Hi, my name is Monty Johnson, I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and this is the second of my lectures on Albert Camus, The Plague, La Peste, originally published in 1947. I'm using the translation of Stuart Gilbert published in 1948. So part two of five, and in the overall structure, after the introductory part one, which explains that the book is a narrative chronicle of events over approximately a year of a plague affecting a French colony. The main characters had been introduced as the main events were narrated in a fairly linear and chronological fashion. In part two, which begins with the city gates being closed since plague has officially been declared. At this point, the narration slows considerably and becomes much less linear. There is in depth character development in several different ways of Rio, Tarot, Rem, Bear, Grand, and Father Pantelou in their the descriptions of their initial responses to the extraordinary circumstances of the plague. And especially towards the end of this part, we get the most explicitly kind of philosophical reflections. And this is by far the longest part, almost half of the entire book. And so these detailed descriptions of characters are going to set up various changes that happen quite a bit more rapidly in the subsequent parts and through fewer words depict large changes of character. But this part is very long on description and philosophical digression. Now the first thing that's described is the misery of the stay at home orders and the effects of the quarantining of the city, which is explicitly compared both to exile and prison. That is being forcibly confined in a certain place like being in prison. And yet, even though that's in your own home, feeling like everything in your home and around it has changed so that you're in a foreign place or exiled from your actual home. In part one, the commercial and mercantile character of the town or on were emphasized. Now the description of the abrupt cessation of business activity is used to represent the despondency of the citizens. The only businesses still making money are those selling alcohol or movie theaters, which are pathetically packed, despite only showing reruns. And eventually the infrastructure of the whole town, its hospitals, schools, cemeteries, churches, stadiums, and even subway cars are repurposed and reconceived in order to deal with the plague. So we see this transformation of the environment and the world around them, and this violent transformation, how the various characters respond to it. The people as a whole are also described. Those many of them are cut off from loved ones that they thought they would only be temporarily separated from. And these make individual appeals for exceptions to the travel restrictions. But those are always denied by the officials.  Everybody is in the same boat. Everybody has a reason for this not to be happening and a desire for it not to be happening. But no exceptions can be made. There is also described universal frustration in communication, whether it's brief, like in the form of telegrams, so literally telegraphic speech, or when people at length attempt to hand write love letters, all of these attempts seem to fail. Even consolation from one's neighbors become impossible. You try to unburden yourself about something you're suffering to your neighbor, but the response inevitably is experiences hurtful and leaves you regretting that you even mentioned it to them. So people are simultaneously tied to one another, but also cut off from one another. People try to improve themselves and their relations to others, such as their missing partners or parents or children, and they try to become the parents that they never were, or treat their parents like they haven't to this point, or treat their wives or husbands differently. But the increased concern for these people actually has a compounding kind of depressive effect and people prove unable to authentically carry this out. And the plague is compared to bringing the entire town into a kind of exile, which again is a paradoxical idea. They're trapped in the town and yet exiled from it. So one either dwells in the past or the has a desire to speed up the present. But there's no clear imagination of the future possible, or to the extent that it is this imagination is rapidly overtaken by fear. So quote, hostile to the past, impatient of the present and cheated of the future. We are very much like those whom men's justice or hatred forces to live behind prison bars. By the way, the an alternative working title for the plague at one point was the prisoners. And the idea was going to be that we're focused on the prisoners, the people who are cast into the situation and trapped where they are. And that title would have brought out, I think, even better than the title of the plague, the focus on the differential effects on different kinds of characters as a result of the fundamental cause of the plague. Now, in at first, there is intense speculation about how long the plague will last. But people finally get over doing that because they will bitterly resign themselves to some finite period of suffering, but then inevitably be disappointed when it's realized that no end or limit can be imposed on the plague. As it were, it operates on its own time. And you can't predeterminate beforehand. And so they quote drifted through life rather than lived the prey of aimless days and sterile memories dwelling in the past and unable to escape an unending future which does not allow them to imagine an ending present which does not allow them to imagine any future. Now, the character developments, first of all, fundamentally two unhappy characters, unhappy philosophically unsuccessful characters contoured. His personality is increasingly disturbing and ultimately climaxes in his self destruction. But until the last part of the book, he actually seems to be getting ever fitter and better. By contrast to everyone else in the town, he seems to be flourishing in an environment where everybody else walks around as if under a death sentence. And it's initially unclear why this is, but it turns out that he's happy to be escaping justice. His secret is a crime in the past, which the absorbing circumstances of the present allow him to temporarily escape. But in the end, he's driven mad and into a suicidal frenzy by his own fear of punishment and death. Rambeir, the journalist is miserable upon being separated from his lover and girlfriend. And he feels emotionally trapped here in Iran. So he, for example, requests that Dr. Rio give him a certificate stating that he doesn't have the disease so that he can leave. Of course, Rio refuses because even though he sympathizes with the desire to rejoin a separated lover, recall that Rio had sent his wife to a mountain sanitarium. Rio complies with the letter of the law. The law was the law. Plague had broken out and he could only do what had to be done. Rambeir eventually will overcome his obsessive drive to escape and actually improves as a person by using reason and focusing on helping others instead of dwelling on his own passions. But for a long time and increasingly through part two, but then into other parts of the book, he is frustrated as he's driven by an obsessive desire and not using his reason. By contrast to very different, as it were, happy characters, philosophically happy characters. Grand, his constant talkativeness bears out the image of the citizens that are dwelling in their past. He starts out as somebody dwelling on regrets about his ex-wife, a failure that he can't seem to put behind him. He's an amateur writer who's literally stuck on the first sentence of a romantic novel that he seems obviously incapable of writing because of his lack of genuine feeling and experience with the subject matter. But as he diverts more and more of his focus away from those who have been more fortunate than him in his career and his love life and so forth, and he focuses instead on the plague and its victims, he improves as a person. Eventually, this is symbolized by his overcoming and breaking through writer's block. The steadiness of his character throughout and his straightforward humility, usefulness and efficiency in the context of the crisis allows him not only to survive, he actually contracts the plague but survives it, but he actually flourishes after this. And the narrator at one point describes him as an enigmatic mystery, but also as the ironic hero of the novel. Ironic because the narrator explicitly rejects the very idea of heroes. And he says, you know, we normally would think of them as extraordinary, super powered people. But in fact, it's just the reliable person who does his job, and has the courage to stand his line in the context of a crisis that is the closest thing we have to such a hero, ironically. Now, Tarot is the other kind of happy character. A traveler or even wanderer who like Rambeir is accidentally exiled in Iran. But unlike Rambeir, he courageously takes the initiative of setting up squads of volunteers to help with the plague and high risk jobs, like transporting dead bodies and monitoring affected areas and so forth. So he acts as a kind of moral conscience, goading others to join these volunteer efforts, risky though they are. Some he's unsuccessful in recruiting like Cotard. But others, he's successful, grand and Rambeir. And his recruitment of them and their agreement to help with that eventually improves them and helps them. Tarot's own motive is self consciously philosophical. He is trying to avoid doing harm to any other being whatsoever as comes out in a long philosophical discourse in a later part. In particular, he's concerned about having any connection with death or murder. But he remains a subtle observer and judge of the actions of others in the novels. So his notes serve as a basis for large parts of the narration. And he constantly takes delight in the ironies that he observes and records. Now the first discussion of religion comes when after the first month of the plague, which ends gloomily, and there's a kind of violent recrudescence of the epidemic that coincides with a dramatic sermon preached by Father Pantelou. Father Pantelou is represented as being a serious scholar. He works on ancient inscriptions, for example, and he's a thinker. So he gave a famous series of lectures on modern individualism. He's described as a quote, champion of Christian doctrine at its most precise and purest. So he's a serious intellectual who dwells completely with reason on abstract things and has accepted a set of dogmatic commitments on the basis of his reasoning. And we see his reasoning ultimately challenged and began to unravel in other parts of the book. Now the commercial people of Iran, like everywhere, were not particularly disposed to religion, per se, but plague had induced in them a curious frame of mind as remote from indifference as from fervor, the best name to give it perhaps might be objectivity. So they have a kind of, well, it can't do any harm. So I may as well show up to church just in case there's anything to this. And so they listen to and are subjected to the sermon. Now the narrator and tarot compare the religious responses to something like this to the ancient Chinese practice of playing tambourines to placate the demon of the plague. And they ask whether this religion and this religious response has any chance of being more effective. But at the same time they raised the skeptical question of whether the prophylactic measures and the medicine that they're undertaking can be any more effective. And there have certainly been times where the medical response to plague was no more effective than the religious response or any other response to the plague. And the characters at this point wonder whether they are in such a situation.  