The Mystery of Banking was a book that Rothbard published in 1983 and it's a very interesting book and people have tended to overlook it as sort of a simple exposition or explanation of money and both its theory and its history. But in fact it's actually a very important book because in that book what Rothbard does for the first time is to combine on the one hand Austrian monetary theory which was developed by Ludwig von Mises and which Rothbard wrote about in his great treatise Man of Economy and State, but it combined that with the mechanics of how the Fed creates money. That had really not appeared in any Austrian book on money before Rothbard wrote in 1983. So he himself said I combined the hard money tradition of the Austrians and of the classical economists with the modern explanation of how money is created. And he saw that as his main contribution. Now that's in the first half of the book. So he sets out the theory in about five chapters. It's very straightforward. The public can certainly, the non-economist who is a member of the public can certainly understand what he's doing in those first five chapters. But also it is appealing to the economist. It does show monetary theory in a different light. It shows monetary theory as simply a part of the exchange economy. Now in the second part of the book is where he showed how the Federal Reserve actually developed. Actually he even goes back further than that and talks about the national banking system which was a statist form of banking that was foisted on the economy by Abraham Lincoln in 1861, the National Bank Act. So Rothbard traces that all up to the point where we had the panic of 1907 and actually before then we had a crisis in 1893. And he shows how the forces of big business, especially big banking, the Wall Street banks, wanted to centralize the whole banking system and wanted the government to bail them out when they got into trouble from inflating too much. So that is a very interesting story. It's very well told. It's the second part of the book. As professors we can use the first half of the book if you just want to teach monetary theory and the second half of the book can be used in an economics course on economic history or even in a history course in which you're talking about the second half of the 19th century and how money developed. And also in history courses talking about the progressive era Rothbard shows how the movement to have a Fed was part of the same movement to have big government interference in all types of business, not just in banking but in railroads, food, medicine and so on.


Hello, welcome to this week's CMC Markets currency snapshot. My name is Jasper Lawler, I'm a market analyst here, and today we're going to be looking at the euro sterling currency cross. Now, the pair is starting to look rather interesting. We're heading down towards lows made in July of 2012. But before we get there, the price is starting to diverge a bit with an RSI indicator. Now, the economics of the situation tell us that the euro should be still making losses against the pound, but this technical indicator is telling us otherwise and we want to look a bit more into that. Now, talking about the relative economies of both the UK and Europe, today was a good case in point. We saw the PMIs for services and manufacturing from France and Germany. It was a mixed bag, a slight improvement, but still overall a pretty bad situation. And you can see why when you look at some of the structural problems that are happening in Europe, massively high employment, which is not being addressed by some of the politicians over there. You look across the pond though and you see the UK, we've seen impressive retail sales for this quarter, which were down in the first quarter, strong economic growth. So in the UK, we're looking at a rate hike and speculation as to when that's going to come. It could even come this year, probably it's going to come sometime early next year. In Europe, we're looking at the opposite. We're looking at the potential for further monetary easing, namely in the way of quantitative easing, whereby the European Central Bank would actually be printing more euros, devaluing each euro, whereas in the UK we're looking at a rate hike, whereby investors would be sending money into the pound in order to benefit from those higher interest rates. Now, that's obviously quite a diverging picture and you can see the euro is heading down against the pound, but we're seeing a slight technical situation here on the chart and we have to start thinking why that might be and a lot of this situation does rest on the quantitative easing scenario and the current assumptions may not be right. If the ECB does not engage in some kind of quantitative easing programme, if there are problems with the German Bundesbank opposite, if the German economy starts to recover from its current slowdown and policies within Germany restrict this policy going through, then there will be no devaluation of the euro and the current picture may turn out to be not quite reflecting reality. Now, if we take a quick look at the chart now, this is a daily candlestick chart for euro sterling and what's really supporting the price at the moment is this downsloping trend line across the lows. What you'll often see is a downsloping trend line across the highs. Sometimes it will be across the lows and that's what we're seeing at the moment. Why this is proving particularly significant is we've seen a few touches on this and we're now grinding down against it again, but that's combining these lower lows into this trend line, combining with higher lows being made in the RSI, so a bullish divergence in price alongside a long-term support line. So then if we do see a move in the euro pound back towards and above the 80 level, the 0.80, that could be some kind of confirmation this down trend is subsiding for a while and this RSI bullish divergence is playing out. Now, let's have a quick look at what the CMC clients make of the euro sterling pair and we can see that there is a general bias towards long euro sterling, which is supportive perhaps of this divergence situation playing out with the euro sterling having been on quite a downtrend for a sustained period. It may be poised for a bounce back. Of course, keep in mind that these statistics do vary day to day, so it may be different by the time you're looking at this compared to this video. That's it for today's CMC markets FX currency snapshot. My name is Jasper Lawler. Good luck trading.


Gracious God, Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, we ask your abundant blessing upon Brother Melvin this evening. Would you be very, very near to him, Father? Fill him with your spirit.  Remove every taint, every stain, Father, and just wash him and bless him and make him a vessel for your abundant glory tonight. Father, would you bring clarity to his mind? He's got a vast topic, and I pray that you would give him focus so that he might know where he needs to direct his attention and other things that might need to be just lightly touched. Would your spirit just guide him and bless him in every way and bless all of those who are listening and being instructed in Jesus' name I pray, amen. So just quickly, again, there'll be a Q&A after the message, and we invite you to submit your questions. Please try to have those in as early as you can, perhaps even by 7.45 or 8 o'clock, as early as you can get those to us would be appreciated. Brother Melvin, you have an opportunity here to instruct me, to instruct all of us. God bless you, brother. Good evening to all in Jesus. Now, it's a real blessing to be a part of this. I'm truly honored and humbled to be asked by the Committee to share it this way. You know, this meeting was held in Roxbury for quite a few years, as has already been said, and that was right in my backyard from where I grew up, but this is my first time. I'm embarrassed, and of course, is my loss. So glad to be here, and I would like to begin with a prayer that has become rich with me. That prayer comes from Psalm 71, and I'm going to begin to share my screen so that those of you who have video access will be able to see some of what we're working on here. So on screen now you can see the opening lines of Psalm chapter 71, 17. I'd like to pray this with you in for myself personally, and I explain in just a moment. Let's pray. Oh, God, thou hast taught me from my youth, and hitherto have I declared thy wondrous works. Now also, when I am old and gray-headed, oh, God, forsake me not until I have showed thy strength onto this generation and thy power to everyone that is to come. Most of you know that I've been a teacher for a number of years, and this prayer is so rich because I am not that old yet, I don't think, but I am gray-headed, and this is one more opportunity that the Lord has given me to declare the wondrous works of God to this generation, and I pray to all that are to come. Give me a moment to start the slideshow here, and we'll move into the discussion. So there are four questions that I have been saying, have been very, very important questions, that we need to be asking ourselves, and in some ways the evening's speech, talk, teaching will surround these questions. They are, who is Jesus? What is the church? How do you define the church? Who are its members? And I think that the question of the questions is, and who says so, the question of authority. To my back, I have a timeline, and I'm not going to, for the sake of time, I'm not going to give much description there, but just so you know that I'm going to do a little bit from the Old Testament, beginning about 850 BC, and then we're going to kind of move up through and look at several different pieces of history. I should say here at the out start, this is a really broad discussion, the rise and fall of civilizations. So like all historians, I pick and choose among the different little pieces that have mattered a lot to me over the years, and have impacted me. I realized that many of you who are excellent historians would probably go to a different place in what I do this evening. But it seems to me as though it would be very important to begin at the right place. It would, the most important event in all of history certainly was the incarnation of Jesus Christ. And so here just the title, the centrality of the work of Christ. I feel like I'm speaking to the choir, and so unnecessary to unpack a whole lot of this, but just to clinch that point, we begin there in any discussion of what can history teach us. Just a couple of things that you see there, any correct position on Jesus begins. He's creator, he was incarnate, he lived among us, and John argues forcefully, we saw him, we touched him, he's flesh and blood, he died, resurrection, ascension, exaltation, sovereign. All of these things, I'm sure you agree with me. Hebrews 1-1-4, present in the creation in history, Colossians 1, capable of reconciling all things to himself. Philippians 2, that great confession, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This is by all means far too short of an emphasis on that central piece, the Lord Jesus Christ. But I want to be sure to make that point here at the outset. Then I'd like to move to an Old Testament lesson on revivalism. Now some of you who perhaps have the outline, you're going to see me reverse a few things. As we teachers do at the last minute, we switch this around to the other thing. So I'm going to begin with a little bit of a story, a contemporary story. Summer fall of 1966, I'm but a lad of 11 years old, and a couple of interesting things are happening in the Chambersburg area where I grew up. I'm a farm, grew up in a dairy farm, Clyde Layman's dairy farm, enjoyed that. 11 years old, brought 10 revivals, located about where the Solemn Christian Academy is located today. And my father took us to these 10 revivals. In mind you, I walked the Saldas Trail as an 11-year-old there at the Brunk Revivals, and I have never, I've never turned back from there, never regretted that decision. As I grew older and reflected