Related to what is this. Oh, so we've been doing revisions for various boards and stuff But one of the other things I've been doing is revising the tester procedures. So historically for stuff like the feather ESP 8266 and ESP 32 feathers Because they have a USB serial converter I've had to use a Raspberry Pi computer to do the testing and so the Raspberry Pi would connect over USB and programming using ESP tool, but now that we have USB CDC support natively in teeny USB. I'm using a Pico through BitBang USB, which can actually do the programming for an ESP 866 or 32 via a USB CDC device, which is actually kind of cool There's like four layers of coding that needs to be done. But what's nice is that there's no Linux involved. It's super fast It's super compact No SD cards or anything So we're gonna be updating all of our testers to hopefully get all of them converted over to be Pico-ified as I put it


I'm Eugenie Scott. I'm the former executive director of the National Center for Science Education. I'm currently retired, but I still keep my hand in a little bit for helping to make sure that students in the United States learn about evolution and climate change. Oh, I was always interested in science. I can't remember when I wasn't interested in science. Although, technically speaking, it would probably be more accurate to say I was interested in nature. There's a difference, because science is the study of nature, and I didn't quite get into that until probably university level, quite honestly. Unfortunately, K through 12, science education in the United States doesn't always, at least when I was going to school, but that was back in the Pleistocene, doesn't always get into the actual aspects of science the way we think of it today. Well, I got very interested in evolution when I was probably in middle school, because my older sister brought back her college textbook in anthropology. Anthropology, what's that? That's a big word, so I started paging through the book. They had these great reconstructions of Neanderthals and Homo erectus and all these fossils, and I just thought they were great. It was just so exciting to see all this. So what's this? This is anthropology. OK, I want to be an anthropologist. And then I became one. The National Center for Science Education began back in the late 70s and early 80s, back when there was a lot of legislation going around in the United States to require that if K through 12 teachers taught evolution, they also had to balance it with the teaching of something called creation science, which is a term of art, believe me. And creation science was supposedly an alternative science that would correct the flaws that would be in the textbook and the normal curriculum. And of course, scientists and teachers were not about to put up with that, so we started getting organized to try to combat this legislation that was popping up all over the place. And out of that group of scientists and teachers emerged in the early 1980s, the National Center, what became the National Center for Science Education. Mostly what NCSE has done over the almost 30 years of its existence is to work at the grassroots level with citizens, with teachers, with parents, of all professions, scientists, and others to try to stop problems before they begin. So the NCSE helps local citizens to address these issues, to persuade a school board or a state legislature that a policy that would require the teaching of creationism or that would somehow water down the teaching of evolution don't get passed. So it's an awful lot of local organizing. Because this is not a scientific issue. If it were a scientific issue, we could go home, because we've got the science. But it's not a scientific issue. It is unfortunately a political issue. So you have to think politically. And that's what NCSE has done over the years, to try to help good science be taught and keep the bad stuff out. And about two and a half or so years ago, we added climate change to our portfolio, if you will. Because we were finding that teachers were getting beat up for teaching climate change similarly to how they were being discouraged from teaching evolution. And we began to notice the parallels in these two movements and how it was affecting science education. And we thought that maybe some of the experience that we had gained over the years in dealing with the evolution issue, we might be able to apply to the climate science issue as well. There are a number of parallels, but there also are some very distinct differences between the two. Sort of the 20,000 foot level, if you go back and you look at these two controversies, the main similarity is that it's really not about the science. People do not show up at school board meetings and wait there behind a microphone for hours to speak for three minutes because they really feel passionate about the Cambrian explosion or because they feel passionate about the differential between the land temperature and ocean temperature. I mean, this is not what really motivates people. What motivates people to fight against climate change or evolution is some sort of ideological or emotional concomitant to this controversy. In the case of evolution, the ideology, of course, is religion. People of particular Christian views and, of course, in Great Britain, it's Muslims.   So it's really not about the science, it's really about the ideology. One of the first things that we noticed about parallels between the anti-evolution and anti-climate change movements was tactics because the first tactic, of course, is to attack the science. The science of evolution is weak. The science of global warming is weak. Therefore, we can reject them. The second thing that we noticed about the parallels between evolution and climate change is that it's not so much the science as the consequences of the science for the particular ideology. Conservative Christians believe that if evolution is true, then the Bible is false, there is no God, there is no salvation, you will not be reunited with God at the end times, and these are very, very important issues. Children will not have a moral right to guide them. There are very, very important issues at stake if evolution is true. In the case of climate change, where it's more of a political ideology and or an economic ideology, the concerns are more along the lines of, well, if climate change is true, that means that we're gonna have to strengthen central government because we're gonna have to take steps to curb the carbon production so that we can reduce the amount of CO2 in the air. That means a bigger central government. As political conservatives, we don't want a big central government. It means we're gonna have to put some constraints on capitalism, that socialism. So there's a lot of things that political conservatives are gonna lose also if climate change is right. Another parallel between the evolution and the climate change controversies is that the consequences for the ideology are stressed. So the ideologues on both sides frame the top, frame the controversy in terms of you've got to choose.  There's a line in the sand and they dichotomize the issue. In the case of climate change, it's another dichotomy. It's a different dichotomy, but it's still a dichotomy.  