And this is the gist of his whole discourse that they are suffering a divine punishment. The plague in Egypt is described in Exodus that was wielded in order to strike down the enemies of God is compared to what's happening to them. He threatens that Lucifer shining like evils very self will strike down unjust people with the plague and that no earthly power, not even the vaunted might of human science can stop it. So he sets up religious concerns as the primary one and acts to instill a fear of death and a fear of God. God, he says, must be placated by spending more time worshiping him and not just on Sundays. He identifies the plague with their salvation then as if it's a good thing, quote, the same pestilence which is slaying you works for your good and points your path. He even expresses partial admiration for the Abyssinian Christians who, quote, saw in the plague assure and God sent means of winning eternal life. And so they inflicted themselves with the plague. And he says he doesn't exactly encourage that but he praises the zeal of those monks and he concludes with what seems like a very half hearted prayer for love. Now the predictable response to this is panic from which it takes a while to recover. So the immediate effect of the sermon is to increase fear for everyone now fears not just death itself but also divine punishment. And so mental illnesses on the rise throughout the town as an episode in the street with a staggering violent madman reveals in chapter 12. Now the clerk grand the bureaucrat earlier who is described as the kind of man unaffected by plague dutifully does his job compiling statistics and shows himself unexpectedly useful like a key essential worker. He seems to be kept level by his hobby of writing or rather his obsessive rewriting of the first line of a novel. Actually, it describes an uncommonly tranquil and beautiful scene which stands in contrast to the horrific scenes unfolding around them. And as Rio reads his draft, he has the feeling of the town being a world apart. And yet grand is meticulously documenting the infection and death rates. And so using this literary preoccupation as a means of diversion and escape. Now, Rambear meanwhile is shown trying to leave the city. He's coping with the spreading panic by pursuing every means of leaving the town, trying to appeal to various officials but constantly coming up short. He observes that these officials are competent people with good intentions. But as regards the plague, their competence was practically nil, he says. He classifies them as into various groups like the sticklers, the consolers, the VIPs, the triflers, the red tape merchants, the overworked and much harassed officials. And by far the greatest number of the traditionalists who just send him on to another office or recommend another method of dealing with it. So kind of bureaucratic nightmare. His hope is raised when the prefect sends him a form to filling out to fill out asking him about his identity, family, employment information and so forth. He assumes that they're drawing up a list of people to exempt from restrictions. But it turns out to be plans for the contingency in the event of his death. They want next of kin information and undoubtedly financial information in order to recover the unexpected costs of burial. Now his reaction to this is despondency. He spends his time wandering from cafe to cafe, a mere shade among shadows, and spends time at the abandoned railway station fantasizing about impossible travels while looking at timetables and posters. The large interior space of this empty railway station can be compared and contrasted with the interior space of the cathedral, which just was described as being packed and stuffy on the occasion of Father Pantelou's sermon. Now, in chapter 14, a startling increase in the death toll accompanies the oncoming hot summer weather. And the result of this is profound discouragement. Many people remain indoors and never go outside. Many others do go outside, refuse to socially distance. They defy official orders, requiring local officials to constantly take new measures, enacting new restrictions and regulations. And there's a stark contrast between the outdoor, where we see scorching sun and growing lawlessness, and the indoor spaces where shade drawn darkness is affecting helplessness and resignation. The plague had killed all colors and vetoed pleasure, he writes. Now, Thoreau's recollections are then reported through the end of this part, and those towards the end seem very Epicurean, as do his subsequent conversations with his friend, Rio, or so I will interpret him in the next slides. So in Thoreau's journal, there is a passage that I've put up here on the slide, which contains several elements that are interesting to think of in relation to Epicureanism. Quote, at the start of the Great Heat, for some unacertained reason, the evenings found the streets almost empty, but now the least ripple of cooler air brings an easing of the strain, if not a flutter of hope, then all stream out into the open to drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making, and in the last glow of sunset, the town, freighted with lovers two by two and loud with voices, drifts like a homeless sheep into the throbbing darkness. In vain, a zealous evangelist with a felt hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying out, God is great and good, come unto him. On the contrary, they all make haste towards some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God. In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground, but once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure, and all the hideous fears that tramp, that stamp their faces in the daytime, are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall in a sort of hectic eggs alteration, an unkempt freedom, fevering their blood, and I too am no different, but what matter, death means nothing to men like me, it's the event that proves them right. So the first thing is the descriptions of the easing of pain and the easing of strain and people using talk and discussion as a kind of therapy, and arguing and befriending people is a way of coping with the situation. They do not take notice and do not take consolation from the religious resources, and so the the cries and the exhortations of the evangelist go unheard, religion even begins to fail to be observed at all, and people become preoccupied with a more primitive and basic concern, and that is pleasure, seeking some kind of pleasure to relieve them from the pain and distress and anxiety that they're experiencing on an everyday basis. And so they, in this context, death means nothing to them, and it means nothing to tarot specifically because one has to concentrate on living and surviving in this situation. Now Epicurean aspects of Rio's arguments and his critique of religion. As the plague worsens, the Bobo's harden and refuse to burst, and the plague is turning from bubonic plague to mnemonic plague, tarot visits Rio, and they discuss the fact that the plague is getting out of hand, how the sanitary department is totally unequipped and understaffed to handle the situation, the prefect refuses to compel help and won't even ask for voluntary help, they're short on imagination, officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic, he says. Now the situation is so desperate that the city is actually considering using prison labor, but tarot who is vehemically and philosophically opposed to the death penalty, and how he sees that this would essentially be condemning forcing people to work in the context of a plague is an imposition of a kind of death penalty on them, so he offers to form a voluntary group of helpers in order to prevent others from committing this kind of murder. The doctor, having no choice, accepts his offer, but he reminds tarot of the risk and wants to see if he's serious about understanding the risk, and this prompts a discussion between the two men, tarot and rio, about pantalous sermon and about religion in general.  What is true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well, it helps men rise above themselves. Al the same, when you see the misery it brings you'd need to be a madman or a coward or stone blind to give in tamely to the plague. So all illnesses improve us in the sense that they force us to deal with it, but that should not, we should not try to convert that into a kind of theodicy and apology for the fact that it's happened and the fact that it's apparently been imposed by an all powerful God. So explaining why he doesn't say that he believes in God, rio says, quote, pantaloo is a man of learning, a scholar, he hasn't come into contact with death, that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth with the capital T, but every country priest who's heard a man grasping for breath on his death bed thinks as I do, he'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence. So the purpose of therapy is not to further scare people and make them think they are responsible for this natural catastrophe that's happened to them, but to use knowledge however possible to relieve human suffering wherever that's possible and not to therefore to give into an accept and find an excuse or an apology for the plague because an apology or an excuse for the God that allowed it to happen, not to do that, but rather to concentrate everything on relieving human suffering. This prompts Taro to ask why do you show such devotion considering that you don't believe in God and he thinks that the answer to that question will help him to decide whether he will join and help form the voluntary sanitary squads and the response to this is very interesting. His face still in shadow Río says that he has already answered that if he believed in all powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to him, but no one in the world believed in a God of that sort or not even Pantelou who believed that he believed in such a God and this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on providence completely anyhow in this respect Río believed himself to be on the right road in fighting against creation as he found it. Ah, Taro remarked, so that's the idea you have of your profession more or less and the doctor came back into the light. So he interprets the point of medicine being to fight against what's happened by nature. If we look at the plague as a natural phenomenon then he's fighting with the art of medicine against the natural phenomenon because of the suffering that it brings to humans. If it's a divine phenomenon, if we have to uh if we should believe that first of all he denies that we should believe that that there is a God that would actually impose this as a punishment or as a purposeful thing or would even allow it to happen. But if we um uh so we should not believe that and instead we should use whatever human means possible to fight it as a natural phenomenon. This gives way to further Epicurean aspects of Rio's views on the world and death and God as he says in another passage from chapter 15 discussing his chosen profession of medicine. When I entered this profession I did it abstractly so to speak because I had a desire for it so he gives a very Epicurean motivation because it meant a career like another one that young men often aspire to perhaps too because it was particularly difficult for a worksman's son like myself so he pursues a kind of conventional uh path to success to fulfilling his basic needs and desires. But then he had to see people die.   