continuously changing planet. It's being formed by many geologic processes. It is trying to balance products and processes as it moves along. The geologic processes that we experience and sometimes we don't experience actually vary in terms of rates and intensities. Sometimes it's very fast like in volcanic eruptions. As you know, Mount Pinatubo erupted very, very violently in the past in 1991. And of course there are many landslides that people are experiencing very recently in Mexico for example. There are many landslides that are happening today affecting many of our lives. They're also very slow geologic processes such as sedimentation. This is the process by which particle by particle, grain by grain, sand and silt comes down from the rivers and all the way to the sea. So as you know, there are many, many examples that we can actually think of. And so as we go along, we know that geologic time is actually very, very long. It's something that we cannot imagine even in our lifetimes because many of the processes actually happen over many, many human lifetimes, over thousands and even millions of years. Fossilization is one of these processes. It is the process by which fossils which are traces and remains of organisms that have been buried in the earth for a very long time are actually preserved. Some of us know what fossils are. You've been to museums probably. You've probably studied it in your geology classes or earth science classes somewhere in high school. But many of us actually haven't seen fossils on rocks or in the rocks themselves. Many think that they're quite rare or actually some think they're common just like us. We think they're common things that we find on our planet, but many times you only see them in special places such as museums. Actually, you can just move around and look for fossils somewhere around the campus of UP. For example, we have many fossils of trees and roots and sometimes if you move further into Antipolo, we actually found elephant fossils there and some turtles as well. And these fossils are actually one to two million years old. Many Filipinos are not very familiar with fossils because we also do not have that habit of going to museums or studying about rocks and fossils every day. So fossils are actually very, very useful in many of the things that we that we see around us in trying to understand the age of the rocks around us in trying to look at the sequences of rocks and trying to determine which one is older and younger. We also use fossils in order to understand the history of the earth and the oceans. We use them to determine changes on the earth via plate tectonics. I don't know if you've heard about plate tectonics in your earlier earth science classes, but it's all about the movement of the plates or the lithosphere on the surface of the earth where continents and even ocean crust actually moves around, bumps into each other, slides past each, slide past each other, and so on. There are also many climate changes that have happened on the surface of the earth and many of these are actually determined by using fossils. Fossils are also used to support the theory of evolution. Biologists from Darwin's time have actually used the study of fossils in order to really determine that life has changed through time. We also use these fossils in order to look for minerals and energy resources on our earth, especially oil, gas, coal, and other hydrocarbon deposits. We usually use fossils also in our daily lives such as when we're trying to understand the past and also our present and trying to understand the future, for example. There's actually a basic tenet in geology called the principle of uniformitarianism, which states that the present is the key to the past. This actually means that geologic processes that happened in the past can be used to understand the geologic processes of the present. And usually when we look at fossils, we try to understand how these fossils were in the past, how probably the organisms that made these fossils behaved in the past by looking at their relatives in the present. In UP, where we study fossils, we usually go to the sea in order to look at the present-day relatives of these fossils. We go to the reefs, for example, of Matabunkai or the reefs of Bulinau in order to see all of the invertebrate organisms that are in the coral reefs. By looking at how they look like, their morphology, and looking at how they behave, we learn to understand how the fossils probably behaved also in the past, the fossils that we find in the rocks. Fossils are actually very important in order for us as humans to understand our place in history and our place in the scheme of things. So what are fossils? They're actually the remains or traces of organisms that have been buried in the earth for a very long period of time. Fossilization actually takes quite some time. You have to imagine that the soft tissues of the animal has to be decayed and sometimes that takes a very short time, like in minutes or hours, but sometimes it can also take several months or weeks. It also has to be transported because normally things on the surface of the earth actually are being transported away from where they were first deposited and as they are transported, the tissues of these organisms actually break. And afterwards, if they're lucky, these parts of the organisms can be buried and modified into harder tissues so that they can be preserved in the surface of the earth. There are many requirements. There are some requirements for organisms to be fossilized. First of course, it has to have a hard part. Sometimes it can be a shell, the bone, or actually the tooth, and other times it can be just being buried very, very quickly in a protective medium. Of course, you have to imagine that it can't be a boulder that will bury this particular fossil. It also has to be a very special condition whereby small particles are probably falling down on this particular dead animal or plant on the surface of the earth. One of the best ways by which a fossil can be buried is when it's under the sea in a marine condition where fine sediments such as mud or silk will rain down on these fossils. Also, it's very important for that fossil to actually have a preserving medium. And these preserving medium can be a special a star or asphalt, ice, for example, amber, which is a fossilized tree resin. And so sometimes these special protective media are very hard to find on the surface of the earth. There are certain types of fossilization. There are instances where no alteration happens or no change happens to the fossil. And so the original fossil itself or the original organism can be preserved. These are very special conditions. And we find these in the woolly mammoths, which are about a million years old. Some are as young as 25,000 years. Of course, in geology, thousands of years is still young. It's when it reaches about the million years or so when it's considered very old. So these woolly mammoths, actually, which were found in Siberia, were preserved wholly in the ice. So this is a very special condition. Sometimes cellulose in plants can also be preserved. The chitin or the hard covering of insects can also be preserved, such as when you, if you've seen cockroaches, and I know many of you have seen cockroaches, that crunchy part of the cockroach is what we call chitin, and it can be preserved very, very well as fossils. Also, sometimes cartilage in some vertebrates can also be preserved. Some inorganic compounds can also be preserved, such as the calcium carbonate in shells that we find in corals, in the pelsipods or the clams that we find, they can also be preserved without alteration. So the original appearance in morphology and the composition of the animal or the plant can be preserved. Most of the time there is a preservation with