This is One of my favorite talks actually I give a lot of favorite talks here at Mises you so it's It's it's my area that I worked on when I was in grad school at Auburn. It was Environmental regulation was subject to my dissertation and I've Maintained an interest in this over the years and it's I think part of my interest came from the fact that this is a difficult area for a lot of people working in free markets People who are sympathetic to free markets When it comes to environmental issues, they say well, maybe we need some government intervention here because it's You know, we need some regulation in order to prevent firms from releasing massive amounts of pollution because that's What they assume would happen if there were no government regulation here Let me there's a lot to cover and we've got limited time But there are two key issues that come up with environmental economics one is environmental resource use So how do we how do we deal with? forest cutting down of forests What do we what do we do about? the local food kind of Idea Endangered species and reason and extinction would be part of this energy conservation would be part of this The fuel economy regulations that you see on automobiles the notorious cafe Restrictions are part of the resource use question Incidentally, I I like to start off discussions on this with my classes by Mentioning that if they really like trees, they should not recycle paper And they sort of looks a little startled like what this is heresy. How can you say this? I say well think about it.  That's the the term commonly used in Economics for a spillover effect a byproduct so if I'm smoking a cigarette and Somebody nearby breathes my cigarette smoke and is affected by that negatively or positively then that's an externality and Tom De Lorenzo gave a talk yesterday on market failure and this is one of those Areas where market failure said to result from from markets or firms not taking adequate account of externalities and pollution problems are in that category most most Most commonly regarded as a negative externality now these aren't really as separate as they might appear because Externalities really boil down to questions over ownership of a particular resource. So who owns the air that I'm dumping my Particulates into as I smoke a cigarette Who owns the water that is receiving the effluent from some kind of mill? These are resource ownership questions. So they're really connected. They're not as separate as you might think now There are three basic approaches That you'll see to dealing with environmental problems one of them is the Pigovian approach named for Arthur Cecil Pigou Cambridge Economist and he came up with these ideas about taxing negative externalities and subsidizing positive externalities and That was supposed to help resolve these problems because then the firm that is generating some kind of smoke Would then reduce its quantity of smoke produced if they know that they're going to be taxed per unit of the of the pollution Or if a firm is producing some kind of positive externality and they know that they're getting a subsidy for it then they start to take that into account when they decide how much of the of the the Product to to produce that's something also that that time dealt with yesterday But we'll expand on that a little bit today as well There's secondly a regulatory approach. This is where the government says we know how much of The pollution is acceptable And we're going to require firms to cut their pollution to that level so they're going to say You can only produce x number of tons of sulfur dioxide From your factory or they may even say we're going to require you to use this particular piece of equipment So your your cars have catalytic converters on them that Converts some of the chemicals coming out of your Engine into something a little less dangerous and inert perhaps So that that's supposed to reduce the impact on the environment. Well, I mean if you came up with some other kind of Method of reducing pollution That may not be something that you could actually use in a vehicle because the government says you have to use this particular technology So that's sometimes called command and control command and control regulation a third approach is The property rights approach and I'm taking a broad perspective on this. I'm including here not only the common law perspective Judge Napolitano talked about the common law a little bit on Monday night, and I hope you were there to hear that The common perception that I am picking up from my students on on environmental issues is that before the EPA Or before there was command and control regulation, then it was just a free-for-all firms who just dump stuff into the water or the air ocean and nobody Could say anything to them about it. It was just a Hesitate to use the word wild the term wild west because as you some of you may know the wild west really wasn't all that wild But it was an un restrained kind of environment That's not the case There were laws of nuisance for examples if you dumped Pollution into a river and someone downstream suffers from that they could sue you Without the EPA or other regulatory agencies being involved to say how much of the emissions were appropriate And how how much the firm could produce that that was not necessary for firms to be restrained in their production You had to show that there was actually a harm generated by this firm and that was a way of Of requiring firms to take account of their pollution We're going to talk later about coasts. You can't really talk about environmental issues here without discussing Ronald coasts And so there are some criticisms that I'll level at Kosian the coast there and that kind of thing So we'll discuss that in a minute first Let's look at two of the key problems that we see with the mainstream approach to the environment Roy cardado who's written a book which I think is in the bookstore here externalities in an open-ended universe Says efficiency is an individual goal-seeking problem not a value maximization problem Why is that important? from the Austrian perspective Efficiency is attained when legal institutions allow individuals to pursue their ends Whatever they might be The there may be conflicts over the use of scarce goods, but the Austrian doesn't the Austrian economist doesn't say well Let's try to figure out what the value of this use is and the value of that use is How much value does the water have when people are fishing in it and swimming in it? How much value does the water have when it's used as a Dumping ground for some effluent. There's there's no way for us to really make those comparisons because Costs are subjective They cannot be measured Now I will say this and then you'll see if you take a Typical class on environmental economics or sometimes this comes into the principles of micro class You'll see This is kind of assumption that we could actually measure these costs What you'll see is often a graph like this and I'll spend some time on this because you you'll If you take economics courses, you'll probably see this What you've got on the vertical axis there is marginal private cost marginal social cost and marginal private benefit All right, so let me go through those for a minute on the on the horizontal axis is the quantity of the output of the goods You're producing so if it's a paper mill producing paper Then we're looking at how to have a measure paper tons of paper or something and The marginal benefit to the firm of producing paper. I've drawn as a downward sloping line. It could be less sloping could be flat But that's the benefit to the firm of producing the paper it's private benefit That is if they produce more paper, they get more money more revenue from the sale of the paper No big mystery there Then we have the marginal private cost again, I've drawn this is upward sloping but it It could be less sloping if depending on the conditions in the marketplace, but these are the these are the cost to the paper mill their accountant would take a Account of these these costs as they produce more paper Maybe they have to go further and pay more for the remaining trees or Maybe they have to pay more for the real estate on which the trees are grown and so forth So maybe this is an upward sloping line again depending on the the market conditions Now the marginal social cost is what you get when you add To the cost of the firm the paper mill in this case the external costs on bystanders If you've been around a paper mill at all, you know, it gives off a kind of a rotten egg odor Which most people find unpleasant? And it may generate some other other effluent Perhaps it it use from my understanding uses a lot of water the water emitted from the plant might be might be Polluted to some extent and so if we add those costs those external costs and bystanders who are not buyers of paper not sellers of paper just Standing around being near the paper mill Then you get an additional cost and the vertical distance between these two lines Indicates the amount of that external cost Now here's the problem We can't measure this We don't know even if we can figure out even if the firm says we know what our costs are How do you measure the impact on a bystander of having a bad smell in the neighborhood?  How do you even put that in in? Numbers if the person is being honest about Trying to be honest about the cost And that's not even considering the fact that some people might look at the surveyor and say if I say a big number maybe they'll Maybe that'll make it more likely that the firm will be shut down Which is what I really want since I don't work at the firm and I don't buy paper and I don't I don't want to smell rotten eggs, so if I say Five million dollars or something Then maybe the surveyor will dutifully write this down and turn that in and it'll be more likely that the firm will be shut down Or maybe the person says well, I work at the paper mill I you know, I don't like the bad smell, but I don't want to lose my job either So I'm gonna say well it cost me about 50 cents last year So we get all kinds of problems in trying to measure this even if the person knows and a lot of times We don't know what our costs are until we're actually faced with a decision to either incur that cost or not How much would I pay for a hamburger at lunch? How hungry am I I mean would I pay $15 for a hamburger if I'm if I'm really hungry? I don't really know I don't really know until I make that decision and of course these costs will change over time They're not going to stay constant So even if you miraculously figured out what the distance is between these two lines you figured out somehow What the what the external cost is how do you know that's going to stay the same? Over time Maybe if I you know if I have a child a small child and I suddenly become more concerned about the impact of The neighboring factories and missions on the development of my child or maybe my maybe I think that those costs are higher And so forth So we have a calculation problem Now often you'll hear comments About overuse of resources We're putting too much pollution in the air or we're putting too much pollution into the water there there's too much Fertilizer washing off into watersheds and causing algal blooms downstream and so forth So we're we talk about these over this overuse Well in order to have a meaningful concept of overuse We have to have an idea of what the optimal rate of use is Otherwise, it's meaningless So you say well Should should we reduce pollution and somebody you're talking to let's say well, yes So let's suppose we did that and then you come back to the person you say well, how much should we reduce pollution again? I mean you you if you continue to do this the optimal rate of pollution is Not zero that would imply that we would just just have to cease to exist I'm up here exhaling carbon dioxide and other things on Some people co2 is considered a pollutant does that mean that I should cease to exist so that So that my production of waste products from the chemical processes in my