I want to thank you all very much for coming out. All the challenges, parking, driving, protests, and everything, Super Bowl. It's so nice to see so many of you here. We were here at about 2 o'clock, and there were two people here. And we're going, oh my gosh, here we're doing a slideshow. So it just means so much for you to share your Saturday with us. And we're going to do our best to give you some of the beauty that we've seen across the state. And we will do a little bit of talking, and mostly letting you see what we've done. Oh, the other, the third party. This is Zorro. He's my art critic and spiritual advisor. And he goes with us on all our photo trips. He looks through the camera and tells me left, right, upside down. So he's an important part of our project here. So you have that. So this was a 17-year journey that started actually with the inspiration for this was 24 years ago, when I went down to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve in the Antelope Valley, which is about an hour north and east of Los Angeles, met a woman, a friend of mine at a lab in San Francisco, back when we were doing film. She said, I'm going down to the Poppy Reserve. You want to go down? I'm sure you've been there before. I said, no, no.  You haven't been down to the Poppy Reserve. What's wrong with you? So she said, you have to go. So I went down. This was a really, really good year after five bad years. To have blooms like this, you need a combination of events. The rains have to come at the right time. The temperatures have to happen. It can't be too windy when the blossoms are on the plants. It can't be too dry. It can't be too hot. So these beautiful blooms that we're going to show you all happen because of a convergence of weather and climate events. So I was down here photographing. I'm calling Nita. And I'm saying, you have to come down and see this.  We spent days photographing this. It's a really interesting area in that the Mojave Desert is that way. The coast is that way. You've got a lot of wind coming in from the coast out into the desert. So what happens is the first day I was back here was so windy, I couldn't photograph. These little hummocks are protecting the flowers from the wind. You can see that most of the flowers are closed up. That's because the flowers close up in the wind, and they close up at night, and they close up on cloudy days. So the one area where you see the blossoms are actually open are on the lee side of these little hills. So I came back two days later after going climbing a Joshua tree and got basically two images out of a whole series of exposures on a roll of film, two that were good where the motion was actually stopped. So I want to back up a little bit. Joan gave you a little bit of our bio, but I want to give you a little more. When Rob and I met and we met in a photo lab in San Francisco, I was a people photographer. That's one of my photos from the first children of the Tenderloin exhibit. And as Joan said, 30 years ago in September, that exhibit opened. And we're actually using some of the same frames from that exhibit in this exhibit. So it was quite interesting to be exchanging them out from Tenderloin to flowers. And Rob's focus was on nature and landscape photography. As time passed, we started working together on a wildflower project. And Nita and I worked together. We sleep together. We eat together. We are in each other's space 94 hours a day. And so five couple counselors and 30 years later, we're still together. And we made it through this exhibit, which is amazing. This is the earliest picture taken in 1984. This is the earliest dated picture in the exhibit. This is a California buckeye tree. They're looping in the foreground. And that's where it sort of started. But it really started, like I said, with a poppy reserve in 1992. And because of Rob's love of this planet, he started working on environmental issues. This was part of a series on mining on public land. And he was invited to go to Washington DC to speak at the National Press Club for the Sierra Club to try to change the 1872 mining law to support the mining law reform that President Clinton at the time was trying to put through. So just for a sense of scale, can you go back? That waste rock pile is 200 feet high. So this is what's happening on public lands, all this mining to get gold. Anyway, I could talk about that forever, but let's go. So I've dealt with water issues. And the smoke you see overhead is from the California Zaka fire, a wildfire fire in 2007. So Nita and I spent about a week documenting that fire. The cloud is what's creating the color of the light. There was a smoke plume going 40 miles from the fire all the way back to Bakersfield. So this was the environmental work that I've been doing as well. And as Joan mentioned, I was a firefighter. When I left college, I had gotten a degree at Clark University in biology and came out here. And decided to explore some different jobs. And one of them was being a firefighter. And this was one of the photos I took while on duty. I kept a little Raleigh on my belt and actually won an award with an Icon International Competition for this photo. So that was very encouraging. And as I mentioned, the Children of the Tenderloin Project, which started out as a three month project and a year and three months later, we had a book and a major exhibit. So Sue, you thought we put a lot of time into this one? And it really showed me the power of photography and how this really helped this neighborhood. And I started to get known nationally for the work I did with children and was invited to do the Children's Defense Fund calendars. And this was, they were hand colored by Teya Shrak. This was a powwow actually here in San Francisco at San Francisco State. And one of the things we've been having fun with is working with our images. We actually got them to be eight feet tall by 20 feet wide. And you can see them at Kaiser Hospital. So the work we've been selling lately to healthcare institutions has kept us going and allowed us to keep working on our Wildflower Project. We've been fortunate to find an art consultant who's putting a lot of our work into different healthcare places. And it's given us money to keep going, photographing, we're going to be spending probably a couple months this summer completing the last three of the Western States for our Wildflower Project and book Beauty and the Beast Wildflowers and Climate Change. That's the project in the book is Impressions of Spring, a voice for wildflowers of the West Republic lands. So when we're not photographing flowers, we've been out photographing birds. Which I call flying flowers. This is the Merced National Wildlife Refuge. Little bit of Photoshop in there. Actually a lot of Photoshop in there. So sometimes we work on our images to make them more literal of what we saw and sometimes we play around with them and do an interpretation of it. This is the Merced National Wildlife Refuge. I photographed this in February last year. So Merced is really close. It's a beautiful refuge. There's a five mile loop you can drive around to see the birds in different types of environments. So now we'll start with the flowers at the San Francisco Bay. So we're gonna just go through these. Most of them happen in Marin and because that's our backyard and there's so many flowers there. And over time, Rob wanted to come up with different ways of photographing them. And we developed the Natural Light Studio. So photographs may look like they've been done indoors in a studio setting, but it's all been done outdoors without flash using reflectors and other, the fusion discs, different backgrounds. We have clamps, we have stakes, we have poles, we have plexiglass, we have all sorts of things. I carry 25 pounds of gear and 25 pounds of camera gear and 40 pounds of a backpack full of 40 pounds of the other stuff we were just talking about. And you can see here, we have a black background behind this photograph, but we have a white background that we started with. So often we'll try both and then later on decide which one we like better. And started creating these setup photos so we could show the environment that the flower was actually photographed in. And I decided doing that because I've seen so many other beautiful macro images that other real talented photographers had made. And I just wanted to know where did this flower live? You know, what was around it? What other plants were around it? And so it gives a sense of place for the flower. And sometimes we're really dealing with the wind and having to create wind blocks. You can see, I'm sorry, you can see that the flower is not sharp, it's out of focus, so it's still even blowing in this wind protected area that I carry around. And we're very careful about where we photograph. If it's a spot where we're gonna do damage, we won't do it. If we can be gentle and work around flowers and other plants that are alive, we will. But we have turned down situations that we would have loved to have photographed, but we don't feel we have the right to disturb them. We, I spend about an average of 45 minutes on a flower. I'm usually on my knees sometime on my stomach. And what this has given me is staring at a flower for so long, it's really given me a sense of the appreciation of the individual life form in the world. As opposed to looking at it from a species, from a general abstract perspective, looking at each flower that's an individual that I know has had a DNA and biological heritage that may go back thousands or 10 thousands of years, it gives me a much greater appreciation for the individual form of life. And that has expanded to every place I go. Now I see things as an individual in a community that supports it. So some of our favorite places in the area are Mount Tam, Ring Mountain, Point Reyes, Mount Burdell. Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The Headlands. We're really fortunate. We've got Golden Gate National Recreation Area within 12 minute walk up from our house. And so GGNRA protects so much land. There's such a great variety of species. We're just blessed with so much public land in the Bay Area. When you go to the exhibit, there's a really interesting fact sheet wall text that gives you some of the statistics of what California holds, how big the state is, how many acres are public land. There's an amazing amount of public land. I wanted to tell a funny story about this photo. We found it the night before. I found it the night before. It was getting too late to photograph. Sometimes flowers will close up and so we can't photograph them until the next day. I unfortunately had to go to traffic school the next day. So Rob came out here by himself to photograph this checker bloom and did it on his own and packed up and two seconds later it poured. So the timing was just perfect. And so by using natural light we get to play with it and we get to get a variety of different effects. This one is we're allowing the sun to reach the flower and then in this case we put a diffusion disc over it and soften the light. Yeah, we didn't spot that, sorry. We get dust on the background so that's one of the things we need to clean up. And then trying to take similar species and come up with different approaches. This is a wild rose that's out at Point Reyes. This is another flower by the shore. And one of the ones that's really fun is to find the bush poppy, which I didn't even realize there were that many different types of poppies. And this is a really neat and fairly rare one to find which is the Luicia and that was up on Mount Burdell. It's also known as Bitterroot. And you'll see the setup photo for this one out in the exhibit. And it's just amazing how hardy a plant can be. It can grow out of anything. It's a seed monkey flower and serpentine rock. Sorry, this is not always responding to me. Point Reyes. This is the San Mateo Coast, Anu Nuevo area. And along the California coast, there are all these benchlands, all these flat areas that are up above the water. Most of them have been turned into agriculture. So there are a few places where the ecosystem has been preserved. We were reading the sign as we entered this area and it said this type of ecosystem is the eighth rarest in the United States because all of these benchlands have been converted to agriculture like Brussels sprouts or cauliflower, artichokes or things like that. So I started taking to wrapping some of my flowers with a fabric because some of the flowers had a lot of the flowers have a real distracting background and I couldn't put something necessarily right behind them.  