alteration, which means that the actual organism is changed as time goes on. So this is the more normal or the more common way by which fossilization happens. Organic compounds, such as the carbon in rocks, can be preserved. Sometimes the leaves of the fossils, such as what you see sometimes in museums, where the ferns are preserved in the rocks, the carbon in them can be preserved in carbonization. Sometimes also the hard wood in trees can also be preserved through petrifaction or permineralization. There is actually a big national park in the U.S. where preserved trees are found. Most often though, the chemical composition in the rocks or in the fossil itself is recrystallized. This means that less stable organic compounds alter in physical form to more stable state without change in the chemical composition. A prime example of this is the aragonite we find in corals today and in the gastropods or the relatives of the snails that we find today. Another way by which fossilization happens is when there is replacement. This means that the original material is replaced by a new material, such as calcium carbonate. Silica or other iron compounds takes the place of the original compound, which is usually calcium carbonate. This happens in shells most of the time, especially in cephalopods, which we call ammonites. Actually, another way by which fossils can be preserved is by becoming molds or casts. You can imagine this when you're baking a cake. The cake is the cast, whereas the mold is the pan from which your cake is being baked. The mold sometimes can form when the animal imprints itself in mud under the sea. Sometimes some of the inner parts of the fossil or that organism can be filled in by other particles around it, and that can form the cast. This is common among pellicipods again, the snails, and the clams that we see in the ocean bottom. There are also other interesting fossils which are called trace fossils, or we call them ikno fossils. These are preserved remains of the activity and behavioral patterns of the organisms. If you imagine a snail, for example, moving along the lawn of your garden, you'll see that there are traces sometimes that the snail leaves on the surface of the soil. These can be preserved in time as trace fossils. We see this in trilobites. They've been moving around on the ocean floors in the Paleozoic, for example, and we see their traces on the ground. We also have dinosaur footprints that are present in many of continental areas where the dinosaurs roamed during the Mesozoic. Sometimes also bird tracks can be found on the surface of the earth, and these can be preserved and it gives us a good example of how these organisms lived in the past. Sometimes also burrows can be formed where worms or organisms that bury in the sea bottom can leave their traces there as linear structures in the bottom of the sea. Sometimes also, interestingly, they're fossil feces. I know some of you are probably laughing right now, but they're called fossil dung, copper lights. They can be also preserved as fossils. They actually look very interesting.  They actually smell very metallic because they've now turned into rock. And these fossil dung or copper lights can be used to determine what the animals ate and how they lived during the time when they were on the surface of the earth. Many dinosaurs left copper lights, turtles also left copper lights, and many other carnivorous animals also left copper lights on the surface of the earth. We can also find borings, bite marks, certain dinosaurs actually preyed on each other. And so sometimes we see bite marks also of marine reptiles on other marine reptiles as they lived on the surface of the earth. Another interesting kind of trace fossil is what we call as a gastrolith. Sometimes they're called stomach stones or gizzard stones, but actually they did come from the actual stomach of the organism itself. These are actually just rocks or pebbles that were left on the inside the stomachs of these dinosaurs or other reptiles or other animals that actually use them so that they can digest their food inside their stomach more effectively. Usually the grain size depends on the size of the animal. It can be anywhere from a sand size, a particle of rock to a cobble sized rock. So it can be as big as my fist, but usually it's very smooth and very polished. And the composition of the rock is very different from the surrounding rocks which preserve the particular animal. But why do we study fossils? Fossils are actually very important for us as geologists, for example, because we call them stratigraphic indicators. Stratigraphy is the study of the sequence of rocks. We have to determine which rocks are older or younger than another rock. And so fossils are used to determine the relative ages of these rocks and they're very good determinants. I, for example, study a particular microfossil called nanofossils and they're very effective up to about a million or even half a million year resolution in order to understand where the rock layers are actually positioned. We also study fossils, most especially for most of you, you're probably familiar with this from biology lessons in the past, that we use them to record past life. They show the course of evolutionary changes in animals and plants through time. This has been very well recorded in the fossil record from the Precambrian to the present, that we have simpler fossils earlier in time in the Precambrian in the form of green algae, whereas today we have humans in more advanced forms of organisms, more complex structures are found now in the present-day organisms that we find today. So we see this in the record of fossils. Some other important fossil finds, for example, the evolution of the horse, which was traced throughout the Cenozoic, show that actually horses range from the smaller sizes to the present sizes we have today, that you see actually on TV, in TV series or actually in race tracks, that they're actually a lot larger than they are today. In the past, they were actually smaller because there was no need for them to run around so fast and to have so legs that are very, very long. They are also evidences of changes that have happened in our climate because in the past, there was no reason for them to run faster because they were living in forested areas. Today, horses are more endemic or more native to areas where there are grasslands. And so they had to run faster, their eyesight had to be keener, and also more importantly, from evidences of how their teeth changed through time, their teeth had to be able to chew a lot of grass, which is full of silica and which is actually hard for them. And so the change in the climate, which led to the change in the types of plants that they were eating, can actually be traced in the bones and the teeth that the horses have evolved through time. We also study fossils in a big way so that they can be used as clues or evidences of changing environments and geographic patterns through Earth history. We see this in plate tectonics. Some of you are probably familiar with it from earlier Earth science lessons. Plate tectonics is the movement of the lithosphere of the plates on the surface of the Earth. Sometimes they bump into each other, sometimes they sink underneath each other or they slide past each other. And we know the movement of the plates by using fossils. Also one of the main evidences that was used to prove plate tectonics was actually by the use of fossils. We also use fossils in order to understand climate change through time. In the fossils that we study in the marine realm, we see that many of these fossils change. The types of fossils that we see in the rocks change actually when there's warm climate versus colder climate. When the currents change, we also see these evidences in the fossils that we have.