Well I have and then I saw that I could never get hardened to it. I was young then and I was outraged by the whole scheme of things so the nature of things seemed off to him. Death alarmed him, caused him fear and he described this as being his thought but subsequently I grew more modest only I've never managed to get used to seeing people die. So that's a slightly un Epicurean aspect of him that he doesn't uh fully accept that death is nothing to him and in fact he struggles against it. Since the order of the world he says is shaped by death mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in him and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes toward the heaven where he sits in silence. So he confines the divine to a sphere that is detached from an utterly unconnected with human affairs exactly as Epicurus does separating the gods from nature allowing them to remain tranquil but leaving humans free in their own sphere to use their art and intelligence and knowledge to counteract the natural phenomena that threaten them. Now Thoreau and Rios developing friendship also reveals some Epicurean aspect so Thoreau is impressed by what Rios just said and asked him who taught him all this and he replies that suffering has taught it to him it's reflections on suffering that brought him to these views much like the reflections on suffering were emotive for Epicurus and Lucretius. Thoreau announces his general agreement with Rios and says in fact you're perfectly right and they're friends who share an essentially Epicurean standpoint. The principal doctrines of Epicureanism are that number one don't fear God because the divine is totally unconcerned with human affairs and irrelevant to human reality. Second that death is nothing to us because it's total oblivion and there's no hope for an afterlife. We've seen that one of them Thoreau is much more accepting of this fact than Rios is at this point but Rios comes to accept this gradually more it seems as he ages as he described on the last slide. Suffering that his chronic can be managed and endured Epicurus teaches in his own example suffering that's acute and short lived is necessarily limited ultimately by death itself and this is borne out in the events of the novel itself. Now Thoreau devotes himself to avoiding wrongdoing of any kind whatsoever especially that that's connected with murder or death. Rios is more concerned with actively relieving suffering and preventing death so Thoreau has a more passive character while Rios is a constant man of action they're both devoted to relieving suffering especially that of others and the pursuit offers them both the opportunity to live tranquilly and to be successful and even happy characters even when the world is falling apart all around them. There is also an intellectualist aspect of the novel that is expressed most clearly in chapter 16 in the quotation the evil that's in the world always comes of ignorance and good intentions may do as much harm as malvalence if they lack understanding on the whole men are more good than bad that however isn't the real point but they are more or less ignorant and it is this that we call vice or virtue the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind and there can be no true goodness nor love without the utmost clear sightedness so all bad things come from ignorance and all good things come from knowledge therefore ignorance and knowledge are the causes respectively of all vice and virtue and thus all unhappiness and happiness. So to conclude reflect on the character developments of both happy and unhappy people the examples of happy people being rio, tarot, and grand and of unhappy people being rambar and kattard and of course as i just explained that corresponds to whether they have virtue or vice and whether they have virtue or vice corresponds to whether they are essentially ignorant or have knowledge. Now the narrator refuses to ascribe to the sanitary groups more than is there due that is the squadron set up by tarot to voluntarily fill in so that forced prison labor does not need to be used. He says those who enrolled in the sanitary squads they were called had no such great merit in doing as they did since they knew it was the only thing to do and the unthinkable thing would then have been to have not brought themselves to do it. These groups enabled our townsfolk to come to grips with the disease and convince them that now that plague was amongst us it was up to them to do whatever could be done to fight it since plague became in this way some men's duty it revealed itself as what it was that is the concern of all and so far so good but we do not congratulate a school master on teaching that to and to make for though we may perhaps congratulate him on choosing choosing a laudable vocation but then again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that to and to make for is punished with death so in a way just willingness to do your job willingness of healthcare professionals for example to do the essential and other essential workers to do what has to be done and what simply has to be done because it has to be done and for no other reason these people we would not normally congratulate we don't normally congratulate a school master for teaching two plus two equals four or a grocery worker for bagging groceries or a nurse for helping us treat a disease even our doctors but they're just doing their job but in the context of a crisis it becomes clear that just doing their job is essential to us and should be lauded now he the narrator observes that many fledgling moralists in those days were going about the town proclaiming there was nothing to be done and they should just bow to the inevitable and to row Rio and their friends might give one answer another but its conclusion was always the same that certitude that a fight must be put up in this way or that and that there must be no bowing down the essential thing was to save the greatest number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation and to do this there was only one resource to fight the plague there was nothing admirable about this attitude it was merely logical so it was merely logical meaning if you knew the facts about the situation then what should be done would follow immediately from them so understanding the facts overcoming ignorance having a kind of knowledge constitutes being good and being good constitutes the character being happy more than Rio or Thoreau grand is said to be the true embodiment of the courage that inspired the sanitary groups he does what he's asked to do and does what must be done because he understands that it must be done and he remains happy and is kept tranquil by his seemingly trivial literary pursuits so the narrator actually says quote if it is absolutely necessary that the narrative should include a hero the narrator commends to his readers with to his thinking perfect justice this insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and seemingly absurd ideal this will render the truth it's due to the addition of two plus two it's some of four and to heroism the secondary place that rightly falls to it just after never before the noble claim of happiness so he achieves happiness because he is not ignorant he has knowledge and therefore virtue and therefore acts in a capable constant and steady way and so one who can be happy despite the world falling apart around them and the fear of death and the obsessive pursuit of desire of all the people around him that person who can be happy is the hero of the novel for what that's worth by way of contrast consider the situation of rambar and coddard and their unhappiness so chapter 17 is a counterpart to chapter 13 which described rambara's attempts to escape through legal channels chapter 17 focuses on his increasingly desperate struggles to escape and his entanglement with the criminal coddard rambara's motives are according to the narrator not virtuous though they had a kind of point that is they followed a kind of reason although it was a reason based in ignorance and therefore vice and ultimately produce unhappiness until a change of the character now rambara's frustration of failed connections and abandoned attempts to leave are described at great length and he's completely driven to get out by his passionate love for the woman from whom he has become separated he eventually enlists the help of the criminal coddard who helps him make arrangements to bribe guards at the main gate meanwhile rio and tarot continue to battle the plague rambara meets up with rio and asks him if the epidemic is getting out of hand to which rio responds the death graph is rising less deeply meaning the curve is being flattened still a lot of people are dying but this can be looked to as being some kind of hope but they lack the equipment and manpower so it's becoming a man-made disaster yes there's the natural disaster but it's how people are reacting to and rising to the occasion or failing to rise to the occasion that are constituting the next stage of the catastrophe rambara is concerned that rio realizes that he's leaving because of his passionate love for his girlfriend and wants to make sure he doesn't think it's because of his fear of death I don't think I'm a coward he lamely says and in fact his character is chiefly motivated by his passionate love and erotic desire for his girlfriend as opposed to coddard who is more clearly motivated by fear of punishment and death so awaiting an opportunity to escape rambara drinks with tarot and rio who mentioned that he could do good in the sanitary squads the voluntary groups he acknowledges this but says nothing further rio and tarot also try to recruit coddard to the sanitary squads but of course he selfishly refuses saying it's not my job they confront him with his criminality not threatening to turn him into the police but just challenging his motives but he doesn't change and part two ends with rambara calling the doctor and volunteering for the sanitary squad at least until he could find some way of getting out of town and rambara is motivated again by his chronic desire and erotic love coddard by the fear of death and punishment but the effect in both of these cases is blamable vicious behavior since it's earlier been established that ignorance is the cause of vice it follows that both of them lack knowledge they don't accept the facts of what the situation is from which the need to act in a certain way immediately follows so in the following parts one of them will learn and change and improve improve as a result in response to the circumstances while the other will sink further into vice and madness and death


