Family Theatre presents James Whitmore and Gene Raymond. From Hollywood, the Mutual Network in Cooperation with Family Theatre presents James Whitmore in Mademoiselle from San Antoine. And now to introduce the drama, here is your host, Gene Raymond. Thank you, Charles Arlington. Family Theatre exists to bring to every listener's attention the practice that must become an integral part of our daily lives. If we are to find peace for ourselves, build peace for our families, and win peace for the world. Family Theatre sponsors the greatest commodity civilization has provided for the soul of man, his contact with God. Family Theatre urges you to pray. Pray together as a family. Tonight, Family Theatre takes great pleasure in presenting Mademoiselle from San Antoine, starring James Whitmore as Blake. I see the major leagues are beginning to worry about television again. It's nice to know, but it's certainly not news. Say, is anything of that second night lead yet, Jimmy? Not a line. No, it should have been an hour ago. It must be some big deal. Well, what about it, news editor? I've got to give a 15-minute newscast in 51 minutes. 51 minutes. Well, I'll write a couple of lines and you can ad-lib around them. Some of that stuff, but the nature figures, how about that? Here's a good one, incidentally. Date Line of Hollywood. Marjorie Du Bois reported to be feeling much better today as she recovers from a strained back which was sustained yesterday in Point Morro, California. The beautiful actress who was currently appearing. Blah, blah, blah. Same old stuff. Don't tell me. The scene called for her to hang from a cliff and some rock gave way. She was saved in the last minute by an aging Indian or a quick-thinking cameraman. No, as a matter of fact, it was wild horses and she was saved by a lighting technique. Uh, bunk. Jared's bunk, but it's exciting and that's what the public wants. What's this you got in your typewriter now? That's what the people want? I hope so. Great. I'll use it. Over my dead body, you put this on the air and I won't be able to get a copyright.  I'm Marcel from San Antoine.  Well, the most interesting part of it anyhow. It's around an incident in the last war. Why'd you wait this long to write it? Well, Jim, it's like your nature-faker story. It might be true, but... But it doesn't sound true? That's about it. That's why I'm writing it as fiction. Well, come on. Let's hear it. What about your newscast? I'll use the same copy I used on the last one. Change a few adjectives. No, don't get caught on it. What about your story? Oh, yeah. You want me to read it to you? Oh, whatever you like. All right, brother, I'll tell it to you. I might think of something I forgot to put in and it'll help me a little with the revision. Well, go ahead. Well, to begin with, I was a sergeant with a machine gun crew, and one day four of us got lost. Hopelessly, miserably, and very unmilitarily lost in a frog-shrouded battlefield in France. Before that fog came in, we'd been advancing through the hedge-rows, and going on that particular day had been pretty easy because the enemy had pulled back to new positions. But with that fog, everything changed. Suddenly, we ran out of hedge-rows and into a forest, and, brother, what a forest that was.  Huh? Yeah. Nah, I mean it. Look at his size. He's been carrying that heavy tripod for three hours. You know, look, a bit tired.   So why should I get better when all I got to do was carry this little old measly 12-ton, 30-caliber machine gun? Hey, maybe we ought to pull in and wait for the fog to leave. That's about time. Great idea, sir. And it might be a good idea to mount the gun. Oh, mount the gun? Yeah. That is merely the sergeant's way of saying he ain't sure if we're behind the enemy lines or not. Well, it's possible. I can't read my map without being able to see landmarks. Can I? No, it's Sammy Blake. It's that thing. It digs into my shoulder, my shoulder digs into my knees. And you dig into whatever's close. Hey, no kidding, Sarge. Really might be behind the lines, huh? Maybe we ought to hold a conversation down to a nice polite roar. Good idea? Good idea. Oh, boy. That might put you... You better dig in and eat before we think about sleep. Maybe behind the lines. Who can sleep? Yeah, where's my spade? This'll be my 26th foxhole. I'm not thinking seriously of going back and collecting all the foxholes I ever dug. Use them to store souvenirs. Hey, what are you doing? I tell you, there's somebody out there. I heard them. Relax, will you, Benny. Yeah, I suppose there was somebody out there. The four of us ain't no army, you know. Don't go ask them for no trouble. What are we supposed to do? Sit around waiting for them to start taking potshots at us? In this fog, they can't see us any better than we can see them. Hey, there. Did you hear that? I told you there was somebody out there. Look at the dirt. Benny, slide me your M1. Here, take it. Tell them to come out. Yeah, yeah, tell them there's a million of us. All right, quiet, you guys.  Yeah, government issue. But what government? Well, if they're not guys, they know the password. Who goes up there? Halt! Give the password. Hank, what's today's password? I don't know. Well, something about bridges. I don't hear anybody answering. London Bridge, isn't it? Yeah. Give the password. I don't like this. Let's not shoot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get on the guy. Stay where you are. I'll tell you when.  We didn't remember the password either. Whoever it is, they don't speak English. Any of you guys know any German? A little French, do? Yeah, try it. Tell them there's a million of us.  Come out with the hands up. Yeah, try not to sound so scared. Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, go ahead. Sortie avec les mains en l'air. Or we'll cut them to ribbons, tell them. Or we'll cut them to ribbons. Yeah. Okay, you guys. Get ready on the gun. It might be a trick. Here, Benny, take your rifle.  Oh, brother. Well, you look at that. Well, I'm looking at it, but I don't believe it. Baby. Oh, baby, oh, baby. They'll never believe this back home. What a doll. What a doll.  Remember, you were the guy who wanted to fill the woods with bullets, cut them to ribbons. So I changed my mind. Uh, entrees. Boom, Amsel. Hey, Will, what did I say? Are you going to shoot me?  She wants to know if you're going to shoot it. If you're not, I think she might like to put her hands down. She thinks we'd shoot her? Holy cow. Um, besevue man down, ma'am, Zell.  Stay away, Benny. You want to scare her away? You are Americans, no? We are Americans, yes. Any of you guys got any rations left? For mine, I got everything. Don't give them to me. She looks hungry. Here, miss, want some food? My name is Janine. Thank you. I thought you were the boss. Why have you taken so long to get here? Oh, this is very good. Kay rations? She thinks it's good. She must be hungry. Say, well, toss me that canteen. Here, here. You want some water, miss, uh, Janine? Water? Yeah. Water. Water. Thank you. And for after dinner, I got a cigarette for you. Oh, you are all so kind. Won't you sit there? Yeah, let me spread this coat for you. Oh, but it will get so dirty. Oh, it's all right. It's a sergeant's coat. Oh. Yeah, it's all right. You must be very brave so far behind the lines. What did she say? I couldn't make that one out. She said we must be very brave to be so far behind the lines. Behind the lines. Oh, yeah, yeah. Very brave. I think I'm gonna faint. Say, Janine, uh, how far behind the lines are we? That is a very good question. You don't know? That is very funny. Yeah, so what's so funny? Search me. I thought you were brave, but you are not brave. You are lost? Well, it's possible to be both. I'm getting back to the question just how far ahead of the rest of the army are we? Oh, 10, maybe 12 kilometers. Not much more. What's a kilometer? It's about a thousand meters still. Holy mackerel. So how much is a meter? About a foot and a half, maybe. 