So people hearing these messages, if they are politically conservative, well, naturally I've gotta take this point of view. Otherwise I'm not being true to my values. Similarly, people who are religiously conservatives, well, I have to take this value because otherwise I'm not being true to my values. So there definitely are non-scientific issues that you have to deal with in this issue and in dealing with these controversies. In working with the evolution issue, we've found that the best way to get somebody to accept the science is to have a message delivered by somebody that they trust that will assuage their fears that they have to choose between faith and science. And so evangelicals who accept evolution are the best ambassadors to the conservative religious community because they're the ones who have the same ideological view but they also accept the science. So that sets up a clash, so to speak. You don't expect this, so tell me more. And similarly with the climate change issue, you have the message that climate change is real, we have to deal with it. Let's talk about what sort of policies we can institute have that message delivered by somebody who is from the same ideological background, somebody who is politically conservative, somebody who is not a socialist, there aren't that many socialists in the United States to start with anyway. But libertarian and politically conservative views can be packaged in a way, shall we say, that allows somebody from that ideological tradition to listen to the science. Now we feel that both the science of evolution and the science of climate change are strong enough so that if a person can listen to them without the ideological fingers in the ears, so to speak, that the science is gonna be persuasive. But you've gotta get the fingers out of the ears before the science has a chance to work. We have stressed the facts that it's not a dichotomy. This dichotomous view that you've gotta choose, you're either an evolutionist or you're religious or you're either a political conservative or you accept climate change. Those dichotomies are really ruining these two controversies. They really are very strongly held by the anti's on both sides. It is necessary to try to convince people that, no, scientists are really arguing about the details of evolution. We're not arguing about whether evolution took place.  Not whether it's gonna rise, because the planet is warming and there are gonna be consequences for that. There's a lot of different ways of trying to help people understand that consensus. One of them is through humor. Project Steve was an effort to try to poke a little bit of fun at the creationist, shall we say. Creationists have for years come up with these lists of scientists who doubt Darwin scientists who reject evolution and they're always trivial, frankly. And back in the early 2000s, I think it was 2002 or three, something like that. The intelligent design creationist took out these full page ads around the country for promoting this idea that evolution was shaky science and this was scientists doubting Darwin. And we found that very annoying and there were a lot of people who wrote us and emailed us and said, oh, NCSE has to get up a petition. We can get tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of scientists to sign a statement about evolution happen and we thought that was pretty dumb because it was pretty dumb to have a petition of scientists who doubt evolution. I mean, when is science done by vote? I mean, you don't vote on how the world works. You test explanations and you accept the ones that work and that's the way it's done. You don't just raise your hand if you like evolution, that's silly. So we decided that we would poke a little fun at the intelligent design petition of scientists doubting Darwin. They had 100 scientists who doubted evolution. And so we came up with a list of 200 scientists who signed a statement about evolution as an important scientific idea, natural selections are very important, don't teach creationism in school. It was a nicely written little paragraph there. And we got 200 scientists to sign, twice as many of course as the intelligent design proponents, but all of ours were named Steve. And of course that generated a big giggle from the press and from anybody else when you think about it because it's so silly. I should say Steve's and Stephanie's. So we've had a great deal of fun with Project Steve. And of course once we announced Project Steve, the Steve's and Stephanie's just keep coming in over the transom. And I think we're up to like 1400 Steve's or something like that. You get a T-shirt I guess, maybe that's a selling point. I think climate science is different. I mean there are enough similarities in the approaches that deniers take for both and there's enough similarities but I think it's different enough. When a central point of your whole position is that the 5,000 feet of sediments and Grand Canyon was laid down in one year by Noah's flood, that's gotta take the cake. I mean that is topped only by, that is topped only by the idea that it was cut in a period of a week or 10 days.  I haven't heard anything quite so zany from the climate science people. Although I mean it's fun to kind of just roll your eyes at some of the things that the creationists believe but frankly the anti-climate change people are a whole lot more important and they've got a whole lot more political clout and they've got a whole lot more money and the stakes are really a lot higher. I mean I think it's very important to have a scientifically literate population and that includes understanding evolution, its role in science and that's an important thing. But if you don't understand climate science, if you don't understand the fact that the planet is getting warmer, the oceans are getting warmer, the oceans are acidifying, serious consequences are taking place as a result of human actions that are producing more carbon dioxide and other products that increase warming. If you don't really understand that you are not only scientifically less literate than you should be but you are also politically and socially a lot less literate than you have to be because we are going to need to take some very serious measures to try to roll back if possible or certainly to cope with the kinds of changes that we're already producing. So yeah, I can have fun with creationism but I take climate change a lot more seriously. Philosophers of science have gotten themselves all tangled up in trying to define what science is. I deal with the general public. My definition of science is really, really simple. Science is a way of understanding the natural world using natural processes and these natural processes are tested against the natural world to come up with some explanations that help us understand better how the world works. Now, pseudoscience to me is maybe trying to do the same thing or at least trying to reflect this matter of natural inquiry that we call science but they get big parts of it wrong. The reason why creationism is a pseudoscience is that even though yes, they're