So I started wrapping them and it'll take more time to wrap the flower than to make the composition because I wanna get the folds just right and sometimes I'll have it just right and a small puff of wind will come and blow the fabric away. It's a really, really light fabric called, it's a chiffon I've gone through five different fabric types to get something that holds the most graceful folds. And you'll see the setup photo for this also in the exhibit. So it's all about trying to present this beautiful individual, this beautiful flower in the most elegant way sometime or trying to show it in a different way that I haven't seen before. As far as I know, I'm the only one that uses this technique to do this. It's really painstaking and time consuming and can be really frustrating. And then I also developed a way to get the flower in contact with the front of the lens. So I have this, it's called the contact series. I got kinda tired of doing these strict looking botanical everything's sharp, everything's clear. But botanical images. So I've been working with this. This takes a lot of trial and error to get something that actually works. I throw a lot of them away. So this is this series. I'm looking up into the flower and the light is being transmitted through the back of it to give all these beautiful effects. If you saw this in nature, you would recognize this at all. So this is the photo that became a wall in the hospital. So now we're gonna go a little bit into the Central Valley and Gorman in the Tehachapi Mountains. And I think Julie was, were they saying that 75% of this type of flowering land in the Central Valley is gone, is now agriculture or housing. And just to back up a little bit, Anita said Gorman. Gorman is a town that's the top of the pass. Coming out of Los Angeles, you go up over the Tehachapi Mountains. There's this little town called Gorman and above the town of Gorman is private land where one of the most incredible blooms in the world happens. I've been driving up and down the interstate five past that area for 50 years and I've only seen this bloom once. And so I mean, they call it a 50 year bloom and that's been my experience. So we'll show those in a moment. So this was just right off five. So there are little islands here and there that you'll find of wildflowers that still exist. The freeway pavement is probably 20 feet that way. Then there are wonderful vernal pools in the Sacramento Valley that you can only go through with tours, some of them are on Mather Air Force Base. And again, 90% of them have been plowed under and there are special ecosystems because the soil is not permeable, so the water pools and then disappears by evaporation. So as the water is evaporating, you get rings of different types of plants and different types of flowers. And you'll see one of the photos out there from this area. So there's a fair amount of research going on on the plants in the areas. And this is a very common flower found in that area, the meadow foam. So this is Garmin, as Rob was mentioning and it was a 50 year bloom. And 50 year bloom means these type of conditions come together generally only once every 50 years. And you could get on the other side of the freeway and look back across at this hillside that was 1,000 feet high, half a mile wide, was 100% flowers. And it was the most amazing wildflower bloom that we have ever seen in the 17 years of really focusing on this project. So we were there for about five days, we were there, well actually we were there for about two days. We were lucky that a storm had come and there were these nice gray clouds overhead that made some really beautiful diffuse light. I'm standing across the freeway on the west side using a telephoto lens that's magnifying the image probably about eight times. So I was able to get all these abstracts. So the freeway goes in the valley below down there. So this is the. Los Angeles, excuse me, Los Angeles is that way about an hour of Bakersfield about 20 minutes that way. And this, can you go back one? This side of the freeway closest to us is on the west side and that's public land. It's called Hungry Valley Recreation Area. The other side of the freeway is private land and it's land that we really hope will be protected at some point in the future because it's just such an amazing place. So that's, this image is taken a little bit farther north but you still have the same collection of flowers. So now we're heading out into the Mojave Desert to the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. This is where we started the slide show. So this is on a nice bright sunny day and this is the same Poppy Reserve seen from totally different side on a beautiful cloudy day. We took this photograph after we took the photographs you just previously saw in Gorman. So now this 1990 El Nino event was an amazing event for us to photograph. We have a few images. We're anticipating that this is going to happen again with these abundant rains. This is what we saw in Death Valley. So you want to hold this for a second? I was going through a really good website that talks about where you can find wildflowers in the desert. It's called desertusa.com and here's what I picked up just a couple days ago. I know it's only January, it's early but the flowers didn't get the memo. Spring has sprung. The southern end of Death Valley National Park is going crazy with wildflowers. Not all the players have made it to the party yet but the ones that are here are just jamming. The southern part of Badwater Road is where the big show is going on. Hills are covered with desert gold, Santa Verbena, brown-eyed evening primrose, desert five-spot, notch-leaf facility. They're also coming up on the black volcanic hills last a few miles before Ashford Mill. The canyons of the southern black mountains have all of the above flowers as well as an abundance of evening primrose on the alluvial fans, desert star, golden evening primrose, broadleaf gillie, and Mojavea can be found in the washes and the brilliant purple Caltholeaf facility is coming up, is coming into its own, covering whole hillsides in some of the canyons. Although the numbers are greater down south, the variety on the alluvial fans from Artist Drive to just south of Badwater is astounding. Desert five-spot, gravel, ghost, rock, Daisy will be blooming in days and the ground is thick, and then he has in caps, thick with plants. For those of you who are worried if there will be any flowers left when you come in March, be sure that there are huge numbers of teeny, tiny seedlings popping up behind the more developed plants. This is all in an area that gets an average of 1.2 inches of rain a year. And so we would encourage you to go to Death Valley, go to Yanzibarago, go to Joshua Tree, see some of these amazing blooms that we've been able to photograph. Yeah, and the year that we were there, Death Valley had five and a half? 5.4 inches of rain and they broke their all-time annual rainfall. We don't know what's gonna happen this year. Right. So these are a few more from that period and if you've ever seen a road runner in the rain, they look like a drowned rat. It's not their element. So keep going, we're 20 minutes into the show. So this was in Joshua Tree. Normally you'll see a can of Canterbury bells, you know, scattered throughout the washes in the El Nino rains of 1998. We were photographing in Joshua Tree. We came across this desert wash. This is all really coarse soil made out of grains of granite. So this is a non El Nino year right now. The next one is what we saw during the El Nino. So not only were there so many more plants, but they got bigger and bigger and bigger because it stayed cool. And then this is the lily right here and we are very careful again where we actually step, where we put things. So normally that, Mike. I'm sorry, normally the lily is probably about this high and there'll be a blossom here and a blossom there and a blossom there and a blossom there. This year the plant was putting so much energy into buds and blossoms to create more seeds, that plant didn't get very tall. So go the next one. And there's Zoro and Cosmic Bunny. And this is a night blooming flower. I'll go back one, sorry. So you can see how many buds are on the plant. So this, and it kept raining. I would love to visit this area and see what's there now. And the detura is a night blooming plant. We actually photographed it by moonlight the night before and then came back first thing in the morning before it closed up to get that because it's such an elegant and probably one of the largest flowers we photographed. Yeah, okay. The question about Photoshop. Did we Photoshop these photos? So this was the original capture.  This is a good size plant. It's on Mount Timopaya State Park beneath the, I mean, just a little bit before the Butchak parking lot. And this is what it looks like afterwards. And this is getting it back to what our experience was minus the wrinkles in the sheet. Again, this is a Palmer's buckwheat. The light was very low, it was very diffuse. What the camera captures is not what the mind does. It is not what the mind sees. It doesn't capture the feelings. So our intention is always to represent the plant or the blossom as closely as we can and still give the emotional impression of what we felt when we were there, when I was down six inches from these plants, photographing it. And you can see all the sand there. It was incredibly windy as well. So you have to work on it to get what you want afterwards. What do you spend about a day on this one? Yeah. So this was what the camera captured. This is above the Kern River Gorge. There was very, very low light. There was still a bit of sunlight just hitting the trees in the background up there. But because the predominant light falling on the scene was from blue sky, it put a blue cast area on everything. So the camera captured the actual color of the light. Our eyes interpret that and make it look as real as possible. And that was what we actually saw. It's a service berry, I believe, and I think the oaks are scrub oaks. So that's some of what we do in Photoshop. People always wanna know, what have you done? What do you do? So this gives you an idea of when we go out, when we were in the deserts, on really good years we'll be out for a month, three weeks to a month at a time. So they're really long trips. And then up here in the mountains we may go out for three or four days. We're limited often when we're backpacking in because we can't carry very much food. We already have too much equipment. So my pack was 65 pounds, Rob was 85. I won't do that again. I won't either. I'm gonna hire a mule. But it was great to be up there. That's Round Top Lake, Carson Pass, Heart Lake area. So here you can drive up to 10,000 feet in park and then there's a trail, I don't have the pointer, but there's a trail that can take you up to Morgan Pass which is 11,000 feet and that's where we've gotten, that's where we got that flower. Again, the background, as you'll see was just really chaotic, craggy rock. This is Summit Passed. We went on a trip with our excellent biologist friend, Ted Kipping, who- Has arrived. Who has arrived. And Ted has led us on a lot of beautiful alpine and subalpine trips into the eastern side of the Sierra. We call Ted when we wanna know, Ted, what's this? What's this? Where's something blooming? Ted has given us so much information. He's such a good spirit. I just love him, he's such a good man. This is northern end of the Sierra, it's up in Quincy. And you'll see a lady slipper out in the exhibit in the mountain section and we actually drove three and a half hours to get that particular flower because we really wanted to include it. That was a $300 flower. And then fire, you'll see in the exhibit, we talk about fire and how important it is to clear the land for the wildflowers. So