12,000 foot and a half. Look, we gotta get back. Miss, Miss Janine, could you, could you tell us how to get back to the lines? Oh, I'm sure it would be very dangerous for you to try to do it tonight. Better you wait until morning. The American army will come up to meet you. They are advancing, no? They are advancing, yes. Well, then tonight you spend in my father's house. Hey, did you hear that? Sleep in our house. No, no, no, no. I don't think that would be such a... Oh, come on, Sarge. Gee. 12,000 foot and a half. Be safe with the me and corn outside by some German patrol. Patrol? We're far enough behind the lines to be caught by the Jerry replacements going up to the front. He's right, Mr. Sarge. Yeah, yeah, come on, Sarge. All right. All right, pick up your gear. Lead the way, lady.  I mean, helping us? After all, this is still German territory. No, no, Mr. It is not much chance. The Americans will be here tomorrow. Yeah, well, I hope so. But suppose you're caught. Then we will all meet in Evan and have a big celebration. But we will not be caught, Sergeant. Yeah, say, call me Blake, will you? Blake? Yeah. Blake. Blake. It is a very pretty name. It is a very lovely name. Wouldn't you say Blake is a pretty name, Ben? Will? Yes, grumpy. Hey, ma'am, what do you think of Benjamin? All right, all right, close it up, close it up. Kind of a merciful name. Wait. There is an... How do you say it? What? Water here. She learns fast. Yeah, hold it, hold it. No, we got an irrigation ditch to get over. Well, we're foot slogging soldiers. Walk on through. Oh, no, no. Better you jump. All right, so we jump. Well, come on, everybody. Sure. All right, give me your hands. I'll help you. He'll miss you, please. All right, over here. Come. You got a broken leg? Come on, hey. Was carrying this automatic cannon? No, it's I'm walking through. My feet are hot anyhow. Oh, no, no, Mr. Henry.  Hey, where'd he go? What happened to him? Open the door. Will, Ben, come on. Let's get him. Yeah, get my hand. Here, here, catch hold, Hank. I'll get a hold of this collar. It feels so good. Oh, you should have trapped it. You might have been drowned. I forgot to. Are you all right? Oh, no.  He's all right. Be as good as no. Cold. I should have tell you it is deep, no? Yes. It's better that he should learn this way, ma'am, Zell. Now he'll never forget it. How would you like a pop in the snoot? All right, all right, come on. I'll take the gun. Ben, you carry the tripod. Hey, it might be lighter, Sarge, if you poured the water out of it. Very funny. It is not far to my father's house now. Just over the hill, near the town. He has been waiting for the Americans for a long time. Let's go. I'm going to be tickled to death. That's him in a fireplace. Are we going to call my father and my brother? I don't know. Wait. We don't want to push you to a lot of troubles. Oh, it is no trouble at all. It is a privilege. Oh, that fire feels good. Boy, this is the life. Man, it feels pretty good, huh? Stop hogging. Will you move over a little? Well, will you give me a hand with the machine gun? We'll stick it over by the fire. Drive some of the water out of it. We're really ought to police it up. I will do it after a while. Come on, move over, you guys. It is so good to see you. We have waited so long for you. We did not think you were coming. But it is no matter. Now you are here. Papa, this is Sergeant Blake and Corporal Henry and Privates Benny and William. I do not know their last names. Pleasure, sir. My father, Albert de Marais. This is very nice of you, Mr. de Marais. My house is your house, my friends. Jeanine, go with your brother. Kill the chickens. We have a big party to celebrate the victory. No, no, no, no. Mr. de Marais, you see, sir, we're not for acts. Oh, no sense. I have been planning this celebration for a long time. The chickens are old. They too have been waiting. But we make up for it. We do why, no? We make up for it with one yes. You said, we will have one big party. We all become very good friends. Jeanine, why don't you tell them we're not the whole army? They will be here by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Why spoil the fun? Come with me. I get to wine and wake my brothers. I hope you're right, baby. I sure hope you're right. It's quite a party. I like parties like that. Everybody having a good clean time, singing songs. It is much fun. Everybody enjoying everybody else. Yvonne and Lucille were very good, yes? Yvonne, Lucille. The chickens. Oh, yeah, very good. Is that what you call them? Yvonne, Lucille. Papa had two great worries about them. He was afraid first that they might die from old age before the Americans came. Second? And second, he was afraid your Americans might come on Friday.  That is a good thing. Oh, look. Where? It seems so strange to see lights on in Saint-Antoine. It is our town and it has been so dark for so long. Yeah. Hey, there seems to be a lot of activity down there, doesn't it? Yes, I don't know what it could be. That's it. The Germans are moving out. They must be pulling back all along the line. They are. Oh, Blague, they are leaving. Vive l'Amérique. I'm so happy. I think I could kiss the first American soldier. I... I think I almost joined the Navy. Oh, but Blague, I know you for only such a short time. So short a time? I don't think you're so happy. I don't think you're happy at all. Oh, but I am. You are not. I am too happy. Well, you don't show it. All right. You see? Well, not too well. You better explain it again. Blague, I... I think we go home. Yes? All right.  Watch to get excited, a rooster. A rooster. You know, a heat chicken. Holy cow, it's daylight already. Hey, we got to get that gun policed up and get back to the lines. I want to wake up the whole house. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say the big weep will ought to be good and dry, man. Hey, Benny, come on. You grab the barrel. I'll get it out of the other end. And we'll pull it away from the fire. OK. Yes, sir. But there ain't a bit of moisture left in that thing. Come on. Kind of hot, huh, fella? Boy, that was the stupidest thing I ever saw. Were you with him?  I'd like it fine. OK. Janne, no. Well, nothing's wrong, Mr. Emery. Sorry, Hank. OK, kid. You got a handkerchief? Yeah. Gee, you're bleeding. Yeah. It's nothing. It's only a scratch. I'll wet it at the pump.  Oh, Ben and I tried to pick up the machine. It was a little hot, that's all. Gee, let me see, Sarge. Golly. That looks like a bad burn. Let me get my aid kit. Hey, anybody remember me? I'm the guy with a cut left. Golly, Sarge. I will fix it for you. If you put some of this stuff on, Miss Emery, it takes the soreness out. This will hurt a little more, chéri. Hey, hey, Sarge! Sarge, you're coming in. I can see him off in the woods. Tanks and everything. I tell you, they're coming in. Who's coming in? What are you talking about? The whole bloomin' line. Us. We. The United States Army. Oh, yeah. You see? I tell you. Listen, honey, you got on a old rags grease. Old rags? Yeah, we gotta clean up our machine gun. Well, I'll have the kickers ran out of the Army or what's worse, promoters. Oh, no. Getting lost is bad enough, I've been caught with a rusty- Well, it's no use. They'll be here in a matter of minutes. Hey!   