trying to explain the natural world and yes, they at least go through the motions of trying to test some of their explanations, where they fail is that they are unwilling to recognize the data and observations that refute their explanations and you can't do that and call yourself a scientist. One of the problems with science is that maybe the most common phrase that a scientist utters is, oh crap, it didn't work because most of the time your explanations fail because if you test things right, you find out where your weaknesses are but then you refine and you go back and try it again. If you just ignore all of the evidence that refutes your explanation, you're not doing science. That's to me the sine qua non of being a pseudoscientist. Curiosity, I mean certainly all the scientists that I've known, they are people who are just driven by, gee, I wonder how that works, gee, I wonder why it's that way and then you use this process of science to try to answer those questions, to try to figure things out. It's just a real enthusiasm for figuring stuff out and explaining how the world works. It'd be nice if it were more remunerative but that's not the way it works. Yeah, boy, if you ever wanted to get rich quick scheme, you'd sure go into scientific research. That's gonna put you on the gravy train for life. Now, of course that's absurd. And what's particularly amusing about this is that the people who are making these claims are often spokespeople for major money interests, coal and gas and oil and other industries that benefit from the current energy productions that we have. You don't think these people are gonna lose money if the restrictions on carbon producing industries are put into effect, things like carbon taxes or even cap and trade, which is barely adequate.  And unfortunately, the kettle is not even light gray. It's just a totally inappropriate kind of, the vast majority of scientists who are contributing to improving our knowledge about the natural world don't have big fancy laboratories. They don't have big huge salaries. They're not gonna retire to cushy second and third homes. I mean, this is not a get rich quick scheme, trust me. Have you had any complaints from Bob's or Peter's or John's that asking why you didn't go to Project Bob? Well, we've had wistful requests. Are you gonna have a project normant? No, it's only funny once that we can only do that.


The International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC, and the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, have been working together to develop standards for lithium ion batteries. These standards include testing procedures for determining the charge and discharge capabilities, power performance, and life cycle of the batteries. A new method was also developed to determine the life cycle of a battery in relation to its depth of discharge. This article was authored by Yuri VanMierlo, Peter VanDenBosche, Omar Heggazi, and others.


The video we're about to review today is crucial in understanding the philosophical and theological errors that Christians sometimes make when trying to appear honest and truthful. I have put considerable effort into identifying contradictions in the Bible, where also offering my perspective on the decentralization of Christianity, which has led to the proliferation of denominations and opposing doctrines of faith. When I saw the video of a white young man attempting to understand Islam from a position of Christian argumentative superiority, I was inspired to challenge his ideas with the help of Dr. Zakir Naik. In criticizing Islam, I'm criticizing a creed and not people.  Well, a creed isn't a race, in the same way that people can criticize Christianity. In fact, I welcome criticism of Christianity because it invites the opportunity to explore and to discuss the things that I believe to be true. I'm so confident in my beliefs that I think that they will actually stand up to that kind of scrutiny, which is why I welcome it. However, we should be prepared to entertain his 40 arguments on Jesus and Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, as well as his incoherent interpretation of the Arabic word al-wadud, which is a loose English translation of Allah, is all loving and is sometimes used to justify the pagan concept of the trinity. Well, before we begin, let me introduce a person in the video. I prefer to call him Brother Brian Hodesworth. He's a Tridentine Catholic Christian who arguably regained the reform of 1962 when the Catholic Church was opened up to liberals and modernization. He describes himself as this struggling Catholic thinker, apologist, writer, speaker and communication professional who makes video commentaries on topics related to culture, morality and religion informed by his experience as a practicing Catholic. Assalamualaikum brothers and sisters, welcome to another episode of the Open Minded Thinker Show. We appreciate your support. I'll encourage you to like, share and subscribe to help us reach more people. Based on Brian's statement so far, it appears that he's very confident in Christianity. It's a great thing. I'm not against it. However, the question is whether he's willing to accept the truth about Christianity when it is presented to him. Will he be willing to acknowledge that Christianity has about 200,000 contradictions in the Bible, where Brian has said that the Church never allowed anyone to read the Bible without the express permission of a Quranic clergy, some due to the fear of confusion from the Bible's numerous contradictions. Will he accept? Well, let's have an open minded discussion here. And there are three areas I would want to focus that attention on. They're on the founder of each tradition, so that would be Jesus and Muhammad. On the rival conceptions of God, they're both monotheistic religions, but Christianity describes God as a trinity. And on the Quran versus the Bible, the two competing scriptures. So let's start with the central founding figures of each faith tradition in Islam. Muhammad is described as a prophet, and in fact, they go far as to say that he's the last prophet after which no more revelation is to take place. And in an attempt to evaluate that, I think it's probably worth trying to define what a prophet is and what we should expect from a prophet. Please take note of where he's driving that here. My definition would be particularly unique. I would say that a prophet is a messenger from God who reveals something important about God and points us beyond this life to our fulfillment in another. And the reason that I say that they point us to something beyond is because the mere fact that we have prophets and apparently need prophets tells us that we are estranged from God. And if we weren't, he wouldn't need to send messengers in our midst as a kind of espionage towards our rebellious condition. If we weren't estranged from God, he would just communicate with us directly. So because of that definition and what we think of as the rule of prophet in evaluating someone who claims to be a prophet, we should expect to encounter someone who directs our attention towards a different kind of life, one that is markedly distinct