Panel Discussion Quotes

You can't really move forward until you look back. [From Remaking America panel discussion at George Washington University]

On dope he sometimes thought that all the televisions on Calchalk Street were softly cackling about Richard Tull: news flashes about his most recent failures, panel discussions about his obscurity, his neglect.

What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love’s favourite perversion? … I loved Ellen, and i wanted to know the worst. I never provoked her; I was cautious and defensive, as is my habit; I didn’t even ask questions; but I wanted to know the worst. Ellen never returned this caress. She was fond of me - she would automatically agree, as if the matter weren’t worth of discussing, that she loved me - but she unquestioningly believed the best about me. That’s the difference. She didn’t ever search for that sliding panel which opens the secret chamber of the heart, the chamber where the memory and corpses are kept. Sometimes you find the panel but it doesn’t open; sometimes it opens, and your gaze meets nothing but a mouse skeleton. But at least you’ve looked. That’s the real distinction between people: not between those who have secrets and those who don’t, but between those who want to know everything and those who don’t. This search is a sign of love, I maintain.

Whenever a controversy arises over sexual or reproductive morals, you can bet that religious leaders from several different faith groups will be prominently represented on influential committees, or on panel discussions on radio or television.

The typical cholesterol panel that you receive and discuss at your annual physical, along with many of the underlying assumptions behind it (e.g., “good” and “bad” cholesterol), is misleading and oversimplified to the point of uselessness.

In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in a studio in Dublin, debating with a lay spokesman of the Roman Catholic Church who turned out to be the only believing Christian on a discussion panel of five people. He was a perfectly nice and rather modest logic-chopping polemicist, happy enough to go for a glass of refreshment after the program, and I suddenly felt a piercing stab of pity for him. A generation ago in Ireland, the Church did not have to lower itself in this way. It raised its voice only slightly, and was instantly obeyed by the Parliament, the schools, and the media. It could and did forbid divorce, contraception, the publication of certain books, and the utterance of certain opinions. Now it is discredited and in decline. Its once-absolute doctrines appear ridiculous:

On cable news (with a few exceptions), if there's a panel to discuss immigration, that panel is composed of rich white dudes, and the occasional lady. A panel on the poor? Rich white dudes. An hour on racism in America? White dudes and rich Michael Steele. A panel on women's rights? They literally make the women leave the building. It's no wonder most people in this country are politically apathetic. No one is speaking for them.

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. —Psalm 111:2 (NIV) The church I attend recently celebrated its 150th anniversary. It’s been a festive year, replete with special dinners, panel discussions, and a book on the church’s history. But what amazed me even more were all the little stories that formed the big story—those quiet, individual witnesses of faith who, taken together, made up this grand sweep of 150 years. One woman has been a member for nearly half the church’s life. Fifty-two Sundays times seven decades is how many church services? “You’ve heard thousands of sermons!” I said. “What do you remember about the best ones?” She smiled. “The best sermons are the ones I think about all week. Because then I know God is working in me.” That simple lesson of faith was the start of a new practice for me. When I hear a phrase or sentence in a sermon that especially strikes me, I’ll write it down on the bulletin or on whatever I have handy. (Once it was the palm of my hand!) Then I pin that phrase to the bulletin board behind my computer. This week’s was: May God give me the grace to understand that the world is too small for anything but Love. I see it every day, reminding me to ponder how I might live that message. Like my friend at church, I’ve been able to see in a new way how God is working in my life—all week long. Guide my life, God, by Your Words; that in hearing them, I may live according to Your wishes. —Jeff Japinga Digging Deeper: Pss 105, 111, 119:18; 1 Pt 2:2