All right, come on. Now, look, it will set up on the other side of the hill. We got nothing to lose but ammo. This is very exciting. Look over there on that road. See through the trees? The road leadens out of San Anton. Where? I don't see anything. Brother. There's a bush. There's still some left. Doesn't that look like a good target? I'll bet you that's the last enemy caravan to pull out. Shall I pour it on him? Oh, no, please. Wait till they have left the village. It won't have long to wait. And it's pretty... There they go. Pretty long range. Now, Sarge, now? Are they far enough out yet, Janine? I think so. Remember, then, he aim height to compensate for the distance. I got you. Okay, Benny. Pour it on. Keep it up. We got two more cans. You got one. You stopped one of the trucks. I did? Come on, come on. Keep it up, boy. Now, try for that command car. Yes, sir. Look, he's going all over the road. You stopped him. I'm not... You stopped working. Maybe at jam. Open a breach. Let's take a look. That looks kind of foopied on it. I've boiled that blasted rotten luck. It's frozen solid. What's wrong with it? Oh, brother, come on. Give me a hand here. Okay, here. Uh-oh, Sarge and... Well, I think we got company. Yeah, jeep. With three stars on it. Uh-oh. What is it, Blake? We're caught. It's a general. President Charles here. I am, sir. Sergeant Blake Legley, sir. Aren't you a little ahead of the rest, sergeant? Yes, sir. What's the matter with your hands? Oh, it's nothing, sir.  What's the matter with your hands, sergeant? I burned them, sir. On the weapon? Lieutenant, inspect that weapon. Yes, sir. And you, corporal. What happened to your lip? Uh, well, it's like this, your one. I'm in general, sir. Ah, hand-to-hand combat, eh? Uh, well, yes, sir. You might say so, sir. They are very brave and good men, Mr. General. I'm sure they are, young lady. How long have you been here, sergeant? Uh, since last night, sir. The weapon is completely burned out, sir. I'd say, from the look of it, it's seen almost continuous action. We expected heavy fighting here at Sal Antoine. Do you happen to know why we didn't get it, sergeant? Yes, sir. The enemy's pulled out, sir. You got here last night? Yes, sir. And when did the enemy start to withdraw? Well, last night, sir, but you see, this had nothing to do... Remarkable. Remarkable. Huh? One machine-gun crew. Sergeant Blake. They are very brave men, Mr. General. Indeed, they are, young lady. Lieutenant, drive these men back to the age station immediately. Yes, sir. But, uh, what about you, sir? I'll walk back. Oh, no. I'm going to get a first-hand account of this action from this young lady. It will be a pleasure, Mr. General. Come along, men. Give me a hand inside. Uh, just a minute, Hank. I mean, corporal. Say, sir, may I have a word with the young lady before... Of course, sergeant. I understand these things. Say, look, honey, I... I just want... Uh... Yes, Blake? Well, look, I mean... Look, we've known each other a pretty short time. I know that, but... Well, uh, come here. Is that what you wanted to say? Yeah, only louder. Coming, sergeant.  Yes, sir. And about the general, honey, I don't... I will only tell him the truth. That's all I can do. The truth? Well, okay, I'll... I'll be back, honey, even if it takes me ten years at hard labor. Corporal Harry Castellucci and Private First Class Benjamin Tool and William Marvin Miller and for services above and beyond the call of duty for extreme valorant battle and for selfless actions in... French government has an expression of gratitude to Sergeant Blake R. Legler, Corporal Henri Castellucci and First Class Private Benjamin Tool and William Marvin Miller for their brave action and the liberation of the city of Saint-Létoire is pretty... Of course, we all kept telling him we didn't deserve all the honor in the medals, but all we'd hear was nonsense.  Hello. Oh, sure, send her back, please. Can see what you mean about writing it as fiction? Might be a little embarrassing if everybody had to turn in all those medals. No, that's not exactly it. You see, Ben, it just sounds phony. It sounds like something. A newsman just dreamed up to make copy. Sounds like something with the dreamers of this business, the ones we call a nature fakers. I don't know. I believe it. Oh, hi, baby. About ready to go, dear? Yeah, say, Jim, I don't think you've ever met my wife. No, I never have. How do you do, Miss Legler? Jim Hardman, my wife. Janine Legler. So nice to meet you, Jim. You still believe it, Jim? Well, maybe you better write it as fiction, Blake. Yep, you better write it as fiction.  Raymond again. The chances are you begin the day by reading the morning paper and, much as you reach for the news, if you're like nearly everyone else, you often wish you hadn't heard the latest. Science is expanding the universe of physical knowledge to terrifying proportions. At four or five global points, war can and may explode momentarily. Tragic, bewildered thousands are displaced from their homes. Prices appear to be rising to astronomical zones. The polio season will be over and the pneumonia season will take its place. And there's the chart. The chart telling you what to do if an atom bomb makes your city a target. Are you safe and sound any place at all? Most of us keep reading and wondering and worrying. If you're past 50, you're nostalgic for the old days of peace, plenty, and certainty, but you may even wonder if such a time actually did exist. If you're young and healthy, you may see the panorama of your far horizon blurred by near hazards. How does a thoughtful person keep his poise? By escapists, distractions from too much thinking? Perhaps. By building a philosophy? Perhaps. Only one thing is certain, as has been proved by those who understand or who are beginning to understand the providence of God. They know that it must be God's will that they live in the exact age into which they're born. While we were given life without asking for it, we'll be given the courage to meet life only by asking for it. Just as it's weak to evade reality, it's strong to meet it, meet it head on, and God must truly love those who meet it squarely. It's the poise to understand that every age has its own hazards. At what you might have died of in an earlier age, you are now saved from by a new medicine born of normal research or perhaps a research to meet the emergency of war. There is an equalization. The poised know that, and they know the seed of poise is true and stalwart faith, faith that humbly unites in prayer with God. This faith and the prayer keeps families together, keeps the nation safe, for the nation is safe when its families are rugged and solid. Remember, the family that prays together stays together.  It's not possible but the thousands of you who feel the need for this type of program by the mutual network which responds to this need and by the hundreds of stars of stage, green and radio who give so unselfishly of their time and talent to appear on our family theater stage.  This is Charles Arlington expressing the wish of family theater that the blessings of God may be upon you and your home and inviting you to join us next week at the same time our family theater will present Jean Lockhart and Scotty Beckett in The Funny Man. Join us, won't you? Margeous Network, serving more than 500 radio stations for mutual broadcasting systems.


