So, yeah, so I have lots of things I kind of wanted to do, and this being the last one, it's like, well, let's hit some of our high notes and invite some of our most favorite speakers back, and that list includes Ernie. And Ernie is known for doing these soft talks, right? The ones that kind of give you perspective and meaning and kind of help you formulate like this is, you know, why we do things. And I was like, Ernie, would you like to come back and talk? And he said, absolutely. And he said, what would you like to hear? And I said, I would love to hear an actual technical talk from you. And so he's like, great, I'll do one on architecture. I'm like, fantastic. And so he's going to give like a really detailed talk about systems architecture using a skyscraper metaphor, and I am so excited. So Ernie, thank you. Thank you for coming back and you're entrusting us with your talk. OK, hello, hello. OK, let's start this timer because God knows I'm going to fit this in 45 minutes. OK, so I hate to break it to you, but I want to start off with a quick disclaimer. This talk is not about skyscrapers. You may think, but Ernie, you just showed a slide a moment ago that said this is how to build a skyscraper. The very first slide said it was about skyscrapers. No, trust me, it's not about skyscrapers. And in fact, it's really very important that we remember this as we go through this talk. So I'm going to ask for your help as we go through this. I want you, when you see this slide, to simply read it out loud. So let's try it now. This talk is not about skyscrapers. OK, we've got it. I do find this interesting, though, as I started to do the research for this talk. I stumbled on this Wikipedia is where you start research for all talks after all. And the problems posed in skyscraper design are apparently among the most complex encountered because you have to balance things like economics, engineering, construction management. I find that really interesting. So the first skyscraper that we're going to talk about is the equitable life building. It technically doesn't even qualify as a skyscraper, but to be fair, the word skyscraper was once a term that was used for a very tall horse, very tall men, or even very tall hats. So I think that we can give a seven-story, 130-foot tall building a pass. Now, the equitable life building was the tallest in the world from 1870 to 1884. And it was built and owned by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. But that's a mouthful, so if you'll permit me, I'm just going to call them equitable from here on. Equitable, being a life insurance company, were experts at assessing risk. And so it's important to note here that they had determined that their building was fireproof. We'll come back to that later. Its basement housed saves and vaults filled with several billions, and I do mean billions in 1870s dollars of securities, stocks, and bonds. And to put it simply, the Equitable Life Building was the center of most of the wealth of the New York financial district, and it showed. This building was gorgeous. Tenants in their building included bankers and lawyers, and it even had an exclusive lawyers club, which is what you see here. In fact, they really only had one problem. Can you spot it? The problem is it had stairs. And a lawyer on the seventh floor of a building would find he had no clients, if in fact they had to climb six flights of stairs to see them. Thankfully, a solution to this problem already existed. A gentleman by the name of Elisha Otis, who was first and foremost, had a beard to rival Mike's, I think. Really? It's a very nice beard. He was a tinkerer along with his sons. And at age 40 in 1851, he was managing the process of converting an abandoned sawmill into a bed frame factory. And so while cleaning up, he was looking into how he could get all the old debris up to the upper levels of the building. And now hoists and elevators existed, but they had one really important flaw. If somebody cut the rope, then whatever was on it was either broken or dead. Seemed like a problem. And so he and his sons designed what they called a safety hoist that wouldn't fall to the ground if it broke. And the interesting thing about it is it had these teeth in this rail that was on either side of it. And there was a spring inside that top mechanism there so that when the rope was cut, if tension was released, these pegs would shoot out and they would catch in those teeth. Now, he didn't think much of it at the time. He didn't patent it, didn't try to sell it. And he didn't even ask his managers for a bonus for this thing. But three years later, the bed frame business wasn't going so well. And he was looking to try something new. So he formed a company to try to sell the elevators. He got no business for several months. And then came the 1854 New York World's Fair. And he saw a great opportunity to be very dramatic and to do a presentation of how this thing worked by having a helper actually cut the rope and show that everybody's excited, like, we're going to get to see somebody die. I guess it's like what people do with NASCAR, right? Like, it's all about the crashes. But so he had a great opportunity to do it. I want to point this out, too. This is a pencil drawing. So I think this might qualify as the world's first photobomb. I'm not really sure what that's about. So anyway, these elevators weren't perfect. They ran on steam engines back in that day. And they required someone that meant to keep them constantly fueled. But even though it would be a while before they were updated to run on electricity, the equitable company had actually realized this was a huge deal for them. Because it had great potential for an office building. Previously, the lowest floors in the building were, in fact, the most desired by tenants because they were the easiest to access. But a company leasing space in its office building then would need to, if they wanted a good return on investment, take all the upper, less convenient floors. And so now, there's a safe way to travel up and down from these highest floors. And the highest floors also happen to be the ones that have the most light, the most fresh air, the most distance from road noise. And so this literally turned the value proposition for buildings completely upside down. And all of this was the result of something that Alisha Otis didn't even think was a very big deal. It's just a really good thing he decided to share it with other people. So anyway, we were talking about the equitable building. The one that was built as fireproof, the one that had billions of dollars in its basement. This is the Café Savaron. It was a really swanky cafe in the building. And on January 9, 1912, just after 5 AM, the winds howling 40 miles an hour with gusts up to 68 miles per hour. Already, the temperatures that are below freezing are much colder now due to the wind chill. And Philip O'Brien, the timekeeper for the Café Savaron, starts his day by lighting the gas in his small office. And he distractedly throws the still lit match into the garbage. By 5.18 AM, the office is engulfed in flames. The flames spread to the elevators and the dumbwaiters. And within minutes, the entire equitable building is on fire. The fire department arrived, but the water, as you can see there, was actually freezing on the building as they were trying to put it out. So the building was utterly ruined. And so it was that the building that was built as fireproof was lost in a fire. And any history buffs that are out there right now might recognize that 1912 was also the year that an unsinkable ship was struck in iceberg and sank. You'd think two disasters in one year would be enough to teach us to stop making these kinds of grandiose claims. But next skyscraper we're going to talk about is the Home Insurance Building. It was built in 1885. The architect that was tasked with building the Home Insurance Building was William LeBaron Jenny. And the story goes that Jenny left work unusually early one day.  