Hi, I'm Rick Halk, Chief Probation Officer for the District of Columbia, and you're watching Perspectives on the FJTN. And welcome to Perspectives. I'm Robin Roland. On today's show, we're looking forward to the future, checking what's on the horizon for officers and for the national system as a whole. First we'll explore our high-tech future with visits to New York Southern to see a defendant database system that's on the leading edge, and to Virginia Eastern to look at their innovative regional drug lab. We'll get some supervision tips from cybercrime expert Ed Harrison, and we'll continue our coverage of the 2000 National Chiefs Conference, where chiefs gathered to plan the future of the system in the 21st century. In a special follow-up discussion, we'll get to the heart of what all that future's planning might mean for officers, and we'll sit down with a key player in the future's planning process, John Hughes at the FCSD. David Adair returns to talk about the legal perspective, and we'll have an update on the new guideline amendments from the Sentencing Commission and news from us at the FJC. There's a lot happening on the technological front that's of interest to officers. One development that's starting to attract attention is the subject of today's first story. It's a computerized database system that's one praise from everyone who's used it, even if they used to hate computers. And no wonder it was custom-built for officers and staff. Here's our report. Hi Doris. Oh, hi. How are you? I have one prisoner for you. Oh, okay. Do you have the 312 and my fingerprint card? It's a daily occurrence in any pre-trial services office around the country. All agents bring defendants to intake for processing. You don't have a social security number on? But what happens next only happens in the Southern District of New York. Look straight ahead, please, at the camera. As soon as a case comes in, a case number is assigned and the defendant is photographed. Okay, thank you. At that point, the case file is generated in Hudson. It automatically starts a case file. Hudson is an online database system developed here at New York Southern's Pre-Trial Services Office. It's a river of shared knowledge that flows throughout this office, linking everyone in it. John, is this correct? You were born 82865? Yes. A defendant's case file in Hudson is a comprehensive source of information. Biographical data, addresses and phone numbers, chronos, the defendant's check-in and drug test schedule, test results, officer notes, defense attorney and AUSA names and numbers, anything that can help in managing the case. For a district like New York Southern, it's a blessing. We're a large urban district here. We're one of the largest pre-trial districts in the United States. We have an incredibly large intake of persons and it seemed that we were never able to have the sufficient number of persons to cover the duties that we had lined up for ourselves. Hudson streamlines tasks for everyone in the office. Here in reception, for example, where defendants check in for their office visits, thanks to the intake photo, the receptionist can confirm the defendant himself has come in. He fills out a brief form with his current address and phone. She checks them against the information in the case file. She can see if the supervision officer wishes to see him or if he requires a drug test. If he does, the test results are sent automatically into his case file in Hudson. So that an officer, while they're preparing their report within, I'd say, 15 or 20 minutes of the UA being taken, has a result on his PC. It also gives you an email telling you what the result is. Officers use it to input chronos. Since they're entered, they're accessible by that officer from his home, from outside of the office, or from here in the office. The whole process started when we decided that we're not going to put chronos onto a piece of paper anymore. We're going to put into a standard database format. With the database format, you get to do things like see patterns and count activities. If at any time I want to measure how many persons are under supervision for a given period, the system allows me to do that. If I want to know how many people are under random drug testing, I can find out. Hudson is built to work on a standard web browser, easy to learn and use. It also means officers can access Hudson from their home computers. And with a password, other districts can access Hudson over the Internet. Sharon Regis remembers what it was like to find a piece of needed information in the days before Hudson. A lot of searching. We had to go through, you know, find the folder, make, you know, see if the information is there, you look up, look, look. Many times you can't find the exact information. With Hudson, we put that information in and it's available online immediately. Don't expect to find a program so perfectly tailored to pre-trial services at your local computer store. The genius behind Hudson is Corey Nguyen, the office's systems manager. Without doubt, Corey is a gifted programmer. But it could be that his primary talent is listening. One of our latest features is the ability to click on a client's address and, one, get the map of the area, a graphical map. And the second one is clicking on the address again to get driving directions from the court location to the client's house. This was not ideas I thought of. It was the office's idea of what the system should do for them that guided me towards these two features. Corey, he's granted us anything we've wanted on it and he keeps asking us, what else do you want? Just tell me and I'll give it to you. It's a living system that can be changed and altered and tweaked and updated constantly to meet our needs. Officers asked Corey to combine packed information with Hudson. They got it. They also got one click access to docket sheets. Once again, another officer came to me and asked, hey, is there a way where we can get the docket without having to go to the docket system and type that docket number in and wait for it to come back? Why can't we just click on a docket number and it pops up? Well, I found out a way to do that and with cooperation from the clerk's office, we were able to make docket sheets available at a point and a click away. Officers here don't hesitate to recommend Hudson to others. The system, like Corey's, if not Corey's, could be of equal benefit to the pretrial officers across the country. We are currently talking about exporting Hudson to other districts and we're beginning with our neighboring district, the Eastern District of New York, and hopefully even beyond that. Anybody who doesn't have it should take a close look because it's really a pretty good tool. Hudson, it has helped us a lot. For Perspectives, I'm Craig Bowden. We were able to show you only a fraction of the features that Corey has built into Hudson. Most of them at officer request. It truly is an amazing tool. We continue our report on technology with a caution to officers and some solutions. The subject is cyber crime and our guide is Ed Harrison. He says that in a supervision situation, officers may need to think globally and act locally. The thing that has made it incredibly difficult is that internet connectivity has gotten to the point where you can almost access something off the internet as fast as you can access it off your hard drive. So why should you keep images that could be incriminating to you on your hard drive when you could keep them in a hard drive in a jurisdiction that's not going to recognize a search order? So you need to understand with the sex offenders especially, and more and more of the economic criminals are doing this as well, something called data caching. That is simply putting your data in another jurisdiction out of the way so that if you do come and do a search on someone's house and on their computer, you're not going to find anything. Because it's on a hard drive in the Virgin Islands or in Guam or in the Philippines or some other place on the planet, you're not going to find it. There are some jurisdictions that are able to, through court orders, get the offender to actually install software on a computer that will take snapshots of what's going on on that computer and email it to the officer so the officer can see what's going on. It doesn't take a highly skilled officer to get one of these emails and say, oh, that's pornography or oh, that's credit card information or oh, that's, so that software is certainly something that's out there. It would be extremely valuable to the probation officer doing the supervision that there would be a specific court order that the defendant provide periodic copies of the phone records, the same with credit reports, charge card statements, anything that would show interaction with money or telephones or internet service. There's a lot more great information from Ed Harrison on the FJC's recent special needs offenders broadcast on cybercrime. It's one you don't want to miss, so if you haven't seen it yet, check your FJT and bulletin for rebroadcast times. Coming up next on Perspectives will reveal the outcome of the futures planning process at the chief's conference and join a discussion on the results that officers might see. And FCSD chief John Hughes talks about his views on the future of the system. There's a lot more to come, so please stay with us. Substance abuse issues play a major part in supervising defendants and offenders. Now probation and pretrial services officers can get the latest information directly from national experts. This is among the most complex phenomena facing our society today. Live on the FJTM, the Federal Judicial Center presents Substance Abuse, a continuing education series which brings you the latest on research, policy, and strategies. The FJTM bulletin or the JNET for air dates of the next edition of this provocative series. In our last edition of Perspectives we went to the 2000 National Chiefs Conference in San Antonio where chiefs were called on to shape the future of the probation and pretrial services system. In a special series of workshops led by facilitator Fay Malaney, they started by looking at the past to discover the values that make their districts what they are. The two things you voted for out of that timeline that were most important to you was impartiality and equal administration of justice and that people can change. Fundamental things. You then were asked to think about what makes you proud. What we're proud of is we can make a difference. And then when I asked what your sorry's were, you said the thing you're sorry's about is indifference, complacency. Next they scanned the present horizon to identify the forces arrayed against them. And out of those the one that you said was the most powerful impacting force that was pushing on your life now was the call for accountability. We put the next screen up and asked you, of all the forces impacting you, which one do you feel you can grab by the horns and do something about? And what was the highest vote getter? Accountability. In fact you said the greatest force pushing on us is the one we can do something about. It was a remarkable display of strength and solidarity. And they weren't even finished. In the last stage of their journey the question was what kind of system do we want in the future? Not an easy question as Mark Maggio reports. Before they could decide what kind of system they wanted in the future, Chiefs first had to agree on what a system is. What are the traits of a system, what are the benefits of a system, and sorry but what are the costs? Ain't going to be any free lunch to have a good system. Fortunately the workshops had prepped them for that question with time devoted to this value spectrum, a roadmap built on choices. Through their ratings on eight system values, Chiefs mapped out the future they sought and that map called for change of direction. And it's unusual that in a group like this that seven of the eight items would call for significant movement. Again, not a worshiping of the status quo if that is any indication, but a recognition that you know there's places yet to go. The Chiefs embraced consultation and consensus building over centralized directive style decision making. They showed they would sacrifice a small amount of local flexibility to achieve greater national uniformity. They chose to move from a largely independent system toward a more interdependent one. And showed a strong preference for collaboration over coordination. On the traditional balance point between law enforcement and treatment, Chiefs felt the system needed to move back toward treatment. Their strongest mandate was to shift work focus from activities