So yeah, my name is Nathan Ege. I'm from Mozilla, and today I'll be talking to you about the Dalla video codec project, what we are affectionately calling the next, next generation video, all right? And so I started by sort of giving the motivation of why free codecs matter. And so here we're talking about, when we talk about free, we're talking about control and not cost. So the idea is that you should be able to do anything with this video codec that you want to and apply it to any application that you want to and not have to ask permission from anybody. And so if you look at the current video codecs, there are a billion dollar toll tax on communication tools. So what this means is that for every cell phone that has a audio or video codec in it, there's a small cost associated with licensing that codec. And if you look at the price of the components of that device over time, they all go down. But the cost of licensing the codec sort of stays constant. And of course, as these things are sold all over the place, this is a multiplied million fold. So there's a heavy cost there. And if you look at also the licensing terms on these codecs, they're really used as kind of a competitive weaponry, right? So the commodity hardware manufacturers will use these weapons by having patents on some portions of a codec, and they'll have a reciprocal license with other hardware vendors. And what this means is new entries into the market who don't have any of those advantages will have to pay a little bit more, that few cents per device. And that will make them uncompetitive and unprofitable. And so this is a tool that used to keep competitive markets, your competitors out of the market. And then finally, the success of the internet goes based on not having asked permission, right? So having to license a codec already is kind of burdensome. And if you have an idea of beginning from that point, maybe a non-starter. And of course, if you usually don't have to beg for forgiveness either. So I work at Mozilla, and we ship what browser you might have heard of. And we do this through a volunteer network. For many distros, we do this through this volunteer network of distributors, people who run FTP sites, who host the source code, or who host binaries. If you're a small open source project, and you're using a codec, and you're distributing through the same fashion, we all have the same problem. We can't count how many people are using our product. So for many of these licenses, there's a per user cost. And it's just even keeping track of the number of users is burdensome. And you can't possibly even begin to pay that license cost. And so what a lot of people do is they'll just ignore these costs.   And so a famous case is Skype started by using VP7 and VP8. And then when they became larger and successful, they had the revenue to then license other codecs like 264. And so there's sort of this tax on success that shows up when you use codecs without being mindful of the licenses. And then finally, the cost of the license really isn't actually the largest cost in deployment. The largest cost is in compatibility. And you think about the lifecycle of product for some hardware manufacturers. And they might spend orders of magnitude more on just ensuring compatibility across all their devices and all their deployments. And the licensing fee then is really not so much a concern. So you might have seen this webcomic. And you think, well, OK, we have all these codecs. We should really just make a new codec that covers these use cases. And then we can get rid of all these compatibility issues. And now you have one more codec that you have to be compatible with. So developing new codecs is kind of missing the point. The compatibility is kind of missing the point here. There are other really good reasons. And so these are all mostly around cost and licensing. So you can't license an encumbered codec if there's no acceptable license. So for certain video codecs, if you call them to license or codec, they'll give you option A or option B. And neither one of these things apply to you.  And an example of this is for 264, if you are deploying this to a large group of people on the internet, there is a license cap. And so you can just pay the cap and don't have to worry about counting the number of people vote for other codecs like AAC. There's no cap, so you're back to the same kind of problem. There's no license that works for your distribution model. And in some cases, building a new codec then maybe cheaper than the licensing terms. The doll development team within Mozilla is far below the cap for 264. And we're not sure what the licensing will look like for 265 exactly. So it makes sense for Mozilla who has this distribution problem to build a new or to invest in the development of this free codec that everybody then can use. And of course, this adversarial licensing is a huge risk in a competitive market. And Fran is often none of fair, reasonable, or nondiscriminatory. There was an FTC hearing in June of 2011 where the initial property advisor for a large networking company said that Fran meant she had to call and sign an NDA before she could get licensing terms. And so if she's under NDA, she can't talk to other people about the licensing terms for the same technologies. How is this possibly reasonable and nondiscriminatory? All right, so what we're trying to do with Dala is we're trying to change the competitive market here. Creating good codecs is not an easy problem. But we really don't need that many. We really just need one. And many of the best implementations are already free software. So if you look at the open source community, many of the commercial implementations of these commercial codecs are already open source software. You can use them. And if you have any kind of deployment on the scale, you have to go and license the appropriate patents maybe. But they're already out there. And other implementations work great. And then of course, network effects decide the market. So there has not been a case where a royalty-free codec has taken over in a particular niche that's then been displaced by a non-reality, by a royalty-bearing codec. And so for JPEG, JPEG is a pretty old image standard. There are lots of new image standards that have come out. Some of them have been patent encumbered and perhaps offer better performance in some very specific cases. But nobody's been able to displace JPEG. But being royalty-free is not enough. There are different people who care about different things. There are some from the video space. There are people that care about the cost per bit in terms of the number of bits per pixel, the compression of the codec. But they don't care about price. So they'll be willing to pay anything. They want, just give me the very best codec. I'll pay whatever your licensing terms are. There are people who are in the mobile space that say, well, I need the best performance per watt. There are people that have other needs. And so in order to really win this game, you have to be royalty-free and you have to be good on all fronts. And so at ZIF, we shipped other codecs. We shipped the Aura. And we shipped Vorbis. And these were not best in class for those use cases at that time. And they didn't see the great adoption, even though they were royalty-free. And in some cases, they were significantly better. And so what we did at ZIF was we then made Opus. So Opus is an example of a royalty-free audio codec that we did at the IETF standard body. And Opus is better almost across the board for every use case. And it basically made like 10 other codecs obsolete. You could just use Opus in one place, and you could handle all use cases from very low-quality voice communication all the way up to low-latency, high-quality, stereo, high-bit-depth music quality. And so what we want to do is the same sort of thing. But the strategy is essential here. So these things are necessary for us to be successful in deploying a royalty-free video codec. So we need to design alternatives to avoid the worst patent tickets. So it's not enough to be just avoiding existing known patents working around them. We have to actually have a story that's compelling that we can tell people about why we're royalty-free. So just going and saying, well, we read these patents and we navigate them isn't sufficient, because those people aren't going to also read those patents, the people you're talking to who may use your technology. They don't want to invest the time in that. And so we have to have a compelling story. We'll read and analyze patents and publish the results. And often the advice there is that you should not publish your patent analysis because it kind of gives your competitors a blueprint of how you might defend this in, say, a patent court. And the point there is that when we analyze and publish these results, we can then defend ourselves against IPR claims like we did it with Opus by simply pointing at specific parts of these defenses and saying your claims to this technique we're using do not apply for this specific reason. We're not actually giving away any patent defense as a result. We end up with a very defensible statement. And then, of course, we're going to patent a new technology that we developed. We've done this already with Dala. And the idea there is that by patenting specific technologies, we can then go to other partners in the industry and get them to listen to our claims as to why we believe we're royalty-free. Until Opus had patents, it was very difficult to have that conversation. But towards the end of the Opus development, we filed some patents and we were able then to speak with industry partners. Because we can take those patents and we can use them to grant reciprocal licenses. So the fourth bullet point here, which is sort of what we did with Opus, is we partnered with other people in the industry and granted a license on a reciprocal term, which meant that you could use our patents for deployment of Opus so long as you did not sue anybody else who was deploying Opus for those patents. And then if you did go after someone else who was deploying Opus, you would lose that defense. And any of the other partners who were deploying Opus who wanted to sue you then had the right to do that without losing their license. So this became a lot sort of like the GPL in a sense. It became this sort of technique to encourage good behavior. And then finally, we're targeting the next generation. So we're not targeting 265. We're looking after that. The Kodak development cycle is a pretty long cycle. And so we believe that to be competitive, we need to take the time to actually develop something that is significantly better than 265 because they've already kind of come to market. If we were to deploy something that was equal to that, they may have an advantage in the hardware space or in other spaces. And so we want to actually be maybe 30% to 50% better than what 265 is doing. And then finally, we have to document all of this stuff and make it so that it's abundantly clear that doll is royalty free, that doll is better in all these use cases and let people know what we're all about. All right. And so there are other parts of this strategy that are actually going to be very difficult. We have to be the best in all cases. We have to be best in compression per bit and bit per watt. So for the mobile case, we have to be good for archive use cases. We have to be good for streaming. We have to be good for real time communication. We have to be able to speak with our competitors and our critics in the other camps and get them on board with what we're doing. So there's a huge amount of developers that work on royalty-bearing codecs. And there's great mind share on that stuff. And we want to encourage those people that to contribute parts of their technology towards the codec development process, knowing