body would then cease So we don't really know where the marginal social benefit and the marginal social cost are equal Back to my diagram here The ideal from the point of view of most environmental economists is to locate this point Q star as You're increasing your output initially the marginal private benefit of Producing this good is higher than the marginal social cost So we say well, it's optimal socially efficient and so forth to continue to increase the the output of this product Well, we can we can continue to do this Until we reach this point Q star at that point any further increase in the output would cost more to society Then it benefits the firm If the firm doesn't care about the cost on bystanders and is only looking at The cost of timber or the cost of water or the cost of labor and so forth then The firm will continue to increase output up to QM At QM the firm will finally say well now if we increase our output the cost to us would be greater than the benefits to us So we'll stop there. We won't increase our output anymore From the environmental mainstream environmental economists perspective. That's that's too much because at that point the marginal social costs exceed the benefits of producing this product and So the environmental economists would then say well what we need to do is I should say the typical Environmental economists would say well, what we need to do is somehow induce the firm to cut its output from QM down to Q star at that point we have social efficiency now again We don't know where that point is because we cannot measure those social costs. We can't measure those external costs now The Pagovian tax approach which says we're going to tax each unit of pollution Let's say each ton of sulfur dioxide by X amount of dollars What's the X? Well X would be determined by how far that marginal social cost is above the marginal Private cost the external the cost on bystanders. We're going to then Determine how much that is and we're going to tax the firm by that amount And so you see Sometimes carbon tax proposals which have been the headlines in recent years are an effort in that direction If they say well co2 is a bad thing. We don't want to produce more of it. So we're going to tax fuels that have carbon in them Some economists Have said well carbon taxes have some problems. Maybe we can instead use tradable permits So we can say we're going to allow X number of tons of sulfur dioxide to be emitted into the air in the next year and So we're going to create a permit one ton of emissions per Permit and then we're going to auction these off. This has been done auction these off So firms that find that it's very expensive for them to reduce their pollution We'll buy a lot of permits instead because the permits will be cheaper and the firms that say well It's it's pretty cheap for us to reduce our pollution. So instead of buying those permits which look expensive to us We're going to reduce pollution instead Now this is appealing from an efficiency perspective because this means that the Instead of applying the one size fits all command and control regulation to all the firms This means that the firms that face high cost to reduce pollution don't and instead those that face low cost Reduce the pollution instead. So this means that you get some efficiency advantages Nevertheless this is Going to require government to do the impossible It's going to require government to assess the ideal quantity of pollution permits so if you choose a pollution tax And you say we're going to tax units of carbon By some amount. Well, you've got to figure out what that distance is and then you've got to Put that into dollar terms and impose that tax Secondly if you say well, you know, maybe we're not real sure what the tax ought to be and So for whatever reason we think that that's that's not ideal. Let's use a market approach Let's have tradable permits. Nobody likes taxes. Anyway tradable permits sound so flexible It sounds so reasonable and efficient and we an economist Look at this and they say well, you know, just this is This is ideal if we can we can sort of sort things out that way. Well, then you have to figure out this distance here You have to figure out what Q star is which again means that you've got to figure out where that intersection is We don't know where that intersection is Now you might say well, you know, maybe maybe we understand that that we can't figure out exactly where that point is But we we do know that we're producing too much pollution. So we should reduce Well, first of all, we don't really know that we're producing too much pollution But even if you did that if you if you overshot and you wound up down here You thought Q star was here when it was in fact here If you thought it was lower than where it actually is you can do more damage than Then you're then the damage you're averting or avoiding So it it's a it's a very sticky kind of problem and not one that has Has a good solution from a government intervention policy perspective Art Cardin I have a higher guard for art and his his work and and he contributed Paper I think it was actually a comment or a note to the quarterly journal of Austrian economics a while back We had a brief exchange Dolan and block were Discussing environmental policy issues and in art weighed in on this and he said the calculation objection Which is what I'm talking about the difficulty of determining exactly what these these costs are the calculation to emissions Trading calculation objection to emissions trading schemes is more than a simple. How do you know? Conversation stopper Finding the right amount of emissions to allow might require some trial and error But credible commitment remains an important potential obstacle What incentive is there for a state to specify a particular level of carbon emissions that will be allowed each year and then not Change this in response to political pressure Now I would quibble with art on this bit about trial and error trial and error requires a measure of success and failure and We don't have that in this case Yes, you can say that if you impose a higher tax you get less pollution but how much pollution is ideal again, we're back to the calculation problem and without prices and profits and losses that are originating from Voluntary interactions in the marketplace You don't really have a way to determine whether the trial reduced resulted in a Better outcome or a worse outcome. Okay, so when the government's got its thumb on the scale We don't really have a good way to determine where the proper balance is But art brings up an important point and that's Political continuity, how do we know that the policy that the government imposed today is going to be appropriate? Even if miraculously they came up with the appropriate policy today How do we know that's going to continue to be appropriate next year or the year after that or even next week? So we don't know this we're living in a dynamic marketplace. We have things that are changing around us all the time policies tend to be Static they tend to to be put into place when the political conditions arise to to do that and Then the next Election comes along and the next group of politicians decide something very different Firms that are trying to decide whether or not to make some kind of massive long-term investment Have to take this into consideration. Do they reduce pollution? Or do they not reduce pollution? What what should they do? How much pollution should they reduce given the existing policy environment? What's the policy environment going to be next year the year after they don't know and therefore that makes investment decisions very difficult Also, how do we know that politicians won't set limits that are conducive to exploitation by constituent groups? if you have this idea that politicians and the bureaucrats of the EPA are Sitting there trying to honestly come up with the ideal amount of pollution for the nation as a whole or the world as a whole There's a great deal of literature Austrian and otherwise a lot of this is the so-called public choice Literature that indicates this is not what politicians and bureaucrats are really after what are politicians? What are elected officials want more than anything else? They want to get reelected Okay, if that means that they Have to sacrifice some broader economic broader environmental goal in order to satisfy the Constituents in their districts. That's what they'll do So if the paper mills pumping out a lot of pollution and the paper mills sends a lobbyist to the politician and says well You know, we're really important for jobs in our district and yes, we produce pollution But we also produce these these beneficial things and by the way, here's a campaign contribution Do you think that perhaps you could see fit to loosen the requirements on us? and At the same time you might have other groups that come in and say well, you know, we're destroying our environment And we that aside here's a campaign contribution Do you think you could see fit to vote our way and we'll make that known to our members of our environmental organization and and and we'll Make sure that we we put you in a favorable light so that you win the next election so you have these special interest groups that are That are constantly putting pressure on environmental policy and if we actually got something that was Ideal whatever that might look like for the at the current time it would be happenstance more than a matter of of Deliberation and consideration of science If you want to look up that article about art What should Austrian economists do it's in volume 17 that's several years ago for the QJ AE He's pointing out this Calculation problem, I'll move on in the interest of time. Let's talk about this efficiency fetish If we could calculate the efficient quantity of pollution Where has that gotten us? if we knew somehow What Q star was if we knew somehow where the what the ideal amount of SO to or CO or some other pollutant might be now what? How does that trump property rights? The issue becomes an ethical issue I shouldn't say it becomes an ethical issue. It's always an ethical issue here How do we violate the property rights of another person? It's not about exceeding some Number in our measurement of parts per million Rory Cordado says pollution is therefore not about harming the environment but about human conflict over the use of physical resources Humans change the environment such a way that it harms others who might be planning to use it for conflicting purposes it's about Competing uses of a resource air water land and so forth Now I'm I'm running short on time. I see but let's let's talk about this tragedy of the commons for for a couple of minutes Some of you might recognize this setup here on the screen. This is a prisoner's dilemma diagram and The tragedy of the commons, which is a term that a biologist Garrett Hardin came up with decades ago indicates that There is not Definite property ownership over a resource that resource may be overused that is it will not be used in such a way as to maximize its Output over the long run. So a classic example of this would be some kind of pasture land So let's suppose we have two ranchers Al and Bob And Al and Bob have to decide how many of their cows to put out onto this common pasture land More cows there are on the land the more grass gets eaten and the less in pounds of beef per cow you get So if Al and Bob both choose to put one cow on this pasture then Al and Bob both get Let's say five pounds of extra beef per day Added weight gain in there in their livestock That's a total of 10 and If they chose both to put two cows on The property so Bob puts his two and Al puts his two then Al and Bob get four pounds each of Weight gain for their cows total of eight so greatest long-term output for this pasture is if there are only two cows on the pasture and They get a total of ten pounds collectively across the two cows If Bob and Al put a total of four cows on the property then each cow is gaining only two pounds per day total of eight Okay