toward outcomes. And to base efforts more in the community than in the office. Finally, they chose to move toward a greater identity with a national system than with their local court. With their map in place, Mulaney helped the Chiefs fill in the details of the system they desired, acknowledging its traits, its benefits, and its cost. Which trait needs the attention of federal probation and pretrial services? It's kind of like if the car has a lot of good working parts, let's don't focus on those. What things need attention to make sure this vehicle carries us forward? Okay? Whoa. So a real sense that the first thing we need to do is get the destination right. Okay. What about the benefits? Let's take a look at those. We expect all of these benefits out of the system. Which is the most important benefit to you? So again, an end product kind of focus is what really benefits the most. And just a sense of that we aren't in this alone. Okay. Finally, the last one has to do with the cost. That's the other flip side of this whole thing of system building is it ain't free. It comes with a price. That's always painful. The accountability for outcomes won't come easily. We'd rather report our activity than our outcomes. So what does the future look like? The chief's vision was summed up in five goal statements. They called for a system in which desired outcomes are clear and measured and results are communicated. A system whose components cooperate to deliver an effective continuity of services. One that successfully serves the whole through collaboration and communication. Chiefs favor a system in which supervision is moving from the office to the community. And in which staff share a commitment to mission and to the treatment of all persons with dignity and respect. With their work complete and their vision clear in their minds, these chiefs left the conference eager to share their journey with their districts and perhaps dedicated to a measured yet determined course of change. Dick Gregory, a comedian who was active during the civil rights movement, once said that revolutions never start on the street with the picket line. Revolutions always start inside our heads. And so just perhaps this week a quiet revolution has begun. For Perspectives, I'm Mark Maggio. And what about that quiet revolution? What kinds of results should officers expect? We invited four chiefs to our studios for a roundtable discussion about those issues. After we look in on that, we'll hear from a key personality in the future's planning process, John Hughes, Chief of the Federal Corrections and Supervision Division. But first to the four chiefs. We asked them to start with practical things that officers can do to strengthen their bond to the national system. I'm really interested in pushing an old concept that I was taught 25 years ago when I entered the system. And that was you do the same quality of work for your fellow officer across the country as you would do for your own judge. And I think that's a very important goal that the system should get really back to. And I think sometimes when we're talking on the national level, we're talking about working well with the administrative office, the Federal Judicial Center, the Sentencing Commission, Bureau of Prisons. But you know, sometimes I think we forget that it starts on our own doorstep in our own district because we know that in several instances there's competition and problems in our own district between probation and pretrial services. We need to overcome that at the local level in order to be effective because we are a continuum of services and we really need to work with each other locally as well as nationally. More TDYs. Yes. And the TDYs provide such a wonderful experience for people to help out on another district, to see another side of our system, perhaps different kinds of cases. Yes. Absolutely. I think one of the, I've never been on the receiving end of TDY, but I did one and it was one of the best experiences I'd ever had. It was something that really helped my career. It encouraged me that I could look beyond my district for opportunities for learning experiences. So I think when officers look in news and views, they ought to look at those requests for temporary duty and they ought to think, well, is that something I might do or I might learn from? It's a way of getting involved. There's lots of other ways as well. Even just calling another district and asking them for their policy on some issue, whether it be awards programs or informant policy or the new drug testing policy, is a way of bridging gaps between the districts and finding that there's a lot of wonderful, wonderful work that's going on across the country. I'm always amazed whenever we reach out for policies how good the work is across the country. Most of our officers do come in with that sense of expectation and pride. I had one officer who was not a U.S. pretrial services officer. She was a United States pretrial services officer and she made that very clear. No matter where she introduced herself, it was not U.S. it was United States. And as a result, the rest of us always introduced ourselves in the same manner. The officers in the community are the ones that represent the federal probation system. Across the country, how many officers they are and how many folks do they come in contact with over the course of a year? They are the federal probation system. I think that it's very important for officers to realize that collectively their actions, their comments, what they do is that persona, makes that persona and we talked about the need to maintain a system and it's a point of pride for all of us and what folks can do in order to help preserve that sense of system while we still maintain the autonomy and the creativity of our districts. And some of it, as we talked about yesterday, was speak about our system with pride, avoid cynicism, work towards results, think about performance outcomes, offender outcomes or defendant court outcomes in their work. It kind of gets us back to where we started about being professional with each other and working together. But when you think in terms of the fact that all the officers across the country have been selected from a pool of very competent, talented people, you think about the fact that they have all undergone extensive background investigations, the character, integrity and values that they bring to the system. And you know that you can stand inside of people of that caliber who are committed and dedicated professionals has really been a great joy to me and I think the more that we can foster and continue that level of professionalism, the better served our system will be in the years to come. I think when we left the chief's meeting there was pretty much uniformly a feeling of positive excitement for the future and I think that stemmed from sort of a collaboration on agreement that we're going to work in the future together in a way to pull ourselves I think together more as a system. There's a change as a constant but I think we're in a transition and I think collectively the chief's all agreed that we want to pull together and make it a better system nationally. And the challenge we have is to try to filter that concept amongst the entire system and the ranks. That really I think is the challenge to get everybody on board so we can actually carry it out because we can't do it. It's really not us, it's everyone. We've got the best and brightest. No one is better placed to talk about the future of the federal probation and pretrial services system than our next guest. John Hughes is chief of the administrative offices federal corrections and supervision division. In that role not only does he guide the nationwide administration of the system but he's also on the front lines of supporting and improving the working life of officers. Welcome John. Thank you. We're going to put you on the spot first thing by asking you to talk a little bit about yourself. A lot of officers out there don't know your history. For example that you've been both a federal probation and pretrial services officer. So tell us a little bit about your background. Well it is true that I have been both. I was sworn in in New York Eastern as a pretrial services officer way back in the 70s and came to the AO about the time that the pretrial services act of 82 was being implemented and I was hired as a pretrial services specialist at the AO to help implement that law to do some training and to do data collection and certain things. And I stayed for the next 14 or 15 years and migrated to different positions at the AO. I've been a regional administrator and I've been branch chief in each of the three branches at the division. And around 1988 I moved upstairs at the AO to a position in the office of management coordination where I got a bird's eye view of the AO and got to learn more about how that works. But then an opportunity came up to be a deputy chief probation officer out in Arizona. I saw the ad for it and I talked my wife and four kids into letting me apply for it. And we went west and it was a great opportunity to work again in a court and it's a special office out there. There are a lot of good people in that office who work very hard and are committed to the job and to making a difference. And it was good to be around people like that in the courts again. You know, with defendants coming through the back door and buses pulling up and marshals around. It felt good to be back in a court after all those years. So you really do have a wide range of knowing the AO inside and out and then having been an officer in different offices, different parts of the country too. I did feel like after all that experience that when this opportunity arose for this job that it was a chance of a lifetime and I had to try for it. But I felt like I was ready. Do you miss the field? I do. There's a lot about working in the field in the so-called real world that I do miss. But it helps to know that we're serving those people here and to be reminded as often as we can that what we're doing here is in support of their efforts out in the field. So that helps. John, at the National Chiefs Conference, you told a story about your pride in being a part of the federal probation and pretrial services system. Would you share that with us now? Well, it's a little bit corny, but I will share it. When I got the job back in New York Eastern, I was still in my 20s and I was feeling pretty proud to have become a Fed. I mean, my parents are first generation Americans and I was very impressed that I'd get a job with the federal government and work for the federal courts of all places. And I was so proud that I actually went out and bought a trench coat because I guess I thought that's what you're supposed to look like. And it was the real deal with buttons and all kinds of things on it and a big belt. And I walked around Brooklyn like that for a while until one day I walked in a county probation office and walked up to a desk and there was a guy behind the desk and he said, let me guess, a Fed. So at that point I had a little insight into what I looked like and the code ended up in Salvation Army but the point of the story was the pride I had continues to this day and all the jobs I've had, it's always good to say where I work. I still feel very proud of that. And especially in this job to have a chance to serve the system from this level is a great opportunity. Speaking of the chief's conference, it's been almost six months since it happened. Many attendees feel that that was a watershed event for the system and one that sparked a long-term process of positive change. In your view, what are the most important outcomes so far? Well, I think you're right that it did spark a long-term result but we're only six months into it but we already can feel that it's a long-term result. There was so much commitment shown by those chiefs some of whom have been around a long time and you might expect them to be a little bit more cynical or at least pessimistic about changing the behavior of offenders, for example but one of the things they had these items they could vote for and one of the things most chiefs could agree with was that people can change and that probation and pretrial services officers can make a difference and that was pretty impressive, it sounds simple but to have people who have been around for a long time saying that that's still true and they're still committed to that was very invigorating for all in attendance and it left us all with a good feeling and building on that feeling, I think we're, you know follow-up to the chief's conference there's a lot of groups that are working on various aspects of that conference