Father of the man: two fictional stories

For weeks Leonard Littlefield has had no relief from the dull warm pressure in his bladder. Sitting in the waiting room of the Medical Multi-Imaging Facility in Portland, he\u27s worried someone will say something about the wad of sterile cotton lining his jockey shorts. As though maybe they could tell, or even care. Since the biopsy five days before, he\u27s needed the pads to absorb the leaking

Literary Decadence and the French Occult Revival: A Survey Essay with Two New Translations of Joséphin Péladan

The history of how the term ‘decadence’ came to be used as a description for certain kinds of literary productivity, eventually spawning a ‘Decadent Movement’ in the 1880s, which expanded to embrace the visual arts as well as poetry and prose fiction, is complicated and curious.The notion of cultural decadence had been popularized by the eighteenth-century philosophe Charles-Louis le Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, in Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur decadence [Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline] (1734). Montesquieu argued that the disintegration of the Roman Empire had not been a series of unfortunate accidents, but the inevitable unfolding of a pattern governed by a quasi-scientific law, applicable to all empires, and all civilizations, according to which they follow a life-cycle that guides them inevitably from infancy to virility, and from virility to decrepitude. Implicit within that argument was the notion that France was repeating that inevitable life-cycle, its decadence symbolized by the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and its climactic catastrophe looming

Know Your Audience, Ask Your Audience

This article describes the process used to develop an award-winning series of 27 well water Tip Sheets for Rhode Island private well owners. Our multi-agency team worked to develop the series by: 1) Combining our knowledge of the audience with scientific, writing, and design expertise and teamwork; 2) Applying principles of risk communication and plain language; and 3) Asking for and using audience input at multiple stages. Our commitment to know and learn from our audience and incorporate their suggestions into the final product required extra planning, time, and money, but made a difference in the final quality of the materials

The science of decadence

In the nineteenth century, the concept of decadence was not solely of aesthetic interest but had a number of scientific applications. Decadence itself is an organic metaphor, extending the natural processes of decline and decay to societies and the arts. Rather than rejecting nature outright, decadent authors readily embraced new scientific theories that changed the way people thought about the natural world. The pessimism of nineteenth-century science stemmed from the brutal world of industrial capitalism in which it was developed. Decadent writers then incorporated both scientific ideas and language into a literary style obsessed with decay and decline. Finally, science returned to decadent literature to pathologize certain modes of artistic expression as yet another sign that certain types of individuals were ‘degenerate’. Three key scientific theories of the nineteenth century underpin the decadent fixation on decline, decay, and degeneration: uniformitarianism, evolution, and the conservation of energy. All three theories identify impermanence in natural structures previously believed to be permanent and stable

Evidence-based patient choice: a prostate cancer decision aid in plain language

BACKGROUND: Decision aids (DA) to assist patients in evaluating treatment options and sharing in decision making have proliferated in recent years. Most require high literacy and do not use plain language principles. We describe one of the first attempts to design a decision aid using principles from reading research and document design. The plain language DA prototype addressed treatment decisions for localized prostate cancer. Evaluation assessed impact on knowledge, decisions, and discussions with doctors in men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer. METHODS: Document development steps included preparing an evidence-based DA in standard medical parlance, iteratively translating it to emphasize shared decision making and plain language in three formats (booklet, Internet, and audio-tape). Scientific review of medical content was integrated with expert health literacy review of document structure and design. Formative evaluation methods included focus groups (n = 4) and survey of a new sample of men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer (n = 60), compared with historical controls (n = 184). RESULTS: A transparent description of the development process and design elements is reported. Formative evaluation among newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients found the DA to be clear and useful in reaching a decision. Newly diagnosed patients reported more discussions with doctors about treatment options, and showed increases in knowledge of side effects of radiation therapy. CONCLUSION: The plain language DA presenting medical evidence in text and numerical formats appears acceptable and useful in decision-making about localized prostate cancer treatment. Further testing should evaluate the impact of all three media on decisions made and quality of life in the survivorship period, especially among very low literacy men