She sat a heavy book that she was reading on the birdcage. And inspiration struck. And I kind of always read this line like it's being said by King Arthur and Monty Python and the Holy Grail talking about coconuts. But if so frail a frame of wire would sustain so great a weight without yielding, would not a cage of iron or steel serve as a frame for a building is supposedly the revelation that he had. Now the Home Insurance Building is considered the father of the skyscraper and was the tallest one in the world for four years, up until 1889. It was built of cast iron columns and rolled iron beams forming a framework up to the sixth floor. Steel beams were then used from seventh floors through 10 floors. The majority of the curtain wall. So in these buildings, you build a frame and then you hung the masonry like a curtain off of the frame so that most of the masonry was not bearing load. However, not 100% of the masonry wasn't bearing load in this building. Most of it was hung from the frame, though. So this made the building drastically lighter, about a third the weight of a full-on masonry, load-bearing masonry building. Something as simple as a birdcage led to an idea that would change everything about how we were going to build skyscrapers from that point on. Of course, if you were a New Yorker, you didn't necessarily call the Home Insurance Building the first skyscraper. If you were a Chicagoan, you sure did. And so there was a lot of drama around this. But here are these people in Chicago and they're building this awesome building on an iron and steel framework and it's clearly a technical accomplishment. And more importantly, it's serving both their needs and the needs of many other occupants. And yet, it was easy for people to come along after the fact and debate just how big an accomplishment it was or whether it was really the first one. This is Leroy S. Buffington. He doesn't look like a very cheery guy, does he? Maybe that's because he claimed he had the same idea back in 1881, except he didn't actually build it. He applied for a patent in November of 1887 and it was awarded in May of 1888. Now, by this point, this technique was already in very wide use. Buffington actually started a company called the Iron Building Company for the express purpose of pursuing lawsuits against builders that were using this means of construction. Now, yet here is a picture of a flax mill back in 1797 that used iron framing. So it sounds kind of like prior art to me. But you know, that didn't stop Buffington from trying to extract money from anyone and everyone who might pay. But again, next guy's grape we're gonna talk about is the Monatnick Building in Chicago, Illinois. Now, the Monatnick Building was being built by two brothers. They were from Boston. Their names were Peter and Shepherd Brooks for whatever reason, I could not find a picture of Shepherd. You can tell they're wealthy though because Peter has an oil painting of himself. They hired a guy by the name of Owen F. Aldis to be their property manager and manage all of their investments. And Peter only ever visited Chicago once. They relied on Aldis for all their information. Somehow they still thought it was gonna be the biggest city though in the world. Now, Aldis recommended that they hire Daniel Burnham and John Root. These were the imaginatively named Burnham and Root to design the building for Brooks. And so Burnham's a pragmatic businessman, but Root had a flair for the artistic. So here's a sketch for the building that was drawn back in 1885. And it was then gonna be a 13 story building with Egyptian inspired ornamentation, you can see here. Now, Brooks was known not just for being extremely wealthy but also for being extremely stingy and liking simplicity. And so Brooks insisted the architects were refraining from any kind of elaborate ornamentation. And in fact, he didn't want any protrusions on the building at all because he said they just created places for pigeons to nest. I'm not really sure what his big problem with pigeons was but he really didn't like them, I guess. Now, when Root's on vacation, Burnham has another draftsman, a junior draftsman, create a simpler drawing. So Root comes back from vacation, he's not terribly happy about this, right? His beautiful architecture had now been ruined. But eventually he decided to throw himself into this design anyway and he said, he declared that the heavy lines of the Egyptian pyramid had captured his imagination and he would throw the thing up without a single ornament. But by embracing that constraint, Brooks was able to not fight against it but use it to inspire and to actually stay invested in his work. Now, you can see, I mean, here's the thing, right? Root is still an artist at heart and he couldn't quite give up entirely on ornamentation. So you have these protrusions, I'm sure they're gonna create places for pigeons to nest. But Aldous was able to sell Brooks on this idea because he said that it would increase rentable space. So you can see those little places that stand out there. And in fact, the height of the building was calculated by determining how high they could feasibly make it while having sufficient space to rent due to wall thickness because this was a load bearing masonry building. So the more building you put on top, the thicker the walls had to be at the bottom. And in fact, the walls on this building had to be six feet wide at their base. And on top of that, Chicago had soft soil so they had to devise a special sort of raft system that sat underneath the foundation to sort of float the building on top of this soft soil. So here's what the building turned out. It looks pretty much like the sketch. You'll see it's a little longer there. It was built in two parts later. It ended up being 17 stories tall, including the attic. And it was tallest of any commercial structure in the world at that time. Now, still, it is the still the largest load bearing iron frame or iron frame building with a load bearing exterior masonry wall that way. Now the building was designed to settle eight inches but by 1905 it had settled that much and quite a bit more and they ended up needing to reconstruct the first floor. And then by 1948, it had settled 20 inches. So it resulted in a step down. So the street actually had a step down to go into the first floor. And guess what? In 1967, it turns out that they found it to be sinking. I don't think it ever stopped. I don't know why this is such a revelation to them but apparently it was still sinking. So profitability is one really important factor to consider when you're building but it can't be the only one. But again, next skyscraper that we're gonna talk about is the Fuller Flatiron building. It was built in New York. It was built also by Daniel Burnham but during the time that the Manhattan was under construction, route passed away. Burnham was still in business and his new company, DH Burnham and Co, designed the Fuller Flatiron. He worked with associate Frederick Dinkelberg there to build the building. Now, it was originally just called, supposed to be called the Fuller building after the then recently deceased George A Fuller but locals insisted on calling it the Flatiron. Now I assumed it had to do with what it was being built from or something like that but it was actually a lot simpler than that. It just looked like a Flatiron. And at the tip in fact, it was only six and a half feet wide. This is one of the corner offices looking out from that tip and it definitely necessitated a different shape for the building because they had this triangular plot of land they were building on. But if the Monatnok building had required walls that were six feet wide at its base and this thing at its tip was only six and a half feet wide you were gonna have a problem here. You're gonna lose a lot of rentable space. So it required a different approach and you may notice that the walls are nowhere near six feet thick here. So it's really better to have an oddly shaped building than half of a building. But to do that, you need to choose the right materials for the job. And in this case, it wasn't masonry but steel. So the Fuller Flatiron was built on a steel frame. Now, you know, looking at the photos you might not be terribly surprised to hear that the locals at this time were calling this Burnham's Folly. They were actually taking bets on how far the building's debris would fall would actually fall whenever the first windstorm came along. But an engineer named Corridan Purdy was involved in this project and he had already designed bracing that was tested to withstand four times the force that the Flatiron would ever encounter. During a 60 mile per hour windstorm in fact that hit soon after the first tenants moved in you couldn't feel the slightest vibration in the building. And in fact, one tenant went so far as to say that not even the filament in his light bulb was vibrating. But, you know, that didn't really surprise the engineers at all that were involved in the construction because they'd tested it. Everyone else was downright amazed. Again, so now we have a twofer. We're gonna talk about two skyscrapers. 