on those, those 10 revivals, something emerged that I just would like to share with you. If you had been there in those days, in the summer of 1966, you would have seen hundreds, perhaps in some evenings 1500, people gather in that tent and Brother George Brunk would preach horrifically. And we were moved, and I remember of watching young folks who were older than me, but streamed down the aisles to the front of that tent, and older folks alike as they came to the altar, so to speak, and, and they're poured out their hearts before the Lord. This happened night after night for a couple of weeks. You would have thought that indeed Franklin County was right on the verge of a massive revival. And I certainly do not want to discount the good work that was done in the hearts that were stirred there by what I'm going to say here next. But what was disheartening is it was just a few years, in mind you, that group of people, which I grew up among, actually there came to be a great, I don't know, disintegration, perhaps is the word to use there. This was about 1968 through there. As I grew older, I reflected on that and wondered, huh? What was it that went wrong? Or maybe nothing went wrong. But it seems to me as though that group of people that birthed me, and just for the record say, I am deep, deep respect for my roots in the conference that is mentioned here, the deep teaching that I received, the instruction I received. It was with sadness as I grew older and realized that this disintegration, something was wrong. That set me to thinking and I began to wonder about the concept, the contemporary concept of revivalism. It led me to think about Elijah on Mount Carmel one day as I was meditating in the scriptures, First Kings chapter 18. You know the story well, I don't have to repeat it. But maybe just a few of the highlights. It's a little, the nation of Israel is at a low spiritual level. Elijah boldly confronts Ahab, Jezebel. There's a saga here that we're not telling the entire story, but the day comes when he confronts Ahab directly and says, let's have a contest. Let's, let's decide where this nation is going. And he laid out the conditions. They meet on Mount Carmel and you know the story of what happened. I just have one simple point to make. In terms of revivalism, I challenge you to talk what Elijah did there on Mount Carmel, complete with a miracle, fire from heaven. The people as a group, the whole mob, if we want to call them a mob, they, they come away, shouting, the Lord, he is God, the Lord, he is God. It certainly looked as though revival was about to break forth in Israel. And again, I do not want to discount this great story. What a story of faith in action on the part of Elijah. What troubles me is this? There really was not much change in Israel when you study their history. This event happened in around the middle of the ninth century BC, 850 plus or minus a few years. Likely you already know this. It's hardly a hundred years, a little over a hundred years, and Samaria collapses to the Assyrians. And not long after that really is the fall of Jerusalem. Here's what troubles me. What do we learn from history? Well, what I see here is we ought not to count on some big event, complete with all of the, everything that would out do anything that any TV preacher has ever done. Have all of that in place. We better not count on that winning the day over the long run. We better count on people who are dedicated to the Lord Jesus Christ, have confessed Him as Lord, have studied their Bibles, and have committed themselves to follow Jesus at all costs over the long haul, over the long haul. Please don't hear me discounting the place of special meetings where we call people to Christ, but history teaches us something here. And that is don't trust or don't count on those periodic revivals is actually carrying the day is roll loss. And I'm afraid we will too if we don't do the hard work of discipleship. This is a bit of a transition year and I really, really, really need to keep moving. So forgive me if I go too fast. I'd like to talk just briefly about four eras of peace on earth. New historians are quite familiar with these pieces. So it's just a little bit of a framework here for us to think from. So before Pax Romana, the Pax Mongolica, the Pax Britannica in the Pax Americana, you'll read about these even in a secular text. And so I referenced them here for a couple of reasons. I want to look at A and B in particular, and particular B because that's the one that I think we are likely the most unfamiliar with. Pax Romana, approximately 200 years, 27 BC, beginning with Caesar Augustus and ending with Marcus Aurelius. And incidentally, Marcus Aurelius was probably the most systematic persecutor of Christians. There were others, of course, but his was systematic widespread. The 180 AD marks the end, so to speak, of the Pax Romana and a change of fortune for the Romans. First, there is the Hun invasion. The Hun invasions, the Huns were a Central Asiatic group of people, not Mongols. They were Huns. And their pressure from the east toward the west dramatically changed things there in the Roman Empire, particularly for those of us of German background. And it's a fascinating thing because that pressure from the Huns moving from the east toward the west, pushing other German tribes, caused them to begin to seek some safety from the Roman people.  Not really. The word Phuet Arati, that those of you have a screen in front of you, that you see kind of really captures it. Actually, the Romans invited the Germans across the Danube River in some of the Germans begged to come across the Danube River and later the Rhine for fear of the Huns. And hence that long 200 years of German movement into Roman territory and and the events that followed far too much there to spend much time there, but fascinating piece of our own history there. I failed to say, of course, the Bible calls the Pax Romana the fullness of times. Great statement, and I pondered it often. So how was it the fullness of times? Well, certainly because of the advent of Christ. But here we are some 2000 years downstream and things have happened since then. Second, there is the Epochsmann Gollica in notice that we flash forward here to 1200, 1200 to 1350. In the next slide, I'm going to say more about that. See there the Pax Britannica, approximately 100 years according to the scholars. I don't know. I kind of think it's a little longer than that really. But this is the British piece from the Napoleonic era up through World War I. And then some speak of the Pax Americana, the 20th century, or some think of that as after 1945. Don't have time to unpack much of that. Do want to talk about the Mongols just a bit. As I've already stated to you, I think this is, excuse me, this is a near of history in which we are not all that familiar with the events, but there's great lessons in it. I'd like to just offer a few of them to you. Those of you who are watching the screen and the video, you are able to see an animated map showing the growth of the Mongol Empire, 1200s, 1300s.  And a piece of it that I want to just mention to you is you'll see as it repeats itself there how it spreads down into China. And so the Mongolians, we wouldn't think of the Mongols as being this powerful today, but nomadic people who rode horses and who conquered people, they spread themselves out over the world and they actually conquered China. What you can see that I have in the text there, conquered in quotes. And I have it for a reason because I think there's an insight here. At first just a little reflection on my own childhood. So growing up in the 1960s, those of you who remember that, you remember if you went to public schools how that we occasionally had those drills where bells went off and whistles rang and we died under the desk and we were thoroughly schooled in the fact that the communists had their guns trained on us and that we had to be very, very careful and be ready to resist them. You remember that. Now with that backdrop, come back here to this story of the Mongols in their conquering of China. Think of the Mongols as people, they ride horses, they know how to shoot an arrow off of a horse like not even an American Indian would be able to do. They're fighters, nobody fighters who travel fast and rapidly with the face of the earth, conquering and destroying and looting and so on. When they conquered China though, militarily, rather than destroy them and tear the whole place apart and burn it down, they occupied for around 100 years and in that occupation, they of course set themselves up as governmental rulers and they get some of the Chinese dignitaries and trained government officials to help them. Over time, they change. The Mongols become Chinese. I can't help but tell you this very, very interesting little piece. It's probably made up to make the point, but it's a good way to see it. So the Mongols, they don't take baths. They don't clean themselves up. They know almost nothing about bathing. Well, when they take over China and they start walking down the streets, the Chinese walk by them and hold their noses like this. And after a while, the Mongols say, well, what's the deal? Well, you have to take a bath. A bath? What's a bath? Let me show you. Ah, as you might expect as those Mongol dignitaries settle down into the bathtub and experience that the warmth of water and clean after a while, they say, you know, it's not a bad idea after all. Long story short, the Mongols are defeated by the Chinese, the Chinese culture captivates the Mongols and they are drawn irresistibly toward the Chinese way of life. My point, it's not guns that change the world, brothers and sisters. It's not horses and bows and arrows and military strategy or any such thing. It is ideas. It's the strength of ideas. It's the strength of culture. And of course, you know where I'm going with this. What if the Western world had said to themselves, we're Christians. We know the Lord. And you know what? If those Russians want to come and conquer us, we'll let them do that. We're not changing. We serve the Lord. What if, in fact, that had been the approach rather than gun for gun, missile for missile. You know the story. I suspect the world will be very different. Let us not ever forget the kingdom of God is a kingdom born of the ideas and teaching brought forth by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and beyond that. And I believe, I thoroughly believe it has the capacity and to change the world. And I want to be on that side. That's the story from Pax Mongolika, Mongolika. Just mentioned in passing, it is also the rise of world trade. And the reason I mentioned this is because we probably always think of the Eastern world as being a little bit backwards. But you know what? They really were leaders, at least up until the 16th century, 15th century. They led technologically. They led in a lot of ways. And the Mongolians weren't that bad. They actually made it possible for world trade to happen because they patrolled the Silk Road and it is said a lady could carry a thousand coins in her purse and walk the Silk Road under the Mongols and she was safe. That's better than our world is doing today. And I've said, let's move on. I have two stories except I'm only going to tell one of them for the sake of time. And this is on the sovereignty of God. One that perhaps is pertinent for the day in which we live. The black plague and antisemitism. And again, for those of you who are online and can see the screen, you see an animated map of the spread of the black plague. We've seen a lot of maps these days and respect to COVID. Well, here's one. And I want you to notice something that's fascinating. You will see every time because through this animation that there is a space that was not affected by the black plague. You see Greco. And if Warsaw was on this map, you would see it as well. Focus pretty much on central and southern Poland. You see this area that was not affected by the black. But there's a story behind it in this kind of a fascinating way or a story that follows it.  