Determinism, which is the assumption, despite popular belief, that the universe is a lawful and orderly place. In other words, when I hit Brad with a scrunchie, there was a reason for it. And then he throws a flower back, actually. And I said, shizzle. Despite the example, things are not willy-nilly. So, for instance, if cause and effect. If you can figure out, if you see the cause, you can figure out, er, if you see the cause, you'll figure out the effect. There you go. Yep, that was a good one.


Virtue ethics is Well, it's it's a little different from the rest of the theories that we're gonna look at most of the ethical theories are Going to give you or are going to give you some kind of valuation of action They're gonna tell you they're gonna have some some claim as to what the right or wrong act is supposed to be And you know, that's good as far as it goes. I mean ethical theory is supposed to be a guide to action It's supposed to tell us what course of action to take virtue ethics is I mean, it's kind of like that, but there's a real big difference There is there is going to be something to say about action but a big part of virtue ethics is Not only saying what is the right action to do What is the good action? But what kind of person to be? What is a good person and this can get really sticky real fast real sticky real fast So this is one important key difference to keep to keep in mind is that virtue ethics Ask the question of what kind of person to be We should probably start with the definition of a virtue I usually like to work up to the definition And and explain why we have that definition But I think it in this case is helpful to go kind of backwards Now virtue As the book is defining is a trait of character Manifested by habitual action that is good for a person to have trait of character Manifested by by habitual action that is good for a person to have That's a mouthful And this is this is why I say You know virtue ethics does look at action. It really does look at action, but not just action There's more involved in it than that um Now what's interesting here is There's some kind of implicit claim that the trait of a character is going to determine the action And we'll you know keep a finger on that one. I'll return to that and see what that means later on And you know a real question here is what does it mean for it to be good for a person to have? That's another question. It's going to come up. So put your finger on those but we uh But also keep in mind that you know this definition of A virtue is a trait of character manifested by habitual Action that is good for a person to have So before really diving deep into you know an extensive discussion of what virtues are It's probably helpful to start with what are two examples I'm not going to go through the laundry list of examples in the book I'm going to focus primarily on on two Now one question that I think immediately comes up is you know, how do you know? Uh, what's a virtue so where we're asking here is and how do we know which dispositions of character? Produce these you know habitual actions that are that are good for us Well, there's there's already one idea already embedded in our culture when we talk about this and that's health Health is a virtue in our culture. It's good for us to be healthy It's good for us to be healthy So a question very quickly becomes an imaginary asking right now. So what is healthy? How do we figure this out? well, uh Aristotle Thought that there was a really kind of a handy way to start figuring out what the virtues are And that was through what he called the golden mean And it was the uh point Between the x between the two vices, right? There are vices of excess and vices of deficiency So when we're talking about health, what kinds of actions are we talking about? We're talking about eating and we're talking about exercise and we're probably talking about You know medical care of some kind or another So we can we can really quickly start thinking of excesses of eating, you know Spending three days at the all-you-can-eat buffet that that's an excess Uh, you know deficiency is you know kind of go the other direction where you're not eating for three days Where you're just having water or Crust of bread or something like this Well, the golden mean Is is going to be between that now it's probably got take some work Right where you try to figure out exactly what's too much or too little This is a hot topic for debate in our in in our culture You know just the number of meals and size of meals to in a day, you know The one standard model is three Meals three, you know quote-a-quote full meals another model is six smaller meals That's there's a debate between those So this you know, so trying to figure out that you know That middle point between the excess and the deficiency that that's the golden mean and it takes work Uh same thing with exercise you can uh, you know That an extreme deficiency is not moving at all You know becoming very much a part of your couch That would be a deficiency of exercise going on excess is You know running yourself into a heart attack, you know running all day every day And and not stopping that would be an excess. So the golden mean is somewhere in the middle there Well, that that's the idea for health what we can apply this to Um To other kinds of dispositions. So for instance courage or bravery Or at this has its excess and it has this deficiency And the excess is You know supposing i'm confronted with 20 guys and out here in the middle of the park and they want to take my camera I was like, well, I'll wield my water bottle as a weapon I'm going to take you all on. Well, that would be an excess Of trying to handle that situation, you know thinking you're being very over confident of my abilities to handle 20 guys You know a deficiency would be uh, you know, maybe something like uh, say, okay. Well, here's my camera. Here's my wallet Here's my hat here my clothes and by the way, would you like to beat me a few times before you leave right? That would probably be some kind of um, you know deficiency and you know the you know the courage part might be somewhere in the middle, right? um You know in that situation probably, you know leaving behind the camera and taking office probably the actually the courageous thing to do Because you're being so outnumbered Now if it's just one person, well, you know, maybe there's a difference there. Maybe there's a difference so You know, this is how we start to find these virtues we start to find this golden meme between the excess and the efficiency In addition to you know the action there is this this trait of character So we're getting at the motivation for the action Why do we perform that action? So for instance, um You know a really You know, we again, we already kind of load this into our culture. We already have some really clear ideas about this you know, we tend to think that a really poor reason to pursue health is Uh, you know merely for the sake of vanity merely for the sake of looking good It's not that looking good is a bad thing But if that's your only reason if you're not pursuing health for the sake of being healthy We tend to think that the reasoning is off. There's something missing. There's a improper motivation Um So not only the kind of action but the motivation For the action and maybe a way of saying that is you know, once we've identified the good Then wanting the good for the sake of the good So wanting to be healthy because it's healthy as opposed to wanting to be healthy for the sake of vanity We can start going into other examples. Um, but that'll I think suffice for the moment So this this gets us an idea to what these virtues are It's you know, this mean between the deficiency and the excess And it's you know, these reasons it's these motivations that dispose us to perform that golden mean In the variety of situations Well, very quickly Some questions are going to rise as to whether these virtues are the same for everybody Now there's going to be a lot of variation All right You know, my golden mean for courage is probably going to be something very different than say your average trained marine You know your average trained marine might be able to take on those 20 guys and not be foolish You know, the trained marine has got lots of training and strength and knows how to handle that situation So what's going to determine the right action here? Well, that