to follow up on it but we're setting the table also for a strategic assessment of the whole system which will begin very shortly and that will involve a lot of round-table discussions about what the system is all about who we should be in the future and that sort of thing and it was very encouraging that at the chief's conference that those kinds of ideas just flew people just grabbed them and ran with them they were very happy to talk about these things and we really tapped into something so I think the timing could not be better that the strategic assessment is beginning now following that chief's conference That's great John, in what direction would you personally like to see the system move over the next five years? In the direction that started at the chief's conference I think, and that is a move towards greater collaboration working together to solve problems the insight we got at that conference was that there's a lot of expertise a lot of knowledge in our system and that we need to pool ideas we need to share and we need to do it together and we're already doing that in many areas but we're going to expand on that we already have working groups on officer safety, on sex offender treatment on Indian country that's a very special population that's been neglected for too long we have a working group on pretrial detention getting back to the basics of pretrial services why it was started in the first place in February of this year the director approved a ad hoc supervision working group which is an umbrella group that has five groups underneath it and they're looking at all kinds of supervision issues which is our bread and butter which we better pay attention to and they're looking at transitional issues from prison to the community technical violation policy treatment in a risk control environment pretrial services supervision and also performance measures but the point I'm making is that it's a collaborative effort these are people from the courts working with people at the AO and at the FJC we have the FJC at the table with us if there is an implementation issue or a training issue that arises they're right there to help us through it and it's really been a great experience for us to work together so closely and to put our ideas together John thanks for talking with us you're quite welcome we'll be right back Hi I'm Michael Burney your host for Court to Court our mission is to provide education and information that will enhance your job and how the courts function what ongoing challenges do you face each day what innovative practices are other districts applying what makes your work satisfying we'll find these stories and share them with you we're excited about what's in store be sure to watch Court to Court on the FJTN check the FJTN bulletin or the JNET for broadcast dates and times welcome back perspectives likes to focus on local innovations that resolve problems and create new opportunities and that's definitely the case with our next story from the eastern district of Virginia as Kate Lineit reports some out-of-the-box thinking in their pretrial services office combined with a quest for perfection have benefited officers throughout the region I've worked in a forensic and toxicology lab for many years and my experiences in the lab you see a lot of adulterated neurons and you sort of know what they look for and I noticed that we were getting a lot of diluted looking samples at Virginia Eastern's pretrial services office they knew a water diluted urine sample could mean a defendant's drug use might go undiscovered and that wasn't the only problem spot in the drug testing program if you have somebody that tested positive today and it takes you a week or two to get the result back you can have a week or two of drug use by that person without you being able to do anything about it Elements of doubt about his test results did not sit well with Bob Claggett Virginia Eastern's lab technician a man with a perfectionist streak Well, I asked the chief about maybe if we could get a better analyzer something that could test for creatinine A test of a sample's creatinine level is sometimes the only way to confirm whether it's been diluted but to do creatinine testing requires a high volume analyzer and the district wasn't doing enough testing to justify one at that point inspiration struck and Chief Caroline Ortwein got on the phone She called me in 1998 and asked if we would be interested in contributing urines to the cause of a regional drug lab with the thought that we'd save money process, drug or urine screens a lot faster We thought it would be a wonderful idea if we did the testing for the other two court units and even treatment facilities where specimens are collected because we could have the increased volume that would qualify us for a larger analyzer The idea took root and soon Virginia Eastern's pre-trial services was in business with the country's only district-run regional drug lab We have samples coming in from the DC probation office Alexandria probation office Manassas office of probation and the pre-trial services here in Alexandria and from Richmond Virginia Presently we are testing just about 100,000 tests a year The plan benefits everyone with high volume have come lower cost and quicker turnaround We get a turnaround from Carolin's shop in about 24 hours as opposed to about two weeks with the national lab We also save money We save about $3.75 for every sample that Carolin's people test and return to us But it's not only the new analyzer that makes the district's testing program state of the art Other procedures born of Bob Claggett's years of experience offer yet more sophisticated tools to officers We're the only district in the country that uses creatinine to determine if two marijuana results are new use or just a reflection of previous use by the defendant In many cases Virginia Eastern's own supervision officers can get immediate results It's been a wonderful supervision tool for both pretrial services and probation You have a person right there on the spot that has over 30 years' experience in testing urine and testing for drugs So you have the ability to go ask that person what he thinks of the specimen It's no good now You'll get a 2, 1.0, 0, 1 Okay, thanks Future plans for the lab include a more sophisticated, higher speed analyzer and immediate desktop access to test results for officers and treatment counselors But technical wizardry aside there's another reason the regional drug lab represents the wave of the future The conversations we had at the National Chiefs Conference this past summer had to do with how do we in a decentralized environment become a national system learn to cooperate to depend on each other to communicate across districts and even between units within a district And this is a perfect example of how you go about doing that A person comes up with a good idea follows through on it and other people cooperate It just happened to be our office who identified the need and got the group together It could be certainly any court unit that had a compelling need and a good geographic area Anyone can certainly do it For perspectives, I'm Kate Lynett Chief Ortwein says a big key to their success is having a dedicated lab technician like Bob Claggett Just having an experienced person in that position, she says brings subject matter expertise and a sense of scientific credibility to their drug testing operations including on the witness stand David Adair joins us now with his update on the legal perspective Welcome back, David Hi Robin, I'm glad to be here I understand you have something a bit unusual and far afield for us this time Yes, I have Although it's been a quiet couple of months here with few developments of note in the legal area there have been a few frequently asked questions and believe it or not one of these has been about the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations Article 36 of that convention of which the United States is a member provides that consular officials of an arrested alien state of origin must be allowed to communicate with the arrestee Now this occurs principally when the arrestee is in confinement If the arrestee asks the competent authority of the arresting state is required to inform the consular post of the arrestee's country of origin of the arrest and detention A number of pretrial services officers have asked if they have any responsibility to advise an alien defendant of his or her rights under the convention Now the treaty does not impose specific obligations on officers and employees of the judiciary In fact the State Department has advised that judicial officials are not responsible for notification and that the responsibility is usually on the part of the law enforcement officer who makes the arrest or who assumes responsibility for an alien's detention The State Department has however encouraged judicial officers who preside over arraignments or other initial appearances to inquire whether the alien has been provided with consular notification And though there is no suggestion that pretrial services officers have any obligation to either provide or verify notification there is also nothing to prevent a judicial branch officer or employee from providing assistance So if your court wants you to provide this kind of assistance I suggest that you may want to seek help from the United States Attorney's Office on any of the details such as the timing of the notice Have there been any frequently asked questions that might be of interest to supervision officers? Well, there's an oldie but goodie one that's been asked over the years but was recently asked again And that is what is the responsibility of a probation officer to prevent an offender who's under the influence of drugs or alcohol from driving Now this question arises in the situation which during an office visit are you using drugs or alcohol? Now I do believe that an officer has some responsibility here but since the criminal law committee has disapproved of officers making arrests officers should not act to physically restrain such an offender Nonetheless, there are a lot of other things that an officer can do For example, an officer might attempt to coax the offender to voluntarily give up the keys of the car Or an offender may be instructed to remain in the office until they are stated The officer might call a family member to take the offender home or depending on the circumstances to a detox center even or a taxi cab could be called for the offender Now if the offender insists on leaving the office and the offender believes that the offender is likely to drive the offender should simply warn the offender that local law enforcement will be notified and then the offender should follow up on that Law enforcement can then take any action and the officers have had good results with this procedure In other words, Robin officers simply need to use professional judgment and common sense in dealing with this situation Yes, I'm sure they will and you've given us a lot of options to consider What about the Supreme Court's Apprendi decision? Have there been any new developments there? Well, you're speaking of course of Apprendi versus New Jersey in which the Supreme Court held that facts other than prior convictions must be pled by the government and found beyond a reasonable doubt The answer to your question is that there have been quite a few cases and a few but by no means all issues seem to be settled For example, most courts are holding that Apprendi does not require that facts relevant to sentencing guideline determinations as opposed to sentencing or as opposed to statutory sentence determinations be pled and proved beyond a reasonable doubt It also seems clear that in drug cases at least a number of Apprendi are not implicated so long as the sentence imposes within the maximum sentence that could have been imposed without reference to drug quantity In most cases under Section 841 that's 20 years unless of course there's a prior conviction and it seems likely that prosecutors will be pleading drug quantities from now on but there's still many, many unresolved issues particularly in connection with cases in which the indictment or information was filed was completely taken before the Apprendi decision until these questions are resolved I'm still suggesting that pre-sentence writers need only flag the issue for the court in these cases for now it should be up to the parties to present the issues of the court to decide We'll continue to follow the decision and try to get you guidance when it's clear how officers should react to this difficult decision Good information as usual David Thanks again Thank you The next piece of interest on a regular