In the fall of 2006, I participated in a three-day conference at the Salk Institute entitled Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival. This event was organized by Roger Bingham and conducted as a town-hall meeting before an audience of invited guests. Speakers included Steven Weinberg, Harold Kroto, Richard Dawkins, and many other scientists and philosophers who have been, and remain, energetic opponents of religious dogmatism and superstition. It was a room full of highly intelligent, scientifically literate people—molecular biologists, anthropologists, physicists, and engineers—and yet, to my amazement, three days were insufficient to force agreement on the simple question of whether there is any conflict at all between religion and science. Imagine a meeting of mountaineers unable to agree about whether their sport ever entails walking uphill, and you will get a sense of how bizarre our deliberations began to seem. While at Salk, I witnessed scientists giving voice to some of the most dishonest religious apologies I have ever heard. It is one thing to be told that the pope is a peerless champion of reason and that his opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is both morally principled and completely uncontaminated by religious dogmatism; it is quite another to be told this by a Stanford physician who sits on the President’s Council on Bioethics. Over the course of the conference, I had the pleasure of hearing that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were examples of secular reason run amok, that the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad are not the cause of Islamic terrorism, that people can never be argued out of their beliefs because we live in an irrational world, that science has made no important contributions to our ethical lives (and cannot), and that it is not the job of scientists to undermine ancient mythologies and, thereby, “take away people’s hope”—all from atheist scientists who, while insisting on their own skeptical hardheadedness, were equally adamant that there was something feckless and foolhardy, even indecent, about criticizing religious belief. There were several moments during our panel discussions that brought to mind the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: people who looked like scientists, had published as scientists, and would soon be returning to their labs, nevertheless gave voice to the alien hiss of religious obscurantism at the slightest prodding. I had previously imagined that the front lines in our culture wars were to be found at the entrance to a megachurch. I now realized that we have considerable work to do in a nearer trench.

Here’s how I’ve always pictured mitigated free will: There’s the brain—neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, receptors, brainspecific transcription factors, epigenetic effects, gene transpositions during neurogenesis. Aspects of brain function can be influenced by someone’s prenatal environment, genes, and hormones, whether their parents were authoritative or their culture egalitarian, whether they witnessed violence in childhood, when they had breakfast. It’s the whole shebang, all of this book. And then, separate from that, in a concrete bunker tucked away in the brain, sits a little man (or woman, or agendered individual), a homunculus at a control panel. The homunculus is made of a mixture of nanochips, old vacuum tubes, crinkly ancient parchment, stalactites of your mother’s admonishing voice, streaks of brimstone, rivets made out of gumption. In other words, not squishy biological brain yuck. And the homunculus sits there controlling behavior. There are some things outside its purview—seizures blow the homunculus’s fuses, requiring it to reboot the system and check for damaged files. Same with alcohol, Alzheimer’s disease, a severed spinal cord, hypoglycemic shock. There are domains where the homunculus and that brain biology stuff have worked out a détente—for example, biology is usually automatically regulating your respiration, unless you must take a deep breath before singing an aria, in which case the homunculus briefly overrides the automatic pilot. But other than that, the homunculus makes decisions. Sure, it takes careful note of all the inputs and information from the brain, checks your hormone levels, skims the neurobiology journals, takes it all under advisement, and then, after reflecting and deliberating, decides what you do. A homunculus in your brain, but not of it, operating independently of the material rules of the universe that constitute modern science. That’s what mitigated free will is about. I see incredibly smart people recoil from this and attempt to argue against the extremity of this picture rather than accept its basic validity: “You’re setting up a straw homunculus, suggesting that I think that other than the likes of seizures or brain injuries, we are making all our decisions freely. No, no, my free will is much softer and lurks around the edges of biology, like when I freely decide which socks to wear.” But the frequency or significance with which free will exerts itself doesn’t matter. Even if 99.99 percent of your actions are biologically determined (in the broadest sense of this book), and it is only once a decade that you claim to have chosen out of “free will” to floss your teeth from left to right instead of the reverse, you’ve tacitly invoked a homunculus operating outside the rules of science. This is how most people accommodate the supposed coexistence of free will and biological influences on behavior. For them, nearly all discussions come down to figuring what our putative homunculus should and shouldn’t be expected to be capable of.