that's hard There is going to be some variation between people Similarly, it's going to be variation between cultures So we might be tempted to say that we're, you know, right back with moral relativism all over again Since the virtues are going to vary from person to person and I mean, you know, kind of sort of there's going to be some Actions that are going to be virtuous and some reasons are going to be virtuous depending upon The person But the fact of the matter is and I don't think Rachel's emphasizes this enough There are going to be same virtues Simply because we are all people We are all people there is something of what it means to be a person There's something of what it means to be human beings. So think back to health So there is going to be some variation between people, but that doesn't mean that it's completely relative No, of course, there's variation, but that doesn't mean that there's this fundamental difference because we are all people We are there are some fundamentally Same things about all of us what it means to be a person what it means to be human being So even just looking at health you know you know my Target heart rate is about 144 right that's supposed to be my I'm sorry. No, that's the high end Between 117 and 144. That's my target heart rate now That's going to differ from people from you know people that are younger than me and you know some people that are older than me But there's still that range there's still that commonality why there is that range. Nobody's target heart rate is 10 You would be dead Nobody's target heart rate is 350 Again, you would be well, I don't know that might be high. Let's say 800. Let's say 800 you'd be dead by then Now the reason why there is that range Even amongst a variety is because we are all human beings or is that commonality So we looked at two ideas here that we come to know the virtues By finding this golden mean. You know, this is a process of discovery And yeah, you have to go out and discover it um But at the same time The you know the range of the virtues or what's going to count as a virtue is going to have a common Uh defining point and and that's because of what we are Right. What does it mean to to be human? What does it mean to be a person? Now there are some advantages to this to virtue ethics and since we Uh do load in the idea of of reason and we do I load in the idea of character traits It seems like virtue ethics, um Avoid some problems about uh doing the right thing for the wrong reason Now you you might be wondering what this is. Well You know, suppose, um, I don't know Suppose you're friendly to uh, suppose.  You could find out what your co-workers like For the purpose of manipulating the co-worker to do what you want I mean, it doesn't even necessarily mean harming the co-worker. You just You know be able to Persuade the co-worker to do what you want that co-worker to do Maybe for their own benefit. That's fine So again, we're kind of talking about this idea of selfishness and we were related to with the ethical egoism We think selfishness is kind of a bad reason and a dishonorable reason of distasteful reason To do things, you know You know marrying a person for social status Doesn't seem like a good reason and we think that if you marry somebody you You ought to marry that person because you love that person It's the same act marrying marrying all those things considered equal is good But the difference is The motivation the reason So in this much we think that virtue ethics gets it right That there's a certain vantage where virtue ethics gets at the character doing the right thing for the right reason Now this isn't to deny That you you can't do the wrong thing for the right reason. Sure, right? We think that there's doing the wrong thing for the right reason But with this much as far as motivation is concerned, we think virtue ethics gets this right So Another thing that virtue ethics tends to get right Is dealing with impartiality Now when we're dealing with theories that just cover actions, we don't deal with the reasons or motivations at all So uh when we're so you so sometimes it seems kind of weird in some situations where you know, you save somebody's life Because you're obligated to save their life like well Or you know, suppose you rescue your spouse From a fate worse than death and your spouse says wow, thank you so much for saving my life And then you say well, you know, I had a moral obligation to save your life That's gonna be silence at dinner that night You know virtue ethics tends to get this right. It's like well, I saved your life because I love you So When one of the things that virtue ethics tends to get right is is this idea of the right motivations for actions Now related to that is uh dealing with impartiality Now Rachel's first gave this condition for impartiality is you know, everybody's interests are considered equal And you know nobody really blocked at that but I think you're probably thinking of maybe a legal or setting like that But there are plenty of situations where uh, you are you are biased and you should be biased You know, if you have two people in front of you And they each have a headache And one person's headache is worse than another. You know, you probably ought to give And you have like one dose of aspirin you ought to give that dose of aspirin to the person is the worst headache Okay, no big deal But suppose uh, the two people uh are Are not just two people.  No You know and situations like that you ought to consider your child's interests to be more important. That's your child. There's a relationship there so This idea of uh, um that virtue ethics gets the Right motivation down is strongly linked to the idea that virtue ethics gets the right impart gets the right ideas down about impartiality So virtue ethics has its advantages But it still has us murky areas And one of the things that uh, rachel's points at is you know with this definition of virtue You know, we're asking ourselves. Well, what is Well, what is what is good? What is goodness? And you say well, what is goodness? And the answer is it's virtue And the question is well, what's virtue? And the answer is well, is that character trait Manifested by habitual action. That's good for a person to have To which you say great What's goodness? And the answer is it's virtue Very quickly, you see how this kind of devolves into a circle What's goodness? Well, it's virtue. Well, what's virtue? Well, it involves goodness and that doesn't help So yeah, they give me some real problems. They're trying to figure that out Now What I don't think rachel's does enough work doing He kind of just leaves it as mysterious and walks away.  How do we know what that is? Well, we got to know what a person is But there is something fundamental to what being a person is We already have this idea regarding health We have a lot of descriptions about what health is And you know, we have a lot of descriptions of what the body is and this doesn't stop us From figuring out what healthy is We have this range of what health is Same thing with any kind of emotional health There are some commonalities of what it means to be person and what it means to be a person with a mind and emotions And we are we are able to start figuring out what this what this is what this goodness is to have this kind of goodness Of what it means to be a person uh And this comes from this common definition this common This definition of what it means to be human So it's not quite as far fished out there It's not like we can just pick any notion of good or just You know put it into the virtues like no, there's there's something of what it means to be a person And yeah, that's a lot of hard work trying to figure out what that is. There's a lot of theories about what trying to figure that is But that doesn't mean that whatever virtue is it's just up in the air There's just kind of a lot of blank spots And if we want to answer that question if we want to figure out What the good life is We got to figure out what we are And when you're doing that You're doing metaphysics So you'll want to worry about virtue ethics is trying to figure out what this goodness is and Like I said, we we apparently don't have much of a problem trying to figure out at least a range of what healthy is And uh, you know, uh, as far as physical health is concerned and what health is as far as the uh, uh emotional health is concerned And we do the