from the kind of life that we try to make for ourselves here and now without prophetic guidance. I think that this should be readily apparent in both their teachings and the witness of their lives. There should be something about them that forsakes the trappings of this life and instead invests in the one beyond. And by the trappings of this life, I mean that a prophet should be indifferent towards things like money, power, pleasure and sensuality. As you can see, he has taken a position on this issue where I agree with him that the examples of the prophets can be used to determine the truthfulness of his message. I cannot extend same approach to Jesus. The reason being that Jesus' life was not fully documented. There are no record of his activities in the first three decades of his life. The documentation of his life only begot during his ministry as a teacher and messenger of God. In contrast, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, had his entire life documented without any biases towards praise. He lived alive and reflected the qualities of a true man and prophet, much like David, Moses and Adam. His deeds were recorded without any pretense. For me, he is the perfect human being. If someone calls Muhammad a warlord, that is no different from calling Moses, David, Joshua, Ahab or the Archangel Michael a warlord. Therefore, his arguments is not valid. A man by the name of Michael Hart, he said, and who was Michael Hart? Michael Hart was a contemporary historian and mathematician and he gathered other historians and biographers together and they said, let us compile a list of the hundred most profound human beings in history and to make a long story short, they made a category. They set up 32 different categories by which to compare and produce these hundred most great profound human beings. And let me tell you what Michael Hart said. He said that Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, he placed him at the head of his list and those with him could not dispute it because categorically, he earned that position and Michael Hart said, I would have chosen, I would have liked to choose Jesus Christ because I'm a Christian but there were several categories that honestly I could not choose him because Jesus Christ was not a father, Muhammad, he was. Jesus Christ was not a husband, Muhammad, he was. Jesus Christ was not a statesman, Muhammad, he was. Jesus Christ was not a warrior, Muhammad, he was and Jesus Christ was not a ruler, Muhammad, he was. And so Michael Hart and his other collaborators, they said, the greatest human being that has impacted history in all annals of documented history, it had to be Muhammad, sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. If he is not satisfied with that, if you read Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, when talking about Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, it says that Muhammad peace be upon him was the most successful religious personality of the world. Imagine Encyclopedia Britannica, they are forced, they have no choice. If they want to be authentic, how much ever they try, they have to mention the truth. As Allah says in the Qur'an in Surah Isra chapter number 17 verse number 81, when truth is held against falsehood, falsehood perishes, for falsehood is by its nature bound to perish. Allah says in the Qur'an in Surah Qalam chapter number 68 verse number 4, verily in Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, you have the most sublime and excellent character. But a bride took a terrible position of the Trinity. For example, one of the names of God is Al-Wadud in Islam, which means all loving. To say that God is all loving means that this is something that you can always ascribe to him and that it doesn't require us to have been created for him to be described in this way. If it did, then you'd be conceding that God's love is contingent upon us existing and therefore we would be needed for God to be what he is. But how can someone who is all loving, all powerful and utterly self-sufficient require us to exist to be what he is that is all loving? And this raises a big difficulty in the Islamic conception of God. Because before God created us, how could you say that he was all loving? Love after all means to will the good of another. To love means to focus your attention on someone who is not yourself. And if God is the only one who existed from all eternity, then how could he love someone else from all eternity? The Christian understanding of God solves this by telling us that within the divine being are three distinct persons who are a perpetual exchange of love from all eternity while sharing in one divine nature. Thus one divine nature or one God and three persons to fulfill the nature of God which is love. It is sad that these guys making a fabric argument to justify his claims that reference to the Quranic use of the Arabic word al-Wadud was basically describing God's love for humanity. However, he lied to cover up his ignorance. For example, one of the names of God is al-Wadud in Islam which means all loving. To say that God is all loving means that this is something that you can always ascribe to him and that it doesn't require us to have been created for him to be described in this way. He was referencing his current chapter 85 verse 14. For example, I was addressing with the following words and he is forgiving the affectionate. These verses uses the word al-Wadud to describe Allah's affectionate nature towards his creation. I want you to mark that. The word here doesn't talk about a transcendent love that was there from all eternity but the love that's associated with his creatures. For example, one of the names of God is al-Wadud in Islam which means all loving. To say that God is all loving means that this is something that you can always ascribe to him and that it doesn't require us to have been created for him to be described in this way. For more clarity, Brian must understand the love in the realm of divinity in Islam is of two types. One, we have the initial love known as ar-Rahman. In a God in this sense is all loving. He loves all his creatures, sinners or saints unconditionally. This is due to his love that he creates all pistols, his bounty upon all, shares his blessings with all and sends his message and messengers to all. Two, we have the reciprocated love also known as ar-Rahim where God has a special messy and love for those who love him too and follow his commands. He reciprocates the love with feather, banal villains and antennal bliss in paradise. Allah reveals to prophet Muhammad Thaz, say to mankind if you love Allah then follow me. Allah will love you and forgive you all your sin and Allah is all forgiving or messy for current chapter 3 verse 31. So the argument that al-Wadud justifies the concept of the trinity is not valid. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let's draw the curtain here. Remember to like, share and subscribe to help us reach more people. Until next time, assalamualaikum.


Skycat we have already seen, but I thought I will just show you one more video of Skycat. This was the possible operating scenario, just a tribute by someone.