FYI segment will begin with events at the US Sentencing Commission In October the commission's third symposium on federal sentencing policy focused on current sentencing for economic crimes and on ways new technologies have impacted the landscape of criminal activity The event was an opportunity for the commission to gather input on those issues Attendees heard from representatives from the federal community and from academia and industry You can watch all or part of the symposium from your desktop via webcast Just follow the links on the sentencing commission's website at www.ussc.gov In other commission news November 1st was the effective date for 13 new amendments to the sentencing guidelines These amendments focus on congressional interest issues, circuit conflicts and technical issues Two previous emergency amendments relating to the no electronic theft act and telemarketing fraud prevention act were made permanent by the commission Congressional interest issues also resulted in changes to methamphetamine, firearms child pornography and sexual abuse, identity theft and phone cloning guidelines The commission also resolved five circuit conflicts during this amendment cycle Three relating to departure issues They amended departure provisions concerning post sentencing rehabilitation aberrant behavior and dismissed or uncharged conduct They also resolved circuit conflicts regarding the application of the guideline for drug trafficking in protected locations and a specific offense characteristic under the guideline dealing with bankruptcy fraud And the commission made a couple of technical corrections amending the guideline on unlawful chemicals to fix a typographical error and including a new sex offender provision as a specific mandatory condition of probation and supervised release rather than as a footnote For more information on the 2000 amendments call the commission's help line at<PHONE_NUMBER> or check out their website In a program co-produced with the sentencing commission the FJC presents the latest in its special needs offenders series The broadcast highlights the sex offender treatment program at the Federal Correctional Institution at Buttoner, North Carolina and features excerpts from a June 2000 seminar that engaged nearly 100 probation and pretrial services officers in a question and answer session The program debuts December 14th at 2 p.m. Eastern Officers wishing a deeper understanding of the Apprendi decision should tune in for a new program dealing with issues and questions surrounding that subject Charging and sentencing after Apprendi airs for the first time December 13th And if you find yourself challenged by change in your workplace a new PBS program called Managing Personal Change may help you turn change to your advantage The program airs December 14th and may be used for two hours of group credit in the supervisor's development program Coming up we'll get an advanced look at the next edition of Perspectives But first please stay tuned for this important announcement and please feel free to sing along Please fill in We need to know the score Please fill me in Please fill me in Your feedback is important And if you don't complete this form we'll sing this song again Your feedback is important Please fill in the evaluation form available in your program materials or online on the DCN Yes we'll remind you once again to fill out that friendly little evaluation form and send it to us here at the FJC A copy is available from your site coordinator or you can fill it out online just head for the DCN address on the screen On the next edition of Perspectives we'll discover how officers are getting involved in their communities often with inspiring results As usual we'll have plenty of news views and great ideas from the field and from the nation's capital That's it for our show today Thank you for joining us We'll see you again next time For all of us here at Perspectives I'm Robin Rowland Goodbye


Let's jump into some of the meat. So why would you want to do video? A lot of this is going to be very marketing heavy. So how are you communicating your design? And why would you want to do that? So what are the purposes and how can video be used? So some of the first ones is obviously the money comes from business development or marketing. Where's the budget coming from? And so we want to get some new clients. That's like, you need work, got work, how do you get work? Video is an extremely powerful medium. It's a soft sell, so it can live on your website 24-7. It's online. It's shareable. They can be looking at it while lying in bed, because someone's like, oh, check out this architect. Here's a little video. Send your link to it.  Now, it's not guaranteed they're going to stay there the whole time. But as in your photographs, you don't know how they're going to interact with your photographs. You don't know the moment-to-moment experience that they're having with your photos. So a video, you press play. They're watching that video. So it's a very, very precious, specific experience. And you have so much more control over this compared to standard text or photography. So it can showcase and communicate your work. Architects love to talk about process. What is their process? How unique, potentially, is their process? Culture is another one. You might want to sell the vibrant culture that is in your office, your own design process, and how that culture affects the designs that you come up with. And everyone enjoys video. I mean, old to young. It's not just a young person's format, their medium. Everyone enjoys it. They get it. They're used to it. And it's just only increasing more and more. So client acquisition. The next big one, if you were owning your own company, or if you were further on down the line and had enough stake in a certain firm, you might want. Talent is the end all be all.   So it's both acquiring new talent and at the same time creating something that will retain the current talent that you have. So there's a lot of video work that we do for like, we've done a bunch of stuff for like Gensler. And no one's ever seen that besides if you work at Gensler. They just post it. It's been tens of thousands of dollars on videos that only are for use internally. That is completely about perpetuating and collecting the culture of Gensler. Gensler has an issue because how many offices they have? Dozens and dozens and dozens. So keeping some sort of consistency across the entire network is very difficult at that scale. So both attracting and retaining, same as I said before, it's 24-7. It's out there always. It's a great way for an applicant to find out about your firm without having to sort of know someone directly in your office or finding them through LinkedIn or whatever. So it's a great, amazing, powerful way to showcase and communicate your work, your process, or your culture. So talent. The other aspect of video, which is something that we're still trying to push and make more prevalent in the work that we do with the architectural community, is to make the videos more personable, visceral, and memorable. And what I mean by that is developing the narrative so that your audience member is doing a little bit more than just watching and learning about a project or learning about your firm, but maybe having some sort of engagement with this piece beyond that. So did they laugh? Is there anything comedic in this? Probably not too many videos you want to do as an office or an architect to make people crack up. But I mean, there are examples of sort of comedic plays on architectural processes that can engage an audience in a very different medium than just doing the straightforward, purely artistic piece. There's a time and place for both. But video allows you to have a much deeper engagement with your viewer, the ability to communicate tone and narrative through music, through this shot selection, is extremely visceral and is much more memorable and stays with your audience, with your viewer, much longer. So engagement is key. Shareable. So videos are ubiquitous, right? They're everywhere. The AEC, which is the architecture engineering construction industry, is light years behind everything else. We're like 10 years later. We catch up to everything. We're super delayed. Print publications are way ahead of us and their dinosaurs. So this industry is very slow to adapt this medium. And there's a whole other slew of reasons of obviously why that's the way it is, because architects don't really make that much money and our budgets are squeezed. So there's other ways to talk about financing a project, which I'll get into a little later. But because video is so ubiquitous online, and these are sort of statistics that are sort of like no brainers, but it's always good to just sort of realize how effective and powerful videos, as far as its shareability and getting a message out there. So 19% of what's being shown on social media is video, which isn't super high, but it's a pretty nice chunk. 70% of business to business marketers already use video. So everyone that's out there trying to get work from each other, which is what architects do, you're getting work from another business, 70% of people are already using it. Videos are three times more likely to get inbound links than text, so that means an inbound link is clicking on something and coming back to your website, which is what you want to generate, because that's where all of the rest of your visuals are, your texts describe you. So if someone watches a video, and it's embedded on someone's random website, check out this firm, it's really cool, whatever, they're three times more likely to come back to your website after watching that video than if they just read some text about it. And obviously that sort of mobile explosion, audience is three times more likely to view a video as opposed to desktop viewers, so as we get more and more people using video on mobile devices. So this is where the current's going. This is not new news, usually just bring this up to alert the crowd again that this is what's occurring. I'm gonna get into a little bit of a case at the end of here when I talk about distribution, but the analytics and metrics in the back end of the video is just insanely powerful information. You can know where people are watching it, where they're coming from. It's somewhat similar to what you can do with your website analytics, but it gives you such amazing power to find out where people are watching your content. And what's great about video, which separates it from text and photos, is that you post the video in one location and you can potentially post it in multiple spots if you're intelligent about it. But all of that data is collected into a single place, right, this is some thumbnails I've shown from YouTube. So no matter who takes your video and posts it somewhere else and displays it on their blog or is watching it on their mobile phone on Facebook, all of that information is being tied back to a single location for your metrics. So where are people watching my video? This is a way to find out where new clients could be online, physically and potentially digitally. So it's extremely powerful to just dig back and find out where these people are watching this content. And yeah, it's live trackable. Super detailed, I'll get into that a little bit later. And then search engine optimization. So I was in my class yesterday and I was like, SEO. And I was like, you guys, and I got some looks and I'm like, wait, so you guys, does anybody SEO? And they didn't know what SEO meant. So search engine optimization, which is basically how effective your content is, is going up the search rates, right?  But it is a way potentially if you're doing residential architect for someone that's looking for a residential architect in a certain area or if your information or content is tagged correctly, your videos and your photographs are rising up to search engine optimization so that that content is being viewed at the top when someone searches that. Everything is Google, right? And Google is basically keywords. Those keywords that your potential clients, potential new hires are typing in is what you need all of your content to have plastered everywhere. You need to tag it, it needs to be in the text, it needs to be embedded in the photographs, it needs to be in the video, right? And those keywords are the core statements that you're using to differentiate yourself amongst your competition. So SEO and video basically, you know, these stats explain video just explodes, your likelihood to raise up the rankings. So that's sort of some of the quick reasons why you might want to look at video if you were practicing architecture or had an office.