Hey everybody, welcome, welcome and happy Saturday morning. It is the 23rd of October. Man, we're almost finished with 2021. Can you believe that? We are almost finished with 2021. And today I wanna talk about inflation, but how you can benefit from it, right?  And I'm here to tell you there are things you can do. There are things you can do. So stick with me to the end. I'm gonna give you some real good pointers today. A lot of it has to do with online stuff. Go figure, right? Don't forget to subscribe. Hit that big subscribe button down there. If it's red, you gotta click it, turn it gray. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live. I've got my little iPad over here so I can converse with you. I want you to put your comments in there. Tell me what's going on, tell me what's happening in your part of the town. Ask me any questions you want about starting running and growing online businesses. Cause that's what we talk about on this channel. When I go live, I talk about starting running and growing online businesses, but you keeping some money in your pocket is important too. So that's what I'm gonna kind of talk about today. I am live on Facebook and YouTube. So you could be watching me on Facebook. You could be watching me on YouTube. Either way, I wanna welcome you and I thank you for your attention. I thank you for showing up, but I am requesting that you put comments in that chat box. Now, this is live right now. Of course, if you watch this later on and it was a recording and I said it was live, that would not be true. But it is true right now. But if I said that, then that wouldn't be true, right? Because later on, nevermind. If it's live for you right now, don't forget to put something in the chat box. If nothing else, say hi to me. Let me know what your weather is. Let me know what's going on. The key I'm trying to get you to do is to participate. If I can get you to participate in this, then your chances of being successful online are increased greatly, okay? So I wanna make sure that you're participating. Super important. I'm gonna be monitoring that. I'm gonna be watching you. Okay. So we wanna spend, let me get my throat clear here. Let me get a little sip. Hang on. Hang on. Ah, that's better. So we want to spend less and we wanna make more, right? And we wanna do this during inflationary times. And I don't think anybody in the world right now could argue that there's not inflation. It's everywhere. It's craziness, right? There's so much inflation going on. But let's talk about it first. What caused all this stuff? How did all this happen? How did we get this? Well, it was the illness that did it. The illness changed a lot of things, okay? Consumer prices are rising. And if you're the like the type of person who's living paycheck to paycheck, this means you're gonna have a harder time paying for food, gas, and utilities, all these things. So that's why this training this morning is so important because you can apply this. Now some of you are gonna take this today. You're actually gonna increase your income, which is really cool. Inflation hit a 13 year high in September, okay? Prices, consumer prices went up 5.4% in the US compared to last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So that's pretty big, okay? Inflation has been a surprising and unwelcome participant, I guess, seeming to persist at elevated levels at a time and we're all hoping to put that devastating economic impacts of that illness behind us, but it's not working that way, okay? Pandemic caused downturn itself. It kinda exasperated wealth and income inequality. The wealth it can adjust, okay? Obviously they don't have a problem, but those on the lower end of the incomes, not so much, okay? So that's why I wanna do this training today to kinda help you guys out. And I want you to think about what changes should you make in your budget to beat inflation? Because there are some definite changes you can make. Is there anything you can do to reduce your food costs? Because there are things you can do to reduce your food costs. Should you change how you invest for retirement?  Is there anything that you can do to take advantage? Here's the key, to take advantage of the rise in inflation. Everybody says, oh my gosh, it's bad things happening and I'm gonna be a victim to it. Don't be a victim to it, benefit from it. I know I'm benefiting from it. And I'm gonna tell you one way I'm benefiting right now. I am doing a video right now. And this video is about inflation, okay? Now, since I'm doing a video on inflation and helping you guys out, guess what? This video will play over and over again and they'll put ads on this video and those ads will make me money. So right there I'm making money on inflation. And I want you to also think, is there any good news about rising inflation? Because there's always good news about everything guys. We gotta just sometimes search for it. So what can you do with your budget? This is a time when you should review how you spend your paycheck, your income, whatever it is. I know you're cutting and some people say, well I'm cutting till it hurts JR, it's so difficult. But there's obvious places to cut, like eating out or let's say streaming services. You know, what are you paying for? What services are you paying for? You don't even use. I can tell you, we don't pay for, gosh, the only thing I think we pay for is Netflix right now. We got rid of YouTube TV and cable and satellite dishes and all that stuff. We don't need it. If I'm watching that stuff, I'm probably not working. So when was the last time you looked at your mobile plan? Is your mobile plan matching up to what you do? I think that's super important. And I checked mine out, I look at it, okay? So online you can use apps and the internet to find lower prices when they're available. Let's say for gasoline, there's gasoline apps out there. There's a way to earn money back on gasoline. So there's things out there. When prices aren't changing that much, people tend to be inclined to invest less of their income or less of their time actually shopping and thinking it may not make that much of a difference. But right now it makes a big difference. So shopping online, taking advantage of deals. I just this morning did a deal with, I think it was Hello Fresh and they gave you like half your meals for free. And I said, well, I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm gonna see what it is. And I think I spent 29.95, I got six meals for two people. So that's a pretty good deal, okay? That's a pretty good deal. So right now think about shopping right now as investing time to find better deals. And you can put in that chat section, what have you done?  Supply change disruptions may continue to push consumer prices up. So you're gonna want to get an early start when you're holiday shopping. Now would be the time to do it.  So you're gonna pay more. So do things a little bit sooner now. Put off unnecessary purchase until supply issues are reasonable and prices go down. You know, I've been looking at big screen TVs for probably about five years. My big screen TV that we have in the family room is probably about nine or 10 years old. It's truth be told. And I'm telling myself, well, gee, you deserve a new TV. I have the money to buy a new TV.  