that they can get the benefit of using this on a royalty-free basis once it becomes available, say, after the next generation of codecs. And then one of the strategies that we did with Opus that was great was we found a niche that was not currently covered by existing audio codecs. And we developed a strong use case around that with Opus. So for low-latency, high-quality audio, there was nothing in that space. And Opus filled that niche. And until we started showing that we were very successful there, we couldn't get other people to become interested in Opus. But once we showed some success, then everybody realized that this was going to be something they could deploy. And then finally, the biggest problem is the doll development team is 10 people. And we're not in a position to develop our own hardware. And so what we'd like to do is create technology in a way that shows that it's compelling, but also is something that other people will want to pick up and can easily convert into a hardware implementation. And so some of the things that we did in Opus that worked really well that we're going to try to do with Dalla is we're going to try to do all of our work in a public process and recognize the standards body with a strong IPR disclosure policy. So the work with Opus was done at the IETF. And in the IETF, there is a strong IPR disclosure policy where anybody who shows up to contribute, as make any comment towards that process for developing that standard, is required to disclose any patents they have or may know about that read on that standard. And in that specific disclosure, they're required to give the patent number. And there's nothing about the IETF policy that says you must not use patent encumbered ideas or technologies, but because they give us a specific patent number, we can then evaluate that patent and say, well, we do or do not agree that this IP infringes on what we're doing. And if we do believe that it does, we can work around it. We can then just opt to use some other technology or find some different way of doing things. That worked very well with Opus. And then we're going to question all of the assumptions around the conventional structure of video codec. So basically, the dollar research project is sort of a high-risk, high-reward approach. We're going to try new and radical techniques with the idea that some of them should give us performance gains that are above and beyond what you get with traditional video techniques. The way 264 and 265 and VP8 and VP9 have been developed, they're sort of incremental improvements. So you take an existing technique and you say, well, now we have more CPU budget. What can we do that's different? And maybe you'll refine that technique a little bit and by applying a little more computational power, you'll get better motion vectors or you'll get better entry coding. So we're going to check all those out and see if we can find something else. We're going to try to find applications where high flexibility is essential. So we've targeted dollar at real-time communication. This is in line with work with Opus where at the IETF, they adopted Opus for the mandatory to implement audio codec. We would like to develop a codec that fits, a video codec that fits that niche for real-time communication with the hope that that will eventually get used at the IETF with the WebRTC. And then finally, the process at MPEG uses a PSNR to select the features that they include in their codecs. And PSNR doesn't actually correlate well with what people perceive as video quality. And so we actually will look at the videos and choose our techniques according to what gives a better visual performance rather than just arbitrary metrics. Okay, and so very quickly, I'm going to give you guys an overview on how video codecs work. So there are four main parts to video codecs that pretty much all codecs have to do. There's prediction, considering what you already know about a scene when coding the current scene, transformation, so you rearrange all the data so that it's in a more compact form, quantization, lowering the resolution of the transform data, and then entropy coding. And so prediction, there are two kinds of prediction in video codecs. There's intro prediction, where you predict portions of the current frame from already decompressed portions of that frame. So lower in the frame, you can use references from above it. And then intro prediction, where you use the decoded previous frame to predict the next frame. And here you can see for this current frame, we've constructed a reference frame from the previous frames, and that's the residual. And there's significantly less information in the residual. And so that's how most video codecs get the bulk of their compression. Video transformation, so most codecs use a 2D DCT, which takes some spatial domain or some image information, image pixels, applies the transform into a more sparse domain, keeps just the highest coefficients and uses those as what it codes. This gives us also great compression is responsible for some of the blocky edges you see in codecs like JPEG. And then last two points, quantization and coding. Quantization is where we will take those transform coefficients, reduce the number of bits used to represent them, and take those bits and run them through an entropy coder that converts them into some set of numbers that has some probability distribution that's efficient. And so in DAWL, we're going to basically do different things for all of those. Instead of doing just a DCT, we apply a LAP Transform, which is technology that was around about 20 years ago in the early 90s that was abandoned because of the computational cost. And now that we've got faster computers, this is now something that is tractable. It also requires us to go through and do a bunch of other new techniques because none of the intraprediction and intraprediction work with LAP Transforms exactly the same way. And we've had to then innovate in that area. We're going to do multi-symbol arithmetic coding. Most of the existing codecs do binary arithmetic coding, context-adapted binary arithmetic coding. We use this great technique we borrowed from Opus called perceptual vector quantization. And if you were at FOMS yesterday, Jean-Marc gave a great talk describing that technique and why it will be that's going to work really well for us. And there's some interesting ideas around prediction where you no longer do the difference between frames. And in doing so, that removes our exposure to a number of patents that begin by saying take the difference of two frames and then do this additional processing. Finally, we do Krumba from Luma Prediction, which is different from other codecs. And Tim Terry will be talking about overlap block motion compensation next month at a conference. And we do this clever time frequency resolution switching. So all of these are kind of new techniques are not currently used for video coding. And we're going to use these in DAW to try to have a believable story for being royalty free. If you'd like to follow the work we're doing, I've got a link here to some of the demos we put together. These are all online. And I think the slides are online that has a link. I encourage you to take a look at them if you have any interest in those specific coding techniques. This is a chart that we made that sort of describes our progress for the previous year. And so what you're looking at here, the red line is what H.265 does on a certain video set as of, I believe, November 20th of last year. And then these lines here are the dollar code base sort of over time. And so we're making progress. You know, there's been additional work actually. John Mark landed code yesterday that gave another 5% improvement at sort of low rates. So we're moving closer to that red line of 265. And we believe that there are many more techniques we can apply that will get us a little closer. And of course, you know, the techniques I talked about before are really, you know, not the end of it. There's new and innovative work that's being done in this space. And for example, this is a very interesting technique that lets you take the center frame that is a composite of the two other images and separate them. So these are the result of doing sort of spatial or the sparsely induced prediction where you're actually able to separate two frames that were overlaid. And that this has computational cost that may be tractable in the next few years. So their ideas that are new that haven't been currently deployed that we believe we can get a lot of gains out of. So what's the road ahead look like? You know, as that slide showed, we've been making some progress with these new techniques. We've had to sort of innovate and find new ways to work around problems introduced by using LAP Transforms, but there's still a long way to go. The industry is currently looking at deploying 265, HEVC, which is 265 and VP9. So they're not really focused on the next next generation. They've got a lot of work ahead of them. But we'd like to, you know, take that opportunity to innovate and make Dall something that will be competitive. So we'd love to get help from people. And we, in particular, are looking for application domains where, you know, there's some novel use case that isn't currently covered by video codecs. And if there's something that you think would be interesting, maybe around, you know, video conferencing or any of those areas, please talk to us and let us know we'd like to accommodate that. All right, so I'm open for questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. One or two questions. Are you going to propose a data to a standards body when it's finished? Absolutely. In fact, we're gonna be working with a standards body hopefully before we, I'm sorry, so to repeat the question, the question was, will we be proposing Dall to a standards body at completion? And the answer to that is that we're actually talking with the ITF informing a working group, hopefully soon, to do development of video codecs in a public process. So even before we have, you know, this is just one of the ideas. Even before we've gotten everything finalized, we'd love to engage a standards body, maybe bring in other partners to give us contributions, maybe involve the community, and get that done long before we're complete. Right, yeah, so we run tests against, so the question was, how does the CPU usage of Dall compare to 265? We run benchmarks against 265 and currently we run significantly faster than them on their reference model. Our goal is to develop not just a reference model but also a production quality code that we can release under the ZIF Mozilla heading that could be used to actually do this in software at a performance rate from day one. We're not going to just have ideas that will be, hope that the CPU performance will improve over time. So we're designing techniques that make use of this. Our entropy coder, for example, is designed to work really well with SIMD. No, I think the techniques we're using have not been finalized. There's a lot of optimization we have not done. So the X264 has gone through and done assembly translations of some of the transformations and motion search, and we haven't done anything like that at all. So there's still lots of room for additional performance. Thank you very much, and... Okay, thank you. You did a free room. So maybe next year we need a bigger room. Hopefully. All right, so the next stove will be...