Jews were not liked. And because of their culture in lifestyle, that is tending to kind of be a separate group of people. Mind you, their communities were not affected by the black plague as strongly as was the general population. Aha, speaking of conspiracy theories. Oh my, they're targeted and in blame. The finger is pointed at them. They're blamed for poisoning wells. They're blamed for all kinds of things that were associated with the spread of the black plague. And you can read about how they were persecuted whole groups of them burned that gathered up in cities and burned in the middle of the city and so on. So they're persecuted. Mind you, that they hardly had a haven. But those in Eastern Europe, they're around Breckow and Warsaw, Poland, Eastern Europe, they said, oh, well, listen, if you need a place to live, come and live with us. And so thousands, tens of thousands of Jews made their way toward Eastern Europe, which is the explanation as to why there was such a large Jewish population in Eastern Europe come the 20th century and the Nazi atrocities that we are familiar with. Fascinating. What was God thinking in all of this? You know, his thoughts are above mine in yours. His ways are above mine in yours. And so it's not that I would second guess it. But why does this plague proceed like this and then let this gap? And how is it that this concentrates in Jews? You can see my line of thinking there. God is sovereign. He will accomplish his goals. If you're looking on the paper, you will note that the second story is a battle of Waterloo. But I'm going to pass over that story. Essentially, though, maybe I would want to say to you, to us all that we ought to be careful about the heroes that we embrace and the stories that we read. History makes out that these that were these great men, be they politicians or army generals or this or that, who were the movers and shakers of the world. Give credit where credit's due. But then remember this, if you read almost any of these stories with some care, almost every one of them has embedded in them somewhere an event that clearly was from the hand of God, his sovereign will at work. The short story in the battle of Waterloo as a tremendous amount of rain on the eve of the battle delayed the action of Napoleon and likely was the decisive point that meant his defeat there. Not the wisdom of the Duke of Wellington credit where credit stood, but still the main event was that rain. That's the kind of stories I love to tell my students and then point to say, who is sovereign in history? Who rolls history? It is God. And perhaps I will say to us Americans, let us remember in this very difficult time politically and a great deal of confusion and all of that our call, the call to us to pray for our leaders and to remember that Jesus Christ is Lord, his sovereign of the universe. In fact, he will bring the past that which is in his heart and mind to do in the days ahead. Let us never waver from our confidence in that great truth. I'd like to transition now to a few defining eras in church history, in church history particularly and just think about those. You'll see two of them in yellow and I put those there particularly because I'd like to emphasize them rather than the others. However, just a quick run through here. So the Constantinian heresy and again likely most of you are familiar with this fourth century and clearly the wedding of church and state and a confusion about what it means to follow Christ begins to emerge a massive confusion. I personally think that one of the greatest heresies that hit the face of the earth, that hit Christianity began here when the position was rejected that Jesus where Jesus taught unconditional love for one's foes, friends, so forth and so on. This was the beginning. A second pivotal point was the rise of Islam. The sixth and seventh centuries. One could likely make an argument I think that Islam may have died of its own if it had not been that Christians decided to meet Islam on their own terms. Violence with violence. One wonders again what would have happened if in fact Christianity in the sixth and seventh centuries when this movement was beginning, Islam was beginning, if the message had gone out all over the world that we Christians will have nothing to do with I guess at that time spears in lances and weapons of that so we'll have nothing to do with it. Our master has taught us otherwise our Lord has directed us otherwise. One wonders what would have happened instead of the event that I wish would have happened and that is that the hearts of the world would have been won by people who love unconditionally rather than that you see the Crusades 1100 to 1300. Every time I teach this to my world history students, every time I read this story, I weep. I really do. How it isn't that over 200 years the best of Christianity, the cream of the crop, even Bernard of Clairvaux, joins in this effort to bring war against the Islamic people there in the Middle East. Oh my it just troubles me deeply. Troubles me deeply. One wonders again how the world would be different today if Christians would have lived out what Jesus actually taught. You know and I know that the Islamic people have never forgotten this event 1100 to 1300 AD. The Reformation. I'm going to talk about that here in just a moment and the great migration to the Americas in World War I. So we'll take those three and think about those a bit. Reformation, some fascinating things to be learned there. I recently read in this text a history of Christianity by Paul Johnson. I'm not exactly a Paul Johnson fan but find it fascinating to read from different perspectives and what really fascinated me is I looked at the index, at the chapter titles and so on. When it got to the Reformation he speaks there of the third way and I was so excited because I thought oh Paul Johnson gets it that there really was this third path that the Reformers took that the sometimes called the Anabaptism. Well mind you when I got to this section and began to read there he really identifies the third way as the way of Desiderius Erasmus. Now I have long been fascinated by Erasmus's doctrine and imposition and in many ways have deep respect for the position. I was hoping that Paul Johnson would actually follow through and make the connection to show that if there was anybody who carried forward Erasmus's ideas except for staying in the Catholic Church it certainly was the Anabaptist. Hire me a word. I was disappointed. Need to let that alone. The four tenets of the Reformation you can see listed here I am not going to talk about these in length. At length I think that you are familiar with them. The fourth one I do want to point out to you the Bible is final authority in questions of doctrine in practice. I'll pick up on that here when we look at the unintended consequences. Lessons from history. Listen carefully. Decisions are made. People do things. Sometimes they think they're very right and preach so and seem to have no concept of the unintended consequences. What may happen? Have we thought through the issues? Now I want to be clear. We can't possibly know everything ahead of time. We have directions in Scripture and I have been to have confidence that if we follow the directions that Jesus has given and if we walk in his footsteps those consequences that follow are in his hand and he will care you will see after them. I sometimes wonder though if we do just don't think deeply enough. Look at these. If you have a paper in front of them you already see them. Mass education became an ideal in goal number one. I'm reading these for those who may be listening and have no access to print or anything. To the exaltation of the individual personal conscience. Trump's group consensus. Third, the promotion of democratic ideas. Fourth, the exaltation of the family built on romantic love. That's a fascinating one. Not going to build on it at all this evening. Fifth, the separation of church and state in matters of government. Six, the dignity of the labor man vocation is holy. Seventh, laity participation and worship, the rise of enmity, whatever issues we may have with Martin Luther we need to give him credit here. He worked hard on this point. Eighth, the birth of denominationalism. Ninth, seeds of nationalism. Tenth, the seeds of socialism. A little time to develop all these two, all these just looking at two of them. Two in eight. Number two, the exaltation of the individual. Personal conscience. Trump's group consensus. Little time to develop this but very, very fascinating. I'll just go to the book end. So the early, early on this felt like great liberation and likely was. Now the individual needs to learn how to respond to God into his word. Amen. On board. If we carry this forward into the 20th century this meant that there was this ended up being a redefinition of salvation in some ways I think that are problematic and troubling. Not time to develop that but think on this. You know and I know that we struggle with this today and it goes back to some of these things. Number eight there, the birth of denominationalism. Remember that the fourth tenet of the, the Reformation was that the Bible is final authority and matters of practice and doctrine. Wow, that answers all the questions and I can just fill the euphoria of those who set the idea forth because there's a great sense in which it's true. But by now we know that that simple statement is not a cure-all question is. Remember who's interpreting? Who's, who does say so at the end of the day? And today we have multiple interpretations and understandings of the scriptures and it has resulted in denominationalism. Now again it would be interesting to explore this at length but if I go back to Erasmus for a moment and here's where I have a heart for Erasmus. He was one of the only leading reformers who got it. Why did he never leave the Catholic Church? In my view, I'm not defending him for not leaving. That church had issues. He was not sure how you could actually move away from the Catholic Church or from the established church into this new system of thought without somehow having anarchy in the church. He never could resolve that in his mind and so he said to his fellow reformers in so many words brothers, I understand, I understand but I fear that if you keep following this path you're going to end up with an endless, if he didn't know the word, I'll fill it in, denominations. How? This is something that we should think about. Eight o'clock in Brother Brian said I could go to 810 so I'll just need to keep moving. Here's something fascinating for you. So the migration, I don't know if you've ever thought of this or not but the movement of white Caucasian Europeans from the old world or Europe to America is almost unmatched in history unless it would be the movement from east to west into Siberia by the Russian peasants. But a fascinating, fascinating thing, this migration and chief among it and this is just kind of extras for you for today. You'll see here a marker, mind you I'm about two hours from it. It's down here at East Liverpool, Ohio, right on the border of Pennsylvania, Ohio where the Ohio River passes through. It's the marker where the American surveyors begin to survey the west. Now the actual marker is in the middle of the river, they say these days but nobody goes to see this marker. It would be worth seeing it. If you look at the picture there on the right hand side you will see there that patchwork there in Ohio and Indiana and places like that all those squares that emerged there. Here's what I'd like to say to you about it. This was the greatest land cell that the world had ever seen. I think I have in my notes something like this, the end of nobility and feudalism and a fascination and opportunity for personal property for the penniless. This was the first time ever in the history of the world in a massive way that a government put up land for sale and made it possible for the average person for almost a penniless person. If he had a will to work he could buy some land, mind you