You have a TV. What difference is it gonna make if you have better pixelation in the pictures a little bit better? You don't even watch that much TV. And she's right, okay? So are there things that you're trying to buy or you want to buy that you don't even need to buy? Is there anything you can do about food costs? Yes, there's stuff you can do about food costs. In an inflationary environment, substitutions can be your financial way out. Think about substitutions. So I want you to think about this. Food and shelter costs rose in September and put together accounted for more than one half of the monthly increase of all items measured in the consumer pricing index, okay? So that's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Prices for meat. Now we sell canned meat, okay? So I'm terribly sensitive to this, but prices for meats, poultry, fish, eggs rose 2.2%. Over just a month period of time. That's over one month. And get this, beef prices. Beef went up 4.8% in a single month. So if we round that up to 5% times 12, that's a 60% increase. That's huge. So what can you substitute? What can you do? What can you change in your diet? Food prices have largely been rising because of weather-related shortages, okay? Transportation issues, lack of staffing. Meat and fish prices are going up faster than vegetable prices. Think about that. So what could you do? You could eat four vegetables, okay? You don't have to have quite as much meat. That's something you could do. Take that in your planning and your consideration. And guys, if you have ways of saving money, I want to see them. You're gonna help people out with that in the chat section. So if you go shopping, let's say for crab cakes, okay? There's been a 50% price hike for crab meat in the menu.  It was hard for me to handle that because when I first got to California, they were like $19.99. And then they went to $32 a pound. And right now at Costco, they're I think $38 or $39 a pound for Alaskan crab legs. I haven't bought them in a long time. Why should I? At my grocery store at HEV, they're $49 a pound. I am not spending $49 a pound. And a lot of us will say, well, JR, you got the money, you can spend it. No, that's stupidity. Just because you have money doesn't mean you spend money. Think about it, guys. You gotta be sensible about this. Now investments, okay? What are you doing as far as investments? That's a great hedge against inflation because if inflation is incurring and you have some extra money, stocks are also gonna be going up, okay? So this is the time you may want to buy some stocks. A lot of people say, well, I don't have any money to buy stocks. It doesn't take much. It can be $50 or $100 a month. But that $50 or $100 a month can turn into two or three or 400. During inflationary time, it's a great time to buy some stocks. Check it out, look at stocks. This is the time, I gotta tell you that I'm really buying stocks is during inflationary time. Let me get another sip here. Guys, put where you're from here. Let me put something here in this chat box to get you guys going. You're just not going. I want you to go. Where is my, I'm trying to find all my stuff here. That's not the one. That's not the one. I'm looking for all my tabs up here. I got so many tabs open on my computer that it's crazy. Oh, there it is. Tabs right there, right there next to me. Let's see here. Put the ways that you're gonna save money or make money during inflationary times in the chat box. I gotta get you guys started. I gotta get you started, okay? I wanna have you guys talk. Normally you guys are talking a lot. You're not talking that much today. So make sure you're talking. I want you to participate. I love hearing from you guys. I really do. So, you know, this is how I'm gonna hear from you right now. Now, if you're an ultra conservative saver, you know, who shied away from stocks because you're scared of the stock market, you may wanna consider that inflation is also a risk. Okay, so you're risking stuff anyhow. If you don't keep pace with inflation, you're losing your purchasing power over money. So in other words, if inflation is 5% and your pay is only going up one or 2%, you're falling behind, okay? You're falling behind. And I'm gonna give you a great way to make more money with inflation in just a second. So hang on, I wanna get that to you. Where interest rates are right now, investors need to take a slightly more risk on return than to beat inflation. You know, we recently bought a house, built a house in Texas, and I put a mortgage on it. Not a big mortgage, but a mortgage on it. So this is, why would you put a mortgage on it? Why don't you just pay cash? And I say, well, because I can take that same money, put it in the stock market and earn 10%, and interest rates are like 2%, 3%, okay? On mortgages, it would make no sense to pay all cash for a house right now, not with the way the stock market is. So now we're down to, is there anything you can do to take advantage of a rise in inflation? And of course there is. There's all these advantages to stuff, okay? If you have some cash that you don't think you're gonna need for a while, maybe you could buy bonds if you wanna do that. Bonds are actually doing pretty good. So that may be something you wanna look at. Is there any good news about rising inflation? There's always good news, always good news. Sometimes you gotta look for good news, but there's always good news.  The Social Security Administration announced a 5.9% benefit increase for 2022. That's the biggest increase that they've ever done, okay? So if inflation relits next year, which some believe it possibly can because of the supply chain fixes and all that, so security recipients will continue to get the higher payments anyway. So that's pretty cool, right? Additionally, one of the few potentially beneficial effects of rising inflation will be that the Federal Reserve may well lift the benchmark rates sooner rather than later and more than previously believed. So that's some welcome news for people, okay? Previously, bad returns on savings should start to rise, okay, so maybe you put some money in savings. It's hard not to panic. I get it about inflation. When your paycheck doesn't go as far as you need, still keep things in perspective. It's not the 1970s when prices skyrocketed and I was alive during the 70s. I was a kid, a very small kid, barely a kid, okay? But recent headlines about increasing inflation had been alarming, but inflation itself is not abnormal, it happens, okay? It's not out of your control.  What can you do to increase your income? Ask yourself this question. What can you do to increase your income? And I'm here to tell you, make yourself more valuable. How are you gonna do that? Digital marketing, okay? There are so many things you can do with digital marketing. There are so many projects you could take on. And some of you may say, well, I don't know how to digital marketing. I don't know how to build webpages. I don't know how to do SEO. Then learn, that's all you gotta do is learn. Go to my channel. I've got tons of videos on how to make money online. There's so many ways out there now that weren't there before. Take this time. Take this time you have. Quit worrying about inflation and improve your skills.  