so Here's where there's a problem. Let's say let's say Bob is trying to decide what he should do Should he put one cow out or two cows out? well, obviously the The weight gain depends on what Al does so Bob's thinking well, what if Al is going to put one cow out on the on this pasture Then that means if I also put one cow out on the pasture I get five Pounds of weight gain, but if I put two cows out I get six pounds of weight gain. I think I'll put two Al is making the same decision. He doesn't know exactly what Bob's going to end up doing but he says well, what if What if Bob puts one cow out on the property then if I choose one cow as well I get five pounds of weight gain if I put two cows out I get six pounds of weight gain I think I'll put two cows out So both of them end up putting two cows out on the property They end up in this box here with a total of eight pounds of weight gain instead of the Maximized output that you would get if they both restrained their their Putting of cows out to pasture and put only one cow out each so we get an overuse of the resource over grazing and We get less than optimal output Carl Minger When we heard about from the very first night Actually, I think it was the next morning Monday morning. You heard Joe Salerno's talk on the history of the Austrian school And he spent some time on Minger Minger says when all members of society compete for a given quantity of goods that is insufficient or scarce a Practical solution of this conflict of interest is only conceivable if the goods pass into the possession of some of the economizing individuals and if these individuals are protected by society in their possession to the exclusion of other individuals So back to our diagram if Al Somehow comes into ownership of the pasture. It's no longer shared ownership. It's no longer common access Well Al then says well, I want the most output I can get from this property Maybe this means that That I choose to put a total of two cows out on the property and that there may be it may be that they're both my cows It may be that I put one of mine and I rent the pasture out to Bob who also puts one of his Or it may be that I don't put any cows out and Bob puts two but in whatever Whatever arrangement we come to The property is going to be optimally used if Al can say no more cows after two and That results in a higher level of output Now we come to coasts Famous coast theorem coasts last I heard his His most famous Journal article in the Journal of Law and Economics had more citations than any other article in the entire economics literature So and one of the Nobel Prize. I think that was in 1990 I want to say 90 Anyway Coast said if you don't have transaction cost that is the cost of negotiating and arranging a transaction then The outcome the the the amount of pollution generated will be the same Regardless of the initial assignment of property rights now Transaction costs aren't zero We know that they're not and some people make this mistake They'll say well in a cosian world and by that they mean in a world with no transaction cost coasts himself didn't think transaction costs were zero He knew this I mean so it's a kind of a straw man argument to say well, you know coasts was wrong because transaction costs aren't zero when he knew that So he said well courts then should balance the costs and the benefits of both sides and then make a determination the decision of the courts is relevant when transaction costs are not zero Now the one of the problems with this cosian approach is that it neglects the problem of subjectivity of costs and benefits The time I have left I'd like to go through an example of this so that you can see this problem coast mentioned a problem of Steam locomotives Going down a track burning coal or wood or something and emitting sparks out of the stack sparks land on fields and property adjacent to the track and as a result Fires destroy some of the output from those neighboring fields. So this is a kind of an externality problem here negative externality So let's let's suppose these are orchards and the orchards are being destroyed by sparks from the passing train let's suppose that the burnt property Or the property that's at least subject to being burnt has lost market value as a result of this Casting off of sparks by the train So there's a let's say a hundred thousand dollar reduction in the market value of property So a farmer has to suffer the loss of the trees or at least the ability to grow trees and the market value of the property is now $15,000 not much else. You can do the property Let's suppose that installing a device that would cut back on the sparks to prevent this burning Would cost a hundred twenty thousand dollars So should the sparks fly or should the orchard grow? What's the more valuable? Use of the property should we allow the railroad to proceed and using the space as a dumping ground for its effluent or Should we allow the farmer to use the space to grow fruit? So the mainstream is going to look at this and say well a hundred twenty thousand dollars is greater than a hundred thousand dollars So the railroad's use is more valuable abatement of this of this Emission is going to be too costly Relative to the resource that is being preserved. So growing trees would be inefficient QED no problem here. We just did the math now We've said a hundred thousand dollar reduction in the market value of property 120,000 dollar cost of spark reduction devices now Here's where the coast therein comes into play if we there if there are zero transaction cost Let's suppose the court says well, we're going to give the rights to the farmer a railroad would then say well, it's worth a lot to us To be able to continue to use the tracks and the farmer is suffering a market loss of a hundred thousand dollars We'll just pay the farmer a hundred thousand dollars So that we do not have to install the hundred twenty thousand dollar spark abatement device and farmer loses the trees but is compensated for that and Society as a whole is better off by twenty thousand dollars Now let's suppose in the second case the court say for whatever reason we're going to give the rights to the railroad Now the farmer is not going to be willing to pay a hundred twenty thousand dollars to induce the railroad to install devices That would protect a hundred thousand dollars of market value. It doesn't make any sense So the devices are not installed the trees are gone Society gains by twenty thousand dollars. This is this is coast saying it doesn't matter what the courts decide if there is zero transaction cost You get the same exact result in both cases now Let's suppose that the land is not only valuable According to its market value, but it's got a subjective value non-marketable to the farmer Maybe this is land that's been in the farmers family for six generations or maybe the family graveyard is on this property and and losing the Having the graveyard burned over every so often about sparks from the train is going to be very disturbing to this person or maybe for whatever reason this is going to be Psychologically harmful for the farmer Maybe the trees are special you know my great-grandfather planted these trees I harvest fruit from these trees that makes me feel like I'm connected to my great-grandfather and and Losing those trees would mean more than just the loss of the property. Now. This is this is common. This is not some sort of Strange idea When I got engaged to my wife, I gave her a diamond ring the diamond ring has market value I would like to think that if the That my wife would not say well, you know, I really would like to put some new carpet in the living room Yeah, this got some market value. I think I'll sell this It's got hopefully some sentimental value to her as well So this this is not uncommon for this for the market value to not be representative of the total value of an asset So let's suppose now the railroad gets the right to the total market value of the property was only a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars Farmers not going to be able to raise a hundred twenty thousand dollars to induce the railroad to install devices So the devices are not installed the trees are gone In this case society loses by a hundred thousand dollar loss of market value plus nine hundred thousand dollars of psychological loss to the farmer and Then of course there are the savings from the no spark reduction devices So we factor that in and we get a total loss to society. We can't really measure this of course, but we We could easily get a loss that is far far greater than the savings So a resource that is very valuable to the owner is then lost So this is why Rothbard says we can't decide on public policy tort law rights or liabilities on the basis of efficiencies or minimizing of costs Now I'm out of time. I'm going to instead of going through All this other wonderful material about drones and radio waves and other things. I'm going to point you to A few things that you can use to follow up on this matter the classic Austrian paper on Environmental issues is Murray Rothbard's law property rights and air pollution Bob Murphy mentioned this paper Yesterday in his talk on the Paris climate agreement Which is an excellent talk? I'm assuming it's available in Mises org So you should take a look at that if you have not already. It's a very good stuff there Free market environmentalism by Walter Block Roar could not Roy Cortado's book that I mentioned earlier externalities in an open-ended universe and also a Paper in the QG AE from a few years back toward an Austrian theory of environmental economics I can also look at the aforementioned block Dolan Kardon discussion In an issue of about three years ago So those are some places you can go to get the Austrian perspective on environmental issues I'm sorry. I don't have enough time to go through some of these other things. This is a massive amount of Material we could discuss here I'll be available later in the week For office hours if you have some follow-up questions. Thank you very much


Kevin obviously tight game going in a halftime, then you have a big third quarter and you guys kind of get separation What was the difference to you in the second half? I always just stayed the course. I mean I felt like We got good looks in the first half we did a decent job getting stops but I think we ratcheted the defense up in the third quarter and Along with you know our offense going to another level, you know 24 points is pretty ideal for a quarter Especially with you know one of the best offensive teams in the league I think we did a solid job on the defense side in that third and you know I've seen the open in there, and I just try to finish my shots You seem to be more riled up than usual the way you were taking on the crowd and everything I mean just would what was behind that tonight? I mean I'll say that every year It's probably it's probably just who I am at this point, you know I mean always right up.  That's yeah, I just started seeing it People may be just focusing on me a little bit more lately. I guess Kevin do you do you enjoy when?  Yes fun, I mean, I think that's just a part of game. I think that's That's the true essence of the game is that dialogue that goes on around the court We all seen it and playing in that black tops and in in a high school gyms It's like that that conversation around the court is always fun and it's always positive I mean, it's just always a good vibe, you know, so Sometimes I'd like to indulge in that while I'm playing And second just what does it mean to you when you're on the bench and your team outscores the jazz in those minutes that you're resting It's just amazing, you know, every player loves that when you're on the bench in your in your gauze is just turning up like that I mean patty came hit some huge shots.  He's a common he's a combination of players on I feel I Think the greatest players in our game can transform into anybody at any given point and I think Jaws on the way to that I mean, I see like when he playing I see like two or three four different Hall of Famers in his game You know from Iverson to he might make a Jordan like layup or he might run down a court like a Westbrook or D Rose and you know his float game is up there with some of the best has ever played You know, so he's just a you know, I don't want to gas him up too much since we planned against him But I think the skies and lemon form this future is obviously bright and you know, he makes Everybody better planning against him even opponent. So It's about the level you approach that game with I'm looking forward to it