cooperation, and realization of Government 3.0. About 276 participants from the government, academia, and civil societies of Korea and 14 other countries attended the conference as speakers and discussion panels

discussion panels. Major participants at home and abroad included Osamu Ikeda, president of the National Public Service Ethics Board in

the President’s Science Advisory Committee, Panel on Environmental Pollution, published a report entitled “Restoring the Quality of Our Environment.”44 This report included a section on “climatic effects of pollution” that is notable for treating CO2 as a pollutant. It also includes an appendix on “Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” written by a committee chaired by Roger Revelle that also included Wallace Broecker, Joseph Smagorinsky, Harmon Craig, and Charles Keeling. This appendix discusses consequences of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide such as the melting of the Antarctic ice cap, sea level rise, ocean warming, increasing acidity of fresh waters, and increased photosynthesis. The appendix notes that “[t]he climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.

Adolph Berle, Jr., former Undersecretary of State conducted the symposium, which consisted of three panels. I was on the military panel. After I had expressed my views, he asked me whether I would hand him in an exposé, in writing, which I did. On the same panel was a student, originally from Yaffa, in Israel. After talking about world problems and whether there were military solutions for international grievances, he said to me: If I were in Yaffa and you were there, too, we would be deadly enemies. Yet, as we are sitting here, discussing the problem, we can be good friends. - Thinking about the same problem to-day, the situation has not changed one bit, after 37 years. In 1949, war was raging in Israel. To-day, the situation has still no solution, the enmity remained the same.

He’d seen her next day at the panel “discussion” of his final novel. Lack of clear plot progression, shallow characters and poor dialogue choices, had been the gist of their “advice.” Jerks. Wouldn’t know a decent, modern plot if it bit them all in the collective ass. So what if I want to actually make money with a book, and not just collect a lot of critical admiration?

However, the most interesting property of your spacetime tube isn't its bulk shape, but its internal structure, which is remarkably complex. Whereas the particles that constitute the Moon are stuck together in a rather static arrangement, many of your particles are in constant motion relative to one another. Consider, for example, the particles that make up your red blood cells. As your blood circulates through your body to deliver the oxygen you need, each red blood cell traces out its own unique tube shape through spacetime, corresponding to a complex itinerary through your arteries, capillaries and veins with regular returns to your heart and lungs. These spacetime tubes of different red blood cells are intertwined to form a braid pattern (Figure 11.4, middle panel) which is more elaborate than anything you'll ever see in a hair salon: whereas a classic braid consists of three strands with perhaps thirty thousand hairs each, intertwined in a simple repeating pattern, this spacetime braid consists of trillions of strands (one for each red blood cell), each composed of trillions of hairlike elementary-particle trajectories, intertwined in a complex pattern that never repeats. In other words, if you imagine spending a year giving a friend a truly crazy hairdo, braiding his hair by separately intertwining not strands but all the individual hairs, the pattern you'd get would still be very simple in comparison. Yet the complexity of all this pales in comparison to the patterns of information processing in your brain. As we discussed in Chapter 8 and illustrated in Figure 8.7, your roughly hundred billion neurons are constantly generating electric signals ("firing"), which involves shuffling around billions of trillions of atoms, notably sodium, potassium and calcium ions. The trajectories of these atoms form an extremely elaborate braid through spacetime, whose complex intertwining corresponds to storing and processing information in a way that somehow gives rise to our familiar sensation of self-awareness. There's broad consensus in the scientific community that we still don't understand how this works, so it's fair to say that we humans don't yet fully understand what we are. However, in broad brushstrokes, we might say this: You're a pattern in spacetime. A mathematical pattern. Specifically, you're a braid in spacetime-indeed one of the most elaborate braids known.