Ooh video game feedback. Okay, when you're in an Antarctica and you take the robot thing is okay fix that The tanks make a harsh sound kind of be quieter. They get they are too loud aren't they? Okay. I need to fix that Try that This is where some tanks are right. Yeah, it's a little better All right guys seriously though I've been working on this video game for a while and in a nutshell I wanted to make a game that my kid kids could play and would be a good influence on them as opposed to like most of the Modern video games where it's like You learn how to be a psychopath, you know, I learned a lot of cool stuff from games when I was a kid So I'm gonna make a game with it with a hero who is genuinely a good person who's strong creative Intelligent a problem solver they save the world. They also kick butt. They're just a genuinely good person So I'm at the point in the game now where you can play from beginning to end everything appears to work and I'm just going through finding little bugs. I'm adding music, you know, updating the effects and stuff Just like tuning it up Finishing touches so this is when it would be excellent to have some feedback. So I have a deal for anyone Presuming this isn't like a million people, but I don't think that many people are gonna do this Anyone who wants to help with that you can be in the video game So I can I'll make you one of those little people, you know, it can have your name I'm not gonna put like anyone's full name and address or anything But just like your first name and like you can say what the dialogue has to be if it's a person who's like integral to the Story, obviously the dialogue has to remain informative in the correct way or whatever, but anyway If you want to be in the game, this is what you have to do You have to give me some feedback now ideally if you can make a video that would be great And just like put it on YouTube and share it to me and I'll watch it or If you just want to email me try to send some Some screenshots, so I know what you're talking about stuff That would be really helpful and if you if you do video you don't have to do fancy screen capture You just aim the camera at the screen. I'm not super picky about that But uh, here's a basic guideline of how you could do it Find three things in the game that you like I don't want to give any more Leading information than that just three things that you like say why what you like about them Why you know just kind of kind of give me some kind of information about what what's good about those things? And then give me three things that are no good Either you know bugs or things where you're like, I really hate how this part of the story goes or I don't like this special effect or or I really hope in the final version of the game You put this kind of music here or something, you know Just any kind of constructive criticism or suggestion or anything so three good things three improvements And if you send me that oh, and you also have to play the game from beginning to end so you have to Say something give me some kind of indication that you've gotten to the end of the game Just say ah, yeah at the end. There's a scene like this Okay, if you do that and give me some good feedback then I'll put you in the game and just Send me a picture of yourself Wearing whatever you'd want to wear in your little character.  You're just this little tiny pixel-y person and If there's a specific person already in the game that you want to be say I want to be Army guy number six standing beside this tank here or just send me a screenshot with an arrow I can probably do that or I Can also add people because there are a bunch of places that kind of need some more filling out towns and stuff anyway, so Yeah, anyone who wants to do that that would be great because I could really use some feedback right now because I've been playing this game for like The last year, you know, I'll work on I'll build a level level I don't know you call it a map an area and then I'll play it like a hundred times while I'm making it to make If sure everything works, so it's just kind of all a jumble to me So some feedback from other people would be super valuable right now, okay? Oh, I should mention the game is not that hard to get through like last night before I uploaded it I played it from beginning to end without saving It's like a reasonably skilled person can get through the game without difficulty It's cuz it's a story driven game not a difficulty driven game I might make it a little harder or put difficulty levels in later, but right now you can get through the game It's not that hard. Hopefully it's fun Okay, one other thing is I'm not a hundred percent sure how I'm going to distribute the game. I Think I'm just gonna give it out for free and just share the code and everything and Make it so people can donate if they if they want to But if anyone has any thoughts on that Feel free to share because I'm still thinking about that, but yeah I think I want to go with just giving it out and And you know requesting donations if people want to Oh, duh, this was the other thing. All right, you have until the end of January to do this I didn't didn't really give a timeline people who sent me messages like 2042


Bonjour et bienvenue, this is La Modelist and welcome back to my channel. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to recreate the awesome hoodie corset by Mugler. You know that cool collab Mugler did with H&M?  But no worries because I decided to recreate the pattern to share with all of you. This design takes cues from Teddy Mugler's classic styles like this suit over here. And what's super cool about this is how the new director of the fashion house turned that high end vibe into something that you can rock on the streets. Anyway, so let's dive into the pattern making. For the corset pattern, I will use the basic back and front torso block. And I have a separate tutorial for the basic torso block and kindly check it out if you don't have one. And for the hood top, I will use the dartless or knit basic block and I also have a separate tutorial for this one and if you don't have one kindly check it out. Next, I've prepared a metal jacket zipper here. The zipper will determine the length of my jacket and the measurement of the zipper is 17 6 8 inches and I will base the corset and the hood top length with the zipper. Now let's move on to the design analysis of the hoodie corset. The corset starts from the under bust until 5 inches below or more from the waist with bones. The length of the corset will depend on how long your zipper is. The shoulder is extended giving it an oversized look. There is a plating on the bust because the hoodie top does not have structured darts. Plating can give room for the bust area. Flat or kimono sleeves, this type of sleeve is used for shirts, sweatshirts and hoodies. This kind of sleeve does not have a cap ease. Metal or plastic jacket zipper, this kind of zipper is made out of two pieces that separate, used for jackets and other garments. And a basic hood, which is used for sweatshirts and hood jackets. Now let's dive in to the corset pattern.  So let's work on the front corset first. From the waistline, mark down 3.5 inches or 9 centimeters and square in a line. This is the small hip level. Just get the halfway between the side seam and the front waist dart. And mark in the halfway measurement. From the halfway mark, square in a line towards the bust line and the small hip line. This line is for the second front dart. From the second dart line, mark out 3.5 inches or 1 centimeter each side. And square in the dart legs until the bust line and small hip line. And now we have a second dart. From the bust line, mark down 3 inches or 7.6 centimeters. And square in a line and this is the under bust or emperor line. And disregard the excess space from the bust line to under bust. Next, get the measurement of each panel and record. From the under bust at center front, mark down your desired corset length. This will depend on your zipper length. For me, I've used 8.58 inches or 22 centimeters but always refer to the length of your zipper. Next, from the waistline at side seam, mark down 2.68 inches or 7 centimeters. And draw the hemline for the corset. When drawing the hemline, make it sure to hit the end of the darts and draw your desired shape. Place the zipper at the center front and mark in the under bust or emperor line for reference. Next, get the halfway measurement between center front and the front waist dart. And mark in the halfway and square a line. And don't forget to label your front corset panels. And cut out the panels from your paper. So this is how it will look like. For the back corset, mark down 3.5 inches or 9 centimeters from the waist. And square in a line. This is the small hip line. Next, get the halfway between the side seam and the back waist dart. And mark in the halfway measurement. And from the halfway mark, square in a line towards the bust and small hip lines. This is the second back dart. And mark out weights of an inch or 0.6 centimeter each side. And square in the dart legs until the bust and small hip lines. This is the second back dart. From the bust line, mark down 3 inches or 7.6 centimeters. And square in a line. And this is the under bust or emperor line. And disregard the excess space from the bust line to under bust. Next, from center back at waist, mark in a 1 inch or 2.5 centimeters line. And disregard the excess. We will add a panel later on in here since the back will have a lace-up closure. From the side seam at waist, mark down 2.68 inches or 7 centimeters seam as front. And square in a line for the back corset hemline. Next, label the back corset panels. And cut out the panels from your paper. Next, get a new piece of paper. Place panel 1 on the paper and trace off the new center back. From center back, mark out at least 1.5 inches or 3.8 centimeters for the back panel. And square in a line. And do not forget to label this panel on fold. This panel will conceal the skin at the back since the back closure will be a lace-up. And we are done with the corset patterns. Now let's move on to the top pattern. To start off, trace the knit block on your paper only until the waistline. Next, get the zipper and place it on the center front. And mark in the under bust mark that we did earlier for the corset. And continue on marking this until the side seam. And square a line. And disregard the excess at the bottom. Next, place the corset panels at the under bust line of the top pattern. And follow the measurements of the corset panels. And mark in the measurement of the corset panels. And from this mark, draw a slant line towards the underarm side seam. And cut out this excess. Next, from the underarm side seam, mark down at least 1.68 inches or 4.4 centimeters. And from this mark, redraw the armhole to enlarge. And cut out the excess. Next, get the halfway measurement of the shoulder slope. And mark it in. And from the halfway mark, square in a line until the under bust line. And cut through this line making two pieces. And don't forget to label the top panels. Next, get a new paper. And square in a left-hand side vertical line. And a perpendicular line at the bottom part of your paper. Next, mark out at least 4 inches or 10 centimeters. And square in a line. Next, place the panel 2 at the left-hand side. And tape it in place. And place panel 1 at the right-hand side. And tape it in place. And now the top pattern is enlarged. Next, redraw the shoulder slope from necktip to shoulder tip. And next, mark in the halfway of the enlargement. And mark up 1 inch or 2.5 centimeters for the tucking line for the pleat.  