Go to Fiverr and start building websites for people. You can get really good at that. You could do a templated one. And you could say, hey, I can do a templated website for $195. And you know, do a cheat website. But if you wanna upgrade one, I can do one for $5.95 or I can do one for $15.95. The point is, take this time when everybody is crying and moaning and all that and go out and learn new stuff, do new stuff, utilize the internet. We have the internet now. Previously, my throat really had today. Sorry about that, guys. Previously, when we had these really high inflationary times like the 70s, there was no internet. There's nothing you could do. You would just stop. At least now you can go check prices, okay? I do a lot of price shopping. And I'll share a quick story with you. We have these really nice, I had the same windows in my office that's what I'm looking for. But we have these really nice big tall box windows in our bedroom. We have three sets of them, okay? And we wanted to put a curtain right across the top with just strips of material coming down between them, okay? So I went online and I started looking around. And I had these, we have really high ceilings. We have about 11 and 12 foot ceilings in this house. So I had to have a curtain or at least a strip of material because it's not a curtain, it's not gonna cover the window. That was at least 105 feet long, 105 feet. That's pretty long. And all of the panels I saw online that were reasonable, you know, 30, 40, 50 bucks, whatever were 50 inches wide and we need ones just for the post area between the windows, we needed something that was 24 inches. So we couldn't find a 24 inch by 105 inches. So we went to a website and they do custom drapes. And these custom drapes, hang on, were $890 for four strips of material, $890. And then you had it by the curtain round which was 160 or something like that. So we were $1,000 for these four strips of decorative material. And I was just like out of my mind. I'm like, I'm not spending that, I'm not doing that. So we looked at like Amazon had some material in there, excuse me, some of these drapes that were 105 inches long but they were 50 or 60 inches wide. And it was just too wide. It was just too wide. And I said to my wife, I said, we could bunch it up more. She says, no, it's not gonna look good. I said, but these are $30, $40 a week. And you know, get these panels.  So I said, okay. So she goes outside, she's walking the dog. I'm in the bedroom. I'm looking at these, you know, windows. I'm like, what do we do? Because I don't want to spend $1,000 for four pieces of material. And she walks inside and she looks at me and she says, we need to hire a tailor. I said, what do you mean? She said, well, you can get these panels that are 50 inches, we need 24. What if we cut it half and had it fixed that way?  So I go online, I find some on Amazon for 30 some odd bucks. I finally found a curtain rod for like 60 some odd dollars. So we're up to about a hundred bucks. We call an alteration place and the lady wants a hundred, which she wanted, she wanted $88 for each panel, which would have been 160, 170 some odd dollars, which was a pretty good deal. And I said, well, let's do that. But then I thought, well, why don't I call a few more alteration places? So I found another lady who does custom draperies and she does wedding dresses, all this thing. She wanted 80 bucks for both of them, 80 bucks. So for under $200, the $80 plus the roughly $100 on the spend for the supplies, I got those panels. So 200 bucks. So I saved, you know, what was it, $1,000 initially.  And then I did the shopping part, found the seamstress.  And then if you couple that with improving your skills during these times, when was the last time you improved your skills? Watch some of my videos on my channel. You know, I've got 1,000 videos on my channel, 1,000 videos. I'm checking the time here to make sure I don't go over. I got 1,000 videos on my channel. Check them out. I have some courses. If you wanna invest in yourself, you know, look at the description after this video has been uploaded and it's not live anymore, you're gonna find links. I even have a free course on there. It's $97, you can click and learn on that one. Do something to improve your value because there are people that are taking advantage of inflation right now. They're making money off inflation. I am, by doing this video, I told you that just a minute ago, right? I said, look, I'm doing a video on inflation to show you guys how you can save some money, you know, by using these apps and shopping and doing all these different things. But this video is gonna be viewed over and over again. They're gonna put ads on this video. Right now my CPM is like $28 per 1,000 views. So for every 1,000 views, they give me 28 bucks. So this video on inflation will make me money off inflation. Is that crazy or what? I think that's pretty crazy. So anyhow, apply some of these things, guys. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel. Really easy to do. If that button down there is red, it's telling you you haven't subscribed. So click and subscribe to the channel. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live. You don't miss out on anything. Why would you wanna miss out? 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to come. We called them, we sent notes home, we would try and stop her because he would be on the peripheral watching us with all the kids wanting to be a part, obviously, and he's one of the kids that needed to be a part of our program. But based on kind of the behavioral plan and all that stuff, he couldn't be there. So we tried everything we could to get her and not until about the fifth time of doing something did she actually show up. So that showing up is a change in behavior right there. So not to stop you, but that's exactly right. You are right that that is a short term outcome, the fact that they've come to a socialization. But now the next step, just because they came to the socialization, what do you want for them? To improve your quality of life. Okay, okay, yes, very good, very good, good. Sounds great, very good, exactly. That sounds exactly right. And so your data element is the score on that test. On the survey, what was the name of it again? Okay, so the World Health Organization Quality of Life, the score on that. And then the data source is going to be your own agency. Yes. Okay, okay. And the data type is? Yeah, it's qualitative and quantitative? Does it have? Yes, there's room for both. There's room for both? The qualitative is your own. Is it a self-report? Or is it administered by a staff? It's self-report. Okay. Okay, so it's still self-report then. It's them telling you what they're feeling. Okay, good. And it's a questionnaire, self-report questionnaire. And the collection methodology you started with, who's doing it? How often? Okay, very good. And in their home or in the office? Okay. That's part of the socialization. Okay. It's either in home then in home or in office. Okay, sounds right, doesn't it? Sounds great. So you've got it all laid out. And we are all in very good understanding about what it is she's measuring. Now, here, this indicator and this element can come from a score from a standardized instrument that is already being used in the community. Like I mentioned, the RAT test, the WRAT test that's used for academic achievement often. You might have a standardized depression index. You might have stress index. You might have things like that that you can utilize that have been standardized. If you can use those, those are great. But what do you find the challenge in using those? Anybody trying to use those? No one's used a standardized test? Like assessment tools that are out there that you might be using to assess your client's well-being in the beginning. Anybody using any of those? That drops her score. So it looks like they're getting worse. But in essence, they're getting better. They're getting more normal. Yeah, interesting. So we're not even geared up for that kind of thing because it's a cubital, it doesn't matter. Interesting. It's like weird. Well, there are, like if you go online, you can go to assessments.com and you can find a ton of instruments. I mean, there's a plethora of instruments out there that you can use, that it could be utilized while doing assessment and or for evaluation. Is anyone getting hot in here? Is it just me right now? It's got a little, Jackie? It was kind of cold before. It was cold, it goes up and down. Thanks, Jackie. So I thought maybe it was just my hot flash. It's another topic for another day. All right, so anyway, so you want to utilize, if you can, some standardized instruments. But that's not always feasible because they're not always cheap. If you look online and you find an instrument that measures depression or instrument that measures stress or instrument that measures any of those social well-beings or parent conflict or any of those parenting skills things, any of those things, they're not cheap and they're usually hard to get and they're a little more complicated to administer. So I don't find nonprofit agencies using all that much. So what we've done a lot with agencies is help them design their own instrument, their own pre-post test set of questionnaires. And that's again a whole nother training that we've done in the community about how to develop your own questionnaire pre-post test. And it's really, there is a skill to it. There is a need for it to be standardized and need for it to be accurate and to look at the validity and reliability of it and all that within it. But don't let that keep you from designing one and using one. If you ask, even when you find that agencies don't realize that at the time of assessment you have this whole intake form that you're asking. Clients questions. If you added five questions on that right from the beginning that has to do with about your outcomes.  