As Amelia labored to pull one fabric panel to the side, the entire brass rod came loose from the ceiling and clattered heavily to the floor. A cloud of dust enveloped her. She sneezed and coughed in the clotted air. She heard an inquiring shout from downstairs, probably from Merripen. “I’m all right,” she called back. Picking up a clean rag, she wiped her face and unlatched the filthy window. The casing stuck. She pushed hard against the frame to loosen it. Another push, harder, and then a determined shove with all her weight behind it. The window gave way with astonishing suddenness, unsettling her balance. She pitched forward and caught the edge of the window in an attempt to find purchase, but it swung outward. In the flash of forward-falling panic, she heard a muffled sound behind her. Before another heartbeat had passed, she was snatched, pulled back with such force that her bones protested the abrupt reversal of momentum. She staggered, fetching hard against something solid and yet supple. Helplessly she tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, some of them not her own. Sprawled over a sturdy masculine chest, she saw a dark face below her, and she muttered in confusion, “Merri—” But these were not Merripen’s sable eyes, they were light, glowing amber. A shot of pleasure went through her stomach. “You know, if I have to keep rescuing you like this,” Cam Rohan remarked casually, “we really should discuss some kind of reward.

Any version of the widely discussed Green New Deal project must include these priorities: 1. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions will at least achieve the targets set in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, namely a 45 percent reduction in global emissions by 2030 and the attainment of net zero emissions by 2050. 2. Investments to dramatically raise energy efficiency standards and equally dramatically expand the supply of solar, wind, and other clean renewable energy sources will form the leading edge of the transition to a green economy in all regions of the world. 3. The green economy will not expose workers in the fossil fuel industry and other vulnerable groups to the plague of joblessness and the anxieties of economic insecurity. 4. Economic growth must proceed along a sustainable and egalitarian path, such that climate stabilization is unified with the equally important goals of expanding job opportunities and raising mass living standards for working people and the poor throughout the world.

We organized ‘The Great Indian Poetry Contest’, an international poetry competition. It was judged by an eminent panel consisting of Kalki Koechlin and Kausar Munir. It was an extensive process which started in May 2018 and took several months to conclude. It included multiple rounds of screening, reading and re-reading the poems on various levels, discussing and arguing our choices of winners, reasoning out each selection with the jury, and finally declaring the results in November 2018.

RAISING YOUR PARENTS, juvenile forum. BROADCAST HISTORY: 1936–37, Blue Network. 30m, Saturdays at 10:15 A.M. HOST: Milton Cross. CREATOR: Dan Golenpaul. PRODUCERS: Paul Wing and Alice White Benson. Children with problems, at home or at school, would write in for advice and support. These letters were discussed by a panel of children, who then rendered a verdict. Questions ranged from simple discipline to heartbreaking stories of neglect. One little girl was continually betrayed by her mother, who promised her a bicycle for passing the seventh grade, then the eighth grade. When the child saved up her own money, the mother “borrowed” it and never paid it back.

For me, radio was a space for reflection. On the air, I submerged myself in music and literature. I listened along with my audience; I read to myself and to them, I discussed all kinds of ideas with total strangers. It was the perfect medium: intense, warm, interactive, and highly volatile. From my very first session in the broadcast studio, I felt like I was in a time capsule, a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was a protective bubble where nothing and no one could touch me. The semidarkness, the illuminated panel, and the on-air light combined to create a cozy, womblike environment, a sort of cosmic solitude. I had the sensation of floating in space, completely isolated from the real world. My only human contact was with the disembodied voices of callers. Everything seemed dusted with an ethereal—yes, I'll say it—ghostly quality. I could touch and hear the whole world, while no one could be sure of my existence; I was just one more voice in the teeming concert of hertzian waves. It was a land of the blind, where we were guided by sounds and voices, and space took the shape our words gave it. We transformed it with every description, comment, insult, or digression. It was almost like death, floating aimlessly at night, listening to spectral voices that in turn spoke about specters, indifferent to their own condition.