Now the heal class or the healer class is a pretty popular choice at the moment, and I'm noticing many players asking about the best place to farm to level up that light staff, especially for those solo players.  How's it going guys, my name is DPJ and if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really helps out and if you like what you see and want to see more, be sure to subscribe. Okay so the healer build starts with a light staff, and like I said are pretty popular at the moment, this is for good reason, with a high level healer it does make a lot of that end game much much easier. Now if you are a solo player and want a spot to farm enemies that constantly respawn, and you are also between a level 15 and 25, this spot will see you earning fast and easy XP for that light staff, meaning you can create that amazing healer build much faster and easier.  Now coming here as a solo player and trying to fight these enemies if you ain't a level 25 plus, you will have a hard time if you don't utilise the surrounding area properly. Doing it this way I'll show you today will be much more efficient for those lower leveled players to kill these enemies and earn that light staff XP at a decent rate. So what you want to do is make your way to the south entrance as you can see me at here on the map. Now bored doing the outskirts are the lower leveled enemies here, level 22s and 23s, these enemies when you are equipped with that light staff are real easy to stand at a distance and kill, and these enemies are right here actually constantly spawn every minute or so, so what you want to do is kill the two right here as you can see me do, sometimes under right two more enemies spawn, once you kill those within that first house is a level 24 enemy, kill him too, then push slightly right again and take out enemies glowing blue, trying to avoid the guys with the shields if you can because these are a pain in the ass when trying to use that light staff, then slightly work left and again take out the glowing blue guy and again try and ignore the guy that is shield, if you do get their attention you may want to switch to a different weapon and kill them, once you have done this quick route head back to the first enemies again and repeat it guys they will have respawned, simply rotate this quick little route as many times as you want, and it really is that simple, this works great for players at a level 15 to 25 like I said, trying to level up that light staff, now when you do get above a level 22-23 you can use the whole area to draw attention to enemies and kill them for XP, but again certain parts of this area will get very populated very quickly with enemies, and you are in reality at best in my opinion sticking to the outskirts while your level isn't high enough, remember to apply weapon upgrades to the healing tree of that light staff as soon as you unlock them, but yes guys this is a great great farm for light staff weapon XP for all those players out there who want to be healers and right now are playing as a solo player, me myself I came here I knew about the area already but I came here with the light staff which I literally just got, I'm moving 15 to 20 minutes maybe a little longer because time flies on this game, I was already a level 10 on my light staff, so it just goes to show how fast it is, I was when I first got here I think at level 20 or 21 but you do earn a ton of XP of those higher leveled enemies, and this within the early stages of the game is one of the best areas to come to, so I do hope it helps you guys out, an un-dap note at the end of the video has arrived, if you enjoyed it leaving a like really helps out, if you're new around here want to see more be sure to subscribe and if you never want to miss a video or upload you can turn notifications on by hitting that bell button but guys thanks as always for stopping by and hopefully I will see you on that next one


Thank you so much. One of the awful things about this wonderful conference is making choices about where to go. I usually want to be in about three places at once, so thank you all for being here. I still feel quite moved by Lorna's keynote this morning. I just thought it was a wonderful encapsulation of a lot of the key issues that really drive us, Lorna. You embody and also you express the values that certainly move me around open education. In preparation for today, I went back and read a few blog posts from the last couple of OER conferences. I've been coming since 2015. Last year there was a particular conversation at the end of the conference with four previous chairs. Everyone agreed that each OER conference kind of moves beyond, significantly moves beyond the one before, but was only able to do that because of what happened previously. I think the conference is quite unique in my experience because it's a place for real critical conversations, and it has been for some time. I'm just so delighted to be here and to be a part of it. When I read back those blog posts, I wanted to link back just to a couple of ideas that I've been meaningful for me about previous conferences. I guess taking your lead, Lorna, two years ago in my presentation about open education, I really made links between openness and participatory culture. I used the example of the marriage equality referendum in Ireland, which even though we're two years on, the world has changed so much since then. It's quite amazing, really. I thought it was this beautiful example of the way people used participatory culture built on open practices to have their voice to create civic change, which is what happened. I drew on Henry Jenkins and others' work in participatory culture asking, you know, to what extent are we enabling students to develop the practices, the skills, the identities that they need to really engage in participatory culture, to develop their voice and their agency so that they too can co-create knowledge and culture. And that's, I think, a key question underlying openness as far as I'm concerned. Also shared in 2016 and shared by many people since then is this one particular work among a huge body of work now in critical approaches to openness, and that's Richard Edwards. And, you know, even the examples Lorna shared this morning, I think, really call this to mind is an important question becomes not simply whether education is more or less open, but what forms of openness are worthwhile and for whom. So that continual negotiation as open educators and practitioners around when and how openness is appropriate in different contexts really underlies these critical approaches. So with that in mind, and that is kind of the soup that I was swimming in and thinking in, I engaged in my PhD research, which I just completed and submitted last week. So this is why you'll hear a few people. It would have been nice to have more than two days after submitting and having to travel here, but hey, newly minted, I suppose I am. One other aspect I'd say of these critical approaches is last year, OER 17, the politics of open was quite transformative, I think, for a lot of people, because not only were critical approaches woven in a lot of the work people were talking about, but they were foregrounded. People were talking about gender, race, geography, just inclusivity at a very deep level. So it was the object of our conversations, not just the subtext. All in all, this was a slide of mine from 2016. What do we mean when we're talking about open? We mean many things. It's not universally experienced, and I think that's very clear. It's complex. It's contextual. It requires digital capability and agency. It's both descriptive and aspirational, and I think this is why people sometimes struggle with defining open, because it's a goal, it's an aspiration that we move towards, but it also describes what we do in some ways, like when we talk about OER. And critical discourse is essential, and I often quote Trezi McMillan-Cottom when I talk about critical approaches, that we really need to move from access to equity and justice. And I think many of us in this room are engaged in that work. So when I started my own PhD research, I began with that question, which was really about individual practice around OEP. So in academic settings, like my own, in which the use of OEP is not required, requested, expected, or specifically supported, why do some educators and not others choose to use open educational practices? And the question was actually even broader than that, because there have been some wonderful studies of open educators, characterizing open educators, but I chose to do an interpretive study of educators across the whole spectrum. So the educators who were boldly open and being an inspiration for others, to those who wanted nothing to do it and said, no, thanks, don't talk to me about social media or any of those things. I think the only way we should interact with students is via email and the VLE. And then people in the middle, maybe people who had stepped up to more open practices and stepped back, or people who were just slowly emerging in their open practice. I really wanted to understand what was happening in the movement along that continuum, if you like. So what I studied was meaning making and decision making around openness. So not how did people understand my definition or our definition of open, but how do individual practitioners, what does open mean to them, how do they define it themselves, and how do they use that then to make their decisions about openness. And then those that do use open educational practices, I tried to understand their practices in a little more depth. So needless to say, there was a very complex continuum of practices, of course. But, you know, encapsulating just some of the studies in this very complex mix of digital practices, looking from less open to more open, these are not meant as poles by any means or a binary, because surely we are beyond thinking about openness in terms of binaries. But if you think of those two things as poles of continuum, four things really emerged and they were practices around digital identity, digital networking, digital tools for teaching that people chose, and use of where we are. And it was very, very interesting, as I said, some people were clearly at one end or the other, some were moving, some, you know, of course it depended on context for individuals. But one of the most important things was that many people perceived potential benefits of openness, but they were outweighed by their perception of the risks of openness. So we do not have a policy at our institution, like many institutions do not, Edinburgh is an exception and there are others. So that lack of policy spoke very loudly. So there were people who were trying things and thought, you know, if something goes wrong, I'm not really sure if the university will have my back, and maybe they won't, but who cares? And other people said the same thing and said, I don't know if the university will have my back, I have no idea what the policy is, and so I'm not going to do that, I just don't think it's safe. So my work now is really going to be moving more into policy. But everything on the right column really characterised the people who were what we would call open educators. So they had resident identities using the visitor resident continuum. They used social media both personally and professionally, used the VLE and email, of course, but also used all kinds of open tools and social media. There was actually in fact very little intentional use of