this was an area in the Santa Ana Mountains. The wildfire, fire I think was called the Baker fire, they come through the year before. And it's pretty obvious you can see on the left third, I mean the right third of the frame where the fire stopped. And this was a very, very graphic representation of how sometimes fire will touch one area and not another. So we were there following year and saw this wonderful resurgence of flowers that had just been waiting for a fire. And quite the variety. One of the problems with them waiting too long for it to burn is that it burns too hot and then the soils can actually become unfriendly to wildflowers and other plants. Almost fused. So these are some of the flowers that we found in that area. Including the flower poppy, fire poppy, excuse me. So out in the exhibit, you'll see a prototype of a book we're working on. We've been working on it for five, six years now. When we have the funding, we wanna put together, invite different authors like Mary Ellen Hannibal, who I've noticed is here and we'll speak in a little bit, to write essays about conservation and environmental issues and use our photographs. We wanted our photographs to be more than just pretty pictures. We both have been involved as activists with our art and so what could we do with the flowers? So we decided to use the flowers to attract attention and then the essays to educate and inspire people to take action to protect life on this planet. So what you'll see out there is simply a prototype, an on-demand book, and if you're interested in us staying in touch with you and giving you an update on the book when it actually comes out, we'd be happy to do that. We started this in 2009. Oh, seven years. Yeah, we put the original prototype together. Rob received an award for one of the photos from Gorman at the Wildlife Photographer Competition that's done with the BBC and the British Museum of Natural History.  We decided, well, we needed a portfolio. We needed something to show. So we made our first blurb book and that started the whole thing. And so we wanted to cover the West. The book is gonna be of Wildflowers of the West, mostly on public land, almost exclusively on public land. So we've been to Arizona. We've been to Colorado. So this is Needed's Hummingbird. Needed was used to photographing children and following children all around. So there's an area, the Yankee Bay Basin, which is just north of the town of Telluride in the southern, southwestern part of Colorado. It gets a lot of monsoonal rains in the summertime.   As climate change happens, these meadows will be drying out sooner. There may be less rainfall. The temperatures will be higher. So there's a concern that some of the plants from lower down, like the shrubs, will be invading these and taking over some of these meadows. So these meadows may be lost. We also went to Oregon, spent nine days at the Columbia River Gorge, which is a really fascinating place because as you go from west to east, it changes from really wet to desert. One of our favorite places is Mount Rainier, which has an amazing wildflower bloom. And you can drive up to, I think it's 5,500 feet and what you get at that elevation is more like what we get at about 9,000 feet down here. And Utah, now Rainier is one of the best of times. Utah was one of the worst of times. There were bugs and they followed us everywhere. After photographing in Capitol Reef for three days, every day we were out with the bugs, we finally had to find something to put over our face. I'm wearing Nita's underwear. It's clean. And it just washed. That I can put around my head. They were going in our ears. To keep the bugs from off of me. We're in the middle of nowhere here. Yeah, we drove up to the spot. This was just about 20 feet off the road. No cars, nothing. Within 20 seconds, the bugs were on top of us when there was nothing there. Yeah, this was really painful. There are 50 bites on each arm. And they're worse than mosquito bites. They last longer. Oh, I couldn't sleep. I mean, I didn't know. So anyway, next time, and I'm not kidding, I'm gonna bring a hazmat suit because it's white. I mean, we're photographing in the heat. So I'm gonna bring a hazmat suit and a mask.  So we're gonna end the show with a little bit of a journey through California's Lily family. And there's quite the variety, both onions and lilies. There's a lot of ways to photograph a flower. Sometimes we're looking straight down on it. Sometimes we're looking at it with all sorts of different light we can use. It gets really confusing sometimes. Sometimes it'll be, okay, I've got it. And then Nita will say, well, why don't you try this angle? Oh no, I don't wanna, I wanna get up my back hood. Don't just try it. Okay, so I'll do it and she's got a better angle. You know, after I've spent 20 minutes with the perfect composition. Nita has incredible eyes for finding things. She has a super saturated sense for color. I will walk by something that's small and she'll say, oh, did you see that? She's always finding things. I mean, she's pointing out things and she'll point out and say, wow, look at that over there. And I'll say, what? And I think I've got great vision, I'm a photographer. So I'm grateful for all the plants she finds that I can spend hours on my knees photographing. That's at the bottom of steep ravine trail. So sometimes we do black backgrounds and then change composition. Sometimes we do white backgrounds. So a lot of these I would have loved to have put in the show. We were supposed to do a 40 image show and I just kept adding more and more and more and more and Nita said, we're not gonna get it done. So I'm just really grateful that she let me put as much stuff in as I wanted to. So we now have 99 images in the show. At last count. 100 if you include the one in the case. So we really wanna thank the people who've made this exhibit possible. And also some of these people are here today. So we're gonna have a chance for some other people to come up and speak briefly and then we'll do a Q and A. I wanted to thank two people that are absent, Bill and Danielle. Our friends, we met up on Mount Tam who spent two days framing for us. I wanna thank Gail who's here that helped us frame. I wanna thank Sue Mazer who told us about the birds and who's taken us up to Mount Tam to show us the rare and endangered Tiberon Mariposa Lily. We are indebted to so many. We're just photographers. We're not botanists. We depend on so many people to show us where to go, what to photograph, the time of year to do it, information about what the actual Latin name is. We couldn't do this without the community of help we have. It really is a community. It really is a family that's given us the opportunity to show you all this beauty that we love so very much. So thank you for watching our slide show. Thank you for coming through all the challenges you had to. It's really nice to see so many people here. Like I said, I was here at two o'clock and there were literally two people here. And well, I'll give a slide show anyway. And I also wanna mention that we are a sponsored project of Blue Earth Alliance, an organization that was created to support documentary projects, whether it be environmental, social justice, or threatened cultures. So we're indebted to them for their support, for the tax deduction, as well as the community that they have created. So I'd like to invite... First of all, are you in a chair? Thank you, that felt so nice. Thank you.


Today, I'm sharing two quick and easy crowd-pleasing recipes. I'll be making a creamy bacon cheeseburger dip and sticky chicken wings. So let's get started. So here's what you'll need for the creamy bacon cheeseburger dip. And as always, I'll make sure to link the recipe in the description box. So you'll need some Monterey Jack cheese and cheddar cheese, a half a pound of ground beef, you'll need some bacon, Worcestershire sauce. You'll also need salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Or if you want to add to that or take away, fill free. Cream cheese and onions. So we're going to start off by frying up our bacon. So I've got my bacon going. And normally when I use bacon for a recipe, I tend to bake it in the oven. But in this case, you really want to pan fry it because you need that bacon grease to fry up your onion and your ground beef. It's going to lend a really good flavor to the dish. So I'm just going to let this continue to cook up and then I'll show you what comes next. Okay, so my bacon is ready and I've got it draining. And to my skillet, I'm going to add my onions. And by the way, I did drain most of the fat from the bacon, but I did leave some of that bacon grease in the pan. So I'm adding my onions and I'm going to add my ground beef. I'm using a lean ground beef and I'm just going to let this cook up. Okay, so the ground beef is done. Let's start putting everything together. So in my bowl, I have the eight ounces of cream cheese, which by the way, I forgot to mention is softened and at room temperature. I'm going to put my ground beef in and it's been drained. And so I'm going to add my seasonings and my Worcestershire sauce. And I'm going to add in the majority of my bacon and the majority of my cheese. You're going to leave a little bit because you're going to want to put that on top. We're actually going to be baking this. So it's going to be delish. And you're just going to give it a good stir. All right, so I got everything all mixed up and I have, I think this is like a one and a half quart casserole dish that I have greased and I'm just putting my mixture inside of it. And you're just going to top it with some additional cheese and bacon. Okay, so I am going to pop this in the oven for about 15, 20 minutes or until that cheese is nice and bubbly. Okay, so here is the dip hot out of the oven. I garnished mine with a little bit of fresh parsley. You could also use some chopped pickles if you like pickles. I am serving mine with some warm tortilla chips. You could also use Fritos potato chips or even waffle fries. So I hope you all enjoyed this recipe. If you try it out, I'd love to know what you think. So now we're going to make the sticky chicken wings. So you will need soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, Creole seasoning, ground mustard, brown sugar, and two pounds of chicken wings. And as always, I'll make sure to leave the recipe in the description box. So I'm going to start off by adding in my brown sugar and next I'm going to add in my teriyaki sauce, my soy sauce, Cajun seasoning or Creole seasoning, excuse me, and my ground mustard. And I'm just going to give this a good stir. Next you're going to pour your sauce over your wings and just toss your wings to make sure that they are evenly coated. Next you're going to cover your wings and then you're going to place them in the refrigerator for about an hour. So it's been about an hour and a half. I've got my wings here. I've got a cookie sheet lined with foil. I sprayed a little bit of cooking oil on it. All I'm going to do is just place my wings on the cookie sheet. Okay so I have my oven preheated to 375 degrees and all you're going to do is bake these for about 40, 45 minutes or until they're golden brown. And another thing I wanted to mention, if you wanted to reserve some of that marinade, set it aside before you put the chicken in it, you can and you can use that to baste your wings afterwards if you'd like. But let's go to the oven. So here are the wings. I baked them for exactly 40 minutes and I let them cool a little bit. That sauce thickened up but there's not a ton of sauce. So if you like a lot of sauce like I said earlier, I would definitely recommend just setting aside some of that sauce to add them to the wings once they come out of the oven. And even though I added a good amount of Creole seasoning, they're really not that spicy. So if you like a lot of spice, you'd probably want to add a little bit more Creole seasoning. So I hope you all enjoyed both of the tasty recipes I share today. If you did, please make sure to give us a thumbs up. And if you have not subscribed to our channel, we'd certainly love to have you. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you all next time.