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building, both of them in New York. Now, these two guys, H. Craig Severance and William Van Allen were once partners in another firm. They had very different personalities. Van Allen was the type of guy who preferred to spend his time with other architects discussing the finer points of design. He was, again, artistic, kind of like Root was. Severance, on the other hand, he spent his time with business folks strumming up sales and humility, as you might be able to tell here, was not his strong point. He had no particular passion for architecture as art. And yet, when Van Allen would get all of the credit for some of the intricate designs that they had built and they were jointly responsible for, after all, they couldn't be built without the money, he didn't take it very well and their partnership ended badly. Not only that, they soon found themselves in competition with one another. Severance was commissioned to design 40 Wall Street while Van Allen was commissioned to design the Chrysler Building. Now, you're probably familiar with the Chrysler Building, but you may never have heard of 40 Wall Street by that name. Maybe this will help. It's yet, it's called the Trump Building today. Back then it was known as the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building. So, Severance had assembled a bit of a dream team consisting of his associate Yasuo Matsui and consulting architect Shreve and Lamb during the design of 40 Wall Street. Now, on the other side of this, Walter Chrysler had William Van Allen do all the design for the Chrysler Building. But one of the interesting things was that Chrysler was super involved in almost every aspect of the design. In fact, he paid for the design and the construction of the building all by himself, even though it was being built for his car company because he wanted to be able to let his children inherit it. He was so obsessed with every detail because he later called the building a monument to me. So, he saw it as representing himself. So, you might notice here, there's no surprise that the initially announced heights of these two buildings, 40 Wall Streets a little bit higher than the Chrysler Building makes sense because the Chrysler Building announced first. And so, they announced earlier by a month, 40 Wall Street already is one-upping them, no surprise. In October of 1929, Severance had been visiting the site of his construction and his building was just about to catch up with the Chrysler Building. The building, the Chrysler Building had slowed because they were putting the first two arches of the top of the building on top of it. And Chrysler had the press already announcing that the steelwork was complete, even though it really wasn't, to make the Chrysler Building just barely the tallest one in the world at 850 feet. So, by announcing completion of the steelwork, they could get some free press that they were already the tallest. Now, Severance wasn't terribly worried about this because he had already put in motions, plans to build much higher than he'd originally announced.  Everybody was announcing they would build something high. There were people announcing they would build skyscrapers over a mile high during this era. Van Allen was quiet because he, Chrysler, and a few others knew they were building higher than anyone else expected. In the third week of October, Severance caught wind that someone had spotted a 60-foot flagpole on top of the Chrysler Building. So, he raised the building's plans again because he needed to make sure he took into account that extra 60 feet. This was enough for the press to declare a winner. So, the Bank of Manhattan Building was scheduled to top out on November 12th. Chrysler Building's dome, you can see in the excerpt from the article, was making it so that it wasn't really possible to actually make the building any taller. And so, the Bank of Manhattan Building was to be topping out at 925 feet, and the Chrysler Building would be 20 feet shorter than that. And this was all including the flagpole because Severance made sure they knew about it, too. Except, the flagpole on the Chrysler Building wasn't a flagpole at all. The flagpole was one part of a 185-foot 27-ton steel spire that Van Allen had been calling the Vertex. He'd had it built off-site in five pieces and shipped to the building on separate occasions, hoisting pieces up and lowering them down into the dome's fire tower on the 65th floor where they were partially assembled. Then, on October 23rd, they hoisted the base up, riveted the rest of the pieces in place within the next 90 minutes. Van Allen and Chrysler went to sleep that night knowing that, in fact, their skyscraper was the tallest in the world. The best part was nobody even noticed when they put this up. They worked to keep it that way, in fact. They made no official announcement, and, meanwhile, people on the ground thought the spire was just a really tall crane, not part of the building. So, it was that on November 12th, the headline in the New York world read that the world's tallest building was, in fact, the Manhattan Trust Building. It was only till four days later that the Dow Service's daily building report, which is normally like a trademark devoted to such interesting things as the price that building suppliers charge all over the country, breaks this article that the Chrysler building was over 238 feet taller than anyone else thought. And, after it was all said and done, the Chrysler building beat out the 40 Wall Street by over 100 feet, close to 120 feet, in fact, and they both cost a small fortune to produce at 13 and $14 million apiece. So, I think for a moment about how much extra expense was incurred on these buildings, constantly adding height just to win against a rival. And, to make things worse for the winner, Chrysler refused to pay Van Allen the standard 6% fee upon completion of the building, and that would have amounted to $840,000, and it was all because he hadn't entered into a contract when he received the commission to build the Chrysler building. Now, prior to completion of this building, Chrysler would have paid anything to win that race, but once he won it, he just didn't seem worth that extra expense. And Van Allen ended up having to sue him to get paid. It more or less destroyed his career. The story of his victory ended up as a cautionary tale for other architects, and in fact, today Van Allen has no major studies dedicated to his work, and he's little known in the history of architecture, and on his death, The New York Times didn't even publish an obituary. But again, another interesting skyscraper is the Empire State Building, also in New York. Back in August of 1929, remember, this is before we'd completed either of the other two buildings we just discussed, rumors started circulating that the new developer was gonna take over the site of the Waldorf Astoria hotel that's pictured there. Now, Al Smith was former New York governor who ran against Hoover, and he had invited John Raskob to chair the Democratic National Convention after Raskob ran his campaign. Raskob was VP of finance for General Motors up until 1928, but he resigned after he was ousted by a man named Alfred Sloan, because Sloan was a supporter of President Herbert Hoover, and he said it was a conflict of interests. So Raskob sold his GM stock to finance a building. He made Smith the president of Empire State Company. Now, Smith had a flair for the dramatic, and this is how he announced his involvement as president of the Empire State Company, and that they would be demolishing the Waldorf Astoria and raising a new 80-story at that time skyscraper, The Empire State Building. It was gonna be the tallest in the world. But remember, this was around the same time everyone else was saying the same thing, so nobody really paid it too much mind. Now, speaking of those months, remember these two guys? William Lamb and Richmond Shreve were part of the group that was actually building 40 Wall Street at around the same time, and another architect, Arthur Loomis Harmon, joined up with him in 1929. By October 2nd, 1929, again, this is before some of the last minute height increases in the other buildings, Lamb was in a meeting with some of the richest men in New York, and he had already built a scale model of a new skyscraper to show them, and the demolition of the Waldorf Astoria had already begun as well, so they were already well underway. Now, Lamb was artistic, much like Van Allen and much like John Root, and his partnership with Shreve was not unlike the former partnership of Van Allen with Severance or of Root with Burnham, but he was also pragmatic, and you can see here that he's looking at the considerations that were given, specifically the time and exterior constraints that he had to work with, and those determined some of the characteristics of the design. And so, this is not new, right? Whenever you're given tight concessions, usually, or tight deadlines, you need to be ready to make concessions. So initial drawings, in fact, were created in two weeks, and a final design was reached in four, and what was really interesting about this is unlike most building plans, they designed the floor plan from the top down. They set a standard for light in the interiors, and then they designed from the top down, placing emphasis on how pleasant it would be to work in that space. So it's really important to determine how, what things are gonna matter, and they weren't willing to sacrifice lighting, ventilation, or other things that would make the property valuable and appreciated by those people who matter. There were certain things that needed to be true, no matter what other concessions they might make. Now, who matters? Well, they're the present and future occupants of your building. They're people like her, they're