So Tucker Carlson took a break from spreading conspiracy theories about George Floyd's death and he is now going to mock the existence of pregnant women in the military, which is weird to me because if you're a right winger, then I was told you're supposed to support the troops at all costs and even perhaps like worship them. Nonetheless, Tucker Carlson is going to mock pregnant women serving in the military pretty explicitly. So we've got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits. Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It's a mockery of the U.S. military. While China's military becomes more masculine as it's assembled the world's largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore, since men and women no longer exist. The bottom line is it's out of control and the Pentagon is going along with us. Again, this is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission, which is winning wars. Okay. Listen, let's accept all of his arguments for a moment. Let's accept. Let's play devil's advocate here. Let's accept that he's correct and that women who are pregnant serving in the military and women in general serving in the military, let's extend that trans people in the military. It is bad because it makes the military more feminine, which reduces military readiness. Let's accept that that is true as someone who is supposedly anti-war. And we all know that that's that's false because Tucker Carlson supported the Iraq war, but he cosplays and larps as someone who's anti-war on his platform. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't the United States military being less ready, less capable, if you will? Isn't that good because wouldn't that reduce our ability to wage wars that are never ending? Isn't that good like by the standards of someone who is supposed to be anti-war?  This absolutely does not reduce military readiness.   But even by his own standards, if this makes our military less effective, shouldn't that be good? Because isn't it bad that we're waging all of these wars? I mean, he says that it's a mockery that women are serving who are pregnant in the military. That's a mockery to Tucker Carlson, a so-called anti-war advocate, but it's not a mockery that we're literally occupying multiple countries, perhaps indefinitely. Isn't it a mockery that we invaded Iraq and the babies who were born when we invaded Iraq are now old enough to serve in that same war? Isn't that a mockery to Tucker Carlson? Like, if you're an anti-war advocate, I wouldn't necessarily be too concerned with the readiness of our military, right? Because our military is capable of, like, destroying the entire planet if it wants to. So I'm not concerned with that. As an anti-war advocate, a true anti-war advocate, I'm more concerned with what the military does, not who serves.  New hairstyles that the military allows.  Who cares? Why does that matter to you? Like, I don't understand. I'm failing to see how this is relevant to any political issue at all. It seems like you're literally just sexist. Like, and I very rarely resort to, like, identity politics name-calling, but, like, what else is this? Like, you just don't want pregnant women to serve. So, like, the military should discriminate against pregnant women. Is that what you're saying?  Like, you have the largest platform in the entire country and you are choosing to mock pregnant women?  Who cares? Yes, pregnant women can serve in the military. They're human beings. They're capable of serving. Like, I just, I don't understand what he expects. Like, what would appease you? Banning pregnant women from serving in the military. And also, he compares the U.S. military to China's military and he implies that China's military is stronger than ours because they're more masculine. They're becoming more masculine. Whereas our military is becoming more feminine. That's what Joe Biden is advocating for. So, China's military is better than ours based on their masculinity. Except, does masculinity and femininity really matter when we're talking about, like, dropping bombs, carrying guns and using tanks? Is it going to do less damage if the drone pilot drops a bomb on, you know, a village in Pakistan if they do it, like, effeminately? If they're like, I don't understand. I don't understand the argument that he's trying to make.  Tucker Carlson is a clown. He's a clown. So, I don't know what's left to say. I think that the clip speaks for itself. Tucker Carlson does not believe pregnant women should serve in the military. All right, you know, not the hill that I'd expect any serious person to want to die on, but have at it.


And have most of you heard of or seen the old Walt Disney 1970s movie, Justin Morgan Had a Horse? Yeah? It was a Disney version, Hollywood, if you would, about the origin of the Morgan Horse. It was not intended to be a documentary, but it was very entertaining. And we all loved it. It did skirt on a lot of the facts. One fact that they skirted upon was that Justin Morgan, or figure, the Colt, was not a two-year-old toss in to settle a debt. In fact, Justin Morgan the Man made the long trip from central Vermont to Hartford, Connecticut to purchase figure as a three-year-old. He had already bred 35 mares his three-year-old year. And that was in 1789. 1792 when he made the trip for a three-year-old. And from Vermont to Connecticut back then was not an easy trip. Figure, also later known as Justin Morgan, was a wonderful anomaly. He could outwork, outlast, outpull all others in New England. And the New England hardships did not affect his soundness. He remained sound and hearty throughout his long life. He did not affect his easy keeper qualities. We always say that our horses gain weight on air and sunshine, and that is just about it. And to put it into perspective, Figure was fold in 1789, the year that George Washington became our first president. This horse singly founded America's first breed of horse. This was done through careful and intensive line breeding and inbreeding back to the founder to set type. It has not only preserved type, but the nervous system, the fearlessness, the work ethic, the soundness and hardiness that you find in today's Lipit Morgan over 230 years later. The Lipit Morgan became defined as a distinct family of high percentage morgans in the early 1970s by a group of people who were concerned and rightfully so that these wonderful horses and this gene pool were dwindling and becoming meshed into something new and improved by those who wanted something else. Today's Lipit Morgan has nearly as much blood of figure as would one of his grandsons or granddaughters, which would be 25 percent. Our horses often have 23 percent