live on it and prove it and it was his. This was the genius of the movement west and here it's really hard for me not to get onto one of my hobby horses which is you see all those little pieces of land. A new nobility is arising, the great landowners of the west. Oh my, you know where I'm headed there those of you who know me. The demise of the small farmer in America is a mistake. The demise of the small farmer in America is a mistake. I'll let it at that for you to consider. Fascinating to me. Enough with the great migration but consider it. World War I is a real transitional point. Francis Schaefer was probably the person who kind of clued me into this to begin with and it's years have gone by and I fought over this and talked my way through World War I. You can't miss it. You can just simply look at the change in dress. Women and men from prior World War I to post-World War I. A dramatic change of events during this period of time. What were some of the things that happened? I again not enough time to say much about these but humanism comes to maturity. Why do I say this? Well Charles Darwin had published on the origin of species in 1859. It became popularized among intellectuals but not the general population. The big arguments in among the masses begin after World War I and humanism really has a heyday and becomes widespread. Nationalism bears fruit. Most historians will trace the rise of modern nationalism back to the Napoleonic era going forward but there is no question that German nationalism as it came into World War I and after World War I, wow, it let us not be fooled. We are subject to this phenomena way more than what we think. I have been dismayed at times at the level of which we are willing to align ourselves with the American military but really ought we not to rethink this a bit. Brothers and sisters never forget we are first citizens of the kingdom of God and of course we do our duty as American citizens. I have no doubt about that but let us not be drawn into this scandal. Let us not be drawn into this spirit that is upon our nation and the world that we are witnessing in our day. Enough said socialism becomes the socio-economic norm. Those are two big of words. I shouldn't have used those but in general we're seeing this today and let me just say this for whatever it's worth. Aside from all the issues associated with COVID-19 my greater concern is the great opportunity that has been opened for the advance of socialism in America. This happens to be close to my heart and I want to say just a few words about it. First we ought not to forget that Nazi Germany you know that Nazi actually stands for the National Socialistic German Workers Party and you would do well to look at that agenda sometime. But why do I say this and how does it affect us and why should we care? Well a few notes here but I don't have time to look at these except to say just one word on it. Henry VIII confiscated church property in England. That included the monasteries in the convents. Before the rise of governmental socialism the social relief was offered by the church primarily through monasteries in convents.  If you were an orphan you had a good chance of getting care at a convent and so on. The changes that happened during the reformation there were more than BCI. One of these was the confiscation of church property in the end of that. Well what did that mean? Well it meant a receding influence of the church in the rise of a new savior, government, care and protection. Now what I'm going to say next I can say fairly. I pay Social Security. I can receive Social Security. I am 64 years old. I turn 65 in November but I want you to hear me on this. I come to believe that we have been drawn into this system way too far. I really have. Consider our fascination with retiring. I don't want to kick shins. I don't want to step on toes. But you know what I'm not planning to retire and buy a cottage in Florida and move there. Deep respect for those who don't see otherwise. But I think it's a mistaken view. I really do. In fact I guess I'm going to have to agree with the Amish. They're basically right. Consider what the church has done with the elderly. I won't mention any of these old people's homes by name but there are several that I have been acquainted with and I am astounded at what has become of Mennonite elderly care homes, the lavishness in many things that are associated with there. For me I don't plan to retire. For me I hope and pray that my children will care for me as I grow old. For me I have two words. For the socialization that is going on they are get out. We need to get out. Strong words but I'm saying it and I hope a conversation can grow up around some of these things. Fourth the 20th century in my estimation has been an unmitigated disaster toward paganism. Sometimes we get tossed about with this thing of our conservative lifestyle. I for one am so delighted to be a part of a group of people who have not caged in to paganism but I need to let that so I can finish. I have four points to make to you and so here are four things I would like to suggest that we maybe can learn from history. First any genuine expression of Christ following must embrace radical unconditional love that is being perfected in Jesus. Why that perfected in Jesus? Look I confess to you I'm still learning what radical unconditional love looks like but let us never forget the position that we have taken call it non-resistance or give it whatever name that you want to. It is the right position. It is what Jesus taught in the Christianity that does not embrace it is at least suspect. I want to say that kindly but I want to say it clear. Second any genuine expression of Christ following must come to terms with the socioeconomic dualism that we have bought into. I just mentioned a piece or so of that and again too big of words here but basically what I mean is the playing games with kingdom economics in this world's economics and culture and lifestyle and everything that is associated with that. We must stop that. I call it dualism and we must become single-minded on this position. Third the future of Christianity lies in its capacity to create kingdom communities that are relatively close communities who with open hearts are prepared to love their neighbor as themselves all over the world. I would love to unpack this with just a brief comment on close communities. By that we need to recover I think the maybe not the how to write lifestyle but living in compact communities that actually do represent here is a group of people visibly living together on the face of the earth in love and brotherhood and the rest of that is suggesting that that doesn't mean we've closed ourselves off. In fact the goal is to open our arms to the disenfranchised of the world close protective where followers of Christ arms wide open to the disenfranchised of the world in fourth and I say also unto the Jesus speaking that our Peter and upon this rock I will build my church in the gates of hell shall not prevail against it simple statement here is let us recover a love for the body of Christ let us bind our hearts together for the cause of Christ in this our day and let it be visibly done in our churches where we gather together and sing and pray and once again open our doors to the needy of the world in with this I close god bless thank you for that presentation brother melvin you're welcome good to see you again good to see you too that was stimulating and engaging it occurred to me that you seem to think that the kingdom of god has the answers for the world's problems as I listen to your message would that be correct yes um well we had an engaged audience also and we've had a number of questions coming in and my thoughts go back to what you stated at the beginning that from that prayer in Psalm 71 about when I'm old and grayheaded I want to show your strength to this generation so I know some of our listeners are on the telephone and can't see you but for their sake I'll just affirm that you are grayheaded you said you weren't old and it's a privilege to be able to ask questions of a someone who's seen a lot of things and and has a wider perspective on history than those of us who've only lived a few years so we have some good questions here and I'll just start with this one do the periodic revivals that the church has experienced play a role in sustaining the church over the long haul yes I I want to be very clear that they certainly have what comes to mind immediately is the Wesley revivals but I would again point out that the Wesley revivals were were long term over over a great period of time and not so much a what should I say a highly publicized event however I the moody revivals here in America and so on I certainly have played their place even at have had their place even as Elijah's revival so to speak their amount caramel I hope that I had said enough to make it clear that I did not intend to throw cold water on events that God has used in his own special way to accomplish his purposes what I did intend to say is that the long-term health of the church should not it's not dependent we should not expect the those periodic revivals to sustain her over the long haul I think it is more the one-on-one discipleship that happens in local congregations on an ongoing basis yeah yeah thank you for that Jesus came to make disciples didn't he amen and didn't he tell us to go out and make disciples too amen amen well good it's not work this is just hard work yeah that's for sure well the the animation you showed of the black plague sweeping over Europe generated a couple questions and I'm just going to summarize those were the Jew why was that area not of Poland not affected by the black plague and were the Jews protected by the application of biblical hygiene and quarantine I the second question is the easiest one to answer the answer that is yes clearly their practices of hygiene in particular and to a certain extent quarantine because of their communities played a role in their you know not being affected by the plague as much at least as others the first part of the question is still unknown historians have made guesses at why Greco and Warsaw the surrounding areas were not affected but there has never been anything conclusive that I know of and I I attributed it to the sovereign hand of God are you able to hear me I can hear you you can't hear me I I can hear you I can hear you there but I think it's my connection okay back on yes okay I just simply said that I attribute to attribute it to the sovereignty of God and cannot give you data as to why it did not affect him yes thank you it was it was interesting to me melvin to to notice that there was also a much smaller area in northern Italy maybe around Vienna that's right you're right well in the Pyrenees between Spain and France that's right seem to be any of the black plague at least a very strong incidence of it you're very observant good okay moving on to some questions about how the social forces have shaped the world and are affecting us is soviet marxism an example of what happens when the gospel in quotes is communicated without the full gospel of non-resistance and non-accumulation of wealth how would the world be different if the full gospel had been preached in Russia 1000 years ago oh my look a thousand years back by their melvin and tell us what would have been different today yeah that's a that's a great question to a thousand years ago the the interesting thing is is the Mongols that I spoke of were were on the move and beginning to move west and we're putting a lot of pressure on the russians and incidentally some of the facial features of pure russians today have some of those mongol you see some of these effects big-round faces I think I would attach that question to the Mongols because the opportunity to actually preach the gospel the full gospel to the the russians could have come via the the Mongols but you know what they turned to Islam rather than to christianity and yes a great question and again I just want to lament you know I not only want to