OER, because we have no policy around OER at our university. And again, hopefully that will change. But those people who were in that right hand column, these were the dimensions that they shared. So if we want to say what makes an open educator in the context that I studied, one Irish university looking at academic staff broadly defined, full-time and part-time permanent and not permanent. These were the dimensions that those people shared. And the pink semicircle is the one that roared out more than all others. So this whole notion of balancing privacy and openness. If people felt that they couldn't safely do that, they would not choose to be open. But those who did had found ways. And of course, you can see the link between the pink and the orange. They're very connected. So the people who did manage to that balancing act were people who had the digital literacies or capabilities to know that I can use this tool for that and that tool for that and a different identity here and so on. And thereby kind of manage that tension between privacy and openness. The outer circle were things really more relation to how people teach and how they think of themselves as teachers. So most of my 19 participants valued social learning. I'm not saying that the open educators were the only ones that valued social learning, but the ones who were open also embodied some notion of challenging traditional teaching well expectations in some way. So some people talked in the mode of having humility as a learner, wanting students to see them as a learner as well as a teacher. And there were other ways that people did that. And I can talk more about that later. One complexity around this. I don't want to go into too much depth. Okay, five minutes is the inner circle operates at two dimensions. So if you if you like, we often help staff develop their digital capabilities as individuals. But what stops people sometimes from engaging and say using social media with students is well, how do I do that as a teacher?  So I think we need to think about those two levels of helping staff do that. And then the same with balancing privacy and openness. Because again, that seemed to be a barrier for many staff. One of the things that I thought to include in my study was I really wanted to speak to students as well, because I felt like this pedagogical interaction that's going on when we engage in open practices is is between, you know, educators and students and others. So I wanted there to be a student voice and unfortunately it wasn't as as deep as I would have liked it to be. But I did follow up interviews with two of the 19 participants educators and then surveyed their students. And what what arose were many, many more tensions. So there were some assumptions both overt and latent made by educators around how open they think students are or how willing they might be to engage in social media or what tools they use. And those were often unmatched by what the students came back and said. So the students in open responses, I asked them to just describe their digital identity. The majority of them used words like quiet, reserved, hidden, private. So they totally understand the perils of loss of privacy. And we're managing that in their own way. So when their lecturer came in and said, let's use Twitter without maybe asking them about it. Most of them didn't engage with it. Because there was no kind of pre work around that. So, you know, I really think this it kind of reinforces what I what I would say my my findings are kind of in one slide really is that I found that practicing openness is complex. Of course, it's always personal. Because once we step outside the bounded space of the VLE and we were identified with our role, our digital identity is personal. So our personal values around privacy around who we are as a teacher, our philosophy of teaching and so on come into play in how we enact openness. It's contextual. So it's very different. We might decide to interact with our students in very different ways if we're in engineering or if we're in social work, or if we're, you know, a adjunct member of faculty or someone who has tenure, all these kinds of things come into play. And finally, it's continually negotiated. So really even the people who have been open for some time, probably all the people in this room, we all know that really every every tweet, you know, one of my participants said it's a lot of work for one tweet, or she's tweeting, every time we engage in openness, we're thinking, you know, will I share this? Will I use that hashtag? You know, is all of those questions. So this notion of continual negotiation is work that people are doing, and it's not recognized and supported to just a very small extent, I would say, particularly at my institution. So, you know, I think my work and the work of a lot of you who are who, you know, there's so many people in this room whose work really inspires me and I've learned from feeds into, you know, this that Audrey Waters expressed so well is that we really need to rebuild institutions, if we are working within institutions, the value of humans' minds and lives and integrity and safety. So holding on to those values of what openness can enable and but also keeping in mind the importance of helping people to care for their private selves, protect their privacy to the extent that they define it and they wish to and so on. And that's difficult work, but I suppose it's occasions like this where we share our work with each other that can embolden us to go out and do that work in our institutions. And Henry Jenkins said this back in 2013, if we truly value participatory culture, we must recognize the right of individuals to choose not to participate, you know, and I think we could replace participatory culture with the word openness there also. It's, you know, they're very similar. So we always, students, staff, everyone must always have the option, you know, not to participate, not to be open and that needs to be okay. And finally, in the face of all that, all those tensions and risks and awful things that are there. Since November 2016, I think I've used this slide in every single one of my presentations because, yeah, we face enormous constraints in the work we do, in the culture that we live in.  And again, it's occasions like this where we can kind of draw strength from each other. So, you know, I just, I always would like to end on a hopeful note and look forward to hearing what you all have to say. So thank you. Stand next to the mic and we're doing all questions at the end or- Let's do questions now while, is that all right? Yeah, that's fine. Fresh in your mind. And I've been asked to give people time to wait for the microphone because this is being streamed. And if the microphone doesn't get to you, then I will repeat the question. Okay. So, any questions for Catherine? Yes, Donna. Thank you. That was, is this on? Can you hear me? Yeah. That was wonderful, Catherine. Thank you. I really like what you were saying about the humility of the learner and how teachers felt it was important to communicate that. So, I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about that? Yeah, one person voiced it in that way and then, you know, several people talked about that and I was able to code it in that way. And it was people who felt it was very important for them as a teacher to show themselves as a learner always. And they weren't really connected to this role of being the expert in the room. So, those are the people who opened up their classrooms and said, well, we're going to invite Henry Jenkins or Lauren Campbell, you know, in to talk to us today. And they wanted to ask questions of those people as well and wouldn't be afraid to make mistakes, whether they were technical or around content or anything with students and also engage with students around things like, you know, what social media tools are you using? How are you using them? What are they good for? What tools could be used for this class now? What would you be willing to use? You know, and I think that it came out quite strongly in the open educators. And I don't know if that, if any of you kind of reflected on that, do you feel that in yourselves? I'm not sure. I'd love to know how the, what I presented from my educators resonates with other people's experience. Hi, it's Yoram. Thank you for your talk. I wonder, did you find and talk to educators that turned away from openness? Yes, very interesting. Yes, I did. There were, I'm thinking of one person in particular now, because I can tell the story, probably better than saying there were a few. It was someone who had engaged with you, who had used Twitter to, it was in a kind of an English literature class and students were being different characters and tweeting. And A, there were some context collapse among students and other people entering the conversation with a bit of teasing and things that he wasn't prepared for, but which he felt he dealt with. But B, he said, it just became such a tension on him that he wasn't sure if he was using it right. And if he wasn't sure if he was engaging enough, just this real weight of, you know, I'm not really sure if I'm doing it right. And I don't have the time to kind of spend, to make sure I'm doing it right. So I think I'm just not going to do that anymore. So kind of two things really. Do you think that today's social media platforms are working as they should in terms of open education? And no. And I think, I wish Alan Levine was in the room. A few of us spent the last day at Coventry and Alan Levine was sharing some open source alternatives he has to many of the tools that we know use, Slack and PowerPoint and all these things.  So it's another thing that I think many open educators who did use open tools before now feel that that's not a legitimate ethical choice with students. So yeah, and these are the kinds of conversations that I have with other open educators all the time. So at the moment, if people do elect to use it, it must be in conversation with students and also the work that's done on the front end is around how to protect your privacy, the importance of digital identity and so on. So that's the work that certainly that I would do as a practitioner with students, but I am ambivalent about it for sure. Okay. It's gone up to the back there. Sorry. Okay. Tony, it's coming back. Thanks, Catherine. At the weekend, as Luna's already said, Chris Bourg did a pretty amazing speech at the Creative Commons summit and she talked about openness as a privilege. I wonder whether that surfaced in your research, that sense of, you know, privacy and being able to balance those things that you described is a privilege that some people have and some people just don't have. Yes, indeed. Yeah, great question. I watched Chris's talk as well. It was quite amazing. And Sava Singh as well talks about this, privilege in a number of ways. You know, at a very elemental level, there are people who chose to be open in the early days of open and I count myself in that group who have this network of educators that, you know, we can now all go into Slack and all these other spaces because we have our networks. And if we then encourage our students to go into the same tools in a very different environment, there's privilege there.  If you're any of those things, you are less likely to experience risk or abuse online, you know, on any of the open tools. So again, I think the most important point is just to be open to clarity about that with students. Because the alternative to not being open though is recognizing all those risks and then fleeing from participatory culture and the open web. And then we have no voice there. So, you know, it's navigating that, negotiating that, modeling how we negotiate that.   So unless we're helping them within our disciplines and our institutions to engage in those practices and protect their privacy and understand the risks, then we're failing, I think. Catherine, I'm going to have to stop you there. But I think that was a really important point we ended on. Thank you very much.