President Mohamed Bwari has approved the appointment of Soni Ishonu as the new Executive Secretary of the Tehshiri Education Trust Fund. Director of Press and Public Relations, the Federal Ministry of Education Ben Gong, who made his known in a statement he issued in Abuja, stated that Ishonu takes over from Professor Suleyman Bouguereau, whose five-year tenure ends on March the 18th. Bouguereau was initially appointed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in April 2014, was replaced and reappointed. Gong described Ishonu as an accomplished technocrat that would bring to the job a diverse wealth of experience, spanning infrastructure, business administration, procurement, management, ICT and education sectors.


So, let us continue with the transient solution for a Markov process. As an example, we took the case of the weather problem, the two state weather problem, the sunny state and the rainy state with the transition probabilities of sunny days becoming rainy days next day and the rainy days becoming the sunny the next day. So, with that we arrived at a solution after n days or after n steps the probability that the day will be sunny denoted here by Sn that will be given by this transient expressions where P 1 and P 2 where the probabilities of sunny turning sunny and rainy turning rainy respectively including from the initial state S naught and then of course, a generated term which will eventually be responsible for the steady state. Now, first let us see what is going to be the value of the stationary or steady state. For that we should take the limit of n tending to infinity, we obtain the then the steady state from the knowledge that since P 1 plus P 2 lies between 0 and 2 because the P 1 and P 2 individually are independent probabilities lying between 0 and 1. So, the lowest values of the sum will be 0 highest would be 2 which means P 1 plus P 2 minus 1 should be more than minus 1 and less than plus 1. So, modulus of that should always be less than 1 hence the term P 1 plus P 2 minus 1 to the power n will tend to 0 as n tends to infinity because it is a number which is less than 1 its power will tend to 0. So, that gives us a steady state probability for a sunny day eventually starting from the fact that it was sunny definitely on the first day.  The correspondingly the probability for asymptotically the day to be a rainy day will be 1 minus that.  So, it gives us the relative ratio relative strength of a day being sunny or rainy asymptotically as 1 minus P 2 by 1 minus Q 1 or using the complementary values it is either Q 2 by Q 1. So, which is the ratio of the probability of turning to a sunny day from a rainy day divided by the probability of turning to a rainy day from a sunny day. So, we can show it as a transition diagram. So, if this now a representation of states the rainy state and the sunny state then the final ratio of whether between the probabilities of sunny and rainy are just the ratio of the downward and the upward transition probabilities. So, that is about the steady state. However, the approach to steady state is also equally interesting and now the problem degenerates into 2 cases. Supposing P 1 plus P 2 is less than 1 which is possible their independent probabilities this can be let us say 0.1 and this can be 0.2 it is less than 1. Then P 1 plus P 2 minus 1 will be less than 0 because it is a it will be negative and hence P 1 plus P 2 minus 1 to the power n will oscillate from negative to positive values as n moves from odd to even. So, for n is odd negative to the power n will be negative when n is even that will be positive. As a result approach to steady state will be oscillatory. So, we should see in this picture a diagrammatic representation that if you start with the sunny state it will keep the probability will keep oscillating. The amplitude of oscillation will come down successively as n increases and eventually the steady state value that we predicted will be attained. So, this is the case when P 1 plus P 2 is less than 1. If P 1 plus P 2 is more than 1 then we have the case of more than 1 then the decay becomes monotonic not oscillatory decay or approach to steady state will be monotonic. That is because when P 1 plus P 2 is more than 1 this term is positive it will successively decrease, but all the time remain successively less every time n increases. So, that would look something like this. So, for the case P 1 plus P 2 greater than 1 we are going to have a diagrammatically saying the transition transients would look something it will reach a steady state, but it will follow a smooth monotonic decay. So, this is the probability as s n as n increases so, this is n. So, it is basically an example to show how one can obtain transient solutions. If you have for example, three state problem then it is like solving three simultaneous equations you can again in principle get it, but becomes more and more difficult as the number of states increases and one has to do it numerically by operating with the transition matrix at successive states. But in principle we have now understood how one can both obtain a transient solution as well as a steady state solution from the knowledge of transition matrix. So, this is the strength of basically the Markovian hypothesis. Most of the examples that we took they seem to be all Markovian at least we have framed it so. In order to give you a kind of a feeling for what could be a non Markovian process which are quite plenty in fact, in nature to give you a one of the practical or nearly realistic problems we take a case of some particle agglomeration modeling. So, this is a as an example of example for non Markovian processes. We take a oversimplified agglomeration model let us say it is oversimplified based on basically just to illustrate the point. So, an agglomeration model let us remind ourselves is not a rigorous model it is just highly simplified a skeletal skipping the skeletal principles just to illustrate the point so an oversimplified. So, in this model let us imagine that there is a large reservoir a box in which there are some monomer particles some molecules suspended the number is very large and they do not get depleted if one is something happens we replenish them externally. So, we keep that let us say that in this system in this reservoir there is also one seed particle of interest. So, we let us say we indicate it with another color the seed particle is let us say red. Now, we process execute the process of agglomeration in the following way. So, every in every step we allow the monomers to agglomerate and form dimers in the next step we stop that process and allow those dimers to agglomerate with the seed particle. So, this is a seed particle these are monomers. So, what do we do in the first step we allow same system we allow these monomers will be there very large number and of course, this seed particle will be there. So, in the first step at the end of step 1 with some rule with some probability we allow that one dimer particle will be formed a small collection of these two monomers it is much smaller than this seed particle. So, we allow the formation of a dimer with some probability p and with the probability 1 minus p there will be no dimer formed. So, there are there are two options. So, we talk we as we mentioned we generate a random number if the probability p is pre assigned let us say 0.4 then if the random number shows a number less than 0.4 we allow a dimer formation if it allows a number if it shows a number more than 0.4 we disallow the formation this is step 1. In the step 2 we allow these dimers only to agglomerate with the seed we assume that the monomers do not somehow is an artificial assumption, but assume that over the seed particle only the dimers if existing that will agglomerate with this and form a larger cluster. If this volume of the seed particle is V naught then here the volume will be V naught plus 2 small V naught where small V naught is the volume of a monomer. So, dimer will have a volume of 2 V naught that is the idea and so on. In the third step now we again allow only the monomer agglomeration and allow it to form a dimer. So, dimer concentration may increase if it has not been consumed already, but every simulation in steps all the odd steps will correspond to the formation of a dimer through monomer-monomer interaction and at every even step these dimers let us say will interact with the seed particle to make it grow and our interest is to construct a kind of Markovian equation for the growth of the seed particle we are only focusing on the seed particle. So, in the seed state space if you look at the seed state space its initial volume let us say is V naught it can only increase by 2 V naught because the dimer only is attaching or its volume at any time can be 4 V naught or 6 V naught. So, we are executing a kind of stochastic motion along the seed volume space. So, this is a seed volume this is my random walking and it is increasing discretely V naught is some number let us say and it will increase by 2 units. So, it has now all the character of a stochastic process and we are interested in finding out simulating how the volume continues to increase because there is no decrease we are not allowing for its evaporation main thing is to see whether like this when you proceed after some stage if it has a volume V naught plus some let us say n V naught what is the probability of transition to another volume of V naught plus n plus 2 V naught because it changes by 2 units every simulation and here n is let us say always even numbers because that is the way we have the rules suggest that our particles are the seed particles grow in only even steps. So, this transition probability P n to n plus 1 from n here n is of course, the number of steps, but we are talking of basically V n plus 1 probability that the volume V n plus 2 to V from the previous step. So, what is the transition probability is it a function only of the state or does it depend on the path. So, this is the key thing that will decide whether it is a Markovian or a non Markovian process to understand it better let us draw the whole process of whatever I described in the following fashion. So, I will now consider the states the steps along these vertical lines. So, let us say in the step 1 where I get monomer plus monomer is a dimer. So, as soon as the process is over at the end of the step 1 I have a dimer formation with the probability P. So, dimer with probability P or I may have no dimer growth or non growth non formation with probability 1 minus P need more length. So, we will write like this. So, that brings us to step 2. So, what does this say in step 1 if a dimer is formed. So, this becomes then a