people like him, and they're people like him because if the building can't be maintained, and it's not gonna be very good for very long, occupants can come in all shapes and sizes, in fact. But just because someone is big, strong, loud, and wants to use your building to puff themselves up, that doesn't mean you should put their needs above the greater good. Now, one reason the building's designs took shape so quickly was they were able to use parts of designs that had been done for other buildings. This is the Reynolds building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. It was designed by a Shreve and Lamb previously, and this is the Kiru Tower in Cincinnati, Ohio, designed by another firm. These are scale models, and you can see the similarity in the design. You can see how they sort of picked and chose pieces of one building or the other to construct their new building to arrive at the final design. It's really important to be able to reuse previous work, and you don't have to be snobbish necessarily about where it comes from. So, November 18th, 1929, Al Smith had just announced the purchase of land adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria, which, of course, meant to everybody's minds that they had to be building higher. They needed a bigger base to build from. And Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon wanted to keep the height down because they wanted the building to stay usable, because if you kept going higher, what you ended up having to do was have tenants switch elevators midway, up or down the building, and just in order to make it to the top floors. And so, the next day, Smith announced five floors were gonna be added because Raskob, the guy who was financing the whole thing, still wanted to add height, even though the designers told him, we really should stop here. And he said it was gonna go up now to 85 stories and 1,100 feet. Now, that was an overestimate by about 50 feet, but it didn't matter. And again, Shreve is still saying to the press that it's going to be based on the sound design and the sound development of usable space. Now, John Raskob's sitting in his office, and he's looking at this plaster model that the architects had given him. And like every client ever in the history of ever, he decided he knew how to solve the problem. And reportedly, he said what this building needs is a hat. Now, the hat he had in mind wasn't a literal hat, but a mooring post for Zeppelins to be able to dock and let passengers on and off at the top of the building. Now, it would be even better than the Chrysler building's spire because it had a practical use, practical, practical use. It would need, after all, another 200 feet. So again, we're staying true to this notion that we're only gonna make use of the sound design of usable space, and it would let them stay true to those claims. So you'll notice, though, how Al Smith couldn't help but slip in that final height of the building whenever he made the statement about their grand plan to add the Zeppelin mooring tower. And you know, never mind the feasibility of docking a Zeppelin in the winds of New York City at that height, or what would happen when the Zeppelin needed to maintain an even keel and had to dump several hundred gallons of water on the people below, and in case you aren't aware, water weighs something over eight pounds a gallon. So we're talking about well over a ton of water being dropped onto pedestrians down below. But Raskov had to build the tallest building. This plan was going to add $750,000 to the cost of this building. But because it had marketing appeal, especially at this era, everyone was obsessed with flight. The architects had basically no say in it. Raskov and Smith were determined it was gonna happen. And so this obviously would frustrate Shreve, who really wanted the design to be dictated by practicality and not publicity stunts. But with the designs completed, it was time to start building. Did you notice something interesting about building? It doesn't really matter that, you know, you designed from the top down, you still sort of should build from the bottom up because after all, everything you build has to sit on top of something else. Now, your definition of bottom might not be the same as mine. It could change depending on what you're building on. But the only way to make sure the structure's gonna stand is to build on something already standing. But it's important to be honest with yourself. If you have an entire ecosystem and your own building as well built on, while you understood the bottom to be the top of someone else's building, don't complain when the bottom gets yanked out from under you. And by the way, during the act of building the Empire State Building, steelworkers put an amazing amount of work. They were the real heroes who turned this design into a reality. They worked under incredibly stressful conditions and under a really tight schedule. They didn't always even have time to take, or take time really to put in appropriate safety nets. And sometimes the support that they did have didn't seem terribly fit for purpose. And sure, they got to have lunch, but they didn't always get to leave the work site. So, construction of the Empire State Building started on March 17th, 1930, and it proceeded for about 14 months. And the building rose at a rate of four and a half stories per week, which was a record speed at the time. So 14 months after construction begins, building opens and it ended up holding the record for the world's tallest skyscraper for almost 40 years. Notice how short-lived Van Allen's record was? It had just been made the year before. And they completed this monumental feat with only five deaths. Now five deaths on record seems almost low when you look at the scale of the project, but even one life lost is too many. But again, another interesting building we're gonna talk about is the United Nations HQ. It's considerably smaller really than Empire State, and it was constructed from 1948 to 1952. Now compared to 14 months for over twice the size for the Empire State Building, it gives you some idea of just how fast they moved on that previous building. But do you notice anything about the building? It's all windows. And they wanted lots of light, of course, so they decided that they should use mostly sealed windows for that. Now the problem is that a building with mostly sealed windows largely resembles a greenhouse, and light with light comes heat. And unless you're building a greenhouse, you don't want the heat, you just want the light. Because it doesn't really matter if your building looks really nice and if you have great light, if nobody can stand to be inside it. So the solution to this had started years ago in response to a problem encountered by a printing company in Brooklyn. Their paper was getting wrinkled by humidity, and in the end result of that was that the print would be misaligned due to printing on wrinkles. An engineer named Willis Carter came up with a solution in 1902, and it worked by blowing air over, I'm sorry, Willis Carrier, came up with a solution in 1902 that worked by blowing air over a set of coils, and they were filled with a coolant. And so it really even wasn't designed to cool anything, but it was designed to regulate humidity, but it just happened to do both. He patented under the name apparatus for treating air, but we later came to call it air conditioning. Now, this wasn't the first idea that anybody had had to do this. In fact, the first space to use a similar cooling mechanism for the comfort of people was the New York Stock Exchange, way back in 1903, actually, and it was designed by Alfred Wolfe. And you can tell, I mean, it's a pretty busy place. You can understand why they went with air conditioning. But these were expensive. This one weighed 300 tons. It was a huge device. And in 1922, Carrier had improved on the original design, on his original design, with a centrifugal chiller. And so it was much simpler. You had increased reliability as a result of that. It was smaller, it was cost-saving, right? Without this, a building like the UNHQ could have never existed. And this is important because it doesn't matter if technology exists if virtually nobody has access to it. But again, another skyscraper is the Willis Tower. You may know it as the Sears Tower. Again, we're back to Chicago. It was designed by Fazlur Rahman Khan. He was the structural engineer that was tasked with building this office complex for Sears. It needed to support all of their Chicago employees, which meant it was gonna be an extremely tall building. And Chicago is known as the Windy City. Gus from Lake Michigan can reach up to 55 miles per hour. And the taller you get with a steel skeleton building, the more susceptible it is to bending at high winds. And that swaying motion that's created at the top can make you literally seasick when you're on land, when you just happen to be in a building at high elevation. So Khan had developed something called