Good morning everyone welcome to Monday. It is Monday September 27th And it has been a mixed bag of stuff over here already and it's only 10 o'clock in the morning You'd never know it by looking out the window now because there's blue sky But it is actually raining on and off here in Kelowna today In fact, we had like Vancouver type rain where it just downpoured for a good 10 15 minutes a couple hours Go which is very rare for Kelowna. We don't get those downpours. We get a lot of sprinkles But not those massive Torrential rains that our coastal friends seem to get so pretty excited that we're having rain in Kelowna We have needed rain for a very long time And we're supposed to get more rain this afternoon even though right now. It's super sunny So of course on every rainy day. Well, who am I kidding on any day of the week I always have tea, but tea is always extra special when it rains. So I've been Chugging tea like crazy today But here's what's really hitting me upside of the head today is the end of the week Signifies the start of Q4. That's right my friends We are literally on the downward slide to the end of the year and of course if you're a full-focus planner user That means you're now flipping over to your last Edition of your full-focus planner for Q4 Whatever method you use to organize your goals It means now you have to revisit all of your goals and see what you can get done in Q4 so that's what I wanted to talk to you about just really quickly today by the way If you are In that cram mode for Q4 goals and you're alongside with me Just drop me a little note in the comments because I know this can afflict a lot of us We all start to feel that stress of trying to get everything done the things that we haven't gotten done yet in these final 90 days in addition we're getting ready for Christmas Thanksgiving all of those things I'm a hockey mom so it is full-on hockey season over at the Calderwood household I'm never home because I am living in hockey rinks and coffee shops You know 24-7 it seems like so there's a lot going on in Q4 for a lot of us whether you're a parent of an athlete or you're Getting ready to host Christmas at your house Whatever that looks like but we still need to examine everything that we had planned for this year And try and see if we can wrap up the year in getting some of those goals done the thing is 90 days is a really short time window to tackle a ton of these things that we set out to do at the beginning of the year So if you're like me and you had maybe 20 or 30 goals and projects that you wanted to do and you still literally have 15 or 20 of those projects left and that's me right now Here's what I would hopefully like you to do is Set aside the expectation that you are going to get all 15 of those unfinished projects done It's not going to happen But here's what can happen is you can focus on one or two Three or four of those projects and you have 90 days to get those very specific projects done What this does is it does set you up for a few wins, right? We can get those projects done We can start to see some momentum on some of those goals And even though we didn't get the other 15 projects done Here's the second thing you're going to do is re-examine all of those goals and objectives and projects and decide if they're worthy enough to even be Completed whether you want to do it this year or if you want to see if you can tackle those into 2022 Often some of the projects that we set out at the beginning of the year they didn't come to fruition because other projects seem to pop up and that's what happened to me this year is I had big goals around a certain part of my business and I'm not meeting those goals and of course I'm not Doing as much work in that area to see some improvement and some achievement But that's because some other things grabbed my attention that I felt had more priority this year And so that part one part of my business really did take a little bit of a backseat as these other very interesting and Unexpected opportunities popped up so super happy about what's going on over here But it did mean that this school needs a bit of refinement and revisiting so that's what I'd like you to do as well is Just extend it yourself a little bit of grace about the things that we weren't able to accomplish this year we still have 90 days to get to those high priority goals and again take one two or three of those and Give it your all through the end of the year. Is anyone else feeling like that like these We just can't even decide which ones we want to accomplish at the end of the year Drop a note in the comments if you're also feeling this way You've got all of these goals and you're not sure which ones you're actually going to tackle The third thing if you have time I would really like for you to set aside some dates for your end of year or beginning of year business plan Retreat. This is something that I do every single year. Well, at least for the last nine or ten years And it is it is literally my favorite time of year It is two days by myself Usually sequestered in a hotel, but sometimes I've had to get creative Where I look at everything that I would like to do in my business and in my life And I start to create a plan for the upcoming year It says prosaic as setting some business goals with some revenue targets all the way down to what books I want to read throughout the year So if you set aside some time for your personal business plan retreat or a retreat with your small team I've actually created some agendas for you to use In fact, I will put a quick note in the comments where you can find these sample business plan retreat agendas and These agendas. There's a few different formats. There's a half-day agenda format. There's a two-full-day agenda format There's a format for if you are part of a small team and a format if you are An entrepreneur like myself, so take a look at the sample agendas See if any of them will work for your upcoming business plan retreat Which brings me to The resources of the day There's a few resources. I wanted to pass along to you today the one that I've just put in the comments So sample business plan retreats But also a book that I would like you to consider here in Q4. I've talked about this book before It was recommended to me by my friend Stephanie. Hi Stephanie and it's essentialism by Greg McKeown and you know Talk about the universe answering your prayers in unique ways. I started reading this book at the beginning of the year I got it from my public library And if you know me, I hate spending money on books because I'd be Flat out broke my friends. I do read a lot of books So I hate spending money on books love love love my public library Love this book so much though. And so I put it out to the universe that someday I'm gonna find this book at value village And then only spend six dollars on the book. Well, guess what? I now have my own Crisp clear. It's pristine. No one's ever read this copy six bucks value village. By the way There's my other resource tip of the week value village or other thrift stores to find some books Especially books that you want to refer to again and again my entire bookshelf. I shouldn't say attire 80% of my bookshelf is value village finds so huge fan Anyways, here's the thing about this book at this time of year is it talks about and I'm reading Literally from the book. This book is not about getting more done in less time Okay, so if your multitasking come back to me, it is not about getting more done in less time It's about getting only the right things done So a great book to tackle in Q4 as we decide what are those right things to get done in the next 90 days So that's my book suggestion of the week the webinar of the week Is taxi talk global unplugged? This is a full two-day event virtual Of course hosted by Liz Caruso and her Massive network of friends. There are a number of event prof rock stars Contributing to taxi talk global. There are links to taxi talk global In the comments and I will update the descriptions to have those links as well If you're on LinkedIn look for taxi talk global and you'll find You'll find information about the event. It is a free virtual two-day event with panels and experts coming in to talk about Virtual events and and a whole bunch of stuff You really need to check out the agenda and see if you can put some time aside to join the event over the next couple days and then of course the Challenge of the week is to examine your Q4 goals and objectives my friends We still have 90 days. It is not the end of the year Yes, we've got some holidays coming up But but we still have some really really good business days ahead of us to finish off the year strong and set us up for success for 2022 That's what I'm going to be doing this week is getting ready for Q4 for 2022 and looking at my bull goals for For the next 90 days Thank you for joining me for today's Monday motivation a bit longer today at almost 11 minutes I try to keep these under 10 minutes for y'all But it was an important topic as we had in to Q4 like I said those but Sample business plan agendas can be found at liankholderwood.com for its last sample agendas Download a copy make edits as you see fit for your team and start to plan your business plan retreat Have a wonderful Monday wherever this finds you sun rain or snow It's gonna be a fantastic week y'all have a great one. Bye for now


We're gonna wrap it up, man. We appreciate it.   He was walking boldly. It was there was some clenching in the going on Walking on his tippy to it Oh What a watery pops


Does God really look like a blue man dancing on a person, a big bearded man in the clouds, or a swirly circle with a couple of dots in it? It would likely be arrogant of any of us to presume we could describe an image of God. However, if we can understand that all of these depictions are human attempts to describe greater concepts than can be made into forms, then we free ourselves from the attachment to those images and can go beyond what we knew before. As many may recall, the first two of the ten commandments reflect this, not putting any lesser gods before the supreme power, nor should we attempt to create images of that supreme power, because it cannot be done.