path 1 if dimer is not formed many realizations will actually follow path 2 all coming from the same simulation of probability P and 1 minus P. So, if path 1 is followed just before step 2 you will have a dimer formed. If path 2 is followed there will be no dimer. So, when we now seek of a transition probability and of course, here the volume was V naught because our cluster or seed was yet to grow. So, if it had followed if the whole process was coming from path 1 it will again followed to branches here because every step has probabilities let us say and in the upper one is a probability of seed growth and let us say that in order to the seed to grow there must be at least one dimer. So, if the dimer is there the transition probability will be finite. So, P of V 2 from V naught it will exist it will not be 0 in this path because it is a path where dimer is formed and hence definitely there is a probability of it growing transition probability exists. On the other hand if this path is chosen with the probability 1 minus of that then this is a non non growth for the seed in any case. So, at the end of this path when you are reading yourself for the next step say step 3 you would have seen that the transition probability for the seed to grow depended on the path because it was pre it was a prerequisite to have a monomer for to have a dimer for the seed to grow because that is the rule we have set. Although rule remains the same the fundamental rule remains the same monomers monomers interact in first step and then we allow the seed to interact with the dimer, but if the dimers are not formed then then both the paths will lead to non growth only. Hence the transition probability here will be non 0 here whereas, if the path second path is followed for the seed formation the transition probability P because there is no dimer formed will be 0 and of course, this is a non growth anyway always with some probability. Hence we will find that the transition probability the P of V 2 V naught depends on path it is non 0 only if path 1 is followed, but for all the realizations where path 2 are followed the transition probability has to be set to 0. So, this is just an illustration of an example where physical problems could be non Markovian. Although this is a very idealized problem this is indeed true in many problems in formulating the so called population balance models for aggregation and coagulation and they cannot be they have to be done by more complex non Markovian methods. What people normally do is to assume a mean field kind of a probability instead of saying assigning exactly dependent on the dimer formation number one produces an average probability for the dimer formation averaging over the 0 1 probabilities and then assigns it for the step. So, that every step there is a certain probability transition probability regardless of the path that is chosen. So, that is of course, a more simplified Markovianization of a non actually a non Markovian model. There are many examples. So, I will just I gave this specific case for example, if the transition probabilities depend on time that could also be a non Markovian process. If transition probabilities are actually dependent on another hidden variable whereas, you are interested in only formulating over let us say a state space of one another variable. Then also the system will have an apparent non Markovian nature which can which can be removed only by including the degree of freedom on which the system was hidden already. So, these are some of the interesting aspects that needs to be known before we address a transition process or before we address what approach to follow to describe that stochastic process. I wish to also at this stage to give you an advance information on how do we formulate stochastic process in the continuous time variable continuous I call it as time, but it can be stepped continuous time Markov process. Of course, time is always continuous. So, what we mean by that is we now convert step to time. So, the Chapman and Scog Chapman Kolmogorov equation specifically we derive the Chapman Kolmogorov equation takes a kind of a parallel form to the transition probability relationship for a two step process that we formulated in terms of sums basically for discrete state processes. So, for continuous state and continuous time let us say that a system it suffered motion transition or motion from a position x 1 at time t 1 x 1 at time t 1 which is denoted often by a pair x 1 a position x 2 at time t 2 and then x 3 at time t 3 here time ordered ordering is done. So, it is this way. So, basically we have a continuous space is a position x 1 and it has moved to x 3 via a transition from x 2 to x 3 and these are at times t 1 t 2 t 3. So, we say t is increasing this way t 3 is more than t 1 because there is no harm in writing, but it should not be misunderstood that t is only a parameter it is not a coordinate representation of the point. Let us see how do we write Chapman Kolmogorov equation for this problem. There are very rigorous derivations, but let us use a physical way of arriving at it. First thing is we have to merely note here that the mass probabilities which we introduced in the context of discrete state spaces probabilities become probability densities here. Probabilities they replace or they move over to probability densities. What do we mean is that now we introduce the concept of a transition probability density Px dx is the transition probability transition probability between x and d between x and x plus dx. So, probability density Px is the transition probability density, but the physical meaning of probability comes by multiplying by the element. We can formulate the continuous space and time transition problem as follows using the correct notation for transition probability density in the form Px 3 from x 1 in a time t. With this the probability of transition to a point x 3 within an interval dx 3 that is the probability can be written now as Px 3 from your point x 1 in a time interval t. So, into dx 3 is the actual probability of transition from x 1 to a point in the neighborhood of x 3. This can be written as being equal to the probability. So, probability that the particle translated to the neighborhood of a point x 2 from the starting point x 1 in some time tau. So, this will be the probability and then in the remaining time t minus tau it translated to the point x 3 from x 2 in the time t minus tau and this transition occurred between x 3 and x 3 plus dx 3 and hence dx 3 has to be multiplied. Hence x 2 is an arbitrary point it would include an integration over all accessible x 2. Now we can easily see that the dx 3 terms cancel each other. This equation can be written in a neater form by replacing t minus tau with the t itself that is t instead of t minus tau. Then actually we will have P x 3 from x 1 in a time t plus tau. So, the older t will become now the new t plus tau this will be sum over all x 2 and the product of transition probability is P x 3 from an arbitrary point x 2 in a time t and 2 x 2 from x 1 in a time tau over all accessible x 2 points. This is the Chapman Kolmogorov equation. It is a very interesting equation because one may note that the tau here is an arbitrary parameter any value of tau is allowed. Hence this forms a constraint equation for the transition probabilities. The constraint ensures that the transition probabilities occur in specific forms and one cannot have some arbitrary function for transition probabilities. So, we basically use the same concept that to have moved to x 3 from x 1 it could have passed through any of values these are all x 2 points x 2 prime x 2 double prime. So, it could have passed through any of the points. So, only the time of course, is has to continuously here change. So, it starts at any time t to have translated to point x 3 after a lapse of time t plus tau goes in 2 steps it was in at time t it is translated from x 1 to x 2 and then in the another time tau it translated from x 2 to x 3 for all x 2. So, it is intuitive, but made possible again by the Markovian approximation that this that the transition probabilities depended only on the previous states and not on the history of the paths. So, this is the Chapman Kolmogorov relationship for continuous space time variable this complements the equation for discrete spaces. With this we formal we formally introduced ourselves to the subject of Markov processes. We will understand more of this as we go along and we from now on we take up some very very important family of random work important family of stochastic processes such as random work problems and then explore how to solve these equations. Thank you.


So in high school I was very much like students at Science and Math. I took all the hardest courses and I had a million extracurricular activities. I was playing a varsity sport. I was working. I was in concert choir. I was in theater. I did all of those things and got pretty good grades A's and B's, but I got a D in high school chemistry, which is really sort of ironic given what I do now that I would get a D in high school chemistry. So I dealt with the D in high school chemistry, graduated from high school, went on to college and came home at Christmas time and had a decision to make as to whether or not I drop out of college or wait until I get the letter that said we no longer want you to come back to college. So I made the decision to drop out of college, came home at Christmas time, first semester of my freshman year, went directly to the military recruiting office and enlisted in the Navy. Anyway, after I got into the military I was trained as a hospital corpsman, a medic. I eventually worked my way up to working in the anesthesia department and in the anesthesia, when we put people to sleep, the anesthesiologist would give me chemistry lessons while the patient was asleep. So that's where I learned all my chemistry. In my case, I had a basically a failing grade in chemistry, but what I learned from that is that it wasn't the end of the world. I still graduated from high school. I still got accepted to college and even though I didn't do very well my first semester in college, what I learned is that other opportunities come along. And certainly what I understand now as a 60-plus year old is that things like getting a D in high school chemistry, things like not succeeding in college the first time around, those are all just sort of minor blips on the road. It's a really long time that you have in your life from the age of 16 or 17 to the age of 60 or 70 when you're done your work career. Lots of opportunities there, lots of places where you can make up for things that didn't go well at other stages in your life.