And now let's move on to the sleeve pattern. To draft the sleeve pattern, take the armhole measurement of the top pattern. And record this measurement. On your paper, draw a t-line. And fold this t-line in half. We will draft the sleeve pattern only on one side. And label the top line A. And from A, mark down your sleeve length, example 22 inches or 56 centimeters. And square in a line. And label this line B. From A, mark down 3 inches or 7.6 centimeters for the cap height. And square in a line. And label this line C. Next, get the halfway between A and B. And mark the halfway measurement from B. And square in a line. And label this line D. From A, measure out the armhole touching line C and mark. And label this mark E. Next, square in a slant line from E to A. And divide this line into fours. Next, from the first mark, mark up to 8 of an inch or 0.6 centimeter. And from the third mark, mark down 1.8 of an inch or 0.3 centimeter. And draw the curved lines as shown. From B, mark in the half of the wrist measurement. And label this mark F. From F, square in a slant line towards E. And trace the pattern to make a copy on the other side of your paper. And we are done with the flat or kimono sleeve pattern. And lastly, let's move on to the basic hood pattern. To draft the basic hood, first get the measurement of the front and back neckline as shown. And record these measurements. On your paper, draw a half T-line. And label the corner 0. On your knit block, get the measurement of the back waist length. And get the 3 fourths of the back waist length plus 1.5 inches or 4 centimeters. And mark down this measurement from 0. Label this mark 1. And continue marking this measurement from 0. And square in a line. From 1, mark down to 3 eighths inches or 6 centimeters. And label this mark 2. And continue marking down this measurement from 1. And square in a line. From the vertical line, mark out the front and back neck measurement. Mark out this measurement from 0 and 2. And square a line. And label these lines 3 and 4. From 1, square in a slant line until 3. And from 1, mark in the back neck measurement and label it 5. And get the halfway measurement from 1 to 5. And mark. And from the halfway, mark up to 8 of an inch or 0.6 centimeter. From 1, draw a curve line until 5. Next, get the halfway measurement from 3 to 5. And mark in the halfway measurement. From the halfway mark, mark down 3 eighths of an inch or 1 centimeter. And draw a curve line from 5 to 3. Next, get the halfway measurement between 0 to 4. And mark in the halfway measurement. And label this mark 6. Next, get the one-fourth measurement from 0 to 1. Plus 6 eighths of an inch or 2 centimeters. And mark this measurement from 0. And label this mark 7. From 7, mark out 6 eighths of an inch or 2 centimeters and label it 8. And next, draw a curve line from 6, 8 until 1. Next, from line 4 and 3, mark out 1.5 inches or 4 centimeters for the facing. And fold the facing and trace the curve line at number 3. And now, we have a basic hood pattern. Anyway, guys, I hope this tutorial gave you enough tips on how to create the pattern for the hoodie corset by Mugler. And if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to comment down below and I will reply as soon as possible. If you're not subscribed yet to my YouTube channel, LaModeList, make sure to hit that subscribe button. And if you like this video, give it a huge thumbs up and I will see you guys again on the part 2 for the sewing of the hoodie corset. See you soon!


Kia ora everyone. I'm here to talk, we are here to talk to you about our favorite topic, which is about mana wahine. And it's about women power, yes? But it's more about balancing what we have in the world today, right? So we are from the island of Singapore and the island of Penang, Malaysia, where we live among indigenous Malays and immigrant Chinese, and Eurasians. We are a network of angels investing in women to help end poverty in this world. Now we don't look at angels as only angel investors, not the people with money, but the people, social entrepreneurs and the people who support them, they are also angels. So we are in the business of collecting angels. And my name is Laina, and this is Pat with me, and we're both Kohot Hiri-Piri, and we're here together with Audrey, who is Kohot Kawa-Kawa. And we are here united, looking very different, but united in a very common mission, and that is helping to end poverty in unity with women. So we are a network of angels, as I told you, and we're not all about exclusion. We're about inclusion, because we come from a part of the world where women have been very invisible, and they haven't been part of conversations about climate change and others. It's a very important component. So we have he-for-she's and she-for-she's. We actually have one of our angels here in the audience, Mama Rutan Yassan. Could you just stand up briefly? Yes, thank you. And we're together hoping to do this grand massive transformative purpose of ending poverty in unity with women. Why do we talk about poverty, and why are we talking about women? As you know, with the Sustainable Development Goals, poverty is number one. So in many ways, we see that poverty is the root cause of a lot of illnesses in the world. When you talked about deforestation, often it's at the edge where people are cutting down forests to be able to warm their homes or cook their meals or clean their waters, or they disperse toxic stuff into the rivers, like as they're making batik, for example, they put very toxic chemicals in the water. So it's very important to look at issues of poverty, and 70% of the poor are women. This is the data a lot of people don't realize. And yet women are the invisible infrastructures. They are the ones who walk for miles to carry water. They are the ones who do subsistence farming. They are the ones who take care of the elderly. They are the ones who do a lot. But when progress comes through, they are the ones who are often very excluded. So we'd like to be able to have that conversation of inclusion. Next one. We also see women as multipliers. Do you know for every one dollar a woman earns, up to 90% of her income goes back to her family and her community, because women are nurturous and healers. We had our previous speakers talking about what we need in the world today is a world of healing and nurturing. The other thing we found, thank you, and the other thing we found is that we have actually been very humbled in our journey because we've come across, everyone's heard about microenterprise and microfinance. And there's actually an unconscious bias today where people only give women small amounts of money. They're not given the money to scale and do great. And yet we've come across many, many amazing women who have, as we show in this little diagram, multitudes of people under them. We have social enterprises have 50,000 small holder farmers all across Indonesia, not only giving livelihood, preserving biodiversity and preserving culture. We have people working with 1,000 weavers under them and giving livelihood, saving girls from going into prostitution, going people into horrendous things. I mean, honestly, Audrey and I have been through, and Pat, we've gone through the journey of seeing their lives and seeing how painful their stories are. Next slide. So rather than just give you statistics, I think I really liked how Charles and Michelle talked about it, that we need to go back to the heart. And I really love Camden as well, who talked about love. So I hope in this story, we want to share with you a story of love and how as we love humanity, we need to love women. We need to love that feminine energy in our lives in men. We want to embrace that feminine energy in men as well. But here are some of the stories of our faces of women heroes. So many, many of them, I really can't get into all of them. So I'm just going to tell you the story of one of them. Okay, I think we just wanted to say that because Vanta in Cambodia, she made such good stories and impact the local community so much that we decided to actually fund her because she is so inspiring and she actually will create and make changes of the life. So this is just one of the social enterprises. Okay, basically, we're only focusing on sustainable fashion. And why New Zealand? I think we just wanted to say that because this is a female and a woman-friendly country and that we feel that we could help, we could learn and grow together and also able to help New Zealand to connect back into Asia, especially for women, social enterprise for New Zealand. And I think I wanted to say that we are actually hosting a session. Actually, I think, like Linus said, we are collecting more angels. And this is the topic is balancing the two wings. And we hope that you will join us if you share the same mission or if you want to support us as well. And this is a 3.30, right? Yeah, okay, that's it.