a tube structural system. It doesn't look much like a tube, but the general idea is very tube-like. It takes all of those skeletal kind of construction and members and it moves them to the exterior, which frees up not just a lot of extra space for use now because you don't have beams going through the middle of your building, but it makes it into an exoskeleton. So it gives you much better resistance against wind. Unlike Mr. Lobster here, though, the exoskeleton he has isn't really winning any beauty contest. Khan's exoskeletons gave a whole lot more flexibility in building design, and further evolutions of his work have allowed for some really beautiful buildings to be constructed, to the point where it becomes a work of art, really. But it wouldn't have been possible to build this high without having a fixed shell to guard against all the wind. Now, the Sears Tower specifically was the first building to use Khan's bundled tube structure, which was just what it sounds like, a bunch of smaller tubes, nine separate buildings of various heights that were essentially just strapped together into one building. The end result was that even with wind speeds over 55 miles per hour, the top floor of the Sears Tower sways only six inches. So this is just an interesting takeaway from that, I thought. But again, another skyscraper we're gonna talk about now is the Taipei 101. Now, the Taipei 101, 101 stories, which is why it's named that, it sets near the Pacific Ring of Fire. Now, the Ring of Fire is the most seismically active on Earth. It gets hit by an earthquake roughly twice a year, and earthquakes are different than wind. They affect, because they affect the building at the foundation, they're very, very strong effects on building structurally compared to wind. It's very easy for an earthquake to essentially break a large building. And this means it's really important to be able to test various types of structures on an earthquake simulator. So it turns out that spaghetti models steal quite nicely, as it turns out, and it has similar kind of structural characteristics in terms of how it bends under load. So I'm gonna show you how they can test these things on something that basically generates, simulates an earthquake. I think this is really cool. People get to play with this stuff, but. Now, the structure looks pretty much intact, but if this had been a real building, the top floor would have fallen down and killed everyone inside. The structure was too rigid, and so it transferred too much vibration to those upper floors. Now, the industry has a term for this kind of failure. The industry calls this the catastrophic failure. Now, I find this really interesting. You have to test all modes of failure in both the laboratory and the real world, but the only way to know of all modes of failure is to learn from previous failures. So somebody has to die first, essentially, for us to know that this is possible. So no engineer can be absolutely sure that the given structure will resist all loadings that could cause failure. All they do is decide that it's acceptably unlikely. Think about that the next time you're on the 30th floor in an office building. Somebody decided the chance of failure of that building is acceptably unlikely. So we should probably test to ensure catastrophic failure is acceptably unlikely, and please, please, please set a very high bar for acceptably. So the designers of Taipei 101, they made it rigid where it had to be, and flexible where it could afford to be. So here's a typical floor plan, just one floor off of Taipei 101. They built a core for the building out of 36 rigid steel tubes, and they included eight mega columns, the ones that you see in red right there.  Now every eight floors, outrigger trusses would be rigged up to the columns on the inside to connect them to the ones on the outside, and they essentially acted like rubber bands. So the building could do a little bit of a shimmy when it needed to. Now, on March 31st of 2002, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit Taipei while they were still building the building. It destroyed smaller buildings all around it, and it toppled two cranes from the 56th floor of the building under construction. But they were able to resume construction after an inspection showed absolutely no structural damage had occurred, and the engineers claimed in fact that during a quake Taipei 101 is the safest place in town. So you'd be surprised how flexible you can really afford to be. And of course, that flexibility is desirable in withstanding a quake, but you can imagine how sick someone might get if they're on the top floor of the building and the whole thing is swaying back and forth like a reed in the wind. So they actually have three tuned mass dampers. This is the largest one pictured here. This one suspended from the 92nd floor to the 87th floor, and it weighs 728 tons. And what it does, this was during a typhoon last year, what it does is it basically pulls as the building starts to sway in one direction, this tuned mass damper's there and it's kind of exerting a force to kind of pull it back in the line. Super cool. And so it's good to note that when the winds pick up, it's really nice to have someone at the top that's pulling for you. And again, the last skyscraper that I wanna talk to you about today is the Borsch Khalifa. Now everything that we've talked about so far has been refined and improved and applied to make this building possible. But that's not really what I wanna talk about with the Borsch Khalifa. After the attack of September 11th, 2001 on the Twin Towers, some people said that no super tall building would ever be constructed again because the problem becomes one of evacuation. In an evacuation situation, stairs are really the only option and walking down stairs as it turns out is actually almost as difficult as walking up them in case you weren't aware. And at twice the height of the former One World Trade Center, the Borsch Khalifa needed a place to ensure the safety of those inside. I mean, it has a naturally fire-resistant concrete core which is great, it helps. But even so, as you build higher and higher, more and more people are gonna need to walk ever further to get to safety. Again, this thing's half a mile tall.  So how do the people of the Borsch Khalifa get out in an emergency? The answer is they don't. It isn't enough to just give one option to people who are in danger to leave the building. And in fact, with the Borsch Khalifa, there are refuge rooms on all the mechanical floors. And they're built from layers of reinforced concrete and fireproof sheeting. And they can actually, the walls can withstand the heat of a fire for up to two hours. Every room has a dedicated supply of air that's pumped through fire-resistant pipes. And by creating these safe places that people in danger can go, the architects are making it more likely that people will survive a catastrophe. And they put these safe places every 25 floors or so. Because it doesn't really matter, it doesn't really matter if the safe places exist if they're too inaccessible or they're too risky to get to. And in a fire, you may already know, it's not usually the fire that kills someone but smoke inhalation. And one of the interesting things is that here's one of these refuge rooms, as they're called. If the route to the refuge room is blocked by smoke, this room's not gonna be any good.  So if fire activates a fire detector or a heat sensor or a water sprinkler goes off, a network of high-powered fans actually kick in and they force clean cool air from the outside through these fire-resistant ducts that are in the building to push the toxic smoke out of the stairwell and keep the route clear. It's really important not just to provide fresh air but to actively work to push out the toxic elements that are in your building. And of course, none of this is really a substitute for rescue workers coming to the aid of those people in refuge rooms. This safe place is just a place for people to go while people who are in the building are actively working to fight the fire. Because anything worth building is only worth building because of how it impacts people. This has not been a talk about skyscrapers. Thank you very much. Was this sign kind of metaphor is the question? I don't know. What do you think? No, no, so the question Mike had was a troll, so I'm not gonna repeat it. What is the meaning of the stickers? Well, this one's a lobster and this one's an owl and this one's a humane development sticker, which is another thing that I believe in. That's the meaning. This meaning here is to be a lobster and this meaning here is to be an owl. I work for a company called CareZone, by the way, and that owl, that awesome owl sticker is their logo. I'm really thankful to them for letting me be here today and I'm really thankful to Mike for inviting me and thanks so much, I'm really sad. This is the last Mountain West, but thanks so much, Mike, for everything you're doing.