same thing when we start talking about uh, in intellectual life And we have a range of what we think a person ought to ought to know Now it doesn't mean that's beyond reproach and beyond question doesn't mean there's still not a whole lot of hard work But it's there, you know, it is a process of discovery trying to figure out what we are and trying to figure out How we're supposed to function How we're supposed to You know be what we're what we are Another problem that kind of pops up for virtue ethics is uh, what we might call a problem of indecision So remember an ethical theory is supposed to be action guiding it's supposed to tell us What course of action to take all right Now a problem with uh virtue ethics is that we're just dealing with not just dealing with we're dealing with character traits We're dealing with character dispositions and sometimes it seems like these dispositions can conflict with one another So we might talk about, um Oh, I don't know Honesty and courage right Now there's some cases where um, the courageous thing Is to lie Yeah, the courageous thing is to lie. Um So you know think of a situation like this where, uh, um you know A murderer comes to your door And uh threatens your life If you don't tell the murderer where your, um Family is so that the murderer can go and murder your family now A very cowardly thing to do in that situation is to tell the truth And to tell the murderer where your family is and let the murderer go murder your family All right, that's a very cowardly thing to do um You know a brave thing to do is to is to lie and to risk The discovery of lying, you know, maybe even to try to trap the murderer or defend your family, right?  All right, they're all hiding in your closet or something like this So there's sometimes where it looks like the virtues can conflict And so what's needed here is some kind of hierarchy of the virtues, you know, which virtues are more important than others and So and that that's that's a lot of hard work and there have been lots of attempts to do that And these are the two main problems then with, uh, virtue ethics is, you know, trying to define what the good is And trying to define, you know, trying to, you know, solve this problem of indecision or maybe what we might call conflicting, uh, virtues


Hello in this lecture we will define employee benefits. According to fundamental accounting principles Wild 22nd edition the definition of employee benefits is additional compensation paid to or on behalf of employees such as premiums for medical dental life and disability insurance and contributions to pension plans. When we're thinking about employee benefits we're really thinking about those types of compensations that are not cash most of the time. Anything that we are receiving from the employer is thought to be some form of compensation. The reason we're receiving something is because we are working for the employer and the employer is providing some type of compensation. We generally think of compensation in the form of cash but anything we receive would be some form of compensation. Why would an employer provide some of these other forms of compensation? One of the main reasons is


One of the things our organization does is work with youth, and we have a lot of conversations about how young people are not considered oftentimes valid citizens yet in determining what should happen. So when you're having conversations about school food, do those conversations about school food include talking and working with young people around organizing for what they want to see in terms of good food in their schools? Including youth, most specifically, I think we really focus at the food project on believing in youth-adult partnerships. So there is, as with any adult who's new to the food system, a training component and an education component, but then ultimately what we work toward as people move through our youth programs is that they become a part of generating the content of our workshops. They are the people who deliver our workshops to external audiences, both youth and adults. And so instead of the young people being, I don't know, kind of marginalized or tokenized in terms of, oh, it would be nice to have that one youth who can sort of be the youth voice. We have three young people on our board who are active members of our board of directors. And so we really believe in looking at all levels, making sure that we express our commitment to youth leadership, not merely youth engagement or involvement.


Yeah, we're back with some tech today. This is ThinkTech. I'm Jay Fidel. We're talking about ThinkTech Tech Talks. I can say that fast five times. And we have with us our old friend Attila Suresh of Cylenda, and he's in Control Central there in Cylenda here in Honolulu. Hi, Attila. Say hi. Hey, thanks for having me on, Jay. Thank you for being available for this, because this is really a hot item. It's about Pegasus and NSO out of Israel. And it's like all over the world now, and it's a fair chance.  There's a fair chance it's on your phone or coming to your phone listening and hearing and copying everything you have to say and do. That's a nice thing, isn't it? Well, it's certainly weird that it's being done for profit, and it's so open and so blatant, and Apple not doing anything about it. I saw something called MVT, and it was a device or rather a software function, software piece, developed by Amnesty International, who has been following the story since at least the spring when it first came up. That would be the spring of 2020. It's spring of this year, April of this year. And anyway, this does not solve the problem, and it works better on iPhone than Android. Although it works, so something said on Android, it works better on iPhone, as I recall. It's called MVT, and MVT can tell you if you have it, or if you have had it, because it leaves little traces when it does its dirty business. But that doesn't stop it from operating. It only warns you that you have had it. And so I'm not sure that's all that valuable. I'm sure there are people who are working on patches right now, but it's hard to patch something that is silent and deadly and doesn't require you to click or press anything for it to work. Pegasus is really a Braconian. Well, it's a zero click zero day bug that's being exploited by these guys. So the problem is that they created and exploit Pegasus, and they essentially sold it to the highest bidder. And it allowed authoritarian governments to spy on anyone with an Apple device. And Apple markets itself as this closed ecosystem that's safe and secure that your grandma can use, and it's something that journalists and politicians have picked up before its recognition of being a safe product to you. Well, unbeknownst to them, the attack factor for this comes from any source. So what that means is that if they did want to into your phone and listen in and monitor all of your communication, including encrypted communications by the way, all they have to do is send a text message to your number, or send an email with a link, or send a notification for a game that you may have downloaded, or send a notification from a dating app, et cetera. And no interactions required on your part, boom, they're in. Backdoor. So it should happen without your involvement whatsoever. That's pretty scary. You don't have to be at the phone, the phone doesn't have to be operating. I don't think, right? It can be just dormant, just sitting there.  