I'm Dr. Gregory Gatis. I'm a professor at White Pacific University. I'm here today to continue the series that Dr. King and I started several weeks ago on the impending collapse of industrial civilization. In that format we looked at various ways in which our whole civilization was going to be threatened and the idea being what can we do to stop it? What can we do to make things better? And we went over a series of things in the first session. One is over population which started 1 billion people at 1800 by 1850. It was 2 billion and then it just went up on a escalating curve. So we're at 7 billion now heading for 9 billion and then probably before a huge start off of billions of people which would traumatize the whole world. So that was one consideration. Other of course is nuclear war. That would be a disaster if we and the Russians or Chinese were to get into this war and launch nuclear weapons at each other given the fact that we all have like 20,000 of these. There would be so much radiation no one would survive on earth. You could be in Australia you're not going to survive just like in the movie on the beach in 1959. So we explored that. More likely scenario however since the Chinese and the Russians are too smart to do something as stupid as that is to take some of these end of times people who don't mind the world coming to an end perhaps the Muslims perhaps Iran perhaps North Korea launching something and starting something like that and may not be major may not be 20,000 ICBMs if North Korea were to launch a nuclear missile and centered into the stratosphere right above the United States and explode that and that would send an electrotic pulse down to earth and fry our electric grid and that would be disastrous for us because we would lose 90% of our people in one year according to Ted Koppel who had wrote a book called lights out maybe you've seen him on nightline. Anyway that was another major concern we don't want to have that and even if the North Koreans didn't do that there was a concern about the electromagnetic pulse coming from the sun which comes every 140 years and were due because the last time this happened was about in 1860 and at that time it did come down but there was nothing electronic on the earth to destroy so nobody hardly noticed it. The only thing that got fried was the telegraph lines out there in the west so people didn't realize how danger it was but if we were to lose our grid and it's not protected it's one of things we have to do that would be devastating for us as well. So we went over a number of these and things that we could do both Dr. King and I spent 40 years arguing about this discussing this trying to alert people to environmental disasters global warming and on and on and so forth but one thing we didn't talk about because we had no expertise in was what would happen if we had these infectious diseases which would go and wipe out populations and really traumatized people and lead to war and gang fighting and tribalization and on and on again we had no expertise in this other than history had a few things in history such as the play back in the 12th or 13th century wiped out a third of Europe and that led to chaos as we all know and that all came about actually in a sense from globalization once people started trading long distances then the rats came with those ships then the fleas came on the rats then the plague came people didn't know what the plague was caused by and so it led to chaos and disorder. So what we want to do is bring this up to the 21st century and we brought in an expert on this who did her dissertation on this Dr. Christine Hansen who is my guest here today who did her dissertation on this and we want to hear from her what are these infectious diseases that could in fact destroy the earth we had little touches of this when we saw the Ebola crisis there of West Africa when so many doctors went in to save these people and the doctors themselves died the nurses died just from being in contact with the blood and things like that fortunately that was contained so okay everybody goes back to sleep again no problem but is it really that easy is it that simple are there some waiting medical nuclear bombs waiting for us for example you've heard rumors about the resistant bugs penicillin was a great cure back in the 1830s for wiping out germs but are there super germs now that are resistant and we have no protection against it and what can we do so for the first part here we're going to hear from dr. Hansen about what she thinks are the major threats from infectious diseases to us in its globalization because globalization originally meant you just sent goods across borders you've sent money but now we're sending people from civilizations who don't have let's say protections against that just just one thing I do know about that I can speak about and that is of course when the Europeans came to America the Native Americans it was rather easy for them to take over the continent not because they killed that many but because they had no protection against colds flew John Smith might sneeze or something and the tribe catches it and they all die and so what the Europeans found is that when they go west they find empty villages well they found the empty villages because their diseases had killed these people before them so the Native Americans know this tragedy firsthand but is there something like that that can happen worldwide here and for that I'm going to turn to my guest here today Christine Hansen who also got her doctorate from the University of Hawaii the same as I did and who also teaches at White Pacific University the same as I did so dr. Hansen nice to see you here thank you so much Greg and this is such an interesting topic and I think one thing that people don't realize is we're at a turning point really in emerging infectious disease and the term emerging is often used because there is a paradigm shift and so between the period of World War two and say maybe ten to twenty years ago we had the belief that infectious disease was really under control that we were conquering infectious disease but what we forgot to think about were really two things the first was that infectious diseases can reproduce much faster than people can so because of that they can develop resistance much more quickly than we originally understood so you mentioned the problem of antibiotic resistance and that is a problem that has emerged specifically because of this ability of the organisms to reproduce rapidly the bacteria but the other factor is simply that these organisms are interwoven with the entire ecosystem so you know we have the idea that a microbe comes when John Smith sneezes but it also comes when John Smith is walking through the forest or John Smith puts his hand down because his hand is covered in microbes the surface of everything is covered in microbes and they're actually interwoven into the ecosystem and we have done so much disturbance to those ecosystems on the earth that that combined with our ability to travel in jet planes and to move faster than the incubation periods of these organisms has allowed a number of novel viruses to come out of their ecosystem niches and you know we've seen the ravages already of some of these HIV would be an example Ebola would be an example the SARS virus would be an example so we're looking at a scenario where a variety of organisms that are living in their prescribed ecological niches have been disturbed by logging by overpopulation which you mentioned and these organisms are moving out of their accustomed niches and they're getting on to airplanes through people that have been infected or through animals because the vast majority of the viruses that we're talking about are actually zoonotic organisms that start in animals and then cross the species barrier so at the moment there are a large number of influenza viruses that are circulating in birds that are of particular concern and so you know that would be probably the group that's the most worrisome and then we have another coronavirus which is closely related to the SARS virus called MERS which is circulating as you probably know in the Arab some of the Arab countries and actually has crossed over to humans from camels so in the case of SARS we came so close to not being able to contain the outbreaks and so the question is at what point might we see an organism that actually we won't be able to contain and especially the problem there is with respiratory illnesses because you can't stop breathing so it's very difficult to avoid exposure to a respiratory virus whereas you know if the contact has to happen through the skin and you know bodily fluids or something then it's much easier to avoid transmission but the the respiratory illnesses like influenza like the coronaviruses are a particular concern and as we saw Ebola we didn't really understand so I remember back when I was doing my doctoral dissertation that I had noticed you know a lot of research about the impact of Ebola in great ape populations it's decimated the gorilla populations and I thought that was kind of cause for some concern you know that there are obviously some genetic relationships between human beings and gorillas and but when I raised that people sort of thought it was silly you know and yet we found that Ebola really could cause problems and I think that's because we didn't fully understand Ebola and we don't to be honest understand most of these organisms all that well so putting the genie back in the bottle sometimes it's possible sometimes it's not but the higher the population the more people are packed together when people are overcrowded then disease is more likely to be transmitted as we saw in World War one that I talked to you before the program about the the World War one influenza outbreak that 1918 flu was caused in large part by large groups of troop movements and people in overcrowded situations people in stressed situations so as the world becomes more and more overpopulated and as we disturb more and more these ecological issues and as we encroach onto environments where animals have been living undisturbed for long periods of time we are actually putting ourselves at risk in ways that perhaps are much more dangerous than say you know conventional war between human beings and and so that's one stream of the problem the other stream of the problem is the rise of antibiotic resistance and this is something that we haven't really seen since World War two but which is very very worrying and in fact the Lancet has been talking for a few years about the possibility that at some point people might not be able to do certain elective surgeries because the risk of infection will outweigh the potential benefits of doing those surgeries which is let me just break in when you say antibiotic now we're moving from viruses to germs is that it well to bacteria bacteria so when you talk about microorganisms you're talking about viruses bacteria fungi lots of different organisms but primarily most diseases that concern human beings would be bacteria that aren't chronic diseases would be bacterial or viral so yeah and they're very very different in how we handle them a typical viral problem would be handled say with a vaccine if one were available or sometimes with antiviral drugs but they're actually much they have been much harder to handle than a bacterial disease so you mentioned the plague and most people are familiar with the fact that killed about a third of Europe you know at certain points in history why don't we pause here for a moment take a break and then we'll take these diseases that you expose us to and and and maybe propose solutions if any that you might have all right hello everybody my name is Mark schlaufe I'd like you to join me for my program law across the sea on think-tech Hawaii comm aloha aloha coco I'm Marsha joiner inviting you to navigate the journey with us we are here every Wednesday morning at 11 a.m. and we really want you to be with us where we look at the options and choices of end-of-life care aloha aloha my name is Josh Green I serve a senator from the big island on the cone aside and I'm also an emergency room physician my program here on think-tech is called health care in Hawaii I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month we'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii we hope you'll join us again thanks for supporting think-tech so we're back here with Dr. Christine Hansen from University of Hawaii PhD and HBU professor who is enlightening us about the dangers of all these infectious diseases that threaten civilization she