  It was a busy two weeks of testing, but the students were troopers and tried hard.

Information and scores from these assessments will be shared with parents at conferences in November.

To celebrate having these assessments done, I brought donuts Thursday morning for everyone to enjoy!  Nice job 3B.  I am very proud of you.....and glad those are done (for the most part).

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Lots of Tulips and a Cheese Slicer

Yesterday, we drove down to Keukenhof Gardens near Amsterdam to see the tulips in bloom. The gardens are open for a limited period of about two months in spring every year. Since spring decided to make a delayed entry, the tulip season is almost upto the end of May this year.
My first connection with tulips and Holland is of the movie Silsila. I still remember how I just wanted to be there as soon as I saw the song Dekha ek khwaab toh with millions of tulips in it. I wondered how it would feel to be amongst so many flowers. I now know how it feels. And I also know that the feeling is so overwhelming that it is too difficult to be put in words. Actually, I said jokingly to my husband that I have become so used to the urban I-see-nature-only-on-my-balcony-and-nowhere-else life, that I am getting stressed looking at all those wonderful flowers. :) And nature is supposed to de-stress you!

So, is this a non-food post then? No, there IS a food connection. And that is actually one of the souvenirs I bought at the gardens. Here it is.

As usual, while I was looking for a souvenir, it was the foodie in me looking for one too. (And no, I dont suffer of Split Personality Syndrome. :)) This Cheese Slicer is what both of us agreed upon. Isnt it nice? And very souvenir-ey? And it slices cheese too!

I tried using it on the block of Parmesan that I had in the fridge, and it gave me neat, thin shavings. Now I dont know whether to use it regularly or whether to just preserve it, so that I can pass it on as a family heirloom later.

What do you think I should do?

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M S Dhoni The Untold Story Release Date Cast and Soundtrack