Hey Radiant, this is Ari. I just wanted to wish everybody a happy Mother's Day. I am here in my mom's kitchen and I'm going to make three recipes today. Hopefully you can follow along and we can have some fun together. Our first recipe today is a blueberry mint lemonade. Here are the ingredients that you'll need. One cup of granulated sugar. One cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice. Four cups of water. They'll be divided, so you'll need one cup separated from the other three cups. A half a cup of blueberries. Six to eight leaves of mint and some fresh lemon slices. Our first step is to make a simple syrup. We'll take the one cup sugar, the half a cup of blueberries, and one cup of water. Now we're going to take that to the stove and we're going to simmer it for three to five minutes until all the sugar is dissolved. Okay, our simple syrup has simmered for about three to five minutes. All the sugar has dissolved and the blueberries are starting to break down. Now I'm going to put this into a beaker and we're going to let it sit for 30 minutes to cool down. To get a cup, it's going to probably take two full lemons, but it all depends on the size. If you don't have a juicer at home, you can just do it by hand. Just cup your hand underneath, squeeze the lemons through, and try to catch the seeds with your hands. Make sure your hands are washed first. Now that our simple syrup has sat for about 30 minutes, we're going to now combine everything together and we're going to set it in the fridge for about two to three hours. Just to cool down and kind of meld all the flavors together. Just three cups of water, the blueberry simple syrup, the cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, and then you can throw in the mint. And the lemon slices. The next recipe is going to be a bacon and cheddar quiche with eggs. So the ingredients for the quiche are hash browns. Now these were just frozen hash browns. I took them out of the freezer, thugged them out, put them in the middle of some paper towels, and just squeezed as much water as possible out of them. Just to get them nice and dry so we can make a really crispy crust. I have two whole eggs, two egg yolks, onions, cheddar cheese, bacon, some arugula, milk, heavy whipping cream, some butter, and then some cloves of garlic minced. The first step that we're going to do is we are going to saute six ounces of bacon, a half of onion, finely diced, six cloves of garlic minced, and two tablespoons of butter. The goal here is to get the bacon nice and crispy so it is a good crunch within the quiche. So it will probably be about 8 to 10 minutes. While the bacon, onions, and garlic are sauteing in the stove behind me, we're going to make the hash brown crust. So you want two tablespoons of butter, about a half a teaspoon of black pepper, and then we're just going to add in a half a teaspoon of salt. Then we're going to mix this up real good. Then we're going to press it into our pie pan. So you want to make sure that your crust is all evenly spread out so it bakes evenly. And now we're going to bake this on 425 for 30 minutes. Alright, our sauteed items are done. So now I'm just going to put them in this bowl lined with paper towel just so I can soak up some of that grease because I don't want all that grease floating around in my quiche. Make it hard for it to set. Now we're going to make the custard for the quiche. So we're going to take one cup of whole milk, three quarters a cup of heavy whipping cream, two whole eggs, and two egg yolks. I'm also going to season this a little bit. So we're going to do a half a teaspoon of black pepper. And we're going to do three quarters of a teaspoon of salt. I'm going to add it, but you could definitely use a measuring spoon. And then we're going to whisk this. Now we want to get it nice and whisked together because you don't want to leave any clumps because it will bake unevenly and awkwardly. Let's get it going. All right, our crust is done. It looks nice. It's got the toasty sides. It's got a little bit on the bottom. And then if you look underneath, this is glass and see-through, you can see there's a little bit of browning on the bottom, which is exactly what I wanted. This actually took me about 35 minutes. So a little bit longer. It all depends on the moisture content of what's left in the potatoes. So now we're going to build this, throw it back into the oven, and get the quiche cooking. So the first thing I am going to do is put the cheese in. I'm going to throw the bacon, onions, and garlic. I'm going to get that and make sure it gets nice and evenly spread around there.  So I get a good bite every single time. And then we're going to put the custard in. Kind of swirl it around there too, because stuff will start floating. Then make sure you get that good bits on the bottom, like the pepper and a little bit of salt that's on there because that's obviously some of our seasoning. Okay, here we go. So we're going to throw it into the oven and 350 for 30 to 35 minutes. This is my daughter Ellie. She's going to help out on this recipe. She has decided. So this recipe is a ricotta jam toast. Now you can use any jam that you'd like. I made this one. It's a raspberry cardamom jam. This is a whole milk ricotta. You could use skim milk if you'd like. I think the whole milk ricotta is just a little bit thicker than what I'm looking for. And then this is brioche. So super buttery. What we're going to do is we're going to butter both sides of the brioche and I'm going to put them in a cast-iron pan and get a nice toast on each side. And then we're going to fill it with the ricotta and the jam. Ready? Let's butter it. So my trick is to butter one side of all the toasts, then put them in the pan, then butter the other side. It makes it a lot easier. Let's get into the pan. Okay, so now that our toast is nice and toasty brown from the cast-iron, we're going to put on a little bit less than a half cup of ricotta for toast. So the biggest thing we want to do is we want to create like a little nest in the middle and push the ricotta to the side so it builds kind of like some walls. And then the jam is going to just sit right in the center. Put the jam on there. Okay, so everything is done. Our quiche just came out of the oven and it looks perfect. I dressed a little bit of arugula just with some lemon juice and some olive oil and just put it right on top just because I like a little fresh bite when I eat quiche. So yeah, so I'm going to have my mom come and join me and we're going to eat and maybe my daughter. Do you want quiche or do you want brioche? I won't go. Okay, a little bit of quiche. Join us. Come on. Lemonade, eat please. Ellie's coming to join us as well. Breakfast for Chichis. Oh, we're going for the donut. She didn't make the donut. Go meta-farm. I even want some quiche. Is it good? Say happy Mother's Day. Every Mother's Day radiant.


All right, our third speaker is Rob Lampert. Rob is from Rent Corporations. And Rob will give the following presentation, Good Decisions Without Good Predictions, Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty. Great, let me, I'm looking for this, there's a share screen, I can do that, okay, great. Okay, everybody see the slides? Yes, perfect. Great, good. Yeah, and thanks so much for the opportunity to talk today. I'm gonna talk about a somewhat different topic, but about ways to think about using models in new and interesting ways when there's a great deal of uncertainty. And so just to start, I mean, as this group well knows, quantitative information can be vital to making good policy choices. You know, so in a whole range of areas we've been discussing climate and natural hazards. And it may seem obvious that quantitative analysis can best inform policy by making predictions in the future. But there are cases where predictions, which are obviously key to the scientific method can complicate the use of quantitative information for decision support or informing decisions. And this is the case when uncertainties are deep and there are substantial disagreements about values and evidence. And so fortunately, what I'm gonna talk about today is another way to think about the use of models and data in these contexts. So traditionally policy analysis begins with a consensus understanding of the future and then proceeds to, that can be a point forecast, but more properly is a joint probability distribution over a greed set of future states of the world. And once we have that consensus understanding of the future, we can rank different decision options by a expected utility or some type of metric. And then we perhaps do some sensitivity analysis to decide how sensitive our recommendations are to the uncertainties. And we call this predict then act because it begins with this consensus predictions of the future. And well, predict then act is incredibly useful in a wide variety of cases. And I always say you never fly on an airplane where the people who built it and designed it and flew it didn't work well in that mode or say live downstream from a dam. There are cases where the uncertainties are such that predict then act breaks down. And under conditions of deep uncertainty which I'll define in a second, there's huge pressures to underestimate the uncertainties, competing analysis can lead to gridlock that people policy recommendations are predicated on forecasts. People attack the forecast which may be more vulnerable than the policy recommendation. And this idea that we often know a lot about a problem which is not predictive but can help us make good decisions. So deep uncertainty is this situation where the parties to a decision do not know or do not agree on the likelihood of autonomous futures or how actions are related to consequences. And there's this emerging field of decision making under deep uncertainty, DMDU which can help address such conditions. And just to summarize, I mean, traditional qualitative methods are designed for systems with a single relevant decision maker well understood behavior, agreement on objectives among the audience for the analysis. And today we face many challenges, climate, et cetera where there's a diversity of priorities, goals and values among participants, deep uncertainty regarding the consequences of our actions and often decentralized polycentric decision making audience. And I give you a plug for a book we did last year which reviews a number of these methods. I'm gonna talk about a particular one just to give you an idea of this way of thinking called robust decision making which is where much my work is. So I'm gonna give you a review of robust decision making an example application and then say a few words of why I think these ideas can be really important for this community. So what's robust decision making? It's an iterative multi-scenario, multi-objective decision analytic framework that helps the parties to a decision identify strategies which are robust that is work well over a wide range of uncertainty to characterize the potential vulnerabilities of those strategies and display trade-offs. And a lot of complicated stuff here but really it was a very simple concept which is rather than use computer models and data as predictive tools we're gonna use them as exploratory tools. We're gonna run many, many cases to stress test proposed policies and use those stress tests to help identify robust responses. So in essence, what we're doing with a robust decision making is turning around the order of traditional analysis. And we begin with a proposed strategy or strategies we then use the analytics to ask answer stress test questions. So rather than rank policy alternatives we ask questions such as what are the conditions that best future conditions under which a particular policy would meet its goals and miss its goals and what are the key uncertainties which differentiate those two classes of futures and then use that information to make more robust strategies. So RDM synthesizes four key concepts. One is it's a form of decision analytics which gives a systematic way of structuring problems focusing on trade-offs but traditionally decision analysis is often very prescriptive and based on predictive information which is great when we have high confidence in it but less so when we don't. It brings in scenario ideas which have this idea of multiple worldviews, plausibility but not probability and are often deliberative that is the information is co-produced and used between information users and producers. A key idea is this idea of stress testing or assumption-based planning that we begin with plans and then we use our analytics to identify the assumptions on which it depends or to say it another way, we use the analytics to understand when plans are gonna work and when they're gonna break and this idea of exploratory modeling which is we're gonna use models not as predictive tools but to a map assumptions onto consequences. And let me say a little bit more of that because I think that's a particularly important point here for this community. The idea comes originally from a colleague of mine Steve Bankus at Rand who did this work about 20 years ago now but identified two different sets of uses of models. One is what we're often familiar with is consolidative models which gather all the relevant information used as a single package and you can validate these models and use them as a surrogate for the real world. There's another way to use models which is mapping assumptions onto consequences and use it in iterative inductive problem solving and that's what I'm gonna be discussing here and it's made useful by the ability to run models many, many times. And essentially this is an argument about the allocation of computer computing resources we could make a single much more detailed model or we can take less detailed models and scan over a very wide range of futures. Okay, so let me give you an example application to give you a sense of how this works. I'm gonna talk about some work we did for the city of Los Angeles helping it plan to meet its water quality goals. They had produced an implementation plan to meet federal water standards on the Los Angeles River but the initial go through this had not considered climate change. So the question is what does climate change do to the plan? Should the plan change in the presence of climate change? So not to go into the details here but this is the plan they ran their optimization models and allocated their investment over three types of responses, regional projects, green streets and low impact development. And this pie chart represents the optimal plan given baseline assumptions. The question is should climate change change this plan if so how? So this is the steps you go through in this sort of analysis. There's a framing the decision and we're gonna be running a workshop breakout session later today on this topic but framing the decision. Once you have the problem framing then we can stress test our policies over a wide range of futures and then use those stress tests to identify new revised strategies that meet our goals over this wide range of futures. So let's start with the first step here. We ask a question. Will our expensive new water quality investments still meet water quality standards in a changing climate? If not, what can we do about it? Turns out to be useful to organize the stakeholder discussions into these four categories. What are we trying to achieve? Those are the metrics. What actions might we take to pursue our goals? We call those policy levers. Uncertainties, what uncertain factors outside the decision makers control affect our ability to pursue our goals and then the modeling, the relationships among those. We call this XLRM as a simple heuristic. And in this case, this is what we came up with, the city's proposed plan, whether or not they meet the water quality requirements, whether it's cost effective. And we focused on two uncertainties, climate change and land use and use the standards of hydrology and optimization models that the city was already using for its regulatory assurance analysis. Okay, so now let's do a stress test. And there's a core of what I wanna talk to you about today.  