The Harvard discussions were chaotic, at least in part because the Trump team’s fractured leadership was overrepresented in many of the panels. Corey Lewandowski, for example, was included in both the primary-election panel and, inexplicably, the general-election panel. He seemed to play a bigger role at the conference than he had on the campaign trail. Incredibly, Lewandowski would tell the Harvard conference that he had written Trump’s announcement speech, which was ludicrous given that Trump spoke without notes and there was no prepared text to memorize. The

During one of the CGI panel discussions, I asked Senator Clinton about implementing ACIA recommendations, and her answer assured me that she was aware of the assessment and understood the science. And during various CGI events, I also met fellow Sophie Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya, who sadly has since passed away; environmental scientist Lester R. Brown; media mogul Ted Turner; and actor Brad Pitt. At the closing dinner, guests were even serenaded by the one and only Tony Bennett. Pretty big deal for an Inuk girl from the far reaches of the Arctic.

Families haven’t always been pushing back against the kind of planning that’s been imposed on them, in part because they don’t understand the plans,” Patricia Angus, who works with some of the world’s most affluent families on wealth and philanthropy matters, commented during a Family Office Association panel discussion.

It is, in a way, the telos of everything I have been describing so far. It is as though the enlightened youth of the Sixties had stepped straight from battling the pig in Chicago ’68 to a panel discussion on crowdfunding at this year’s South by Southwest, the annual festival in Austin, Texas, that has mutated from an indie-rock get-together into a tech-entrepreneur’s convention; a place where the hip share the streets with venture capitalists on the prowl. This combination might sound strange to you, but for a certain breed of Democratic politician it has become a natural habitat. At SXSW 2015, for example, Fetty Wap performed “Trap Queen,” the Zombies played hits from the ’60s, Snoop Dogg talked about his paintings—and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker swore in the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Michelle Lee. In case you’re keeping track, that’s a former subprime lender swearing in a former Google executive, before an audience of hard-rocking entrepreneurship fans.

The mortality rate from cardiovascular disease in Okinawa is the lowest in Japan, and diet almost certainly has a lot to do with this. It is no coincidence that the “Okinawa Diet” is so often discussed around the world at panels on nutrition.

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Bob Taylor: In those days there were always, at these computer conferences, panel discussions attacking the idea of interactive computing. The reasons were multitudinous. They'd say, "Well, it's too expensive. Computer time is worth more than human time. It will never work. It's a pipe dream." So, the great majority of the public, including the computing establishment, were not only ignorant and would be opposed to what Doug was trying to do, they were also opposed to the whole idea of interactive computing.

Make sure you have plenty of variety in how concepts are taught. Mix up segments with storytelling, panel discussions, gamification, practical application time, partner work … the list goes on.

Rodolphe Salis was a tall, red-headed bohemian with a coppery beard and boundless charisma. He had tried and failed to make a success of several different careers, including painting decorations for a building in Calcutta. But by 1881 he was listless and creatively frustrated, uncertain where his niche might lie. More pressingly, he was desperate to secure a steady income. But then he had the ingenious idea to turn the studio which he rented, a disused post office on the resolutely working-class Boulevard de Rochechouart, into a cabaret with a quirky, artistic bent. He was not the first to attempt such a venture: La Grande Pinte on the Avenue Trudaine had been uniting artists and writers to discuss and give spontaneous performances for several years. But Salis was determined that his initiative would be different – and better. A fortuitous meeting ensured that it was. Poet Émile Goudeau was the founder of the alternative literary group the Hydropathes (‘water-haters’ – meaning that they preferred wine or beer). After meeting Goudeau in the Latin Quarter and attending a few of the group’s gatherings, Salis became convinced that a more deliberate form of entertainment than had been offered at La Grande Pinte would create a venue that was truly innovative – and profitable. The Hydropathe members needed a new meeting place, and so Salis persuaded Goudeau to rally his comrades and convince them to relocate from the Latin Quarter to his new cabaret artistique. They would be able to drink, smoke, talk and showcase their talents and their wit. Targeting an established group like the Hydropathes was a stroke of genius on Salis’s part. Baptising his cabaret Le Chat Noir after the eponymous feline of Edgar Allan Poe’s story, he made certain that his ready-made clientele were not disappointed. Everything about the ambience and the decor reflected Salis’s unconventional, anti-establishment approach, an ethos which the Hydropathes shared. A seemingly elongated room with low ceilings was divided in two by a curtain. The front section was larger and housed a bar for standard customers. But the back part of the room (referred to as ‘L’Institut’) was reserved exclusively for artists. Fiercely proud of his locality, Salis was adamant that he could make Montmartre glorious. ‘What is Montmartre?’ Salis famously asked. ‘Nothing. What should it be? Everything!’ Accordingly, Salis invited artists from the area to decorate the venue. Adolphe Léon Willette painted stained-glass panels for the windows, while Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen created posters. And all around, a disorientating mishmash of antiques and bric-a-brac gave the place a higgledy-piggledy feel. There was Louis XIII furniture, tapestries and armour alongside rusty swords; there were stags’ heads and wooden statues nestled beside coats of arms. It was weird, it was wonderful and it was utterly bizarre – the customers loved it.