The Castle Lake Bina Boys basketball team is still perfect on the year, but has it been quite as easy lately? They've been tested by both Pineverbackus and Nevis in the past two weeks, squeaking out a pair of three-point wins, which is a good primer for the playoffs on how to win when things aren't going just your way. But things went the Panthers way tonight as they took on La Porte. First bucket of the game, Miguel Reyes, the between-the-legs pass to Jarell Jacobs knocks down the three-pointer. But back the other way, Kane Richardson behind the back to Chris McDougal gets the wide open land, but not allowed to cheer for the Wildcats tonight. Up to Ethan Brown in transition, he spots up the open three, they're up 14-2. Then it's Jared Brown pushing the tempo. He hits Ethan for the mid-air, laying Panthers. They start the year 180 with a 105-54 win. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Hello world, I'm Edson Tweeter from the USS Baton and this, this is Al the Gator. Say hello Al, and this is how Al feels about the Army West Point Newell. Go ahead Al.  Alright, alright, that's enough Al, that's enough Al. Al, don't eat that!


You can title the message, do what you can. Do what you can. And I'm gonna take my reading from Matthew chapter 20 and we'll take first seven verses. Matthew chapter 20, first seven verses. For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early one morning, hired workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay him normal daily wage and sent them out to work. At nine o'clock in the morning, he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around, doing nothing, being idle. So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever he is right at the end of the day. So they went out to work in his vineyard. At noon again and three o'clock, he did the same thing. At five o'clock that afternoon, he was in town again and saw some more people standing around. He asked them, why haven't you been working today? They replied, no one has hired us, the landlord told them, then go out and join the others in my vineyard. Okay, this parable of Jesus has many implications and it has layers of things that we can take from. But today I just wanna focus on this basic concept that Jesus is presenting here. And he's saying that there's a landowner that's going around looking for laborers, looking for workers in his vineyard. He goes in the morning and then he does it four more times throughout the day. And first thing, I want you to write it down. First thing that I want you to notice from this parable is there is plenty of work for everyone. There is plenty for work for everybody. Jesus said in another passage of scripture, he said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. The harvest is plentiful, it's ripe, it's ready. But really the bottleneck and what's stopping further advancement of the kingdom of God, what's stopping faster progress of the work of God on this earth is shortage of laborers. And like never before, I think today's situation in the economy, we can see the impact of shortage of labor, especially if you are a business owner. And in my personal experience, especially in last year and a half during pandemic and now I have a business and the business has a lot of potential. The business has a lot of unexplored potential. It has a lot of potential to employ a lot of people. It has a lot of potential to make money. It has a lot of potential to do a lot of good. But one thing that I've faced this year, this last year and a half is with all that potential, we have all the equipment, we have the space, we have the material, we have a way to move the supply chain, but none of that works without the labor force. None of that potential is utilized without a labor force. And it's not that you say after all the attempts and after all of the different ideas that we try to implement to be able to continue this business at the end of the day, this potential business, this profitable business, I had to make a decision to shut this business down because there is no labor force. And that's happening all across America now, that's happening all across, it's happening in our economy. So more than ever, we can see what shortage of labor, what it does to the country, to the economy, to the kingdom if I could say that. He has, United States is one of the greatest economies in the world and it's beginning to suffer right now because lack of labor, businesses are going out, people are going out of the business, businesses are shutting down and there's all sorts of issues, all sorts of problems. And that got me thinking when I read the scripture, when I was preparing, when I was doing my devotional and I was thinking about this, I couldn't help to think about my personal situation and the situation at large is that kingdom of God has so much potential. Kingdom of God is doing such a great work, we're rescuing people out of darkness, we're delivering, we're healing people, we're bringing the kingdom of God, we're bringing reformation, there's so much good that's done through the kingdom of God. But because shortage of laborers, it's limited, it could not progress, it could not bring the fullness of the kingdom of God, the full benefit of the cross to this generation. And so today I want to encourage you to get plugged in and get employed in God's vineyard. Get plugged in and get involved in the kingdom of God. We have this unlimited supply of resources. We have this, God has given us, Bible says a holy spirit without measure. All his gifts were given to us. The power of God, the name of Jesus was given to us. The blood of Jesus is on our side and all of this potential, but at the end of the day comes down to the laborers. How many people will say yes to the call? How many people will choose to go to his vineyard and do work for him, work alongside with him, work in God's kingdom? Second thing that I see from this parable is Jesus, or I should say landowner, in this case, he comes at nine or 12 or three and a five o'clock. He comes and he's surprised and he sees, I don't know if maybe he says he's surprised, but he sees people that are idle that are doing nothing. And we see that he begins to employ them. He says, why are you standing around? Come and work for me. We see that he does not like seeing people standing idle. And I want to encourage you today, especially not to be idle in the area of the kingdom of God.  Because I believe that the idleness is a place of temptation. If we are not engaged actively in the kingdom of God, if we're not employing our gifts and talents, our resources, our time, if we're not giving that to the Lord, that we are at risk or we are putting ourselves in a place of temptation. And I can bring many stories through the Bible and I'll read the scripture from 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 13 says this. Besides that, they learn to be idlers going about from house to house, not only idlers but also gossip and busybodies saying what they should not. So apostle Paul warns that if we're idle in our life and that that speaks to all across the board physically, if we're not busy working with our hands, providing, taking care of ourselves, our families, and it also speaks in a spiritual area that then what we open ourselves to doing at best, in other scripture says talking nonsense. In another translation, NLT says, mandolin in other people's business, okay? And say things that we shouldn't, that at best when we're idle, that we gossip, we talk nonsense, and we meddle into other people's businesses that we don't have business being in business with, if I can put it this way. One businessman sent this quote that I really like. He said that the reason why people don't mind their own business, number one, they don't have a mind, number two, they don't have a business. Because if your mind is full of ideas, creativity, plans, you begin to work on things to get them accomplished. But if your mind is empty, you begin to start minding in other people's businesses. You know, we often get suggestions and things of how to do ministry, mostly from people that don't do ministry. How to do deliverance from people that never cast out one demon. How to pray for you, don't pray for healing like this, pray like that or the other. Well, have you prayed for healing? No, but I have ideas, okay? So when you're idle, Bible says that you will not avoid temptation. It's not in the Bible, it's just a parable, but it says that the idle hands are the workshop of the devil, right? Because when we are not busy working for the kingdom of God, Satan will get us busy with everything, with nonsense, with mandolin in other people's businesses.  An apostle Paul says, if you want to avoid it, get busy, what God's called you to do, get busy in God's vineyard, get busy working and doing something for God. If you see something wrong in the church, don't come and tell the pastors what's wrong with the church. Come and say, there's an issue that I would like to bring a solution to it. It's easy to point out somebody else's mistakes and somebody else's mishaps when you're watching on a sideline, but get in the game and get busy working for the kingdom of God. I want all our church, all of us, those are watching, those of us that are here. Let's not be spectators, let's be participators. Let's be playing, let's be on a playing field. Let's not just sit on a bench and tell, oh, wow, the sound is not sounding good today. Well, maybe go get educated and help us out. We'll take volunteers for sound. Or whatever it is that things are not being, oh, the bathrooms are not clean. Well, why don't you volunteer, come before and help us out and get things cleaned up or whatever the case might be. If you don't like something, don't come and complain about it. Come with solution and come volunteering your time and effort to change it. The second thing is, like I said, that the idolness at best leads to gossip, empty talk and nonsense, but at worst, it leads to sin. And we see that clearly in a story of King David, Bible says it was time for kings to go to war. And instead of going to war, King David, he felt like, well, I have been in church for some time and I've been serving for some time. It's my time to retire. It's let the young blood do some work. Let the young blood to carry some burden. And there is some sense in that. But there is work for everybody, for the young blood, for the old blood, for those that just got saved and those that have been saved for 30 years. I don't want us to develop as kind of a veteran's type of a mindset or mentality. A soldier in a God's army never retires. Now your function might change. You might do things slightly different. You might not have a passion and strength to run around and do things that you did 20 years ago at church, but there's things that you can do in God's kingdom. There's things you can do at church and still be an active duty. So I don't want to ask, because a few weeks ago I was with some wonderful person, and I believe we don't have those people in our church, but it was somebody from the other church. And he was like, you know, so I asked him what he does at church, and he was a nice kind of gentleman, by no means saying that he's a bad person or a bad Christian. And that's what he's attitude like, well, I served for 25 years in the church. It's time for somebody else to step up and do the work. Why can't you continue to do the work and encourage and train and disciple and show by your example of the new blood, new people in the church, younger people, of what to do and how to run the race till the end. Apostle Paul, he never retired. He said, I ran the race. I did what I had to do. I was a laborer in the kingdom of God. And even in jail where he couldn't physically maybe do, depraise the gospel like he could do, he changed his function and he began to write the gospel. So whatever season you're in today, that doesn't mean you have to retire and go on a sideline. Find a different function, but serve in the kingdom of God. King David, he retired, even though it was a time for him to go to war. And of