lament I want to ask myself the question so what are we neglecting today that if time should last and go another thousand years that people would look back and say if there would have only been somebody so a great question and I think the role to be quite different yes yeah I think that's a great way to look at it how does it apply to us today here's another one this is a more current question is the exaltation of the individual and personal independence increasing more recently in the past decade it seems like it how do we keep a good balance oh my that's a really really good question I think it is increasing yes you know most of us have been all around this question and wonder what's the right answer to it there's probably multiple answers to it so we are not as economically dependent upon one another as we used to be and that that creates an individualism of its own what's the right balance well you know Jesus said I came to you shall know the truth in the truth shall make you free now I know I'm sidestepping the direct answer to the question but I have full confidence that when we come fully to Jesus we become as free as we can as human beings and by that we might think of balance so that that's what takes me to economics it's what takes me to brotherhood to church and it's a package of things that creates this I belong to God into my brothers and I don't have personal rights that I can just swing around and do what I feel like doing with him and besides that salvation is in the body of Christ not in the church not but it's it's always associated with the church and I don't know I it's too big of a question to to really tackle here but I think we need to wrestle with it a lot fair well that question came in before you unpack some of that stuff about the church caring for the elderly and so forth so maybe you gave some of the answers through that maybe you have a thought on that brother Kirk I do have I I uh it's been described what what what you talked about and this question addresses it's been described as the cult of the individual and and I too think that I've seen in the last decade or maybe even a little longer than that just an increasing focus on individualism and and we must recognize that there's a lot of things that contribute to that but would it be fair to say that that access to especially electronic media might be a very large contributing factor to that? Absolutely absolutely we must find ways to live well in a digitized age I'm a teacher and the access to information is unbelievable as you all know I don't need to tell you that certainly has contributed to that since I know I can find out myself I don't need you I can bank from home I can I don't the list goes on and on and somehow or another it has contributed there and I'm not sure I don't know the answer but somewhere we really have to learn to say no. Amen. May the lord help us on that. Amen. Well here's a tough question the Anabaptists are often credited with promoting the freedom of conscience as an antidote to the state church system so how could this movement have taken place without the individualistic consequences? How can we have freedom of conscience without individualism? Did they miss something or was this an unavoidable consequence? That's an excellent question because one would have to describe what they meant by freedom of conscience because on one hand the Anabaptists clearly meant now I'm talking about not the radical radical Anabaptists like at Winston or someplace like that but they when they spoke of freedom of conscience they certainly meant that government the governing powers have no right or responsibility or right to manage the consciences of men yes not their job they would have quickly said that the the conscience of the brother of each brother must be brought to the to the congregation I'm going to use the words for perfection because I don't think where where it was lived the best I don't think the Anabaptists would have said okay now you joined the church we want to take your your personal conscience away but they would have asked can you bring your thoughts to the congregation can we talk about them and are you willing to submit in the end to to to the brothers and there you have I think you have to see that difference I believe freedom of conscience in relationship to government and freedom how does freedom of conscience work inside of the church that's a different question and one I think we need to continue to wrestle with yeah so so uh of course as we think about this there is would not you agree that uh a very real possibility that group consensus could trump christ just as well as as individualism so there needs to be some sort of balancing uh some deeper perspective of course involved in all of this right absolutely absolutely I most of us who've been in any level of leadership know about the tensions that you're that you're talking about there uh and none of us would want to go outside of the council of christ in our attempts to pull congregations together uh with a in the unity of this unity of conscience or what the right wording is here but certainly oh I don't know maybe I would think about a little bit the way I relate to my life Sheila she's a wonderful lady with very very she's she she has strong opinions and we talk about things a lot what I like is at the end of the day uh we don't even always actually agree but there's a oneness we we agree that this is where we're at we need leadership in our day to lead congregations in a similar path and I know it's beyond all of us we do need the help of the lord thank you man scriptures tell us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling and this question I think is a large part of that you know how does how does that all work together individuals conscience and submission to the church an excellent question and a good verse that I wasn't thinking of just now but uh working out one's own salvation when you hear paul walk his way through places like what is at first Corinthians 14 and other places where he's working with that eating meats and not eating meats and so forth and so on he oftentimes ends up saying something that I wish I'm like good paul doesn't that sound weak you know well let's not blame this brother or let's let's kind of just in the end be okay with each other well in a sense he's saying brother a is working out his own salvation uh and brother b is working out his own salvation and there are these little tricky questions what is it isn't it in first Corinthians 14 where he ends up saying and whatever is not a faith is sin I believe that's where it's at well that's kind of a fascinating way to end what you're saying there but back to the question so there is a certain sense in which your issues are not my issues and in terms of life what I do and what I don't do but it's fascinating in some way our salvation is is connected to the things that we allow or don't allow as paul says and it uses a strong word a strong statement whatever it's not a faith is in well so I'm just kind of meandering around the question but there is that sense in which we must personally work it out and by the way paul is saying though that's worked out in the congregation of young brothers well thank you thank you brother melvin brother philip do you have one final question you would like to to have addressed or other melvin yes I have a question and then I'll offer an encouragement after that it was that was sent in how are the ideals of socialism answered by the kingdom of god hmm well um I would say a very short answer to that is voluntary giving toward a reasonable equality uh oh I'm going to get shot down there but I it seems to me I can't help it almost tell well I want to tell a story but I'm not going to take the time to do it uh I've talked with socialists before I mean trained socialists and I would think strongly that way and their method of from each according to his ability to each according to his need is government coercion uh there's actually a certain amount of truth to that statement what should be true in the christian community from each according to his ability to each according to his need but there the framework is entirely different these are voluntary believers and a voluntary brotherhood who have committed themselves to each other to the death if you please and if this that's what christianity ought to mean for us I think uh and there there will be a a voluntary movement in the direction of that's always in mind where's the need how can I help and so on that's good thank you welcome and we have an encouragement someone said this as you were speaking your point about german and american nationalism is profound and quite frightening in our very day knowledge of history is critical and there is a severe lack of knowledge today preach on thank you brother thank you thank you very much thank you brother melvin that was very very rewarding very worthwhile I speak in behalf of I'm sure all of those who are listening and those who are watching now praise the lord as we as we think about the kingdoms that have progressed through human history and of course we think about the immovable kingdom that was referenced early on in this service this evening I'm just thinking about a an expression that came from the lips from the pen of one poet who wrote words like this for not like kingdoms of the world the holy church of god though earthquake shocks are rocking her and tempests are abroad unshaken as eternal hills immovable she stands a mountain that shall fill the earth a feign and built by hands and those words resonate with me that's the that's the ideal that I think that all of us would like to see in our in our local brotherhoods in the and the church of god so again thank you brother melvin for your very good exhortation instruction here this evening I would like to close this portion with prayer and then we'll have a few announcements and we'll conclude the evening service let's pray gracious god heavenly father in the name of jesus we thank you for the blessing that has been ours tonight as we've been instructed on how kingdoms come and kingdoms go the rise and fall of civilizations and father give us discerning hearts so that history truly can teach us father those were real people those were real movements those were real emotions and experiences that were lived and so I pray heavenly father that we could be discerners that those things were written the four time were for our example and we want to draw from them as your spirit works with us in our day so that we might live closer to the ideals of jesus so father again we thank you we pray your blessing upon all of those who are participating tonight those who are listening those who are watching just bless and keep each one and help us to become all that you desire us to be in jesus name I pray amen now brother melvin has prepared some questions that we want you to think about and perhaps discuss maybe in your local church setting or your small group setting those questions will be displayed for those who have video access and I'm going to repeat them read those questions there are four of them so that everyone can have some awareness of them number one what are we learning about global socialization and what should be our response what are we learning about global socialization and what should be our response number two at what level have we bought into nationalism and how has nationalism affected our identity as a people set apart unto god at what level have we bought into nationalism and how has nationalism affected our identity as a people set apart unto god number three what are the unintended consequences of the reformation and how are we interacting responding to these unintended consequences what are the unintended consequences of the reformation and how are we interacting responding to these unintended consequences. And finally, number four, what is close community with a mission? What is close community with a mission? So those are stimulating questions and it could be very fruitful to fellowship around some of those questions.