I led Sophie and Boris towards the doors, still in a quandary. For some reason, there had come into my head the numerous scenes from movies in which a character, wishing to make an impressive exit from a room, flings open the wrong door and walks into a cupboard. Although for exactly the opposite reason - I wished us to leave so inconspicuously that when it was discussed afterwards no one would be quite sure at which point we had done so - it was equally crucial I avoided such a calamity. In the end I settled for the door most central in the row simply because it was the most imposing. There were pearl inlays within its deep panels and stone columns flanking each side. And at this moment, in front of each column, there stood a uniformed waiter as rigid as any sentry. A doorway of this status, I reasoned, while it might not necessarily take us directly through to the hotel, was certain to lead somewhere of significance from where we could work out our route, away from the public gaze. Motioning Sophie and Boris to follow, I drifted towards the door and, giving one of the uniformed men a curt nod, as though to say: 'There's no need to stir, I know what I'm doing,' pulled it open. Whereupon, to my horror, the very thing I had most feared occurred: I had opened a broom cupboard and, at that, one which had been filled beyond its capacity. Several household mops came rumbling out and fell with a clatter onto the marble floor, scattering a dark fluffy substance in all directions. Glancing into the cupboard, I saw an untidy heap of buckets, oily rags and aerosol cans. 'Excuse me,' I muttered to the uniformed man nearest me as he hastened to gather up the mops and, with glances now turning accusingly our way, I hurried in the direction of the neighbouring door.

299 R. v. Inhabitants of Eriswell, 3 Term Rep. 707, 721, 100 Eng. Rep. 815, 823 (K.B. 1790). The case concerned the question of whether it had been error for a panel of magistrates to have received hearsay testimony in a Quarter Sessions proceeding concerning the settlement of a pauper. 300 Discussed in Langbein, “Evidence” 1173–4, 1181–4.

Its feminism operated on the level of ‘Women in Medicine’ and ‘Women in Finance’ discussion panels, always conducted in a tone of revolutionary awe, as if any combination of women and profession were still subversive

panel discussing climate change at the World

Any employee with a promising idea is invited to give a ten-minute pitch to the panel, followed by a fifteen-minute Q&A session. If members agree that the idea has potential, the employee returns for a second round of discussions with a broader group of company experts whose knowledge or support may be important to the success of the proposed venture. Ideas that get a green light often receive funding—on average $100,000, but sometimes as much as $600,000—within eight or ten days. Each project goes through a proof-of-concept review, in which the team must demonstrate that its plan is indeed workable in order to win further funding. This review typically marks the point at which the GameChanger panel helps successful ventures find a permanent home inside Shell.

Democrats regained, for the time being at least, a majority, and liberals have had time to contemplate what they see as the deeply uncultured mob that trounced them in 2004. They have watched panel discussions on PBS. They have argued about where political strategy went wrong. But the one thing the thinking left and urban liberals have not done is tread the soil of the Goth—subject themselves to the unwashed working-class America, to that churchgoing, hunting and fishing, Bud Light–drinking, provincial America.