course, when others are fighting, he's not doing anything. Bible says that he woke up in the evening, all right? Not in the morning, in the evening, meaning he was in bed all day. He was in bed, idle, doing nothing. And during that time, this was the temptation creeped in. Bible says he was just wandering around the palace, on the roof of the palace, just looking around, doing nothing. This is where he saw Bathsheba bathing. This is where he brought her in and he committed sin. And then that sin led to another sin, to a bigger sin, eventually to do something that that he would never think David would do, killing an innocent person. When beforehand, if you rewind a decade before that, he would not even kill his enemy. He would not dare to raise a sword against him. And so, when we're idle, like I said, at best we would be, we would do empty things, useless things, we would gossip, we would mind, we would start getting to other people's businesses, telling what others to do while ourselves are not doing anything. And the worst, if we continue that path, Satan will introduce this temptation, show this temptation and we would fall when we're idle. So I wanna warn every person, and encourage and warn every person that there is no retired soldiers in the kingdom of God. Everybody is always an active duty. We retire when we go there. Your function might change, but your service to God still stays the same. And so, so that we don't find ourselves in situations that we would never think we would ever get to. And the best way to avoid it is to constantly be in service to God and service to his people, amen. So then you say, right, well, you convinced me, I'm gonna do it, what can I do? In first Samuel chapter 10 verse six to seven says this, at that time, that Samuel tells to Saul, spirit of the Lord will come powerfully on you, you will prophesy with them, you will be changed into a different person. And then he says, after you see these signs, do what must be done for God is with you, that's NLT. And KGV says, do then do as occasion demands. And NET translation says, do whatever your hand finds to do. So what I wanna encourage you is to find whatever you can do and begin to do it. We say, maybe that's not my passion. Well, but there is a need there to begin to serve. So the first thing, so there's two things that I wanna online from here. Do what you can do, number one, and two, do what the occasion demands to do. Let me explain to you the difference. Doing what you can do, it can speak of your gifts, your natural talents, maybe your education, maybe your line of experience. The other day I was talking with a gentleman who has a degree education and experience in the area of finances, specifically hoping to manage finances and things like that. So when I begin to talk with him and I begin to present the vision that we have a desire in our church to get people financially literate in our church. We have something that's going on right now which is Financial Peace University by Dan Rezima. This is just kind of like a starting pack to help you get out of your debt. But my desire, my goal is just to raise business people in our church, help the business owners, current business owner to help them to expand, broaden their horizons so they can go further. And I wanna see in our church that this area will grow and this ministry will expand. As I was talking to this person and he began to share his experience, how he's advising businesses, helping businesses to grow. I said, perfect. The occasion is, I mean, he has a skill. He can do this. And I presented him the vision. I said, would you be able to come alongside? He became a member of the church. I said, would you be able to come alongside and use your gifts, your talents and your experience to do what you can do in this area? So first thing, I would encourage you to find, discover your passion, your gift, your skill, your experience and come to church and bring that and say, I can do this. Is there a way I can serve? That's number one. The two is that maybe you have skill and experience in particular area that cannot be utilized at the moment at church. Do what the occasion demands. Right now, we have many different demands and occasions that you can be a part of. And just to list a few, we have a need in ushers. We have a need in welcoming team. We have a need in helping out in Spanish service. So if you can even do poquito Spanish, okay? You can come and help and serve in that service, okay? As you can see, my Spanish is not there. And we have all kinds of need in a sound department, in the video department, in a live stream department, we need help with volunteers in the kitchen all throughout the week. We have many different occasions that demand right now help. And so maybe it's not your, let's say cup of tea, it's not your necessarily passion or it's not even your area of expertise at the moment, but there is a demand and occasion is demanding and asking to fill these spots. We have a big demand in kid zone and help with the youth. And so I would encourage you is if you can find a place to serve in a church that fits your passion, desire, your talent, your gifting, your skill, and you can take that and enhance that area, please do, we have places where you can be involved in. But if you don't find something specific, don't just retire and say, well, I guess there's nothing that I want to do here at the moment. Do what the occasion is demanding. Just before the service, I came and today I was got ready to preach, I got dressed to preach as you see, okay? But I came here and there was a, there was certain issues that had to be resolved in a broadcast department and another thing. And so I'm here in this clothes crawling under the desks on the floor, plugging and plugging wires and helping guys to figure it out. Why? Because occasion demanded for it, even though I wasn't ready to do that today and I wasn't dressed to do that today, okay? Hopefully after this message, more of you will volunteer and help out that I will have to do that before the service. But my point is, this is what the occasion was demanding to do. And so let's be mindful of what, where and how we can serve and let's not have this attitude where there is no room for me to serve. There is room for everybody. Amen church. Number five, do all that you can do. Do all that you can do. This answers the title of my message. And it comes from the story of Matthew chapter 14 verses six through nine. Jesus replied, it speaks of a woman that broke an alabaster box and anointed Jesus. It says, leave her alone. Why criticizing her for doing such a good thing to me? Again, usually people that criticize others for doing something are the ones that are doing nothing. Are the ones that think they know better, but they do nothing. So they're criticizing her.  She has done what she could. He's anointed my body very ahead of time. I tell you the truth, whatever the good news is preached throughout the world. This woman's deed will be remembered and discussed. She did all that she could. Now I wanna talk to those of us that are serving, that have committed to serve. I want you to serve full heartedly. So that when we do serve, we can give our best to God. That we don't give have hearted. That we don't come and give. If we're serving in ushers, we just do what we were told to do. We just stand there with sour face. Yeah, I didn't have my coffee today because I was late to serving today. Welcome. Hope you find it enjoyable today, you know? Obviously it's just a funny example, but this is to encourage us that when we do something for God, that we do it with 100%. That Jesus could speak of us to others, says leave them alone. They have done all that they can do. It might be a little bit, it might be much. Some of us have more skills than the other. Some of us have more understanding of the others. Some of us are quicker than the others. But whatever you're at, and whatever you fall on the scale of capabilities, let it be said about you that you've done it with a full heart. Let it be said about you that you've done all that you can that you bring your alabaster's box, that you break it for the body of Christ. The body of Christ is the church. We see this woman, she served Jesus, and she anointed his body. Today I ask you that you will anoint the body of Jesus with your gifts, your talents, with your time, with your efforts, with your finances, with your prayers.  Because then Jesus says that everywhere this, everywhere the gospel be preached that her, she will be rewarded pretty much. And that's the last thing, that there is a reward. That everything that we do to God, anything that we do for God, everything that we do for his kingdom will be rewarded. When disciples came to Jesus and they said, we followed you, we're doing all these things for you, we're doing all these things with you, what are we gonna have? And Jesus goes on to say, he doesn't rebuke them, but he goes on to say that you will be rewarded in this life and then in that one. I want you to know that everything that you do for God and I wanna talk to every volunteer and I wanna, that serves, that gives of their life, that gives of their time, finances, that serves here, comes early in the morning, the worship team, every person that is here today that is serving, first and foremost, I wanna say big thank you for our Pastoral team. I wanna say big thank you from every pastor and I wanna say thank you from the church.  Those people that are doing cameras and sitting in a dark room that you probably don't even know where it's at, those of you that are online that are watching right now, it takes a lot of people to put these things together, running sound, running lights, I mean, making these things beautiful, making it sound beautiful, making it presentable, so today you can come and enjoy and I wanna say thank you to every volunteer and every person now, thank you. Thank you. And yes, yes, we got Ruvim, we got Ryan, we got CJ there on the backboard, wave to you guys, wave to you guys. Come on, come on, we appreciate them for their service, but I want you just to know that at the end of the day, whether your name got called down today, whether you got appreciated today from the stage, whether you got thanked by a pastor, by a leader, and we try to cultivate a culture here in Hungry Gen of gratitude and recognition, but if by chance we missed it, remember that your reward is in heaven, that Jesus sees your work, your efforts, and he will reward you. As a matter of fact, the less people see you and reward you publicly, Jesus said, the more he will reward you, because oftentimes our public recognition is already our reward, but when we don't get recognized, that he recognizes and in this life he will reward us and so much more in the next one. And in the Matthew chapter 20 that we just read, Bible tells us that he called all the workers and he rewarded everybody. I wanna let you know that you will be rewarded not necessarily for your work, but you will be rewarded for your faithfulness and your obedience. You will be rewarded not for your work because there are some people that do work of God, Bible says carelessly, and if you do that, Bible even warns us that you will be judged for that, but you will be rewarded for your faithfulness and your obedience. Some of your load will be light. Some of your load will be heavy. Some of you will carry a heavy load, like these ones that complain, they said, Lord, we worked whole day and we worked through the heat of the day, we got exhausted. He said, you know, obviously that's a whole different story. They were complaining about why they got the same reward, but the point of the story is that you get rewarded not necessarily for your work, you get rewarded for your faithfulness and obedience. Some of you carry heavy loads, some of you here four, five, six times a week, some of you just come here 30 minutes before the service, but if you do it faithfully, if you do it as you do it unto the Lord, if you do it with obedience toward the Holy Spirit, you will be rewarded and your word is great in Jesus' name, amen.