Hello and welcome to the session. I'm Asha and I'm going to help you with the following question which says, give a definition. For each of the following terms, are there other terms that need to be defined first, what are they and how am I to define them? First is parallel lines, second perpendicular lines, third line segment, fourth radius of a circle and the fifth one is a square. Let us now begin with the solution and some other terms which need to be defined first before defining the given five terms are point, line, circle and correlator. So the definition of a point is a small dot made by a sharp pencil on a sheet of paper. A point has no dimension, it is only position. Second is a line and the basic concept about a line is that it should be straight and that it should extend indefinitely in both the directions. The third definition is of a circle and a circle is the set of all those points in a plane whose distance from a fixed point remains constant and the last one is a correlator and it is a closed figure made of four line segments. So these are some definitions with the help of which we will define the given five terms. First let us define parallel lines to be parallel, nonintersecting, they are coplanar. That is we have two lines L, M which are nonintersecting and a coplanar. Both lines L and M lies on the same plane and they do not intersect. So we can say that L is parallel to M. So this completes the first part and now let us define perpendicular lines. To be perpendicular they form a right angle at the point of intersection. Gloving figure shows intersecting at right angles. So we can say that L is perpendicular on M or M is perpendicular on L. So this completes the second part and now proceeding on to the third part where we have to define line segment. Line segment is a root of a line with two definite end points. Suppose we have a line L, two points A and B on L then this A B is called a line segment and this is called line segment A B or B A. So this completes the third part and now proceeding on to the fourth part where we have to define radius of a circle. The distance in the center between a circle is called the radius. That is if we have a circle over its center then at any point on the circle A and the line segment joining the center and this point A is called the radius of the circle. So this completes the fourth part. Now proceeding on to the last part where we have to define a square. A quadrilateral in which four angles, right angles, four sides are equal is called a square. So this is a quadrilateral having four sides. A, B, C, D is the quadrilateral in which angle D, angle C, angle B, angle A are all right angles and all the four line segments A, B, C, C, D and A, D are equal. So this is a square. So this completes the last part and hence the solution. Take care and have a good day.


Testing audio. The Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Aspruth Jackson, and I am one of the ministers here. This morning I am joined by my colleague Kelly Crocker, and by the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, and Stephen Gregorius. The vision of FUS is growing souls, connecting with one another, and embodying our UU values in our lives, our community, and our world. We are so glad to be able to connect with you virtually today, and we hope that you will be able to join us for our virtual coffee hour, immediately following the service. The information for joining can be found on the homepage of our website, FUSMadison.org, as well as on the slide that will be seen again after the postlude. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after today's service, and we encourage you to take a moment and learn about upcoming programs and activities. I invite you now to join me in a moment of silence, to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. We see all as it is, and may it all be as we see it. May we be the ones to make it as it should be, for if not us, who? If not now, when? If we have any hope of transforming the world and changing ourselves, we must be bold enough to step into our discomfort, brave enough to be clumsy there, loving enough to forgive ourselves and others. This is answering the cry of justice with the work of peace. This is redeeming the pain of history and with the grace of wisdom. This is the work we are called to do and this is the call we answer now. To be the barrier and the bridge, to be the living embodiment of our principles, to be about the work of building the beloved community, to be a people of intention and a people of conscience. May we, as a people of faith, be granted the strength to be so bold, so brave and so loving. Now I invite you to join with me in the words of aspiration for the kindling of our chalice that appear on the screen. We join our voices in a holy communion of mind and heart, dedicated to the promises that bind us in compassion with one another. In this hour, we light the flame that signals our intention to find the sacred in every living thing. Bro. Tell a story about Anansi, the spider, and how the king who did not care very much for him called him to his court one day and said, Anansi, you are so clever. I have a mission that only you can possibly fulfill and if you do so, I will give you a great big reward for it. You see, I've decided that there are two things in this world that I need very badly to have and I know that you can get them for me.  The king said, well, that would be too easy.  Go out and find it for me. Anansi thought, well, that's not a very easy challenge at all. And he went home and on his way home, he passed a flock of birds that were flying overhead and he called out to them because he'd done a favor for the birds in the past, you understand? He called out to them and said, my friends, I need your help. Will you give me one feather each? Just one feather each. And they thought it was an odd request, but they did it. So all the birds in the sky dropped one feather down to the ground and Anansi gathered them up and put them all over his body until he looked a little bit like a bird, I suppose. Funny sort of bird. And then, being a bird, he flew through the air back to where the king was and he nested in a tree high above where the king was talking with some of his advisors and he listened to the king talking about his plan. The king said, I can't stand that Anansi. He thinks he's so clever, he thinks he knows everything. He doesn't know this though, so he's not going to be able to fulfill my quest. And one of the advisors asked the king what it was that he actually wanted and he said, well, what I actually want are the golden slippers that death wears when he goes to sleep at night and the golden broom that he uses in order to sweep out his house, but no one who ever visits death comes back anyway, so even if he figures it out, I'll still win. Anansi, still in the form of a bird, thought that is definitely a problem, but he flew back down to the ground and decided, well, there was no thing to do about it other than to go and visit death.  And on the way there, he passed a stream, he came to the stream and it was busy and fast running enough that he knew it was going to be a little bit of trouble across, but he thought, well, I should have my lunch first. So he sat down to eat his lunch at the river's edge and while he was eating, he heard a voice from the river asking him to share his meal. He thought, well, it's always good to make a friend, so he tossed a little bit of his food into the river and the river was very pleased by this and so it slowed just enough that there were a few stones in the river that he could hop across and get to the other side. So he came to the house where death lives and he just knocked at the front door. Death was very pleased to have a visitor. No one ever wants to go see death, you understand, so he doesn't get a lot of opportunities to entertain. So he invited Anansi to stay the night. Anansi took him up on the offer. Now he was wise enough to realize that if he fell asleep in death's house, he wasn't gonna wake up again. But he just lay there in the bed, trying to stay awake and death came in to check on him to see if he'd fallen asleep and saw that his guest was still awake and said, is there something I can do to make you more comfortable? Anansi said, well, I can never seem to fall asleep unless I have a pair of gold slippers on my feet. And death said, well, it just so happens that I have a pair and so Anansi put the gold slippers on his feet and he went back to trying very hard not to fall asleep. He stayed awake the whole night and so he never had to worry about waking up again. In the morning, death was bothered by this.  Anansi said, let me help you with that friend and he grabbed the golden broom that was sitting in the corner and he chased the fly all around death's house and then out the door and into the yard and then down the road and before death realized it, Anansi had made off with the gold broom and the gold slippers but when death did realize it he was not happy about it and he chased after Anansi until Anansi came to the river again and said, my friend, my friend, I need your help. Death is chasing me. I need to get to the other side of you very quickly. And so the river parted ways entirely and Anansi ran across it on dry ground in those golden slippers and then the water rushed back in just as death was getting to the river and swept him away and Anansi made his escape. So he stopped at home just long enough to get a sack to put the broom and the slippers in and he went to see the king. He came before the king and said, I think that I have found those two things that you have been looking for, your majesty. But just to make sure, why don't you tell me what they were before I show you what's in my sack? The king was sort of caught. So he said, well, what I wanted were the two golden slippers that death wears at night and the golden broom that he uses to sweep out his house.  But the king had a thought just before Anansi left with all of that treasure that he gave to him. He said, you know, earlier yesterday, I saw a very strange bird up in the tree. Do you know what bird that was, Anansi? Anansi, who was very clever, said, your highness, I cannot answer that question. After all, I don't know everything. I invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering. We give freely and generously to this offering in order to sustain our community here and also the ongoing work of our outreach offering recipients. This week's offering will be shared with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. The UUSC advances human rights and social justice around the world, partnering with those who confront unjust power structures and mobilizing to challenge oppressive policies. Their work is grounded in the belief that all people have inherent power and dignity. So you will see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will see our text to give information there as well. And we thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. On November 10th, 1898, there was a violent coup in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. A group of organized insurrectionists who had been telegraphing their militant anti-democratic intentions for months, openly marching in the streets, holding rallies in public places and threatening to murder their political opponents took the final step that they'd been building towards. They assembled at the local armory and through some combination of collaboration and intimidation, seized control of the guns that were theoretically intended to defend the city from hostile forces such as themselves. Their first target was the office of a local newspaper which they burned to the ground, part of a coordinated effort that saw similar attacks on presses all over the state. The bulk of the mob went from there to terrorize whole neighborhoods, destroying businesses and attacking unarmed folks both on the street and in their own homes. Meanwhile, the ring leaders of the affair executed the next step in their plan. They rounded up the mayor, the entire board of alderman and the chief of police and forced them each to resign from office at gunpoint. Then, by no authority other than the weapons in their hands this group appointed an entirely new city council and made the mastermind of their plot, the new mayor. The newly and illegally appointed mayor then produced a list of leading figures in the