Hello, welcome to SSHiritech, so see in this side and this is continuation of SQL Server interview questions and answers. So today we are going to discuss one more interview question and here we have input table and it would have only three columns, first is card number, then the value, then date. So as we can see in the card number we are having C1, C1, C1, then C2, C2, C2, C2 and C3. In the value column we are having some values and some missing values. As we can see for C1 we can check for the third row. So in the value we don't have any value. Then for C2 as we can see in the second row, so value is missing. So we just want to get these values which are missing by the previous one. So here as we can see the previous value of C1 is 010 and date is 2019 0701. So this value should be get in 2019 0801. Here the value is missing. This is for C1. Then for C2 as we can see we are having 1000 is the previous value. So this 1000 should be updated in the next row. So as we can see in the output for C1 we are having 100, then 1100 and then the missing value now which is 1100 which is the previous value. And then for C2 as we can see first row is 1000, second was the missing. So here we are having 1000 because the previous value is 1000. So how we can get this output? So let's move to Seacoast over management studio to write the query for getting this output. So as I am using SQL 2017 you may have another version of Seacoast over. So here first of all I would like to check if this table is already exist in the database or not. If that table exist then we just want to drop that table. So we can execute the first statement. Now I just want to create the table. So we can execute this create statement. Then I just want to insert data on that table. So let me execute this insert statement to insert the records on the table. So let me execute this query. So as we can see 8 rows affected. It means 8 rows have been inserted in the table. So now I just want to check the data on the table. So we can write select a stick from our table. Now let me execute this query. So as we can see we are having the same metadata as we seen in the slide. So before going to watch this video you can pause this video at this point. Let you think about how we can get the previous value and that value should be updated in the next row. So don't think very complex logic. Let me clear it is very simple. So here we can use the lag function to get the previous value. So we can use the lag function. Then inside that lag function we can use the value and then we have to use the over clause because this is the syntax for lag function. Then we have to use the partition by and here partition by should be on card number. So this is the card number. Then we have to use the order by. So in case of order by as we can see in date. So date is in order. So we can put the date. Now we can put a alias name with lag value. Let me execute this query to check the output. So as we can see here we are having null value and this is the previous value. So this is the first value that's why here we are having null. Then for the second row previous value is 100. So this 100 is coming in the lag value column. Then next is null. So in case of null it is going to pick the previous value that is double one zero. So double one zero is coming on lag value. So this is the logic we can implement here we just want to get the card number. So we can use a card number then we want to get the value. So in case of value we can use the is null function. So is null and this is the value if value column is null then we want to get the value from the lag function. So this is the null value. So we can put as value. Next is date. So we want date. Now we can execute this query and we can compare the output. So as we can see we are getting double one zero. So previous value is double one zero. Next is 1000. So we are getting the output as we were expected. So this is the very simple logic by which we can get the output. So I hope you have understand how we can replace the missing value by the previous values. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you like this video please subscribe our channel to get many more videos. Don't forget to press the bell icon to get the notification of our newly uploaded videos. Thank you so much.


English as a foreign language in kindergarten Learning English as a foreign language in preschools have become an increasing trend in many different countries across the world. Parents are willing to invest money for the kids to start learning English at a tender age as their ability to grasp the language will be easier. Is it necessary for children? There are various ways of transferring knowledge based on FANIA-FEL activities. Various techniques and numerous tools are the main methods of imparting knowledge to children. It has been scientifically proven that children at the ages of three-six have a strong potential to acquire new information, especially when English is made interesting. FUN ACTIVITIES There are various ways of making English interesting. The Internet provides us with an infinite number of games, songs, rhymes, and other EFL activities. Children are usually divided into two groups depending on the age group. Teaching EFL in the younger age group should be action-based, playing games, singing, and dancing. Ages of five-six, children are taught the methodology way like storytelling, role-play, and dramatization techniques. The teacher's creativity is most visible and most important. Children like to see all different kinds of visuals, boasters, flashcards, pictures, videos, picture books, numbers and picture dictionaries. It is best to combine handmade materials. Children like to be engaged in practical, fun activities and exercises, participating in making things like Christmas postcards, Christmas decorations or their cultural festivals. The teacher should bear in mind that children take a lot of time to make things, therefore it is more appropriate for seasonal, festivity and birthday themes. Teachers should encourage their students to speak English when they are talking in their mother tongue. Teaching Vocabulary When the teacher is teaching new vocabulary, it is advisable to show pictures, flashcards or other visuals. Talking about the given topics, try to use English as much as possible, and the children are learning by listening. English songs and nursery rhymes for preschoolers should be included in almost every theme. Consider short attention spans. Small kids will stay interested as long as the teacher succeeds in making the lesson funny, understandable and captivating. Vocabulary words should be repeated several times. Speaking to kids with a gentle voice is also important as the children will be able to approach the teacher without having fear. The teacher can practice saying hello and goodbye by knocking on wood or the classroom door just to get the attention of the children. When saying goodbye, the teacher can wave her hands and get the children to do the same. The teacher's involvement in each activity is essential. Children normally love animals and will be fascinated if the teacher cuts out pictures of animals and get the children to name the animals. It is advisable for the teacher to repeat the name of the animal several times. Introducing fruits and vegetables by flashcards with the names of the vegetable and fruits written on the flashcards. Make the flashcards colorful as children are attracted to colorful pictures. Once in a while, the teacher can bring real fruits and vegetables for the students to taste. The children will be exposed to various fruits and vegetables. Having outdoor dinner activities is important as children like changes. Having a bean bag activity where various colored beans bags are placed in a container and the children have to match the various colors to various colored buckets. It is advisable to group the children into three groups. Example naming each group is apple group, orange group, and pear group. Are you ready to teach EFL to kindergarten level? At the end of the day, teachers should inquire from the children's parents how the child is responding to the various activities. Are the children happy? Do the children prefer other activities? Getting feedback helps the teacher to improve the lessons being taught. Speak with an ITTT advisor today to put together your personal plan for teaching English abroad. Send us an email or call us toll free at 1-800-490-0531 to speak with an ITTT advisor today.


