Tony_S

55 minutes ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Australian television censors? 😉

Some episodes in the first series of “Bluey” got through the Australian tv standards but were removed before showing on he Disney + channel. Some were edited by the BBC too. All,are broadcast now, no censoring. Not sure if the term “dingleberries “ survived though. The only episode I believe that wasn’t approved in  Australia  showed dangerous play in a bathroom. 

27 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

From the Fjords of Manutopea.

I didn’t know about those, I thought they all came from Halewood in Liverpool. 

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

Tony, you are not alone, the problem may be gender based.  Such decisions are way above my salary grade. 

 

Jamie

I can pass any of the standard colour vision tests but Aditi sees more subtle shades than I do, when I think  things are the same colour and of course they are not. If left to my own resources I would probably have chosen rather plain curtains. We do work well as a team because Aditi will choose three patterns and if I don’t like one that gets eliminated. Then of course there is the excitement of finding out if enough metres of the material are in stick somewhere in the UK. She is definitely a good person to take when buying a car. She has no embarrassment about pushing for discounts, and asking what does this mean in the bill?   Years ago when salesman tried to talk to her about the lovely colour she would ask about fuel economy and how fast it could accelerate. She told one chap she had taught motor mechanics for years. She didn’t say it was General Studies she had taught though!

I don’t ever really wear bright colours, I am definately drawn to the drab spectrum. 

55 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Fancy seeing you here, Jack", to which my grandfather took great satisfaction in replying that this was the third such ceremony he had attended.

I was sitting waiting to see Aditi get her degree conferred. This was at the Barbican in London. The woman sitting next to me said how lovely it was to see one’s child graduate. I replied that I wasn’t seeing my child I was married to one of those graduating. The sheer look of horror that someone my age might possibly be wed to one of the bright young people marching across the stage was amazing. I did point out that my spouse was the short woman with a floppy doctoral hat sitting in the middle of a row of ecclesiastical gentlemen and military officers .

44 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

As for HiFi

Mine is all from different manufacturers! Though some people may not agree it is hifi as it set up as a cinema  surround sound system. It can be set to stereo and the two main speakers are also sold as stereo pairs. Before I got the hearing aids I had to fiddle a lot with the processor settings to hear TV sound.  No problem now though. I have just had my hearing aids tweaked and Aditi asked me to turn the TV sound up as it was too quiet. 

11 minutes ago, DaveF said:

The next job is to have a look at curtain fabrics online so I have an idea of what I want when the man comes tomorrow lunchtime

I don’t do very well choosing curtains. There just seem to be so many fabrics and I think my poor brain gets confused. Also my optical processing clearly isn’t as precise as Aditi’s. Last time I “helped” I was told what I liked  was for children. The kitchen was easy it had wooden Venetian blinds. We did have people from curtain firms come to advise us but they generally pushed the “High Essex” style involving swag, flounces , multiple pelmets and rosettes.  Also fitting curtain rails wasn’t something the builder of this house contemplated. Most require drilling in to steel girders. The front bay window curtain rail needed three different types of fixing including one I made up from a plastic plug inserted into a large metal plasterboard fitting. 

22 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

which involves biopsy clippers up a place I'd rather not think about,

Well probably preferable to clippers via the other access route. 

1 minute ago, woodenhead said:

wondered though if perhaps they'd escaped from domesticity.

I had never heard of them until you posted the photo but I can’t resist finding out about a new duck and they were bred originally from Mallards in Pomerania. They are meaty and can fly but don’t much. Popular as lawn and pond birds, that was an American source. Our nearest RSPB reserve is so near civilization there is a good 5g signal so,I can research the birdies (mainly water fowl) we see instantly. I am enthusiastic but really ignorant about birds. Hoping to get better. 

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Her previous house, still standing in the 1960s had no water supply other than a communal standpipe in the "front alley: with communal WCs in the "back alley"

We went to see the National Trust “Back to Backs” in Birmingham. My Grandmother was born and raised in a nearby street. The NT place was just as described. Outside loos , communal laundry area etc. Outside water pump. My mother said the house she was born in had an inside tap but that was all. The Birmingham City Corporation decided that all the slum housing needed to be cleared and built huge council housing estates creating new suburbs. These were good houses with modern facilities like indoor toilets and bathrooms.. My grandfather had years of work working as a builder on those estates and the family moved into one, using a borrowed market barrow from Aston to Acocks Green. The good houses with lots of parks were very much a concern of the Chamberlain family who were running Birmingham. 