American antipathy to discussions of mortality has recently stalled efforts to reform the health-care system. As I write, a proposal for patient-driven end-of-life consultations has been caricatured and attacked as an imposition of government-run “death panels” dedicated to euthanasia of the disabled and the elderly. Pointing to widespread opposition to any reconciliation with the inexorability of suffering and mortality, a number of commentators have claimed that Americans exhibit a national addiction to narratives of individualistic self-improvement and perseverance.

Local blood testing. I use local blood testing to measure some of the nutrients. First, I recommend a 25-OH vitamin D test for most of my patients. I also usually recommend a complete iron panel, vitamin B12, and RBC folate. I discussed this in Chapter 24. RBC magnesium and RBC zinc can also provide some value. However, there are limitations when it comes to testing nutrients through the blood, although this is the case with other methods as well. Micronutrient panels. Some companies focus on micronutrient testing, which involves evaluating all of the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. One of the more well-known labs tests the micronutrients through the white blood cells, specifically the lymphocytes. These lymphocytes are supposed to represent a history of an individual’s

If you have the opportunity to get formal training, take it. This might mean signing up for a company seminar, attending an industry conference, participating in a roundtable discussion, hearing experts on a panel, or engaging in a hands-on workshop. It might seem obvious that formal training is helpful, but it also rarely feels urgent or necessary. Besides costing time, it also tends to cost money, which means we engage in a classic back-and-forth with ourselves: Is it worth it? Especially in the middle of a hectic week, is it really a good idea to step away for a two-day workshop or to give up a relaxing evening at home for a lecture? The answer is usually yes. If spending ten hours being trained helps you be even 1 percent more efficient at your job, then it’s a good return on investment (1 percent of time saved per year is about twenty hours).

In 2009, I attended Book Expo in New York City, where they had three editors of bestselling novels on a panel discussion. At the end of the discussion, the moderator asked the editors if they could make one prediction about the future of novel writing. They all thought for a moment, then one of them said that in the future, you won’t have forty to fifty pages of set up in a murder mystery before the body is discovered. To the contrary, the dead body will have to appear in the first few pages, as people’s attention spans are clearly waning.

oncologists met to discuss a replacement for the ASTRO definition. They decided to define treatment failure as a PSA level that has risen 2 ng/ml higher than a man’s PSA nadir (the lowest level it reached following treatment). This definition has been correlated more accurately with long-term results in all patients, and it takes into account such factors as hormonal therapy and the PSA bounce. Failure is now considered to occur when the PSA level reaches the nadir + 2 value. This is called the Phoenix definition. Still, it takes time to determine this value, so this equation should not be used to gauge the success of treatment in men with less than two years’ worth of PSA tests after radiation therapy. Furthermore, the consensus panel that developed this definition cautions,

On 10 December 1968, at a Red Cross centre near Bangkok, Thomas Merton gave a lecture affirming the place of the monastic as an outsider. ‘The monk is essentially someone who takes up a critical attitude toward the world and its structures,’ he remarked, ‘somebody who says, in one way or another, that the claims of the world are fraudulent.’ Afterward, he went back to his cottage to rest and to shower before a scheduled evening panel discussion. He emerged from his shower, walking with wet feet on a wet floor. It’s surmised that he reached for a fan, which was later shown to have faulty wiring, and suffered a fatal electric shock. Merton’s body was flown back to the US on an Air Force transport to Oakland, then sent on a commercial carrier to Louisville.

I once heard a panel discussion among magazine editors, who voiced their common greatest problem: to find people who can write. A generation has grown up lacking skill in composition and any sense of literary style. Though I doubt that any study of the matter has been made, my own experiences have borne out a theory that people who grow up hearing and reading folk and fairy tales throughout childhood develop not only lively imaginations, but originality in the use of words.