Each case is the city's proposed plan in one particular future. And then we collect those all together in a large database of futures. And here the blue dots is a future in which we meet the regulatory requirements and a red dot is one where we don't. So the question is, so this in particular case is 282 futures, 47 different climate projections and six land use futures. So we have this database. And then so the question is, what do we do with it? How do we make this information actionable? And a key thing we do is this process called scenario discovery, which is essentially run classification algorithms over this database and ask the question, what are the most important uncertainties which separate, distinguish the futures where the plan meets its goals from where it misses its goals. And so that diagonal line across this space in the across the database in the space defined by these two parameters on the axis, the change in 24 hour rainfall to the climate change and the percent impervious area in the city due to land use. That is the best possible straight line that divides the cases where the futures, where the plan meets and misses its goals. And for reference, I've shown there the baseline with the green ax is the baseline case that the city used in its regulatory assurance analysis, which not surprisingly is in the region where the plan meets its goals, but there are a large number of scenarios, the futures outside of that. Okay, so now we can interpret those results as scenarios as we might in a standard scenario analysis. And we essentially have a plan misses goals scenario and a plans meet goals scenario. And these scenarios then become useful in discussions and they depend on land use and extreme rainfall. And these then become useful in discussing with the decision makers this question of whether or not their current plan is resilient to climate change and if not what they need to do about it. So the first question we can ask is compare these scenarios to the available science and ask whether decision makers ought to worry about climate change with their plan. And the answer turns out to be yes. And where we got to that is we looked at a couple of different bounding scenarios and not to go into the details, but if you look at either the full range of IPCC projections or more focused studies, which look try to estimate probabilistically the range of extreme rainfall forecast. It turns out that with current land use, plan is very vulnerable to climate change with if the city achieves its stormwater management land use targets, it mostly, but not entirely buys up the climate uncertainty. So the question is the answer is yes, they do need to worry about climate change. So what should they do? Let's identify some newer revised strategies. Turns out that it's often in looking for robust plans that's often useful to look at adaptive plans. That is ones that begin with near-term actions that monitor particular signposts and then adopt contingent actions of signposts are observed. So one of the advantages of these scenario discovery, these scenario scenarios that emerge from the stress test is that they suggest particular signposts to monitor. So in this case, an adaptive plan might begin with the current plan and then monitor the factors that would put you in that reg region, which turn out to be increasing storm intensity and a failure for the city to achieve its mandated land use goals. So if we observe either of those things, we would go to an augmented plan. If not, we can continue with the current plan. So that would be an adaptive, robust response. to this climate stressor. So should the city adopt that? Well, let's compare three different approaches. The city could just stick with its current plan. It could have this current plan, but prepare to adjust or it could begin with the augmented plan and jump back down to the current plan if conditions are such that it's staying in that green area. So which should it choose? Well, this becomes a multi-objective decision problem. And so let's look at the two scenarios separately. And we have two goals, remember water quality and cost. So in the plan meets goals scenario, this is how the different plans score. The current plan, all of them meet the water quality goal essentially by definition. The current plan costs the least, the augmented plan costs the most and the begin with current plan but prepare to adjust is slightly higher than the current plan, but not too much. Let's look at the other scenario, plan misses goals scenario. We have our same two criteria, water quality and cost. In this case, the current plan fails to meet our criteria. The augmented plan is best but the current begin with current plan prepare to adjust is again meets the water quality goal and is only slightly higher in cost. So this middle one, the begin with current plan prepare to adjust is a lower grants or robust strategy. And we can go into some questions if you like but there's a variety of definitions for robust strategy, which I list here and all of them give you the same answer in this case. So let me just conclude with a couple of comments about how this, I think some of these ideas might be useful for this community. RDM emphasizes first the use of models as tool for decision-relevant exploration, not just prediction. It emphasizes iterative learning processes and it emphasizes this idea of model pluralism and CSDMS might usefully support each of these novel uses of simulation models. So just on this idea of exploratory modeling which we discussed previously, there's really two different ways to think of models. One is consolidated, the other is exploratory. There are a variety of things you can do with exploratory models. Here's a list from a paper from a couple of years ago but you can do a hypothesis generation, reasoning from special cases and then looking at properties of the entire ensemble of which the idea of robust strategies is one case. We hear different ways of using models which might inform the models in your databases and how one interacts with them. RDM supports iterative learning processes. A key one is this idea of deliberation with analysis which is an iterative process where you gather the stakeholders, they define objectives, options and other factors. This is what we'll sketch out in our breakout session later today. That gives instructions to the model producers who then generate decision-relevant information based on the problem framing and then that problem you deliberate again based on that information which may change people's objectives, options and other factors and you iterate. We've embedded these ideas in large stakeholder exercises which in some cases have been very impactful and successful but the key idea here is that rapid and flexible approaches for updating improving models could be inserted into this deliberation with analysis process and could greatly enhance them. And finally, and I'll just go through this part quickly. What I find it really interesting was just an area where I've been doing a lot of current work is this idea of model pluralism, the use of several fundamentally different models to provide a more complete understanding of reality which represents essentially a structural uncertainty in the problem and the idea of multiple world views which include the idea of model pluralism but also note that often different stakeholder groups will have correlated sets of values, beliefs in the sense of different models and policy preferences that shape how they see the world. And so how do you interact with people in these informed decisions in such situations? Really at times, so I'm going to go to this in any detail but this is an exercise we went through looking at how you use multiple world views and model pluralism in a simple case having to do with the conflict, potential conflict between economic development and preserving a lake in a context where there are different communities which have very different views on the value of the different societal objectives. And fundamentally the idea is you can go through do these Ardium analyses with fundamentally different models and then pull the information together in what are called these utopia, dystopia matrices where you look at the world from different points of view. So in this case, we look at it we have three different world views and we accept in these matrix what is the best strategy in one world view and how does the world look from another world view if you adopt the strategy of one and use that as a way to create common understanding across these groups and then begin to develop compromise strategies that work across groups. So let me just conclude with the notion that Ardium and these decision-making under deep uncertainty methods help people make better decisions, not better predictions. The basic principles are consider multiple futures not a single future choose futures to stress test plans seek plans which are robust over a wide range of futures and this often means making plans flexible and adaptive in order to make them more robust. So rather than a predict an act we look over multiple futures and a couple of aphorisms to end with is the idea that premature aggregation either in probabilities or in values can mess up your decision support where we're seeking certainty is in decisions not predictions and this enables you to use models in new and very interesting and often very helpful ways. So questions. Thank you very much Rob for your presentation. This robust decision-making it's very much in line with using models not only in a research setting but also in a more applied way by corporations and in a more operational world basically we're running a bit out of time. So if somebody has one, I see Maura has a question. Jet can you unmute Maura and go ahead Maura. Thank you Rob. Thank you so much for this presentation. Of course I love it. You know, I've been a fan of your you and your work for a long time. And it's just wonderful to see it, you know presented so well and so in such a compelling way. I have a question for you regarding I mean, these are two connected questions in a way. So, but it's about, you know the role of our culture in terms of wanting prediction and looking for prediction. And both as a scientist, you know or a scientist, that's what we aim as a way to validate, right? But also from the policy-making world at least in my work with decision-makers there's always that pushback against uncertainty because that's not what they want. They want certain answers. And sometimes it's hard to communicate like that distinction is like what you want like what you were saying so nicely at the end the difference between, you know the right decisions or certainty and decisions rather than the predictions. So how do you handle that dissonance between what is expected by, you know in general, maybe our scientific culture but also the policy-making culture of, you know just looking at prediction as a standard for validation or validity of the work that we do. Yeah, I know that's a great question. And not one designed for a short answer. Sorry, you started it like that. No, but I will try. Yeah, so first off, I mean that's a very valid observation. And so there's two potential strategies. I mean, one is the quick aphorism that I mentioned on the previous page which you try to focus the locus of certainty in a plan rather than the predictions and that a plan which, you know works well over a wide range of futures and that is actually not an alien way to think. I mean, people, you know many decision makers, many people in their everyday lives, you know look for plans which are robust which are low regrets and so forth. So that is a way that people naturally think and though it is often alien to a culture where people are engaging with experts and quantitative information because they think that, you know that they're looking for predictions and not. Though there are, you know there are organizations where the and or, you know people or personalities which, you know are do not make that switch and really do require our predictions. And so sometimes what one ends up doing is say in an organizational setting is working with the say technical staff or the planning staff who do think in this way coming up with a robust strategy and then putting it in a more predictive language for say the elected leadership which, you know of the organization which, you know independent of their particular views find themselves in a public discourse where they can't talk much about uncertainty. So, but you do the stress testing and hedging essentially in the, you know in the technical discussions and then bring and then package it in a way that is more suited for public consumption. So I think pushing towards the first answer getting people to think about certainty and plans as opposed in the predictions is would do the society and the discourse well.