city who might be most able to oppose his authority and that of the mob and gave orders to his men to round them all up. These undesirables were force-marched to the local railway station and put onto trains bound out of state, in some cases accompanied by some of their armed kidnappers to ensure that they would not return. Somewhere between 60 and 300 people were killed in the Wilmington coup and its coordinated riot. Perhaps another 2,000 or so folks fled the city having suffered the loss of their livelihoods and now in fear for their lives. The city's elected government was never restored. The coup plotters won and the state and federal governments never challenged the men who had by violence forted the results of a free election and taken power for themselves. What ought to have been a crisis of the highest order in a country that aspires to be a democracy went relatively under-reported in its day and remains a fairly obscure historical episode today. And we can explain the passive acceptance of it then and the ignorance of it now by no other means than the power of white supremacy. That term can and I believe should accurately be applied to any system or structure that establishes or maintains power and privilege for white folks at the expense of others. But in this case, I do not even have to make a value judgment to use it. The people who organized the coup of 1898 in Wilmington used it to describe their cause. Their stated goal was to establish total white supremacy in the city and eventually throughout the state. The first decades after the end of the Civil War were a time of great change in the United States and particularly in the former states of the Confederacy. Constitutional amendments had outlawed slavery and established a new legal equality regardless of race. It was a deeply imperfect process and there were still tremendous racial disparities in terms of access to power, to wealth and to opportunity. But the country still had moved dramatically in the direction of equality. In Wilmington, North Carolina, black folks, most of whom had survived slavery were the majority in the city.  The civic government was multiracial in its values. The term then was fusionist. And though it can't be said clearly enough that the black folks there and throughout the country were still at a spectacular disadvantage starting from zero and subject to discrimination and threat in nearly every sector of society, nonetheless, they were managing to thrive and grow in collective power and personal resources. This is what the coup was about. Destroying the hard-won gains of the black community in Wilmington, destroying the ability of black folks and the white folks who had made common cause with them to exercise their political rights and re-establishing the sort of government of, by, and for white supremacists that had prevailed before the outbreak of the Civil War. Every one of the people killed by their insurrection was black. And they managed to drive so many black folks out of Wilmington that the city became majority white. At the next election, the insurrectionists managed to win not a fair election, but a legally certified one. It might be that you've heard some or all of this before. If that's the case, I hope that you do not mind the review. But I feel confident in predicting that it is a new story to a great many of us, despite the many very fine and advanced educations to be found in our congregation. So perhaps we may take this as an illustration of how poorly we know and understand ourselves as a nation. It is not by accident that we remain collectively ignorant of our own history. And the Wilmington coup is at least as much white history as black and as profoundly American history as is the Gettysburg Address or George Washington crossing the Delaware. But the contrast in what is generally known and what is generally not is again attributable to white supremacy, less in this case to people who actively carry that banner with pride, but instead to the structures and systems made up of countless individual choices that make whiteness powerful, preferable, and normal in the United States at the expense of black and indigenous folks and other people of color. In his deeply personal essay, Letter from a Region in My Mind, the great James Baldwin writes of how infrequently those with power give it over to those without it. It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep. They suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping. Whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be. The way that we collectively understand our history, or don't, shapes the reality in which we live and cast each of us in roles which we did not and could not have chosen when we were born into this world, but which we were each assigned on the basis of the circumstances of our birth. Nonetheless. And by now I trust that there is someone out there who might wish to say, all right, Reverend, that was a nice enough history lesson and you've shown off your political science degree. But didn't you also go to seminary one time? And isn't that the more relevant education for the job that we all called you here to do? Is a belief commonly held that questions of racial injustice are fundamentally political in nature? And that political matters are necessarily distinct from spiritual ones. But it is one of the spiritual insights of our tradition that we are all connected in the interdependent web of existence. And any system of injustice, racism most certainly included is a sorrowful reminder that the connections we share can harm as well as nurture us. The long history of injustice that set the table of our present era binds us to each other in ways that cannot be discounted or set aside. Put starkly, if my life is enmeshed in a system that oppresses my neighbor, I cannot grow my soul by ignoring that fact. That one level of painful connection alienates us on every other level. So instead, the pursuit of spiritual growth demands that I do what is in my power to disrupt that system of oppression in which all of us are caught and change it. The feminist author, professor, and activist Bell Hooks recently of Blessed Memory use the term dominator culture to describe the overlapping hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, religion, and other identities that shape power and privilege in our society. And the way in which challenges to those hierarchies are met with either the threat of or actual violence. In her words, dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity, moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences. This is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values of meaningful community. Forging a world of shared values for humankind is one of the ultimate spiritual aspirations of our religious tradition. So the work of racial justice is inescapably part of our collective work as Unitarian Universalists and pursuing it helps to remove an impediment to the personal work of our faith, seeking to live a meaningful life. But returning to James Baldwin's essay, he articulates there something even more personal, even more precious that should make all of us care about the work of racial equity. Baldwin says, it is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here, not merely in the personal sense, but it's a state of being or a state of grace, not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. That line once again, love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. If you have ever loved someone and been loved by someone, then you know that the experience inevitably teaches you things you did not expect to learn about yourself. Sometimes hard things you wish you didn't have to discover and sometimes wonderful things that you're grateful to get to know. Through the experience of loving and being loved, we might come to see ourselves as truly beautiful for the first time. We might also be forced to confront our own frailties, addictions or traumas. And both of those insights are gifts because both of them are true. Our country wears a mask of a simple, untroubling history in which things always get better over time and our thorneest challenges lie behind us.  But once I examined that mask, I felt very clearly that I could no longer live within it. The good news I have for you is that the only way out of that mask is love. Love of the generous, tenacious and sometimes frustratingly honest sort. And the story that you heard earlier, the king set a task for an anse without telling him what it was. Sometimes the work of dismantling systems of oppression in pursuit of racial justice can feel impossible in the same sort of way, like a challenge that we don't even know the terms of. Sometimes it is a struggle to begin. I don't ever want to tell you that there is only an exactly one right way to do, well, almost anything. But I do know that we become more effective at working for change when we understand the history that brought us to our present circumstances. So if you feel moved to take some tangible action right now, or if you already felt that way and just hadn't found the next right step yet, I want to particularly offer to you the next session of Black History for a New Day. This African-American history course is designed to help folks engage meaningfully with the hard and too often unknown stories of the black experience in this country. It's organized by local racial justice organization in Himaya, and enrollment is open now for the next cohort of folks from our congregation to participate in it, engaging with the material together in order to support each other in better facing the deep wrongs we are called to change. More information can be found in the red floors and on our website, fussmedicine.org. If you're interested, but have trouble finding the connection, please don't hesitate to contact me about it. Just a few days now, after the one year anniversary of the assault on our national capital, when a violent mob sought to dismantle a multiracial government in order to restore more traditional hierarchies, it seems more important than ever that we learn from our history in order to develop strategies to avoid repeating it.  In possibly his most repeated quotation, James Baldwin said, not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. So often the history and reality of racial injustice goes unfaced because for those of us who are white, to face it would mean facing ourselves. And that is a frightening prospect. But if we have the courage to begin it, the prospect is also wonderful to be able to look upon ourselves really and truly and perhaps for the first time start the work to make change. Each week we gather our hearts at times dancing with joy or drowning in sorrow. We bring these cares here in the spirit of community, knowing they are all held in love. This week we light a candle of great joy for Rob and Mary Savage who are welcoming their first grandchild, Charles Robert Rykoff, who was born on December 27th. We send our congratulations to the very happy parents, Britt and Jeremy, and we send all of them our best wishes as they welcome Charlie into their family. We light candles of gratitude for two recent birthdays in our congregation, Charlotte Wolf on January 6th, and Sparrow Senty in late December. Very happy birthdays to you both. And we light a candle of celebration for Samantha Herndon who was married to Bryce on New Year's Eve. We send them our congratulations and our best wishes for all the years ahead. We light a candle of loss for Louis Mitroff who passed away this past Monday at the age of 99. Louis would have been 100 on February 7th and a celebration of life will happen virtually on Zoom on February 7th. We light three more candles of sorrow and gratitude for the lives of Jane Preiser, Pamela McGee and George Berry, three of our members who have all passed away. We remember all of them with great fondness and love and we know they are already so deeply missed by those who loved them. And we light one last candle for all the joys and all the sorrows that we hold in the silent sanctuaries of our hearts. May we hold them all in love, in gratitude, and in hope. We are none of us seamless, none of us free of worn patches or stray threads, none of us perfectly or entirely whole. Rather, our lives are defined by our open stitches, the places where we have been blessed with incompleteness so that we may be allowed the possibility to grow.