Professor Cornish this is our third interview for the Eminence Scholars Archive and I hope that today we can discuss your published work concentrating on your books which were published over nearly 45 years during the period 1968 to 2013. They cover an impressive range of topics, the jury system, intellectual property and the development of various legal topics during the 18th to the 20th centuries. So could we start with your first book that was published in 1968, The Jury by Penguin Press and I wonder if you can tell us how you devised and executed this project and what originally motivated you. It arose out of the work that was being planned by a group of teachers at London School of Economics, all of whom were masters of their particular crafts and they had been drawn together by Charles Clarke of Penguin's the legal editor at the time, young man full of inspiration and so books like Body and Diamond on the Consumer Law and Society, Wedderburn on the Worker and the Law and many others followed in this process of trying to establish a socially realistic view of how the law operated as distinct from learning its principles in a relatively abstract way so you've got no feel of the range of society who would get involved in particular parts of the law. The jury suggested it itself to me because I was teaching the English legal system sort of task that junior lecturers get and it seemed particularly enticing because of course it is a secret system. Judges instruct jurors in in our jurisdiction without being present during their discussions and reaching of verdicts and nobody knows much about what happens and I thought I could conduct at least some preliminary inquiries nonetheless in order to make a start on opening up the jury system. Perhaps it was a rather strange thing to do in the jury trial was becoming progressively more focused on serious criminal offences only. It had practically lost all role for instance in accident law even though juries did set the level of damages when liability was found. So I set about various ways of trying to meet people who dealt with juries, judges of course, counsel and I was able to get the names of some who had served as jurors in London and arranged to interview them and very interesting it was. Of course the impression you get from people who have prepared to give you an interview is one that they were deeply involved in it and they certainly were that's why they wanted to talk about it. They weren't people who it had been an awful bother in their lives to have to come to Stoke Newington Court or wherever it was instead of going on with their one-man business very often though some exemptions were available in the system because of that sort of factor. And so out of these various talkings about what either participants themselves as jurors or other people in court came to know from experience about jurors I was able to build up something of a working picture. Some of the critics pointed out I really had no objective across the board knowledge. Thousands of people were serving each year as jurors and how to get a bit closer to a social picture of them was under the rules then and now very difficult. It wasn't actually illegal to interview jurors at that stage so that was introduced into the law in 1980 when more people got interested in talking to them. So the blinds came down in form of a statute. I think I recall one of the reviewers somebody by the name of Cameron who himself has written on this topic saying that it was difficult because like the Chicago work there was not much hard basic information. Do you think this is altered in the years? I don't think it's seriously altered at all. Different issues of course have come up the social constructions construction of juries changes as more and more people are drawn into the system and in 1970 women were admitted for the first time to jury trial extraordinarily last ditch stand and there was a certain amount of concern about whether people of less intelligence working people should be serving on jurors because they might find the subject matter difficult simply to comprehend or their task difficult to comprehend. So these streams were certainly there but you couldn't say they were dominant factors which the great minds of the legal system discussed constantly with a view to change not at all. Judges have many reasons for wanting the juror to stay in securing public acceptance for what went on particularly in criminal law proceedings.


Good afternoon. I'm going to talk to you today about digital outputs of collaborative humanities research projects. So I'm not going to talk about my own research, but more give you an overview of some of my experiences working on research projects. Just to give you a little bit of background about myself, I wrote a PhD on the rock-cut monasteries of the Western Ghats in India and GIS database formed a central plank of that thesis. The appendix of the thesis included many pages of printouts of spreadsheet files, which are completely unusable today. So I've learned the hard way about data management. I've also worked as a software developer and as a database administrator and I'm now the work for the Beyond Boundaries project at the British Library as GIS research curator. Throughout the presentation I'm also going to discuss a previous project I worked on, which was mapping the Jewish communities of the Byzantine Empire, also ERC funded, and we did some things well on that project and we did some things quite badly as well. I'm happy to admit, I mean, all in all we delivered the digital outputs on time. They were two weeks late in the end, which is not bad as these things go. The primary one being this online web mapping system, but I'm just going to refer to that a couple of times throughout the rest of the project. Okay, so digital outputs on collaborative humanities research projects can be divided into three different types I would argue. We have data, resources and tools and I've arranged them in this pyramid-like fashion because as we move up the levels on the pyramid we have increasing technological complexity, increasing in effort involved, with a potential payback in usability and the ability to change research behavior. Now that also comes with a risk as we're moving up that the digital output will not be used firstly and secondly there's a decline in the longevity of these digital outputs as we move up the pyramid. So I would argue that any project needs to build a strong foundation here at the base before moving up and too many digital projects have gone straight in at the level of tools without thinking through these other aspects carefully. Now you'll have to forgive me for this one, but we're not working in ancient Egypt, we're working in India and so perhaps Shikara, this is the Kailashatempo Ellora, is a better analogy than a pyramid anyway. So we're going to begin the lowest level, data. So everyone on the Beyond the Beaudry's project is generating data and you'll be seeing their presentations throughout the day today and these data are going to be deposited in a raw form for download and hopefully in a more organized fashion than this. Now there's plenty of different repositories available for depositing data, but our project deals with Zinodo. Now why? Why are we depositing these data on Zinodo? Well the first reason is you have to, okay? Now to comply with grant rules and our delegates from the ERC etc we have to deposit the data, but I would also go further than that and say there are very many good reasons for doing so too. Firstly there are all the reasons associated with open data generally. Now just to find taxpayers investment is an important one, if the data is on Zinodo those data are not going to be lost. Secondly I think there's some particularly important reasons for our project related to developing countries. We should allow researchers in developing countries to see our work we're dealing with Asia and given the project aims of trying to break down regional historiographies and boundaries between work open data is important. So secondly, I think it benefits the researchers themselves. So you can come back to your data in the future and use it. I mean how many of you have had to fish through an old hard drive to find your data set that you used six or seven years ago and found it totally unusable, it takes you days to work out what's going on and you can't recreate the analysis or digital outputs that you made at that time. So if you clean your data properly at this stage and deposit it somewhere where you can find it again it's going to be good for you. Secondly the process of data deposition also and data cleaning also provides new insights. If you look at your data and you know your data that well that it's perfectly clean and that someone else can use it, you're going to have new insights generated from those data and it also makes the findings of your publications more believable. So Zenodo is a great platform as far as I'm concerned. There are limitations, various people have discussed some of those today but flexibility is one of the key benefits of using Zenodo but also one of the creates a lot of potential for problems too. So the power of Zenodo is cumulative, the more data that goes on there and the better keywords are used across Zenodo, the more power it has, the greater ability there is to win data sets together and a final benefit I'm going to discuss is citation. So when you deposit your data on Zenodo, cite your data in your publications. I would argue that that is an excellent way to structure the data that you've put on there and it allows people to find your work as well. People often tend to cite print publications. I do this myself. If there's a digital publication and a print publication, I often just go and find the print publication even if I'm using the digital catalog, go and find a reference to the print publication in a library catalog because that's what I'm used to doing but Zenodo does make it easy to cite. The citations have this type of structure and you can actually download the citation in various different formats on the platform as well. So as I said, flexibility has its own problems and we need to make our data that we're depositing useful. Useful and usable. There's no point in doing it if we don't and with the flexibility of Zenodo comes a lot of problems with doing this. So I've got some tips here and these are for the project researchers primarily but the rest of you can do this too. So deposit the data in the most basic formats you can find to avoid obsolescence. So we have textual data. I'm not going to comment on all these formats but PDF-A is an archival PDF format. If you have to deposit in PDF, I would not recommend it but if you have to, make sure you use PDF-A. It's easy on Acrobat. Go to Save As More. There's options PDF-A. It means the fonts and any other files that are associated with your PDF are actually embedded within that PDF. So it's not reliant on other files in the computer. The other point is don't deposit in JPEG. I think Robert mentioned that earlier. They're a lossy format which means they lose information when resaved. So now draw your attention to the TXT format. Most of you are using text and you need to save in Unicode. That's UTF-8.  So every time you're exporting from Excel, Excel is a CSV file, a Comerceptorated Variable, you have to save as in UTF-8. Otherwise, you're going to lose all your lovely diacritics. And I know you Sunscritters loved those. And you'd be very upset without them. So I've had a... So do save as. And if you take one thing away from this presentation, do not upload to Zinodo in doc or XLS format. In the Beyond Boundaries communities, there are quite a lot of doc and XLS files. Don't do it. If you want to do that as well, okay, I suppose. But basic formats, these formats have to be the priority, okay? So what other tips have I got here? Structure, clean your data. Data should be consistent. We don't want multiple values in the same column, capitalization, lack of standardized terms, abbreviations.  