And then you ask those five questions again at the end. You now have two points in time, two data elements that you can compare to determine whether or not you've improved your programming. The Children and Families Commissions did that really well. How many of you received Children and Families Commission funds? You have you. So Children and Families Commission determined early on when they wrote their grant, the proposal whatever in 1998 that what they wanted to do was make kids ready for school. That was their ultimate outcome, getting kids ready for school. And one of the measures that they determined was an effective measure whether kids were ready for school or not was whether they were read to 15 minutes a day by their parents. 15 minutes a day of reading to your kid a day would make a difference in having a kid ready for school. So at every single agency that ever received funding from the Children and Families Commission had to ask that question on their intake forms, correct? You still do. You still do, yeah. Because no matter if you're giving dental work or if you're giving autism interventions, it was do you read to your kid for 15 minutes on every single intake form for every single agency that was ever funded and they've used that to collect data on measuring their outcomes on whether or not the Prop 10 money made a difference. So if you think about that, if you think about on your intake forms what could I add to my intake form that would be appropriate questions that I could then measure later as an indicator of my success, an indicator of an impact, an indicator of whether or not we met our outcomes or not with our clients and just ask it again at the exit or when they leave. Or at the three months, six months, nine months, whatever you determine how often you need to ask those questions. And a lot of people don't realize when they're using their assessment tools those assessment tools are asking a lot of the questions that you want to then track whether or not there was improvement in the end and they're not using them that way. They're just using them for assessment and determining what treatment they're getting and what intervention they might have but they're not then using it later on at the end to determine whether or not they had that impact or change because they think assessment beginning they don't think end as well. So think about ways in which you can incorporate your evaluation into the system or the structure that you already have in place within your organization instead of making this big add-on evaluation in addition to whatever it is else that you're doing. And I think that's where agencies get hooked up sometimes that it feels too much of a burden for staff if they do that, okay? Questions on how to complete this and it now. So interpreting the data. Now that we got the data and we've collected it all and we've decided on what software we're gonna use and got all the data entered and how to do that I just had a question right now is like, okay, do I have to, I've got this data and I've got all these people that I did an assessment on three months ago and then I did assessment on them again do I have to match them up there to test up to be able to compare and get appropriate results? And my answer is yes, that you really wanna do that. You can aggregate the data of all and then aggregate the data of the others and get results but it's not gonna give you an analysis that you really need to see whether there's been an improvement. So the best thing to do is give each individual client an ID number, put in their pre-test result, put in their post-test result and then do a T-test on it to see if it was statistically significant, okay? And so you've got your data entered into a spreadsheet, use the statistical analysis on it but sometimes what we talk about is that statistical analysis, you might not hit a statistical analysis of that P less than 0.05 on a T-test but you might have what we call programmatic significance meaning that even though you didn't get to that statistical level, if I say it one more time I'm gonna stutter all over it, even though you didn't get to that level you might have seen enough improvement in your clients to say wow we did make a change, we did make a difference and statistically you didn't because you didn't have big enough sample size, you might not have gotten the right, the validity of your question wasn't right or the reliability of it. So you gotta look at that too when you're going back to analyzing why you didn't get statistical significance but sometimes just enough of an improvement can say wow we are making a difference but how can we do it even better, okay? And that not to negate that oh just because we didn't get that statistical value that we should say that we're not doing it, we're not effective and we're not doing well. So one thing we have to do is make sure that when we're interpreting the, okay now I've been talking too long for sure. All right, you have to put it in context and I'm gonna have to stop soon, right? Good, all right, putting it in context is really important, making sure that again you show the total number that it represented, you put it in percentage, making it a relative to the results, it's not always good to just say well the score was 12 out of 50. Well let's do a percent, let's do relative frequency on that, it really makes it a little easier for people to understand and interpret when you put it in context like that. Disaggregating the data and disproportionate outcomes, what are those two big Ds talk about? What's disaggregating mean? Anybody? Could you compare California to someone's? It could, that could be disproportionate outcomes but disaggregating means pulling it apart, aggregate means to put it together, disaggregate means to pull it apart. So sorting it by ethnicity, by gender, by age, by all those things and looking at where are by geographic region potentially if you're serving in multiple regions, you wanting to disaggregate the numbers so that you can really see where you had the most impact and where you might need to put more efforts into a particular group that you didn't have an impact on. So disaggregating the data, disproportionate outcomes meaning looking at whether or not within a particular group you have a higher rate of success than in another group and that they're disproportionately represented over the base of what the ethnic distribution or the age distribution or whatever the regular distribution is that when you look at your outcomes that there's more represented in one group than they normally would be within the general population of who you served. Is that making sense? Kinda? I got a, not so sure. So say for example I had 10% of the population was African-American, okay? And 10% of the population in my program