or slightly more. The Lipit Morgan is the only family of morgans that can lay claim to this much of that blood. All Lipit morgans are defined as descending from 25 foundation horses, eight stallions and 17 mares that were selected on their bloodlines and closeness to figure. All Lipits go back on all lines of their pedigree to our cornerstone stallion, Ethan Allen II. He was in it very intensely line bred Justin Morgan horse back in the day and all of our foundation, 25 foundation horses go back on every line of their pedigree to him. One reason for the type. So that testifies to the purity of this horse. Also, you cannot breed up to a purebred Lipit Morgan. By breeding a purebred Lipit Morgan to a half, three-quarter, seven-eighths Lipit Morgan, there would always be a line that did not meet the criteria to go back all the way to our cornerstone. So therefore we are the purest thing you can get today to Justin Morgan. Today's Lipit Morgan still looks and moves like the original figure of over 200 years ago. That is quite an accomplishment. Our trot is not high action like the show Morgan, they were called daisy clippers and they were ground covering and they often drove these horses in the rugged hills of Vermont and New Hampshire a hundred miles in one day pulling freight. These horses still possess the vibrance, the nervous system and energy, the love of work and they love their people. They love to have a job and they are very faithful to their owners. As we know with all of our heritage farm animals, the Lipit Morgan was bred for usefulness and to work alongside his master no matter what the task. A hot or ill tempered horse was not desired and while these horses do have an abundance of energy, it is controlled energy and it should never be considered to be hot. They have a keen nervous system but they are not hot. The hot is purposeless wasted energy. They are a wonderful family horse. My mare is back there today in the stall. I'm an old lady and my grandchildren are very young and they show and ride and play with all of our horses on a daily basis. They love children. Her sire will be here tomorrow on Saturday in the stall and doing demonstrations. And he's a very people oriented horse too. Today this horse is critically endangered and has been declining in numbers for several years. One reason is the transition to the show Morgan. Is that this poster, the show Morgan? Okay. Thank you. And the show Morgan often has less than 8% Morgan blood. They have been out crossing to saddle bred, standard bred, hackney, range mares and others for years and under rule two of AMHA, American Morgan Horse Association, which was viable from the 1920s until the 1950s. If one horse had a pure bred Morgan parent, which probably at that time had 35% Morgan blood, was crossed on anything else, the progeny could be registered as Morgan. And if you see today, if you see a palomino, buckskin, done, whatever colored Morgan, it's not a lipid. We are only Bay, brown, chestnut and black, and we generally have few or no white markings. Our numbers have that drastically declined and we lose more horses each year now than we begin to replace by breeding. The best estimate is that while there may be 1,100 horses, lipid horses in the USA, Canada, a couple in England and a few in New Zealand, and I think that estimate is high. There is at best guess less than 400 breedable mares ages 3 to 22 and fewer than that of stallions about 70 and probably many of those have been gelded or are sterile. And with the mares, for instance, you know, you don't know how many of those mares are not able to produce for one reason or another even if they're in the right age group. The Lipid Morgan is listed by Equus Survival Trust as critically endangered and the Lipid Morgan Horse Registry is an affiliate of the ALBC and we are trying to attain that status with them now. Now let's talk about this graph. Can you see that? Sort of. Okay. This is a listing of a graph of purebred lipid foals over a 15-year period. I started in 1998 and you can see the trend. In 1998 we had 128 foals. That was probably a hiatus year for us nationwide and in Canada. 1999 we had 93, 2000 we had 78, 2001 we had 82, 2002 we had 90, 2003 we had 109 and 2004 we had 76 foals, lipid foals. That was an average of 89 per year in that first seven years. The next seven years starting with 2005 we had 92, in 2006 we had 44, 2007, 60, 2008, 45, 2009, 41, 2010, 23, 2011, 32 and 2012, 30. That's an average of 39 foals per year. Now these numbers prior to 2008 were taken from the AMHA, American Morgan Horse Association Registry. We know those foals were registered and also a publication called the lipid report that lipid breeders put out every few years because we were small backyard breeders and we keep track. We know who's having foals. There's not that many of us. We know who each other is and we know how many foals there are. We know that we lose foals to not being registered and in 2011 of those 32 foals that we know were born, we know there were 32 foals, eight of them were not registered with AMHA. That's nearly a fourth of that number of foals. If they weren't registered by now as a yearling they're not going to get registered probably and I'll get to that in just a minute. So we assume and we're probably rightfully so that in the years past we lost at least the fourth of our horses to not being registered also because we have mature lipids now that are not registered and people are trying to jump through hoops to get them registered in DNA and they're from registered parents. We also know that some of those unregistered horses are second generation and their siren dam may still be living and they were registered but their siren dam weren't ever registered so we've lost a lot of horses over the year to not being registered. The lipid Morgan horse registry was formed approximately two years ago as a non-profit DNA based registry for purebred lipid morgans to protect and preserve this family of the true Morgan. So we know that we lose some through not being registered as we just talked about. AMHA charges $70 to belong to them annually and for that $70 membership fee you get the bargain price of $90 to register your foal with them before it's six months old. Six months to a year it's $125 to register it. After that it goes to $200 and then $400. Hard breeders cannot and will not be able to they can't pay that they just can't. The lipid Morgan horse registry has a flat fee for registering purebred lipids it's $45 that includes the DNA. We have no salaries to pay we have only a board of trustees that manages and oversees the integrity of the registry and the working of the registry. We have no members