Importantly, look at other people with the positive data and call things the same as what they have done, okay? Don't have everyone using different words for what is essentially the same entity, okay? Keywords. Keywords are very important parts in Zinodo.  We all do, right? But also look at what keywords other people are using. Zinodo searches keywords using diacritics as well, so be careful about that. And if you're stuck for using them, the Library of Congress catalogue has a list of canonical subject headings that you can use as keywords. Now, come to file names. These are some of my favorite horrendous file names. Yeah, now just use this one. Actually, a friend of mine did send me a file, a photo with that name. So no, there's no place for humor in digital outputs, okay? I mean, I'm not going to go through all these, but I'm sure you're familiar with having received files of colleagues with some of these names as well. So, you know, I would say that this is one of Daniel's file names, actually, which I'm very pleased to receive. And, you know, this is just within the context of the repository, this makes sense. It's the ID for the inscription on our SIDM platform. Okay, so do change the file names because every person who then has to download your dataset, which I know there will be thousands of, have to then rename the files. On JSTOR, for example, you have to rename that file every time you download it. They don't seem to give you in a nice format, they use their own ID, right? Licensing, Zenodo gives a Creative Commons BY out license by default. That's fine for me, but some of you may not want your sunscript used by any commercial company. And so you can perhaps want to change that to prevent commercial use. Okay, something you should think about too. And finally, break down the data. That's something for discussion, really, do you upload all your data as a single, as a single zip file, as we discussed this morning, or as a single, in a single repository with all the information there, or do we break it down into the individual section so that individual piece of the data could be cited separately. That's something the project needs to discuss further. Right, so that's the data. So that's once we've got that in place, that base of the pyramid in place, I think we can then move on to resources. Now, what do many of you contribute to digital resources? And I'm talking about the specialist academic resources like Gretel, or Sarat or the Archaeological Data Service. But I'm also talking about broader resources like Flickr, Instagram, people on the project may want to think about publishing in those areas, it's quite gratifying to see your images reused in people's blogs wherever. Okay, so that can be nice too. Now, I'm defining resources as domain specific in that they deal with a single type of data, often with a specific period or geography, geographical area or language. And they're usually presented on the web in a format that's understandable and accessible. So you don't need to download a file to look at those data. That's how I would define a resource. I mean, we could argue about that. Now, why deposit your data on resources? There's a community already in place. They have a larger and broader audience than if you deposited your data separately. They're often more accessible. For example, they're optimized for search engines. You can take advantage of added value functionality, such as display on the map. And they often give you a canonical URL for citation as well, which may be more useful in publication than a Zenodo DOI, because you can take all your different pieces of data from the same place. Now, choose wisely when selecting resources. There's a lot of effort often involved in structuring your data to put on the resource and to meet the standards that the resource requires. What if the resource goes down? How long will this resource be available for? You should also read the terms and conditions or some of these resources you have to pay for as well. Okay. So we have our very own Beyond Boundaries resource. Sidham.uk. This is, it's recently gone live, but it's still under development. And I think Daniel will be talking about this in more detail tomorrow. So I'm probably not going to go into too much detail, but we're hoping scholars will contribute their inscriptions to Sidham. And over the remainder of the project, we'll be trying to promote this and it's used by further projects in the future. I'm dealing with Asian and South Asian inscriptions and inscriptions from Asia more widely too. So we'll come back to that. I'm running. I don't know how much time I've got left really. I was going to talk about link data for a short time, but without explaining the technical considerations of web data, you may know this is a semantic web. This is a way of exposing, sharing and connecting pieces of data, using a method of structuring data with a particular variant of XML or JSON. And there are many ways to use web data, but I'm interested in for our project in connecting digital resources that have something in common, whether that's place, person, time or another entity. So by simply using an identifier that's common across these resources, it's possible for machines and also to harvest data and aggregate it in the kinds of portals that we heard about this morning with new mathematics. And I would argue that every project needs to think about this because we need a world on the end of the web where people can get from resource to resource through a graph like this. And if you have an interest in a particular place, you should be able to access data from all the resources about that place, not just that one resource, otherwise, otherwise you're you're you're cut off. Okay. And in South Asia, there's, there's pandit, which is a gazetteer and a prosopography of, it's quite um, well, I don't know how new it is, but it certainly is still in its infancy, I would say. And I'm providing these, and wouldn't it be great if we could just click through here, if I had an interest in, so, and sort of put on and click through there and find data from on from inscriptions from coins from texts, all about that place. And um, link data is the only really the only way we're going to achieve this. And and any project working, any humanities project needs to be thinking about how they can contribute to this collective effort. Okay. So what does this mean to you on the project? Well, come and speak to me. And we can see if we can get your places into pandit, or another gazetteer, and what we can do to try and build links between your data and others. So we're on to the final digital output now, which is tools. And I'm defining tools as something that facilitates an analysis of the data set, a tool to interpret or manipulate data often providing innovative results. And there can be great variation in the types of manipulation or analysis you can do these tools, talking about visualization, annotation, calculation, you might be able to feed in the data yourself or the data might set might exist within the tool. And examples of tools include read or the map in the Jewish communities, the Byzantine Empire project I told you before, that was a web GIS, a set of web maps for browsing data on those communities. And that's also a tool. So now it's it's rant time now, unfortunately. So as someone who's been is built a few of these tools themselves, and witness a lack of uptake in their use, I would say it's very important that in the humanities we understand that these tools take a lot of effort to produce, okay? Yet they have a finite life. And due to the speed at which progress in technology happens. And they really need to burn quite brightly in that period in which they're useful and to make them worthwhile. Now, not enough effort has gone into tool production regarding their use, the target audience, the impact they might have and how that might be measured. You know, web design in academia does not have the harsh feedback with profitability that is in the private sector. And so large projects can gain funding and continue to be produced for quite a long time before any feedback is sought whatsoever on the interface or whether they're having an impact or how that how they might be reconfigured to do their job better. So in essence, tools are treated often like publications, but it's not clear that they are objects of research in their own right. So I'm going to if I have time, I'm going to talk briefly about one such tool, which is Orbis, okay? Now, I love Orbis. I think this is great, okay? It allows Roman communication costs to be estimated in terms of time and expense and reveals the true shape of the Roman world, okay? Now, basically, you can specify an origin in a destination across the Roman world and you can find out the time that it takes to go from one to the other. Now, this is great. It's a very specific use case. It's had a huge amount of money thrown out from Stanford. I think it's a great system. It's very easy to use. It's had a lot of publicity. There's been articles about this in Telegraph, Forbes, the Hindu. It's an impressive interface. There's a lot of scaffolding around it. They had workshops to use this tool. It's been embedded within some practice, but if we look at the 150 citations for this tool on Google Scholar, the tool is now six years old. That's not bad 150 citations, but virtually none of them use the tool for what they want, what it was intended for, which is measuring distance. People say, oh, this is a lovely tool. People say, oh, I'm not happy with the GIS that's underpinning this, or they've not taken account of this problem, they're not taking account of that problem, but no one use, there are very few citations of this that use it to actually measure distances and scene places and improve the research because of that. That's an indication of how difficult it can be to embed a digital research tool in scholarly practice. To sum up, projects have high level goals and eye catching problems to solve. Many have ambitious aims, which helps them to gain funding. Mac and the Jewish communities are supposed to help medieval historians use GIS. That's a big ask. I need the uptake of GIS. Beyond boundaries is supposed to break down regionalism and historiography, a lack of interdisciplinary research, the national orientation of research, these kind of questions, which is very admirable aims, but can the digital outputs help to address these? I think the data and resources can, by depositing our data and resources, they can help meet these needs in projects more generally and theoretically digital tools can also help meet these high level goals, but the successful uptake of these tools is difficult and has to be thought about carefully. We also should not forget that for one of these tools you can, there can be many traditional publications and those in and of themselves can move a paradigm forward to address these questions and provide examples for future research. So these digital outputs do need to be thought about carefully. Thanks. Questions? To hear your opinion on relative merits of early and late adoption, I think the general experience in numismatics has been that the most successful projects have been those which adapt tools that are well established and well entrenched rather than developing new tools or tasks. I'm curious on, you know, that distinction