was African-American, okay? But then when I saw improvements in my program only 1% improved compared to another ethnic group where 60% improved. So there's a disproportionate representation there of outcomes within a particular, so I must not be doing something maybe culturally appropriate or acceptable to reaching those outcomes, to getting them to those outcomes. Whether it's ethnic, whether it's age, whether it's gender, any of those kind of things you would disaggregate the numbers so that you could analyze this if there was a disproportionate outcome. Does that make sense then? Okay. Political process will interpret the data in many different ways. So it's really important to making sure when you're interpreting data and putting the data in context you understand the political context in which you communicate that data and represent that data. I know that as I mentioned before Orange County doesn't track teen pregnancies. We have no idea how many teens are pregnant. We know how many gave birth but we don't know how many were actually pregnant. And that's a political determination in this county not to collect that data. So you then have to determine, like the data that we do collect and the results that we do get are in a political context and how we report that and having that we have a political representative here. With us and she's probably got a lot of issues and questions on that. If you didn't hear, what was your name, Maggie? Maggie's from Lou Carrera's office, so. Which I'm really glad that you're here. So anyway, but it is, it's definitely put into a political, we work in a political environment and we have to be cognizant of that when we are reporting our data and how we report it. Not that you change your data but you just remembering the audience in which you're presenting it to. And if you're wanting to have an impact and increase your resources, increase your leverage, you need to make sure that you present the data in a way that it's gonna be understandable and appropriate for them to hear it. You know what I mean? Yes. Now they're focusing on what they've improved in the job situation and everything. It's really, it's, we call it spinning in the ER context, but you know it's. What you focus on. It's what you focus on and how you use the data and what the data says to different groups. Yeah. And then I mean an example of that would be, I've been working with the conditions of children's report now too many years, like 15 years as a matter of fact. And we used to track, we still track, we track immunization of children in Orange County. And when we first started, it was down to 60, like 67%, 69% of children were adequately immunized by the age of two in Orange County when we first started looking at it. And then the immunization coalition came about because it's saying, wow, that's really a low number. We need to do something about that. That's horrible. And you know, everybody then said, oh, we're now up to, at one point, we're up to 77%. And it was like, oh, look at how much we've improved. We're at 77%. I'm like, yes, but you could turn that the other way around. Immunization is free in Orange County and we have 23% that are not immunized. So now what? So it's now up to, Kurt, what's it up to now? It's up to 90, almost, exactly. And it's been up there now for quite a while, but this was like way back where they were like, you know, if you look back 20 years, immunization was not that high and it was like, we need to do something about this. But you could turn it around and say, okay, at that time we could say, well, 23% are not immunized and immunization is free in Orange County. So what are we not doing to grab those? And then of course there's now, I think it's 92, almost 95, somewhere really close to that because there's just that amount that wave out that's the issue that they're looking at. But again, now we're looking at immunization. That's when they get to kindergarten, 98% are immunized at kindergarten. Like, well, they all have to be immunized at kindergarten. Let's go back to the two-year-old rate. Let's look at two-year-old. So like I said, you've got to make sure that the way in which you present the information is we're not changing the data any. It's what you're focused on in the data as well. Okay, we talked about ranking already, right? I was just curious, did they ever take an account of that new, that movement of not getting immunized? You know how they were going to have parties and to get chicken pox and measles and. They did see a huge drop in immunization there for a while because of the bad press, autism. I think they're starting to get a tick back up though, coming back up, yeah. All right, so here's my, this is the one I wanted to do. Okay, so we did our in-progress, we did our measurement framework. We've done our feedback reporting results and program redesign is what's really important to this whole process. And then it actually reports back up to what did you meet your issue or need? Did you really get to, if you don't do this feedback loop, there's no point doing it, okay? If you don't utilize information for program improvement, reporting results, then there's no point doing the evaluation. Okay, so we talked about this already a little bit, that you have many different audiences when you're presenting your data. You have to make sure you have both an internal audience and an external audience, different levels of information in the way in which they need to see the data and report the data. A public relations statement should sound very different than a report to your staff, your line staff. Because the line staff needs to know the details and the numbers and the public relations statements needs to know that you made an impact and based on evidence and research from your evaluation. Okay, so we can communicate the results in both graphic representation, which is charts and graphs, which we like. We call scientific writing, which is just give me the facts man. Again, on the conditions of children's report, we are at the Center for Community Collaboration, kind of the editors of the report, and we're always saying, okay, the book's supposed to be about the facts. We're not allowed to editorialize in it too much. I say too much. So I'm always like, and Perley knows more than any, for the Children and Families Commission and Kurt also contributes to it, but Perley edits it all the time for us and we have to always take out some of those editorial comments and statements in there because the report's just supposed to be the facts man. And so that's the scientific writing. Just give us the data, give us the number, don't sugar coat it, don't try and make it anything different or editorializing or explain it away at that point. Later in the formative writing, you're rarely trying to inform people about what the results are without getting too stuck in the data.  Fund development writing, again, when you're writing for funders, you're wanting to show them that you did an accurate evaluation with appropriate measures and that you got results back and that it showed an improvement, but they don't need to have all the letter layers of detail. And then of course a PR in writing is always about making it pretty, getting somebody to understand it and care about it in the public and how to tug on those heart strings and make them care that you made a difference. And that's, but using your evaluation evidence to do that as well. I have a three minute drill before we get to the final thoughts because we got 13 minutes according to my record. So three minute drill here. This three minute drill is in your packet. It is the light yellow. I always call this the elevator drill as well, right? If you got into an elevator with Bill Gates, what would you want to say to him? Oh Lord, yes. So if I got in the elevator, I would want to make sure that everybody in my organization can do this three minute drill. I want to make line staff be able to do this. I want to be able to know the board of directors can do this.  