what we do have is we call friends of the registry there are no demands on friends of the registry we just like to be able to use their names on our website and that they support us you know verbally or out in public or at a horse event or whatever say hey have you heard about the lipid registry it's really a good thing. A couple of those that are friends of the registry do get our information and take it to shows that they go to or whatever but we don't have we don't really ask them to do that unless they just volunteer. We do our DNA testing through Texas A&M and we also provide any of the services that AMHA would provide such as transfer leases for just almost nothing. We also can provide farm prefixes so that no one else can use your prefix mine is ash royalty when I purchased it from AMHA about 15 years ago it was $100 and I believe it's close to $300 to purchase that's a lifetime farm registered farm prefix now the lipid Morgan horse registry has farm rate farm prefixes $25 we're trying to reach the backyard breeder and those who champion the purebred lipid to keep us going there are only a handful of lipids that actually compete in AMHA sanctioned shows I can think of about five in the US and Canada that do driving events or something like that you know or maybe dressage but we're not their type of horse and unless you want to compete in their trail rides or their competitive trail rides my personal opinion is it's a lot of money when you when you still have the when you're preserving the lipid Morgan through the lipid Morgan horse registry now I did register my cult this year in both only because he's going to be a stallion and I think that perhaps somewhere in his lifetime he may breed other Morgan mayors and put some type back into them and that's fine but we're very protective of our fillies and I can't think of a better way had he been a filly I would not have registered him with AMHA because I figure the people who want to buy our mayors to breed for color morgans or whatever else they want to breed they can absorb the cost if we decide to sell them outside the lipid world the purchaser can absorb the AMHA cost to register them AMHA I think it's a good way to protect our lipid mayors because we know they'll only be bred to lipid stallions that way but one of my favorite sayings is that you need to get your hands on the hair so please come pick up our handouts come see our horses and come get your hands on the hair


In this paper, we discuss the importance of early-stage assessments of medical technologies, focusing on the methods used for evaluations and their role in healthcare decision-making. We argue that cost-effectiveness alone may be insufficient when deciding whether or not to adopt a new technology and suggest that other factors such as patient preferences and the potential for synergy between different technologies should also be considered. We then go on to describe some of the innovative methods available for estimating costs and consequences without solid clinical data, which are often used in early assessments. Finally, we highlight the potential benefits of using these models in early dialogue with HTA bodies. This article was authored by Carlo Federici and Alexandra Torbica.


We've looked at adiabatic expansion and compression. These isentropic processes macroscopically reverse each other without requiring microscopic reversal. The gas begins in, and returns to, the macroscopic state of n-atoms at temperature T in a volume V. But the individual atoms do not return to their original positions and velocities. Now let's consider another adiabatic process in which gas increases its volume. Instead of moving the center wall, we can simply remove it, allowing the gas to freely expand into the greater volume. As it does so, it never pushes on a moving surface, therefore it has no opportunity to do work, and its internal energy remains constant. So in the free expansion of an ideal gas, the gas does no work, and its internal energy, and hence its temperature, do not change, unlike the case of normal adiabatic expansion. Since the temperature remains constant, the ratio of temperatures in our entropy expression can be taken to be one, and we are left with entropy as a function of volume alone. Using the free expansion, the volume increased, so the entropy increased, indicating an irreversible process. In particular, the gas will not spontaneously reduce its volume, thereby lowering its entropy. Of course, we could mechanically compress the gas, and then remove heat equal to the work done. This would return the gas to its original state, but it would change the state of the rest of the universe. To be reversible, remember, we have to be able to return the entire universe to its original state. To gain more insight into our simplified entropy expression, let's drop the S0 term, at least for now. Note that V over V0, a ratio of volumes, is a dimensionless quantity, a pure number. Let's denote this as M, and think of it as a number of elementary cells. That is, we think of our entire volume V as divided into M cells, each with volume V0. We can then specify an atom's position to within the dimensions of an elementary cell, by stating which cell it is located in. The smaller V0, the more accurate is the specification of the atom's position. With this definition, we can write the entropy as S equals KN natural log M. Using the power property of logarithms, this becomes K times natural log M to the nth power. Let's denote M to the nth power by capital gamma. The significance of this quantity is that it is the number of ways to distribute N atoms among the M cells. For N equal 1, there are M ways to distribute 1 atom. It can go on any of the M cells. For N equal 2, there are M squared arrangements. For any of the M cells the first atom can be in, the second atom can be in any of the M cells. An M times M is M squared. Extending this idea to N atoms, the number of arrangements is M to the nth power. So, at least in this special case, entropy S equals Boltzmann's constant K times the natural log of gamma. Which leads us to wonder if, maybe in general, the entropy of a gas is Boltzmann's constant times the logarithm of the number of ways the molecules can be arranged within the volume. This is known as Boltzmann's principle. It was one of the great insights of Ludwig Boltzmann. So much so that, as shown here, it's etched on his grave marker, just above his rather imposing bust. Boltzmann used W for the number of arrangements. We've been using W for work, so we use the alternate symbol gamma. This gives us a new way to think about the entropy change in free expansion, and why a process like this doesn't spontaneously