When we talk about threaded fasteners, what we are actually referring to is an assembly of parts that work together. These parts are the bolt, the nut, and in some cases a set of washers. The bolt is the primary load carrying element of the assembly. It consists of a bolt head and shank, where a portion of the bolt shank is threaded. The second part is the nut, which is a structure that contains a mating set of threads that interlock with the threads on the bolt. The last parts are the washers. These are annular plates typically made of a very stiff material, which help spread the load acting on the bolt head and nut over a larger area. There are a number of pros and cons to threaded fasteners to consider when designing a joint. On the pro side, threaded fasteners can be made out of a wide range of materials, including both high strength and low strength metal alloys. This provides a designer with a wide range of options in selecting the best performing fastener for the job and to tailor fasteners for different roles such as tension or shear dominated joints. Another pro is that threaded fasteners are able to generate large clamping forces. This is particularly important for tension type joints and for joints that serve a sealing purpose, where leakage of fluid such as fuel could occur if the parts are not sufficiently clamped together. Threaded fasteners are also removable, making them ideal for applications that require the joint to be disassembled in service. Disassembly could be necessary for maintenance purposes, such as replacing a damaged windshield in the cockpit of an aircraft. Moving to some cons of threaded fasteners, the fact that they are removable can also be a negative attribute. During operation, loading and vibration can cause threaded fasteners to become loose and even fall out. For this reason, threaded fasteners are typically wirelocked in aircraft applications. Wirelocking is a process whereby a wire interlocks adjacent fasteners in such a way that loosening of one fastener would result in tightening of the adjacent fasteners. Wirelocking certainly increases the cost of a mechanically fastened joint in an aircraft, but the fastener itself is also costly relative to standard aerospace rivets. Threads have to be accurately machined in both the bolt and the nut to ensure a good interlocking fit. This is in stark contrast to rivets which we will look at next. Aerospace rivets look similar to a standard bolt, but without the threads. Rather than using a thread and a nut, the end of the fastener is plastically deformed in order to create a permanent connection between the joint parts. Rivets can come with a variety of head styles and can even come in the form of rivet wire where both heads of the fastener are formed during installation. Rivets overcome many of the disadvantages of threaded fasteners. They are extremely cheap, not requiring any additional machining steps to produce the fastener itself. This can be a significant overall cost factor when you consider that a modern commercial aircraft can contain millions of fasteners. Rivets also form a permanent connection that cannot vibrate loose, negating the need for costly wire locking of the individual fasteners. Rivets also have some additional performance benefits that we will look at momentarily, but let's first discuss some of the cons of riveting. The range of materials that can be used for rivets is rather limited. Because riveting relies on plastically deforming the fastener itself, we are limited to lower strength and highly ductile materials. As a result, rivets tend to be significantly weaker than threaded fasteners, limiting their use in certain applications. The strength of a fastener is not the only consideration in the design of a joint. When we produce a mechanically fastened joint, we first need to drill holes in the structure, and as we saw earlier in the course, adding a hole to a structure introduces a stress concentration which will weaken it. But rivets have a unique way to compensate for this weakness. They expand to fill the fastener hole. Let's look at the rivet installation process step by step for the case of two thin sheets being joined and try to understand the benefits of hole filling behavior. We will look at a top view of this process on the left and a cross-sectional view on the right. First, a rivet is inserted into the holes drilled within the two thin parts being joined. As seen in the illustration, the size of the hole is actually larger than the rivet, making it easier to insert the rivet during this step. With the rivet in place, it is possible to begin the next step. In this step, compressive forces are applied to the rivet through either squeezing or hammering. This action causes the rivet to expand, first elastically, then plastically, filling the fastener hole. As the fastener hole is filled, the rivet begins to apply pressure on the inner surface of the holes in the sheet. Further compressive forces cause the formation of the deformed rivet head. However, it also results in plastic deformation within the sheet, highlighted here in blue. In the final step, the rivet insulation force is removed and the sheet tries to relax, just like when a rubber band is unloaded and shrinks back to its original size. But due to plasticity, the blue region around the fastener hole will be larger than it originally was. The surrounding sheet will thus compress the plastic region trying to push it back into its original shape. This final state leaves the material around the rivet hole in a state of residual compressive stress, which helps reduce the stress concentration. Residual compressive stresses are not the only fatigue beneficial outcome of hole filling in a riveted joint. Recall that the stress concentration factor of a hole in an infinite sheet is approximately equal to 3. Stretching of the material under this load also causes it to deform into an oval shape. The situation, however, changes if that hole is filled. The ovalization that previously occurred is restricted by the rivet, resulting in contact forces between the rivet and the whole surface, which redistribute load. This causes a reduction in the stress concentration factor to approximately 2 for the left and right hand sides of the hole. The ovalization shown here is greatly exaggerated, so even small differences between the fastener diameter and the hole size can result in the higher stress concentration factor. So the hole filling nature of rivets is critical for obtaining this benefit. Tension loading within the plate is not the only loading affecting the stress concentration around the fastener. The fastener itself will introduce a pin loading into the sheet that we refer to as bearing. This bearing load transfer also has its own stress concentration factor that we need to consider. If the fastener hole is unfilled, load transfer between the rivet and the sheets only occurs on one side of the fastener hole. This concentrates the load in the sheet, resulting in a large stress concentration. If the hole is filled, the fastener begins with a radial compressive load acting all around it. As the bearing load is added, a reduction in radial compression on the lower half of the hole and an increase in the radial compression on the upper half of the hole transfers this load. Thus, the load transfer is spread over the entire surface of the hole, reducing the stress concentration factor. So to recap what we have seen, mechanically fastened joints can be classified by the type of fastener, threaded fasteners, rivets, blind fasteners and nails, and by the primary means by which the fastener transfers load, tension and shear. We examined in more detail threaded fasteners and rivets, highlighting some of the main advantages and disadvantages and why riveting is still commonly used in the aerospace industry, despite the fact that drilling holes in a structure will generally weaken it. Ultimately, the design of a complex structure requires a series of compromises.