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

We think it's a Swedish Blue which apparently is endangered so a very rare sight

Is it because according to one website, they are not keen on flying and were originally bred for meat and eggs?

6 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Saw some ducks at the sailing club, mallards...

They were floating about in a puddle in the car park.

We went to a local bird reserve a couple of years ago and went into one of the hides. There was a chap in there with all the kit, camo clothing, telescope, cameras  with long lenses and he was identifying all the rare ducks on the reservoir to the other people,in the hide. Irritatingly he was also smoking away! However even with our then not too powerful binoculars it was obvious that every rare duck he identified was a mallard. 
 

Looks like Guinness too. 

The last proper Guinness went in the casserole. So I have a can of the Zero to accompany it for lunch.  

28 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

I was offered Guinness Zero at my daughters' the other day, although I opted for something else. I've never had it; is it any good? 

Guinness draught ( in cans at home) when I am out would often be what I would drink if I wasn’t sure about other beery offerings. The very few pubs we do,visit often have seasonal ales that look,wort a try. The Guinness Zero as my choice when driving is definately better than my previous choice of diet cola. It isn’t quite “Guinness” but probably worth a try.  My  near neighbours who are very very keen on Guinness (especially when watching their rugby team) are very much in favour of it when alcohol is not appropriate.  It certainly isn’t dreadful like some low alcohol,zero alcohol beers used to be. 

I just reported what happened to Mum. I didn’t need an explanation of research protocols. It is like when Matthew was racially abused at infant school the head teacher explained it couldn’t have happened as they had an anti racism clause in their mission statement. 

1 minute ago, iL Dottore said:

did NOT say that, Tony a

I explained the situation where my mother had been told she could only start treatment if she took part in a trial. You explained the process that happened in trials. IT DID NOT HAPPEN like that. I am very aware of research protocols and knew what should happen. So how does telling me what should happen when it didn’t change the facts. It looked pretty much to me that you were saying it couldn’t happen after the 1960s and therefore what we said didn’t happen.  It did. 
Not every lay person is incapable of reading a research document. 

Aditi is off to the cinema at the Basildon Festival Leisure Park (aka BasVegas) to watch some live ballet. Live as in live when it was recorded last week. I was looking at what is on at the cinema and there is quite a range of stuff to see, not just the latest releases but ballet and opera, and foreign language films some dubbed, some subtitled. Aditi and friend are having a meal in one of the many restaurants nearby before the performance so hopefully won’t need to buy the cinema mega deal meal,of hot dogs, bucket of cola and popcorn which seems to be popular . My task is to monitor some washing and take our postal votes round to the post box.  

Tony

On our very infrequent trips to pubs for meals, where it is usually my turn to drive, I have replaced Diet Coke with Guinness Zero or Moretti Zero. 

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Not necessarily, if a certain adverse event is seen in a large percentage of a patient population it doesn’t mean that you will experience that adverse event, just that you have a high probability of experiencing that AE.

 

In one oncology study I worked on significant hypotension was a common AE seen immediately after treatment and although most patients experienced hypotension, a number did not.

Depends upon the study design and the disease being treated. In life threatening disease, studies are designed so that patients get either <standard of care + new drug> or <standard of care + placebo>.

Unfortunately, in some countries and/or some diseases <standard of care> means no treatment at all beyond managed decline.

 

It is a sad commentary on the state of many health services across the world that sometimes the only way to access state of the art care is to sign up to a clinical trial.

Nope, the physicians don’t get paid, the hospitals/clinics/institutions where the study is placed get paid per patient - but this is to pay for the blood work/scans/assessments/specialised pharmacy, nursing and study staff needed by a clinical trial (some institutions are notorious for charging eye gouging mark-ups on the otherwise routine tests required by a clinical trial).

 

The average per-patient cost in an oncology trial (which excludes things like data management or production of study drug) is about £50,000 (and can go much higher).

No clinical trial withholds essential treatment from a patient (see my earlier comment). To do so would be unethical, immoral and counterproductive (not to mention that the regulatory agencies would descend like a ton of bricks on any clever clogs trying to do so). This might have happened in the 50s and 60s, but not today.