reverse, even though that is possible in theory. Let's set M to the n equal to gamma 1. This is the number of ways to arrange the n atoms among the M cells in our box. Then, we allow the gas to expand into twice the volume. With twice the volume, there will be twice the number of cells, 2M. So the number of ways to arrange the n atoms in this doubled volume is gamma 2 equals 2M to the nth power, which is 2 to the n times gamma 1. Now we come to the new way of thinking. In video 2 of this series, we saw that a dynamic system of elastic balls is chaotic. Any uncertainty in its initial state grows exponentially with the number of collisions. So it is practically impossible to predict the microscopic physics of such a system. Let's turn that problem to our advantage by treating the system as so unpredictable as to effectively be a random process. That is, we think of the dynamics as essentially randomly shuffling the atoms' positions after each short interval of time. If we assume each of the possible gamma 2 atomic arrangements is equally likely, then each has a probability of occurrence equal to 1 over gamma 2. If at any time we look at the atomic arrangements in the large volume, what is the probability that all atoms, or more generally molecules, will be in the left half of the box? This is simply the fraction of the gamma 2 arrangements that have all atoms in the left half. But the number of such arrangements is just gamma 1, the number of arrangements in the original smaller box. So the probability is gamma 1 over gamma 2, which equals one half to the nth power. For large n, this is extremely small. So the question, why can't a gas sample spontaneously compress into half its original volume has the answer, it can, but it is extremely unlikely. So unlikely has to effectively be impossible. Therefore, it is possible that if we keep watching our system, we will eventually see all the particles end up on the left side of the box. The gas will have spontaneously compressed. But with 64 particles, the probability of this occurring at a given time is 1 over 2 to the 64th power. This is about 1 over 18 times 10 to the 18th power, 1 over 18 million million million. The time since the Big Bang, the age of the universe, is about 0.44 times 10 to the 18th seconds. So even if we had been looking at our system once a second since the beginning of the universe, it is unlikely we would have ever seen this occur. Now imagine the time scale for spontaneous compression in the case of a gas with trillions of atoms. From this point of view, the second law of thermodynamics does not tell us what is impossible, only what is very very improbable. The physics of free expansion brings up an important point. We started as state 1 with temperature T, pressure P1, and volume V1. We end up at a state 2 with the same temperature, lower pressure P2, and greater volume V2. In isothermal expansion, we move between these states continuously along the isothermal curve in a manner such that at any time, the system is effectively in equilibrium. By contrast, in free expansion, we start at state 1. Then, with the removal of the center wall, the system enters a non-equilibrium condition for which pressure and volume did not have well-defined values. So the system does not correspond to any point on our PV diagram. A rigorous description of the gas evolution would require the techniques of non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Eventually, after re-establishing equilibrium in the larger volume, the gas state can once again be represented by a point on our PV diagram, with temperature T, pressure P2, and volume V2. Now let's compare what happens in moving between these two states by these two processes, isothermal and free expansion. We start with volume V1 and end with volume V2, so the volume change in both cases is simply V2 minus V1. We only need to know the initial and final states to determine this. We don't need to know anything about the process that moved the system between the states. What about added heat? In isothermal expansion, as we've seen previously, the gas absorbs heat NKT, log X2 over X1, where the X's are the piston positions, and X2 over X1 equals V2 over V1. But in free expansion, no heat is absorbed by the gas. There is no way to determine the added heat by simply knowing the initial and final states. We need to know the process that moved the system between the states. This is why we call quantities like volume, pressure, temperature, and entropy state variables or, alternately, state functions. Quantities like heat and work are called process functions. For a thermodynamic cycle like the Carnot cycle, if we sum all the changes in a state variable over the cycle, we get zero. This is obvious, since starting at, say, state 1, going through the complete cycle returns us to state 1. Since the initial and final states are the same, all state variables return to the same value, and the total change is zero. The elongated S symbol with a superimposed circle represents this summation over a cycle. But the total change over the cycle of a process function, such as added heat, is not necessarily zero. For the Carnot cycle, it's NK log X2 over X1 times T hot minus T coal, which is also the net work performed by the cycle. It's common in thermodynamics to use the denotations, such as DT or DS, for an infinitesimal change in a state variable. These are said to be exact differentials, which is another way of saying that summing them up over a closed cycle is guaranteed to be zero. The notation delta Q represents an infinitesimal change in a process function. These are not guaranteed to sum to zero over a closed cycle. A variation on this applies when we consider changes over different paths between distinct initial and final states. For example, suppose we go from state 1 to state 3 of the Carnot cycle. Path A takes us along the forward cycle through state 2. Path B takes us along the reversed cycle through state 4. The sum of changes to a state variable has to be the same for both paths, because the total change depends only on the initial and final states, which are the same for both paths. This is not true for a process function. In the next video, we will use the methods of statistical mechanics to flesh out the idea that entropy is a measure of the number of ways to arrange the molecules of a substance, and that the chaotic micro-dynamics of a gas effectively reshuffles that arrangement continuously. One of our results will be an expression for the absolute entropy of an ideal monatomic gas. Curiously, although the analysis is completely in the realm of classical physics, we will see that quantum mechanics sneaks into the final result.