Good afternoon. It's really a pleasure to be here and I for the purpose of full disclosure I want people to know that I am Someone who believes that a better world is possible and for that reason I've been a social entrepreneur for over 40 years in different ways and I've been working for the last six seven years on Cuba because I saw something in Cuba that I thought was important for all of us as social entrepreneurs So many of you are probably aware of the fact that Cuba has a world-renowned medical system. There's lots of professors Great educational system not bad rum Salsa, you're probably aware a lot of Americans aware of the famous the classical cars in Cuba Which by the way, how many of you been to Havana have been to Cuba raise your hands, okay? How many of you want to go to Cuba? Okay, that's pretty typical these days, but the cities are full of these old cars and I chose this particular one. It's a 1958 Ford Galaxy now why'd I choose that one to show you because My father had a 1958 Ford Galaxy I remember driving in it, but more importantly was in 1958 that I first heard about the Cuban revolution if you can believe it I was ten years old and I was watching TV and These little kids come on Stage come on TV with beards fake beards and they say I'm a Castro freedom fighter send money Boy have times changed that they they could do that on TV back in those days And I this was weird So I sort of got interested and basically if you had the opportunity throughout my entire life to watch the Cuban revolution and It's been fascinating because Cuba with a fairly small population has had a really outsized role in the history of the last 50 60 years in Cuba in the world I should say so it's been fascinating. I've gotten to see Over time different stages of Cuban development the good the bad and certainly the ugly parts as well so Okay, and I'm still having my problems the slides. Oh, there we go. Okay, so you might ask yourselves Well, does Cuba really matter in the world economy small island? Relatively impoverished or though very well educated and trained people and I would argue that there's two a couple reasons Why Cuba is important? First of all, you can see from the geographic area the map here that Cuba is really in a strategic position And it's been that way historically So valuable is that the United States we you know continues to retain a piece of property there called Guantanamo Coincidence, I suppose So that's important in Cuba's largest economic development project is the building of a superport Which is going to service the expanded Panama Canal and become a trans shipment center of all kinds of goods throughout The two United States to the Caribbean but also to Europe as well from the ships that come through from the Pacific But I would also like to point out to you and this is really the reason I'm here That I think Cuba matters for a different reason that sometimes people don't really think about very much And as I look out in this crowd, I know you're social entrepreneurs. I know you're looking for ways To determine how can we build a different economy one? That's not controlled by the 1% and one that takes into consideration all the problems of global warming and issues that we face what's interesting in 2011 Basically the Cuban model the Cuban government excuse me came out and said, you know what? Our economic model isn't working anymore We've got to make really big adjustments if this experiment we've tried for the last 55 years is going to continue So they embarked on a process of changing their economic model and let me point out This is prior to long prior to relations with the United States. So it's something that was Sparked kind of indigis indigisously as they needed to so the point of this whole project that I've been embarking on with a number of colleagues from different countries particularly in Latin America is Is it possible for Cuba to? Create an economy which takes the best parts of what they've achieved on the social side and Helps build a sustainable economy, which has not really worked very well in their case by looking at what's going on in a Capitalist system and what's worthy of taking that's really what the project is about So, you know, it's a little ambitious, but you got to try these things Otherwise, you know, it won't happen We know of the disasters that occurred in Russia and the eastern block back in the 90s. Is it possible to avoid that? so the Fundamental issue here is can Cuba create an innovative hybrid economy? This is truly a hybrid animal. Is it possible? Well, I think we need to keep in mind That in Cuba you have a very highly educated population and in Cuba you have 55 years of attempting to build a socialist You know environment, I think those really important factors because the reality is I feel Perceivably when I go to Cuba and I've been there probably about 15 times in the last You know four or five years. I Feel there's a very strong commitment to community and to overall welfare and that if they're going to try to lift the economy, it's really going to be Doing it together and in some ways, that's the hardest part is to how do you convey? That sense of the social and social entrepreneurship and and social wealth So maybe the Cubans have a bit of a head start that could be very Interesting for us. So the ways they're going to be creating this innovative economy Hybrid is they're opening up to a point where previously the state controlled most of the business is going to be 5050 in the future In terms of where the business is coming from they're opening up to foreign investment They're opening up new ways of setting up economic structures So for example, there's been a long history of cooperatives in Cuba, but now they're beginning to unleash Non-agricultural cooperatives so Cuba is on the verge of literally becoming One of the societies in the world with the highest degree of cooperative Penetration in the economy, which of course brings along with it social equity as everyone is participating in this sort of ownership model there's also a huge number of Self-employed people that are setting up small businesses as well 500,000 at present count So it's a substantial part of the economy So who will benefit from all these changes well first and foremost it will be the children and the future generations of Cuba if Cuba is capable of leapfrogging the pitfalls of 20th century capitalism and moving in to The harbor of 21st century sustainability. That's the issue But you know what it really goes beyond Cuban children it's really children in the United States children all over because Cuba if it can become a kind of national laboratory and Cuba has been a leader in the past in many issues in human development in in our century If they can do that then it becomes beneficial for everyone where we see a testing of a social economy model That's a blended model taking place So you may ask, okay. Well, what does this mean for us entrepreneurs? Well, it means a couple things first of all that there are opportunities there There are Services and goods that are desperately needed by the Cubans and There will be opportunities for us however We shouldn't you know underestimate the difficulty of doing things This is just now getting worked out after so many years and there are barriers the US embargo is still in effect and It is very limiting factor for some of our access to doing business in Cuba and the Cubans are very stubborn I mean they have resisted The United States kind of invasion for 55 years and it remains to be seen how this will move forward So as I move on at the end of the presentation I'll give you a link where you can see a paper that I co-authored on doing business in Cuba Which is geared towards social entrepreneurs and nonprofit entities. So to kind of wrap up. I Think we need to look at the question of what does the future hold? Well, I don't know how well you can see it But I'm wearing a t-shirt that is a t-shirt of Che Guevara who's wearing a t-shirt of Bart Simpson Okay, and that sort of suggests the dilemma We're going to see now in the sense that what does the future hold? This is a big exchange and a big experiment So, you know, will the Cuban government hold up its end of the bargain and really open the economy and allow these entrepreneurial forces to move forward Rains be seen will the United States You know overwhelmed the economy, you know the traditional US economy overwhelmed Cuba and literally Bart Simpson will replace Che Guevara as kind of an icon those are big questions and you know, I encourage people to go and see things You know for yourselves, but I do want to emphasize one thing at which often doesn't get mentioned. I'm gonna here's the my Website if you're interested in checking out the guy that I put up There's a lot of other interesting articles on Cuba and on social economy that I think you might enjoy reading But just to sort of close out here. My guess is that the Cubans are very resilient They have overcome enormous challenges and they're not going to fall over Dead because capitalism and you know is here They see a lot of the pitfalls and while they absolutely have to improve their economy and create better lives For their people. That's it absolutely essential or the whole thing will fall apart at some point They I think have the potential of doing it in a way, which we will all Benefit from and learn from and I encourage all of you to get involved. So thank you very much


On Saturday, October 10, 2020, St. Nusha recorded a new case of COVID-19. The individual is a 48-year-old male national who accessed care at one of the respiratory clinics. He was placed at the respiratory hospital for care. As per protocol, he was swabbed and tested for COVID-19 and the test results returned positive. This brings a total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in St. Nusha to date, 229. At this point of the investigation, the source of infection is not confirmed. The epidemiology unit of the Ministry of Health and Wellness has commenced contact tracing immediately in the communities. This process would aid in determining the source of infection. Commuters on public transportation on the castries to Viewfort route are asked to pay particular attention to the following. The Ministry of Health is requesting that anyone who traveled from Viewfort to Castries route via minibus M481 during the period Monday, September 28, 2020 to Friday, October 9, 2020 to report to the following respiratory clinics for assessment and possible testing. The Loclarie Respiratory Clinic today Saturday, October 10, 2020, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and tomorrow Sunday, October 11, 2020, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Viewfort Respiratory Clinic today Saturday, October 10, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. and tomorrow Sunday, October 11, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Denry Hospital today Saturday, October 10, from 12 p.m. to midnight and tomorrow Sunday, October 11, from 8 a.m. to midnight. The public is advised that all COVID-19 protocols remain in effect. This includes the use of face masks in public places, including public transportation. The five respiratory clinics remain open to the public to facilitate anyone with respiratory signs and symptoms or related concerns. The 311 hotline is also available daily from 7 a.m. to midnight where concerns and questions on COVID-19 can be addressed. We continue to advise on the importance of maintaining the standard recommendations for infection prevention and control, which include regular hand washing of soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer where soap and water is not available to cover your mouth and nose with disposable tissues or your inner elbows when coughing and sneezing, also adhering to the recommended physical distancing measures. The Ministry of Health will continue providing further updates on this case and on COVID-19.