What's up everybody, Jason here for jaspyscasebreak.com 2022 Leaf Ultimate Draft Football, just sold out. This is a six box half case break, random first name, first letter, number one. And again guys, 15 total spots, everybody gets a random letter from the list below. Example, if you get letter M and we pull a Matt Carell, you will get that card. There's one pack per box, five cards per pack, and every card will be autographed. And again, there's the letters there and the combos, and then there's the potential bigger players that you can get out of there. So you'll have some draft picks from this year, and you'll probably have some NIL players as well that are still in college. Jesus. All right, five days, I'm gonna give them seven. Winner keeps the Joe Burrow, NT, Stars and Stripes. Dice Roller there, Nico down to Jeff, there's the letters, Roll, two and a one, or one and a two, three times. One, two, three. Peter Aang down to Adam Koperman, three times. One, two, three. I will, it won't be $100,000 worth, but it'll be a couple thousand maybe. All right, so Peter, you have letter A. Nester with the combo letters, V, W, R. Jeff Henn with X and Z, Jeff as well would be. Nico with S, Adam with letter D. Jeff Henn with C, Adam with NI, T as well. Jeff with J, Nico with G, Jeff with M. Nester with EH, Jeff Henn with PQ, and Adam with letter K. I don't know if anyone's gonna trade, but I'll leave the trade window open, of course. When is optic three box break? We actually have an optic three box break. Do you mean chronicles? Three box break? Whenever it sells out. It's still at 19, if that's what you're talking about. PSA 8, five, that hurts. All right, we'll trade window closing, guys. You know, I thought of you with a chat on Instagram. We were given away, Julio Rodriguez, autographed gold signature black baseball. It was really nice. And the hip hacks, it was really cool. All right, here we go. So I think we're gonna hold off putting up number two for now. This might be something we'll repost once we get back from the national. I think, I don't know if you guys heard of it. Try to keep the website as light as possible. So once we sell out, once we sell out certain breaks today and over the weekend, we're probably not gonna repost them unless, of course, it's like a new release, maybe. So this break is gonna be one of them. We'll do this one, but then we'll have to just repost it when we get back. All right, one, two, three, four, five, six for the right. Well, I literally seen you watching. Three, one, two, three. I thought you would have mentioned it. I think I remember when I showed in, I had it randomized. I think I literally seen you pop in and watch it. I mean, anything Julio already exploded from the homerun derby. I think people got to see him a closer eye for the first time and got to see him get interviewed and see his power and how consistent he was. I mean, it was such a great thing for him to be part of that homerun derby, for sure. It's like if you didn't know about Julio Rodriguez the way he was and stuff like that, now you do. All right, here we go. So we have a Kingsley autograph, which is not numbered. I mean, it could be a parallel, a low number, depending on the level and card once you fulfill it. But that'll go first letter, first name. So letter K is Adam Cupperman. Oh, you didn't gotcha. We have nine and 50, Sam. Is that a Washington putter back for you? Letter S, that's going to Nico. Jalen Cropper to 15. Letter J, that's going to Jeff Han. We have a Tanner McKee. Don't watch Washington football. Don't care for it. Letter T. Yo, Alexander S, right, S-O-U. He's in the chat and he said there was something from two days ago that didn't get ripped. Do you remember not ripping something for him? Everything should have been ripped. Yeah, I see it. Everything's fulfilled. Yeah. He's talking about two prisms. Was it two boxes of prism? I did all that. I mean, if he doesn't remember, but I did all that. And Chris Olavit, that is Ultimate Weapon. S was Nico, Nico Martin. First box in the books, Ultimate Weapon, number to 50 that, man, I can't even see the names. David Bell. Supposed to bring you back to, well, let's see. This top letter is defective. Wow, look at that. Jesus, I didn't even notice that. And Kyle Hamilton to 50. Letter K. Gomani Jackson. Letter D that's going to Adam Coverman. We have A out of 99. That's Romeo dopes. Letter R going to Nestor. And how about little Joe Montania to 99. 13 out of 99. Joe Montana. Letter J going to Jeff Henn. Man, why is it a penny's new source of tiny? Jelani Woods to 75. Dachston Hill to 25. Letter D going to Adam Coverman. Johan Dotson. A lot of people are on this guy too as well. Letter J going to Jeff. Ahmed to 99. And how about a Sam Hell to 50. Oh, that's Saus Garger. Oh yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, if it would have said S, if it would have said Sauce, then it would go to Nico, but technically it says Ahmed. So it's whatever it says in the card. I guess I don't really hear his first thing too much. So it's like, yeah, no, I feel you. But no, yeah, it's funny though. It's like whenever they put like Ichiro on the card, it's going to go to I, but if they put Ichiro Suzuki, then it's like a last name thing, then it's going to go to S. So that kind of messes with people. Jermaine Johnson. Letter J going to Jeff Hand. I know, but you are getting a lot of hits though. I think you still got a lot of popular letters though. Letter T, Tyler. Baddie. Coverman. Tyrone Williams. Letter K, Coverman. Robinson. Kailin Robinson. And going to Coverman as well. Letter D, Desmond Ritter. Theo Letter T going to Adam. Josh. Hendon Hooker. To 75. Letter H going to Nestor with the EH combo. We have a Anthony Richardson, I think it is? Yeah, to 50. You're definitely going to get a Kavion Thibodeau. How about that? Pro duck right there. That's Chad's favorite. 17 to 75. I know he's a giant, but still. Last one guy. That's what I'm saying, Adam. Anybody but a giant Cowboys or a Washington football team for me, I would have been okay with it. But I hope he does kill it in New York.  Carson Strong to 99. Eagles undrafted quarterback, I believe. Letter C going to Jeff Hand. Adonai Mitchell. Letter A going to Peter A. Isaiah Spiller. Letter I, that's going to cover him with the Ni combo to 50. We have Chris Rodriguez Jr. Letter C going to Jeff Hand to 25. And we're going to end it off with a Quinn Ewers. 48 out of 75. Letter Q going to Jeff Hand with P and Q combo. There you go, guys. That was the break. So there you go. Quick little run through right there. Isaiah Spiller. Nice Kavion Thibodeau. Desmond Ritter. Tyler Williams. Sam Howe. Sauce Gardner there. Joe Montana. Kyle Hamilton. Chris Olave. Some nice stuff there, guys. Appreciate it, everybody. Like I said, second half will hold off probably for when we get back to the national. I appreciate you guys. Jaspeyskasebreak.com.


We are in between Corsica and Italy and we found small places of plastic but there is no island at the moment. So we may have some accumulation, some tax, but that would be just for some patches of, I mean, 521 km long. But we never have big islands there in between Corsica and Italy. Never.