Part One—The Lipid Panel. Used to evaluate heart health, this panel comprises of four biological markers representing the four types of fat found in the blood—triglycerides, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Two additional measures of cardiovascular health, homocysteine and c-reactive protein (CRP), may also be measured as part of a more comprehensive profile. These two labs are discussed in Part Six, “Optional Tests” (see page 8). •  Part Two—The Basic Metabolic Panel. The labs used to evaluate metabolism measure blood sugar regulation, electrolyte and fluid balance, and kidney function. Biomarkers included in this panel are glucose, calcium, sodium, potassium, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine. •  Part Three—The Hepatic Function Panel. This panel determines how well your liver is functioning by measuring levels of different proteins produced and processed by the liver, like albumin and globulin, as well as liver enzymes. •  Part Four—The Complete Blood Count (CBC) Panel. The lab values measured in the complete blood count (CBC) panel include red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and hemoglobin. Maintaining healthy levels of these biomarkers affect your vitality and energy, immune system, and cardiovascular health. •  Part Five—Hormones. Although they are not always included in a routine blood test, hormones should be periodically tested, especially in aging adults. Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, DHEA, and prostate specific antigen (PSA) play an integral role in reproductive wellness and affect other aspects of health. Maintaining balanced levels can slow down the aging process, for instance. Hormones involved in metabolism, like the thyroid hormones and the stress hormone cortisol, are also discussed in this section. •  Part Six—Optional Tests. This final part of the book highlights four tests—homocysteine, c-reactive protein (CRP), vitamin D, and magnesium—that are not typically measured unless requested, or if a standard blood test shows an abnormality that requires a more in-depth analysis. These tests can provide a more complete picture of heart health, immunity, calcium absorption, blood sugar regulation, and a number of other vital processes.

Mary Frances Berry, the former head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, addressed the Politics and Prose Black Authors Race Panel discussion on January 15, 2018, saying that the Twitter platform is powerful, but not that powerful. “Some people think social media is a substitute for action. It’s not. You have to get out and do something.

Having a conversation with unfiltered thought is a ticking time bomb.

The presence of mind is unjustified in the absence of thought.

This problem of diminishing or demeaning women’s experiences by challenging their universality—to insist that if you can’t speak for everyone then you can’t speak for anyone—reminds me of a recent encounter I had during a panel discussion on motherhood and creativity. During the question-and-answer portion, a woman in the audience raised her hand, then made an incisive and thoughtful remark about the multitude of practical and artistic challenges mothers face as writers. She followed up her comment by adding that she wasn’t any sort of expert but “just a mom.” The idea that being “just a mom” was both an admission of a form of amateurism and a justification for disregarding a person—and all of her experiences, observations, knowledge, and so on—saddened and infuriated me.

The technical term for what they’re doing is called agenda-setting. They magnify selected stories and topics through their constant coverage and endless panel discussions about every little detail. Talking for hours on end about the stories creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by building certain instances into major issues, and by treating them as if they are major issues when they are not, and getting people to talk and think about them so much, they then become major issues.

The authors of Crucial Conversations also remind us that every conversation exists within a frame: What is the purpose here? What are our goals? A frame is the stage on which the conversation takes place. During that panel discussion, we were really having an argument about the frame of our conversation. I saw the culture war as one thing and wanted to analyze it from the detached perspective a journalist is trained to adopt. She saw the culture war entirely differently—as an assault on basic justice. She didn’t want to analyze it from a detached point of view; she wanted to communicate it as an activist in the middle of the fight. In retrospect, I should have stayed within her frame a little longer, instead of trying to yank the conversation back to my frame. That would

I was having a good time—it was work, but I enjoyed it. And he was home doing my work. To be fair, I treated it that way, too. I had internalized that. He was “covering for me,” as if I were a coworker who’d gone on vacation and left my cubicle-neighbor with all my tasks while I was away. I should be thankful—and I was thankful! I should feel bad—and I did feel bad! I felt bad because I saw other women with spouses and kids, and their husbands picked up the phone with a warm “Hi, how’s it going?” They asked about their wives’ panel discussions, readings, signings. They put the children on the phone, then asked for the phone back to say “I love you!” before they hung up. Some of the husbands even came along. I envied that. I wanted what they had.