mentioned of course the flu of 1918 actually our troops when they came back from World War one they were accustomed to death there they saw it there but there are only 24 million deaths I think in World War one but I think that flu took over 40 million deaths so they were a little devastated to come back to the United States and find that their hometowns had been devastated by the flu which we call the Spanish flu we blame that Spanish other people call the Americans I'm not quite sure which troops brought it to to but in any event the intermingling of all those troops there and killing each other led to this flu which devastated the world there for a while so you've introduced us to a number of things here bacterial and viral and so forth and fungi and so forth let's talk a little bit about what we can do if anything to minimize this I'll just say one little anecdote here that's all I can provide here anecdotes I have no expertise this there was a man at aloe canal who's gotten a fist fight and he got hit by a guy and I guess he caused a blood on his chin or something he fell into aloe canal no one understood how dangerous the aloe canal was with all those pollutants he came out and then within a few hours his his leg was turning black and running he died within you know six hours because there is this I guess a bacterial infection in the water which killed him and that still exists on the big aisle they had just recently someone who was just playing baseball it got cut on the knee and there was maybe something in the soil that his knee then touched and he picked up that and I think he had to lose his legs to as a result of that that was just recently so this is nothing to fool around with this is very serious stuff so we have to turn back to our expert Dr. Hansen who did a dissertation on this to tell us what can we do perhaps to mitigate these impending disasters of civilization okay well you mentioned water and of course you wouldn't want to go swimming in brown water I think most people know that but you know water can carry organisms such as flesh eating bacteria and so obviously some precautions after large rains and things like that are a good idea but more broadly speaking I think what our society really needs to do is the prospect of antibiotic resistance not being addressed is so potentially devastating to our society I mean if you think even about tuberculosis I think tuberculosis is an important disease to talk about because it is respiratory so it's easily contracted and it did kill 25% of the population at times so it historically it's a very very serious problem and we the last person that's airborne because person to person yes that's right the last person who was quarantined was actually quarantined for a resistant strain of quarantine from an airplane was with Andrew speaker and he was quarantined because of a resistant strain of tuberculosis so tuberculosis is something that is easily preventable with antibiotics and the problem is with the rise of antibiotic resistance we're looking at potentially the return of a disease that kills 25% of the population you know and that's not to mention the other emerging infectious diseases that we've talked about so I think our society as a whole needs to invest very urgently in research into antibiotics and unfortunately our system of health care funding is such that the research is sometimes directed toward drugs that are look like they'll be potentially profitable rather than toward what might be the most beneficial for public health so let me break in here just for a second now here's the problem we have a problem we get a drug penicillin whatever and then be admitted ah it solves a problem but as you pointed out the bacteria multiply rapidly and the next generation soon develop a resistance of that and that doesn't work or give larger doses for a while maybe that works in larger dose and finally large doses don't work and you know I got it we need something new right so we have to get something new now aren't we always shoveling sand against the tide here it seems to me technological solutions like this are doomed to failure because whatever we come up with if it's that the bacteria are too smart or they reproduce too fast for us to be permanent in our solutions and they're going to get around it someday you know and I know exactly what you mean by that and there is a lot of truth in it the problem is that if you don't stay one step ahead of them the consequences are rather grim you know so in developing the latest group of antibiotics I think is very important so that would certainly be one thing that we can do we're trying to avoid situations where people are in abject poverty and are living you know say in homeless shelters and that type of thing is also important because if you look at places where resistant strains of tuberculosis have developed and gained a foothold they tend to be impoverished areas places like homeless shelters sometimes in prisons poor neighborhoods and and that type of thing so the more that we can do to see public health as a good that we need to give to everyone and not you know germs don't respect social class and germs don't respect borders so if you're talking about public health and you need to take care of the poorest in the community in order to be able to keep everyone safe so so that's certainly something that we could do you know in terms of individual things that people can do just things like I know people who are really experts in this field and have spent their whole lives in it when they go into hotels oftentimes well the very first thing they will do will be wipe down the telephone with some kind of you know antiseptic wipe down the door knobs and things like that so that's something that you know you may feel a little embarrassed doing it if people are watching I like down the exercise machine yes exactly exactly so those little things just wiping down surfaces that people may have touched is an important thing that everyone could do using hand sanitizer and in fact in a lot of these outbreaks one of the really interesting things is there are people that are called super spreaders and we don't really understand why they are super spreaders but there were super spreaders in the Ebola outbreak there were super spreaders in the SARS outbreak and those people especially in one case with the SARS outbreak when there was a gentleman in a hotel and he touched a lot of surfaces and things like that people picked that up so just taking simple precautions when you're in a public place and you know sanitizing things can be important yeah what was that the super super spreader spreader super spreader okay and that's a person who he is more contagious or something than others yes and we don't know why so in some cases it could be people who have a compromised immune system but that doesn't seem to be true in a lot of the in a lot of the cases so we don't know why but the the fact is that there are people that seem to infect the majority of people in a particular area and you could trace back the cases to that one person which is you know statistically you would expect that each person would infect at the same rate but that's not necessarily true so we don't have to identify the super spreaders so we can isolate them right and you know I'm so glad you brought that up because isolation and quarantine I think are going to be coming back into public consciousness and I wish I didn't have to say that because I think people tend to look at that as something that is relegated to history you know that's something they did back in the olden days but the olden days in a way when you talk about public health are coming back because if we don't have viable antibiotics then we can't even prevent outbreaks of things like the plague you know other bacterial diseases so I hope these super spreaders aren't concentrated in certain races because it's going to be very very bad and volatile you know that was actually what's the whole idea of race is is constructed anyway there's no real such thing as a race anyway except in our minds except in our minds so the idea that there would be any biological basis for that it's just you know would never be true but if but but there can be scenarios where people come from an impoverished part of the world and because of the poverty they've been living in they're more likely to be exposed to infectious disease they wouldn't be super spreaders necessarily as a person they just came from an area that's contaminated right a super spreader we don't understand why some people are super spreaders and as far as we know that has nothing to do with social class or anything else you know it may just have to do with the viral load in the case of a viral illness so may I point out one of the things that's really counterintuitive and that is the the flu that wiped out people 1918 the cruelest part of it was it took young people that's right and the old people that we think well they're gonna die anyhow they're 67 years old like like new moment it was used to be called the the grateful disease or something or they something it was a good thing because it took them quickly and they're getting close to death anyhow but this flu took the young the strong people and not the old people yes that's really counter to that's that's sort of frightening yes absolutely and that particular strain of influenza it it created a tendency for the body to attack itself which is why people with the strongest immune systems i.e. the young tended to get the worst cases of influenza and it did unfortunately strike young adults you know just ravaged the young adult populations so that's one of the things that I mean about the fact that we just do not understand fully certain things about viruses and about bacteria we don't necessarily always know what it is that causes you know the influenza virus mutates extremely rapidly and that's why there are so many different strains part of the reason why there's so many different strains circulating right now so we don't necessarily understand when a mutation occurs what actual impact will that have on human beings or on animal populations and you know so obviously it is a concern and in poultry and swine and things like that as well so how about poultry and swine and things like that is there something we can do there I mean we can't I guess we can kill our animals or something like this but we've been doing you know we the the way that it's handled now is usually through culling and so that's a nice way of saying we kill all the animals and so is that the best way well you know it's really difficult to say if we kill the animals with the plant life leave us alone or they're going to get the plant like you know it's very very rare for a plant virus to be able to infect an animal that's very rare but it is very common for an animal virus to be able to infect a human and there are cases of reverse suonosis where a human virus can actually infect an animal so humans and animals as you probably know have been exchanging microorganisms you know since long before written history and most of our European crowd diseases actually come from zoonotic diseases that were passed into the populations from animals yeah in fact those populations they died off early like say in Europe but when those Europeans went to say America they were already had the immunity by that time which the which the others who had never been exposed to cattle or whatever suddenly got it and they killed them off yes well from what I gather here what we ought to do we have to become vegetarians number one and watch those pants very carefully well this has been very illuminating I'm you really added a whole dimension to Dr. Kings and my analysis of the upcoming disaster and civilizations that we have to watch out for and the other thing is you really leave us we have just keep running staying ahead of those viruses are


This paper proposes a new approach to controlling assistive devices for individuals with tetraplegia. It uses shoulder movements to detect user intent and then translates them into commands for the device. This allows for more intuitive and natural control of the device, which is important for those who have limited or no-hand function. The system was tested with 10 able-bodied and two tetraplegic subjects, achieving an average classification accuracy of 80% and 84%, respectively. These results show that the system is reliable and could potentially provide a viable alternative to existing methods of controlling assistive devices. This article was authored by Lucas Fonseca, David Garaud, Arthur Hierassery, and others.