 

EVERY clinical study - both observational and interventional - has to be approved by the local IRB (institutional review board)/ethics committee before being allowed to proceed. Having had to - in person - justify to a German IRB why it was necessary to perform more CT scans than local standard of care, I can tell you they are NO pushover (definitely one of the toughest meetings I’ve ever been in. Even tougher than getting an extra $20 million out of senior management). 
 

As for the second highlighted point - just because to a layman they seem similar, doesn’t mean they are. Different patient populations, different regimens, different drug mode-of-actions - all relevant differences (and given the cost of a clinical trial no-one does one “just for the hell of it”). As for results being published: that doesn’t mean everything is “done and dusted”. Every single drug (or surgical intervention or other patient intervention) gets continuously studied and monitored during its effective lifespan - frequently leading to new therapeutic interventions and ALWAYS to new safety data.

 

So, basically my mother and I were telling lies. It wasn’t the 50s or 60s. I think the consultant was bullying an older woman and backed down when she said someone had read the information about the trial. I think he deserved to have an interview with an ethics committee. The whole treatment environment changed when she moved  to Worcestershire. 
I have signed up for loads of research projects and I have been fully informed before consent with no pressure. My mother’s situation was utterly different. 

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

My sons think that I should embrace new tech and get an Alexa or something rather than persist with vinyl records

Vinyl sales are increasing and I think it is younger people buying them. Perhaps you are “trendier” than your sons. All my vinyl is old, I haven’t bought any new stuff on vinyl though, still cd or digital. 

46 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Reads like you've already has a few .

I had never really heard of Shipstones until the “Gatwick incident” in the 1980s.

Aditi’s parents had flown out for a fortnights holiday in Spain. Aditi was working in an FE college and her summer break started before the school holidays so I couldn’t fly out with Aditi to join the holiday. However her younger brother was a medical student then and also had a week off. I drove Aditi to Gatwick where we met her brother. He was wearing a slightly tatty Shipstones t-shirt. Aditi really was cross about having to travel with someone who looked like a lager lout and was likely to get them banned from the plane or stopped at the Spanish Airport.  I did suggest she was over-reacting. She must have been tense about whether it had been wise to join her parents for a holiday, and launched into the tirade against her brother who she loved dearly and was normally above criticism. Her family lived in Nottingham so I don’t know if that was responsible for her outburst. 

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

ancient Technics record deck

I bought a new Technics record deck a couple of years ago. It was to replace a Pioneer deck I bought in 1975, that finally failed. The Technics is better, even I with my dodgy hearing can tell. It isn’t the hideously expensive Technics deck or the DJ model. It came supplied with an Ortofon cartridge and I am very happy.  

1 hour ago, Peter Kazmierczak said:

My youngest is watching "Britain's Got Talent".  Not wishing to be sexist, ageist, racist, etc but why is there an act from Japan currently performing?

No idea. Apart from the news and weather I think we have only watched stuff on Disney+ for the last month. 

23 minutes ago, SM42 said:

It was a fancy dress event

When I worked at an Educational Computer Centre one of my colleagues decided to have a party for staff and families at her house. I have no idea how but our boss who was senior adviser for IT, head of centre etc, somehow had the impression it was fancy dress and turned up  as a giant fluffy yellow chick. She was very good about it. 

2 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

as long as the wind was in the right direction and you weren’t getting the pong from the Sewage Works!

Aditi’s parents lived within walking distance of both that pub and the sewage works. The sewage works had cattle grazing on it and the cow manure was much prized by local gardeners if they could cope with a lorry load. Aditi’s Dad had a substantial field and had a a small mountain delivered. There seemed to be a lot of tomato seedlings sprouting from where it was spread the following year. I did wonder if it truly was only cow dung! 

5 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Best to empty the loft completely while you can still get up there as the day will come when you can't get up there. I can no longer get up into my loft but luckily I've only got some empty boxes up there.

A couple of years ago I reinsulated the loft and put walkways on loft stilts and installed shelves. Everything we were not quite ready to part with was put in proper boxes.  The plan is if we haven’t used it or had requests for it in a few years it will be disposed of to charities or recycling. It is neat so if even we can’t do it we can pay for it to be cleared. 
Tony