between developing new tools versus waiting until the tools are well established and on the fields to bring them in? Yeah, I think that if you have a tool that's established in disciplines close to the one that you're working in and it's and it has been used well there, then there are practices in place, you know there are methods of transferring skills between disciplines, there's a familiarity there and apart from all that there is also a proven use case for the tool and that would that would make it more likely to be that would suggest that there's a there's a market available market there So that's a good example, I mean I can't think of an example I suppose like GIS in archaeology and history for example GIS was picked up early in archaeology and slightly later in history and in that early period historians went through a lot of effort in order to try and historians went through a lot of effort to try and build those bridges between the between the use of the tool and the two in the two disappoints So we train every year about you know 30 documenters would bring them out to London and train them here and also we train people in the country so we go to Africa and in China and train them there and one of the things we always tell them is if there's a really cool research project that develops a tool for linguistic annotation don't touch it do not go close to it don't be a beta tester because when the funding runs out it goes down you don't get the data out right so what is one of the problem of the short funding cycles that are then a tool is created for a particular project tailored to a particular project and you don't know if this can be sustained afterwards because funders also don't fund the maintenance and further development of something right they fund new stuff new stuff new stuff so there's a structural problem within the funding stream that doesn't allow for further development of tools so in linguistics for example one of the most bizarre situations is the most stable tools the lexical databases that our linguists worldwide use are tools that are developed by the missionaries by Christians by SIR right so and they don't want to use them but it's the most stable it's the best developed software that is out there and there is nothing on the market that can be compared to them as open source and non proprietary but they have a constant funding stream and everything else that was developed by others like by the Max Planck and by the Doge's project had a sweet life cycle of three to six years and then went down for the development where by the CNRS with yeah yeah they are you know the web moves forward very quickly and unless you can build a real momentum behind a tool it's very difficult for it to have any longevity you know open making the tool open source is to some extent can help but building an open source community around a code base is very challenging very challenging unless they're that unless the the people working in employment full time use that code on a day-to-day basis and have to make changes in order to do their job more effectively open source code base projects generally full flat so because you know obviously people will do things in their spare time but in order to make major software upgrades you know it's a it's a lot easier people using that in a commercial setting or in their or it not just commercial setting but in their day-to-day work all of this said I'm just curious whether you can think of any tool digital tool developed in a funded humanities research project that has been an unqualified success um there's one um actually I've been using called recogito um it's it's uh annotations um basically you annotate uh you can annotate any type of text but it's mainly being used by classicists um and the annotation produces link data that I was talking about before so you when you annotate the um text you uh you annotate at the moment it's working with place names and then after doing that you link the put you say you see room you link that to the url of room in a gazetteer like um pleides and then um you uh and then that is pub then that edition is then published in the recogito um editions which are then made accessible so people searching room can then find that um test and they'll know it's that like you know rooms one example Alexandria say they'll know which Alexandria it is um and uh you know there's a big been a big uptake of that actually there's a lot of editions in the recogito um edition base but um whether then that's gone through to the users I don't know how often people are using that in their research has yet I think that there is another very obvious example uh the portable antiquities scheme right is by far the most successful humanities uh digital tool project in the log but it's supported by the British government at enormous cost has enormous numbers of staff institutional backing right so all of these things we literally just talked about and it runs off technology which conceptually is is very old and almost quite old even when it was in place so they you know all of these things were just kind of discussed are present there and I think they're on now uh I was told over a hundred phds by dependents on the portable antiquities scheme data uh recently so you know this is the this is a clear example the project has succeeded has led to research oh yeah enormous amounts of research and then if I may about jpegs uh we digitized these two photo albums in the in the bl right of a archaeological survey of india bermicircle and the bl kindly gave me uh jpegs and tiffos for every image and you you can't like where I don't know I can't upload tiffos so too big like I've let it upload to zinodo for 20 hours and then at some point it just dies the connection so I've uploaded to jpegs because I was able to now that's fair enough yeah that is fair enough now it's a good it's a good point it's not always possible to upload these big format I would say that in most cases for like natural pictures so if it's not line art or not a color diagram or something like that but a photograph even if it's photogram or a description or a line art the jpeg a good quality jpeg is not going to make a difference that matters the issue of the jpeg is a migration if the jpeg is open to the subsequent resend it loses a little bit of data it's makes photo cards correct so if all you're doing is archiving image there are the risks are much smaller than if you're actually using images but if you're archiving in some way has to say things later unless you're doing that as a change the opening is re-touching a little part and resaving is a jpeg and then doing that again dead times of succession yeah but it's still okay to matter yeah okay we'll let you away with a couple of g-probes okay I have a naive user's question which is not at home about Daniel's brilliant file name but what was missing is any reference in the file name itself to a version number or something like that shouldn't that be an important part of the easily accessible information about that file that I should be able to look at it and see where it fits inside inside the the nodo versioning system who knows if he's gone back and fixed his file and re-update or another date there's a date there's a there is a version date then that's available in the meta if you want to go back and change something on zeno you can only upload a new version but when you upload something to zeno though it gets a do update and it becomes fixed from that point on but you can't go back and change it you can upload a new version on top of it but you can't go back and change the original so I would argue that as a nodo output should just have should not have a version number in it I would say that that comes in the meta data the example you gave was an xeno file if I've downloaded that xeno file onto my computer how am I going to know and it didn't take notice of the version number on zeno go back to each of them that's your problem wait wait wait no before you blame me how am I supposed to take notice of that where am I supposed to store that information the place where I downloaded it from that means that you're talking about the same problem which we talked about from jstore which is now I have to retype a file name so you want me to input the date that I downloaded this into the file name not all meta data can fit in a file name I understand that but what I'm saying is where am I serious about this where am I supposed to keep track of that information unless what I meant to do is to go back and not to download the material not to download the xeno file but to go back and retrieve it every single time unless you want to download specifically you want to download an earlier version you would just always download the latest version from xeno and that's that so I'm not going to have anything locally I well because you may have a version of the file locally already then you go into nodo oh there's a new version I'll download it how do I tell it from the old version it is a fair point you're making yeah and you could make your phone in match this new do version as well I mean ideally you would just you could do things automatically in terms of if you're relying on some set of files for some project of yours if you want those to be up to date you can have it push those files every night or once a week or something like that and then you know you all accept the most I'm just I'm not arguing in particular position I'm just wondering how can on with the assumption that starting with the best position I could build something which is not going to need to be fixed later let's think about things like that where should that information be but this is partly you're asking for someone who's who's filing their data to handle the door own workflow problems what is most interesting about this discussion it tells us also something that great you put everything on the note of who knows how to use it right that's the thing it's a very advanced kind of knowledge system to know you know you downloaded the work within you want to know you don't keep local copies you work with always the view is from because this is the logic that is behind it this is what we see with our language they have never worked with the digital collections in our archive because they're not used in teaching and in training so they have a really hard time understanding how to and Zenodo is great it's fantastic but there is a job in the training from the user perspective of how to use it how to download it so having it in sitting in Zenodo one of the discussions is like who are we serving because it's a very very small community of users that are able to manage this kind of data sets well um yes and no so the development developing countries sharing with the developing countries is kind of a funny idea well yes in Zenodo I mean I've been here for standing here for quite a long time now so I know I should drive this up but yeah I think Zenodo you were plenty of time yeah yeah questions were somewhat responsible it's just an indication I think you're a senior um I would say Zenodo is it's picking your brain you know it's getting you but I would say Zenodo is very simple platform to use firstly and then I mean you can just download a trial and okay reconstructing like a relational database like see I've worked you know I'm I've worked with researchers from many parts of the world and I think that they're perfectly capable of downloading TXT files and looking at and viewing them um that's you know or or you know a CSB file in a spreadsheet is um quite not it's not too difficult I know obviously not everybody can do that but um I think you're yeah I think yeah I'm like a star somebody's got me more on thank you