Hi everyone, Joe for jazby's casebreaks.com doing a Seahawks Steelers, Titans, Rams, Bangles, Bucks, number block randomizer for picker team 13, which is getting awfully close. Big thanks to these folks for getting into the action, let's roll it, let's randomize it two and a four, one and two and a four, four and a two, six times, one, two, three. After six times, mark down to Steve, six times, numbers, and sixth and final time. After six, we got two down to zero, I don't need the IP address, two down to zero, all right, good luck everybody. Mark, you've got two, Oliver with three, AJ with seven, Randall Ness with nine, no word yet on whether there's a relation to Elliot, Todd with six, there might be a relationship with Roger though, Roger with one, Wes with five, Aaron with eight, Randall with four, Steve Locke with zero, all right, Steve you'll get any and all redemptions for the following teams in that tab down there. I'm Joe, I'll see you for the next one, bye.


Hello, my name is Sally Stockwell, Director of Conservation at Maine Audubon. Back in the early 1970s, we noticed that loom populations seemed to be declining. And in 1983, we worked with the Maine Department of Inland Fish and Wildlife and the University of Maine to see if we could track the population trend over time. Since then, every year, we have had volunteers that go out on lakes to count chicks and adults so that we can figure out what the overall population trend is. My name is Will Reed. I'm Elizabeth Payne. I'm C.B. And I'm Anna Karnacella. My name is Elizabeth Neal Pollock. I have a nickname, Bambi. My name is C.L. Clark. I've been doing the loom count since 1983. And I've been involved in the loom count probably since the 90s. I've been involved for maybe a dozen years. And I've been counting the looms for the Audubon since 2004. And it's wonderful. You can't beat it.


Prepare for the worst and plan for the best with innovative disaster recovery apps. Next up, we have Claire Barnhorn, CEO of Solviz. Claire is a long-term humanitarian working for about 15 years and humanitarian aid from field operations to logistics and supply chain with a growing focus on data and technology. Claire is the founder and CEO of Solviz and Solviz Foundation. The platform provides procurement support for organizations in LMICs. In addition, Solviz enables open access knowledge and technical capacity for all through an open access catalog. Solviz provides access to over 400,000 suppliers worldwide. Thank you for the introduction and being invited here and to the previous presenters. My name is Claire. I am the founder and CEO of Solviz.  I worked for many years with MSF in supply chain logistics and I will talk about procurement today, which most of you think might be extremely boring because procurement is not the most sexy subject, but it is actually one of the key expenditure of any NGO working in humanitarian aid. And the reason why we set up Solviz is that we see needs rising globally and funding isn't going up in the same pace. Last year, we were only able to cover 55 of the UN Global Appeals for the most urgent humanitarian needs globally. So what we have looked at is making sure that the money that we do have to be spent as efficiently and as effectively as possible. And with procurement activities being over 65% of any humanitarian budget, that's why we focus on procurement and try to make it as efficient and specifically as effective as possible. Solviz is a procurement platform, so that's the second platform, but the first platform, so we have an integrated solutions with two entities, which the solutions catalog is maintained by the Solviz Foundation, where we provide open access knowledge for everybody. And we help to think through, if you have a need, for example, for light, you don't a generator because that's equal power, but you actually go to the use case and you have criteria your technical specifications so you don't need to be a technical specialist to procure the most efficient solutions. We integrate this with a procurement platform. The tenders and request for quotations are generated automatically, all compliant to donor rules and regulations. And those are sent out automatically already to the suppliers in the database, which are currently over 400,000. So this is the platform. If you go to solviz.com, this is what you will see if you have an account you can sign in. You can browse through. You can also Google. So I'll give a mass vaccination solution as an example. So this is a solution for a mass vaccination site.  We show all the information from an operational perspective, you need to know how it scales, etc. We show all the items. This is a kit that are in such a kid to in order to respond and set up a vaccination campaign. And then you know that all the products in such a kid, like this vaccine carrier is fit for purpose. There's dozens of vaccine carriers but how do you know which one to select to be fit for purpose. And then you have the requirements to support the logisticians as well as operational staff as much as possible with the full lifecycle of the full path on such a campaign. And most importantly, we also add prerequisites. So what do you need to have in place in order to set up a vaccination campaign you don't need only the renewal of the supplies but you also need to know that allergic reactions can take place. So if you're not prepared for a allergic reactions, you can actually go to the next kids and you can add this to your basket. If you've added to your basket you can collaborate on multiple baskets with your team if you're a small NGO, we would like to give you the same procurement capacity as any massive NGO out there. If you work with multiple projects you can have multiple baskets and collaborate with as many colleagues as you want. You can create your basket. You can modify. You can prepare your tender so this is the second workflow, we're actually done with proof the full procurement process for you. This is not direct procurement and it's not donations. This is when you need to find the right supplies for the right price, because when you receive donor money. You have to comply into the rules and regulations around procurement and getting quotations in so that's the step where we're in when you need to source for the best price for the best ways to get them and get them to you at the best lead time. So there's a lot of steps in between where we guide you there's all free material in it. You can send out yours. You will see a dashboard that you can monitor how many supplies have a better interest how many bits your proceeds, but you will not be able to open those up because for accountability and transparency reasons. When due time has passed you can do your supply qualification. You can know your bit analysis, and you can actually proceed to procuring for a good price with efficient and effective processes in place. This can my call to action for you if you need any help with procurement and I know this was extremely fast. I offer a demo with more lengthy explanation of course after this session if you want. If you don't know the market, or if you don't have a technical specialist at hand we are always out there for you to help. And I'll just be super thankful to hear from you and wish you all the best in all the operations you do globally.


Vargas arrives to review the growing strength of the nation's modern army, pre-units rumbling through the streets of the capital, crack divisions mobilized for duty overseas, familiar sight. Replacing men in war industries, these wives and sisters of soldiers overseas are playing an increasingly important role in helping the United Nations win the war. Hot rivets with all the skill of veterans, these girls are helping Canada turn out 10,000 ton victory ships, or tin smiths covering a ship's ventilator. They know their job, force replacement base, the wax, as they're called, service ground crews, service motors, repair ships, serving wherever they're needed, aviation cadets. Today they climax a 12 week basic training course with a six mile foot race across the open country. Preca's future birdmen must pass before they can win their wings. Tomorrow they'll fly the plane, but today they must first use their legs. Picture stars arrive in Washington to aid in the nation's campaign to sell war bonds. Riding in army cars, the celebrities parade through the streets of the capital, known to cinema fans all over the world, gather to cheer their favorites. Purple marks, and the slogan is back the attack in government bonds to win the war. Visit United States based hospitals in the South Pacific. Popular wherever she goes, the president's wife is the subject of many a camera snapshot. Mrs. Roosevelt's presence in Australia and New Zealand serves as a tonic and an inspiration to wounded American soldiers convalescing thousands of miles from home. The biggest force of Lieutenant General Mark Clark strikes for the North, even as Montgomery's Eighth Army rolls virtually unopposed through the South. Ships extending over a thousand square miles of the Taranian Sea, eight occupies the boot of Italy. As Montgomery plunges Northward to join the Americans, Clark's forces strike for Salerno. Italian study relief maps of the Italian coast. Every mountain and every valley is memorized as they steam for Salerno. Tharmy swarms ashore. Under attack from German batteries and placed in the hills, they dig in, establish their beach head, and fight back. This initial thrust into metropolitan Italy, reinforced on schedule. Burns of surrender carried out the greatest naval victory of the war. Today,