What is the need or the issue you're addressing? What is the program that you're doing to do that? And what are some of the outcomes and results that you've been able to get and measure to prove that you've been effective?  Oh, I work for such and such agency. Oh, good, thanks. But they don't take it to the next level of saying, this is the issue I'm addressing. This is the program in the way in which we address it. And this is the measured outcomes that we have been able to have success at. So if I had Bill Gates, I'd put a stop button on that elevator and take at least 10 minutes, forget the three, and say, you know, you got to do something here. So be able to communicate. So I'm going to give you three minutes, well, one minute to write it down. And then we're going to see who can spiel it for us. Who would like to stand up and earn a lollipop? Oh, you're bringing my lollipops back. Good, so I can pass them out. To see who earns one. Thank you for getting a lot of video in here. I have to careful what I say. Is there any more chocolate there? Or are we just all lollipops now? Oh, is there any more chocolate they ask? A Milky Way. Who wants bubblegum? Yeah, some of them are. Anyone else want bubblegum? Sugar mamas, sugar daddies. You guys went through a lot of candy today. For this health research institute. I'm so glad. Dental program. Yes. We're going to be coming to see you, Rita, with my healthy smile. One Snickers left. You want the Snickers too? Good players, this blue raspberry. Anyone finished? Ready to do their little spiel? You were too busy eating health food. That's right. I'm on video. We need 10 minutes to write a three-minute drill. If you are having to step out early, no worries, just do please fill out the evaluation form before you go. We're going to wrap up in just a few minutes. Okay, so are we ready? Who's going to stand up and do their drill? Who's ready? Who wants a lollipop? Or actually, I'll give you the whole bag. I don't want to take these home. This would be dangerous in my house. No redenables. All right, up you go. Stand up. We're doing our three-minute drill. Introduce yourself again. We're one of the chapters in the whole United States that's doing this, and we're doing four sessions. We're doing five lessons in four sessions. We're going to be doing this summer program with migrant education in crime. In one of the elementary schools, we're going to use fourth and fifth graders and their parents. We're going to incorporate therapeutic dance from the wooden floor. We've got a choreography teacher there. We're going to use nursing students and members of the Hispanic nurses to teach the nutrition and also to incorporate self-esteem building messages into each lesson plan. And what we're going to be doing is for short-term outcomes, we're going to be pre- and post-testing. And then long-term, we want to make this sustainable. So we have collaborative partners. We have the Coleman Foundation. We have Northgate Market. We have Cal Optima. We're having a whole bunch of partners help us. And so what we're going to do is make this a sustainable program that continues every year throughout the year and into the summer and build on it, make it bigger and bigger and the limited community. Nice. And improve the health of the children we're serving. Yes, that's right. Exactly. Very good. Nice. Very good. Excellent.  I need oxygen. Needs oxygen. You did that three minutes without breathing. Just hand it to her. Well done. Excellent. So you see how she could communicate to us. And she talked about the outcomes. And she talked about how she was measuring it. She didn't forget that part. And it made it sound so much more credible and accountable to the funder and the dollars that you're going to try and receive, correct? OK. Anyone else? I don't know that we have three more minutes. So I'm going to have to move us along. But that's the idea that you're going to be able to communicate that you are effective in the work that you do, right? OK. So some final thoughts. Developing and measuring outcomes is not about evaluation. It's really about the basic mission of your organization. It's why are we doing this? And a lot of people think, oh, I have to just measure and do this for my evaluation because I've got to do it because the funder requires me to do it. But ultimately, it's about whether or not you're actually accomplishing what it is you set out to accomplish and being able to know that you did that or not. Bless you. OK. So in summary, these are basically questions that you have on your evaluation summary. We do take these seriously. Of course, it's evaluation. Some of it is satisfaction, but some of it is also outcome measure questions. So we do both. And we like to hear from you and let you know because we are continuing this series and we'll be doing them again next year. And I want to thank, again, UCI and our partners and Jackie for putting this together for all of us and for all of you coming today and being here for this workshop. And that people are asking, how do you get in touch with me? Best way is by email. And I'm at Cal State Fullerton.edu. And that phone number is not the best because, to be honest with you, I've had a broken phone line for months and months and months and months. So I can't get messages ever. If you call me, it hangs up on you, all kinds of fun things. So email me is really the best way. And then I'll give you my cell phone. I can give you my cell phone number now. Oh, by the way, that is one of the things. I'll give you my cell phone. Ready?<PHONE_NUMBER>. And as<PHONE_NUMBER>, one of my practices is that at any time I give a workshop for anybody that's a participant in the community, you're more than welcome to call me at any time. Email me with questions when you get back to your agency trying to put this into place and you're not understanding it. I heard someone say earlier today, gosh, I'm so excited and engaged, but I'm so overwhelmed at the same time this was a lot to fit into four hours and I get that. So any of you that would like to get in touch with me and have a question later on, just make sure in the subject heading you put down this training so that I know to remind me where you came in contact with me. And hopefully the university won't spam it out either. But it shouldn't. So just put in the subject heading where I would know you from. So thank you all very much. And Jackie, do you have some closing remarks? You might find me on a baseball field and I'll have to say, ah, I can't do that right now. But that's all right. We do take seriously your comments and feedback and some reminders for those of you who have participated in the series. If you complete five courses, whether it is the same individual or multiple individuals from the same organization, there is a consistent incentive. However, there must be a better mind for the next I do remember. So if you haven't filled one out, if you really love that, then you may write it back to me. And I'll let that reach you in the future. But it was a lot of information, and I think Michelle shared it beautifully and really made it much more friendly. And I really do love her last quote. Evaluation is about your mission. Why are we doing this? And we believe what we do in the council. We should be able to do it all here. So I want to thank all of you for participating in coming to Delhi. Again, thank you so much for making your lives a healthy community. Thank you, that's great. I'm going to put these outside so when you get your evaluations, when you turn in your evaluation, you get a candy. I'm not taking these home. Where's the box right here?