Well, you mentioned Amnesty International earlier, and the reason that they're so interested is because they send out people to rural areas in place of conflict, and with the intent of being able to help and serve the civilian population who's by no fault of their own being victimized by whatever's going on in politics or whatever. So unfortunately, those are the ones being monitored, which is why they took an interest. In fact, of that recent breach that came out this week of 50,000 phone numbers, many of them were found in France, and they checked in many of those devices, and they found, I think over a third of them had the devices spyware sitting on it, monitoring their phone logs, text messages, apps that they were doing, and the geolocation. So there's a lot of data that they can gather about that. And NSO, they advertise themselves as a surveillance company. It's not like they're out there doing any sort of false advertising, saying we can surveil these folks. And the problem is that all these security researchers are now asking the big question of why. Why is it that Apple is not stepping up and patching this bug? In fact, they pushed out a whole bunch of patches just yesterday, about 40 of them and 37 of them were for the iPhone themselves. And those I've attached as many of them allow remote code execution. So that's remote backdoor access directly to the iPhone. So they're finding stuff all the time. But the problem is that Apple is kind of this closed ecosystem. There's not a lot of transparency. They're not sharing how their code operates. They're holding it very close to the chest. And I believe that's partly a business decision that they don't want any sort of income is to come and throw them as this unique product that's making a difference in the community. But at the end of the day, we're all going to pay for their arrogance and for their lack of transparency. And that's why the cybersecurity community is pretty upset about it. Yeah. Well, we should all be upset about it.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I remember the terrorists in California. The FBI wanted Apple to crack the phone because they believed that there were other terrorists in the same terrorist plot that were identified on the phone and Apple would not do it. Even though there was a question of national security. Interestingly enough, finally they went to Israel. They found a company properly like NSO to crack the phone. They had to pay money for that.  But you know what, they were just selling it to governments. That's the way it started. Minnesota was selling it to governments and governments were ostensibly using it for legitimate purposes. Although, you know, it depends on how the government operates. So what kind of government we have and whether it's an authoritarian government. They're out of control, out of hand somehow. It's not hard to understand. Somehow it got loosed from those governments to individuals and then to the bad guys. And now you're right. I mean, and say take sub-Saharan Africa where there are all these, you know, activists and people who would like to prosecute human rights violations and atrocities and all that. And the people who have committed the atrocities now have the opportunity to identify them and to listen to what they're doing and listening to all the information they're gathering to prosecute them in the International Court of Criminal Justice. And so I can see how governments, authoritarian governments might like it, but also governments that are really not legit might like it. Revolutionaries might like it. And there's no exception. And the consequences are deadly. Because if they don't like what you're saying, if they find out that you're trying to prosecute them, run them down in some way, you know, it's like a it's like a hop to rob a story. If you're after them, well, now they know what you're saying, where you're going, who you're working with, who your informants are. It's like the whole thing is so talk about transparency. We have transparency now, don't we? Well, and what worries me is that there's usually not just one, not just one ace in the whole type product out there. I mean, the only reason that this is really making headline news right now is because that list was accidentally leaked over 50,000. And you know who was on the list, by the way, there's a 50,000 telephone numbers. There's a lot of people who are on the list who haven't said they're on the list, but Macron, the president of France was on the list. And he went into orbit over that. Because, you know, he's got all kinds of diplomatic issues and issues that are classified that he's talking on his phone. And oh, the France is in a state over this and his government is in a state having emergency meetings, as if there's some technological solution that they could grab and stop this. But I don't think they can. It strikes me just to throw an idea at you that the way to stop it is to build an entirely new operating system for a smartphone, entirely new operating system. It's not going to have the same functionality, but at least theoretically, it won't be vulnerable to this. What do you think? Well, you remember those Nokia brick phones, candy bar phones? There's something to be said about the simplicity of a product that's just kind of bulletproof and does what it needs to do. You know, we have a lot of freedoms and a lot of advantages. We get with smart devices, but of course, the more we use them, the more our security becomes at risk. It's hard to imagine a world where we go back to analog. So I agree. Some security is going to need to happen. We offer, for example, mobile device monitoring and management. So it allows the kind of police this kind of activity on your organizational level, where we watch from unusual traffic coming in and out of phones. And yeah, you'll see unusual traffic coming in and out of phone. And it's hard to figure out what's what sometimes. Yeah, what they've taken or who they've taken it from. They may be leaving little scraps behind. So the MVT product can find that. But I think it's really hard to identify who's been victimized and what's been taken. And for how long it's been taken. And in any event, what can be done about it? So if I come to you and I say, you know, I'm really worried about this because I have had conversations. I have data on my phone or through my phone that is dangerous. That is highly classified. Maybe I'm a military person. Maybe I'm a law enforcement officer. Maybe I'm a corporate guy who is talking about, you know, information that's really important to the company, proprietary information. And I don't want to stole it, not by anybody here or anywhere else in the world. Because this is global, isn't it? So what's your advice to me? What do I do? Do I throw the phone in the sink? Do I start doing landline? Can I escape this by going to my computer and doing, by the way, I don't think we chat, you know, we chat, Snapchat, whatever, they're vulnerable just the same way. Is there a way I can continue my communication? What's your advice to me to tell it? Well, you've hit on an important point. So first of all, you mentioned how law enforcement and military are concerned about these kind of issues occurring. I can tell you right now, they are occurring and they are concerns in both those departments. We've had some first hand experience with that. And it's not, it's not something that will completely easy answers. There is some good guidance that we can look at. So there's something called CMMC. This is Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Framework. And that is used for all contractors who handle something called CUI, which is Controlled and Classified Information. That's essentially secret, top secret, or just confidential data that the DOD is asking contractors and subcontractors to work with in order to fulfill their needs of a project or a bit. Now, that data needs to be protected in a certain way. And those guidelines follow through not just computers, but to mobile phones as well. So for instance, for mobile phones, it's pretty important not to have a mobile phone that's used for personal and business use. Let's start there. If you are someone in law enforcement or private security or someone where you have important confidential data, not necessarily government data, but it can be, you know, PCI data, it can be HIPAA data, anything that could potentially be considered sensitive. That data is now separated from your primary cell phone, which can be used for, you know, Jouled and Netflix and Hulu and all the other stuff you might be doing on it, and a separate one for work. The good news about all this technology and how it's everywhere means that it's also not as expensive as it used to be to have a couple cell phones. Our HPR streaming comes from Chaminade University, launching its new one-year MBA with online and alternating weekend on-campus classes featuring NA. Brought to you by ThinkTech. Well, you know, my phone was on Do Not Disturb. Go figure. Maybe they were trying to send me a message. It's okay.  So yeah, no, these things. We're an open book. All of us. It just shows you the small example of what the technology will allow in on you. Anyway, please continue. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's some really good guidance in terms of how to do data segregation. The CMMD is the most probably well-documented federal standard that all prime and subcontractors are now being forced to follow. And it does have some great guidance in terms of what you need to use on your mobile device versus not use on your mobile device. Especially if you're using this for confidential type of information, there's a good chance that you're working for an organization or a group. And having a mobile device management policy in place for that group is pretty important. That means that the IT department or management is going to dictate which apps can go on that phone, right? Have they been vetted and verified as being safe? How is your communication plan going to be with your third party vendors? Are you going to use an app that allows secure communication? Or are you going to use an open email program, which is essentially the same as sending a postcard in the mail. So those kind of restrictions and monitoring and security on those devices that are hand confidential data, that's a great way to do it. Separation of church and state. Keep them separate both physically and with lockdowns. Well, you know, it sounds like adaptation, which is by definition sort of temporary. And that if you really wanted to you know, stop this, you'd have to get to the root of it. It's an easy or come up with a patch that would, you know, directly confront it and stop it in its tracks. And I am reminded, and I want to throw this at you as an idea to tell it. I think it was World War Two, maybe later, where somebody came up with this really smart idea of changing frequencies. Both the pilot of the plane was talking to home base, or whatever, you know, the military operative in the field was talking to home base. We don't want that compromised. So we have we have a change frequency. Now encryption is not good enough, because Pegasus can get right through encryption doesn't stop it at all. But they have to have the telephone number. They have to know that it's Macron's telephone number to really make hay on it. I mean, if it went to some kind of silly telephone number that went nowhere, they'd be wasting time, even if they had an automatic way to, you know, just cycle through all the telephone numbers in the world. They have to have a telephone number. Now if you had a system sort of like that changing frequencies system, where, you know, it would change telephone numbers all the time, change telephone numbers every time you made a call, or every time a call was into you, it would be using another telephone number. Same idea. Wouldn't that work getting them off your back? It certainly would help. And Jay, I'm not sure if you've come across anyone under the age of 10, but they don't use phones the way that you might think. You know, they use WhatsApp, they use Messenger Kids, they're using FaceTime. So the communication becomes digital at that point. And it's peer to peer, meaning it's device to device. And that usually end in encryption on both sides. So yeah, I think the idea, maybe the idea that you're getting at is that just traditional phone numbers themselves are becoming less and less important. True. Part of this is phone numbers, but you're right. Part of it is, it's just going to be a digital, like a wireless connection. And in that case, you know, I would throw the same idea at you. It's got to be on some coded connection. Some, you know, you can identify with a series of numbers, digits, what have you. And if I change that every time, then maybe I can shut some of this out. I know it's a technical question, but I'm thinking that there's got to be an answer here somewhere to at least have those guys, you know, thrown off the track. That's exactly how the dark web works, by the way.  It's a constantly moving target. That's why it's very hard to find. But yeah, it's the same idea. I just think it's just digital evolution.  We're doing that now, right? We're using the internet. And we now have video and the quality is a thousand times better than we ever had through dial-up. It's not mortal. So it's just evolution. We're probably going to see the same thing on the mobile storefront, too. There's going to be less dependency on phone numbers and text messaging and all that stuff and private label and then encryption messaging apps, which will have better security. At least that's the hope for, you know, because that's what I want my staff. I don't want them receiving text messages and phone numbers from scambay and advertisers. And I mean, as you know, we do a lot of segments on just text message scams. They come through all the time. Well, that's one of our top, you know, videos is the Venmo text messaging scam. It's on YouTube. It has like a few hundred thousand hits. I mean, it's just that that's what people are getting and they're trying to find guidance on. We can eliminate that huge. This one seems to be to me logically scarier than anything before because a couple of, you know, logical factors here. One is, you know, if there's seven billion people on the planet, a good percentage of them have smartphones. There are many, many, many people who have smartphones that don't have television. And it's ubiquitous. It's ubiquitous. So if I have a way to crack through any security and surveil you on your smartphone, you know, there are billions of people who are vulnerable and and that, of course, includes the leadership. And this is clear that this is used now. It's used a way to get to the leadership, a way to disrupt human affairs in every country, in every institution. There's no escaping it. When you think of the implications and the consequences of this kind of attack, they are worse. It's worse than any other attack in the past. When I see this as it's not just interesting that you're vulnerable and that the government is vulnerable and law enforcement is vulnerable. Everybody from top to bottom, the genius out of the bottle on this and so never intended it. But here we are. And I think this will change human conduct. This will change the world as it is until they come up with a patch, you know, a solution. This has got tremendous consequences. Don't you agree? Well, the, you know, you're just looking at the end, end of ice monitoring. You know, if I remember, I didn't read too much into it. So you may not have more insight about this than I do, but the Hoya transmitters, the 5G transmitters were banned in the U.S. because people to monitor traffic in real time, data and voice traffic and report them to whoever wants to peer in on that. And that's at the transmitter level. So the infrastructure itself can be monitored and vetted and recorded and stored. So I don't believe that, you know, we're looking at a end device compromise. We're looking at a infrastructure compromise. And until you get to end to end 100% digital encrypted communication, you're not going to be able to avoid that. So the only way to do that is you segment your devices in the least privilege. So have one one for confidential information and have a separate device or tablet for games and everything else you want to do and do your best to have complex passwords, have good security practices in your own day-to-day life. And it's all going to be just best effort. There's no such thing as 100% full proof operating system. It just doesn't exist. They can get on your phone or they can get on your phone and get everything. And if they get on the phone that you use for the company, they can get everything there too. I mean, it's pretty scary. Let me ask you this. So we had Cisco, a couple of managers from Cisco on the show last week. And I keep thinking of Cisco is, you know, the switches and the cables that run underground under the ocean, tremendously important element in the worldwide web. We read you think, and I know nothing about this, but do you think that if you watch the traffic on the cables and the switches under the ground and under the ocean, you'd be able to identify signals from Pegasus and stop them? Well, it's possible. Anything's possible if you know what you're looking for. Homeland security on a regular basis does notify the private sector of IP addresses that are public facing that they do request public sector IT administrators and security administrators to flag in their firewalls and look for suspicious traffic and let them know if that does occur. That's done on every two weeks, they release that stuff. So if the private IP addresses of the Pegasus guys are released, then yeah, we can start looking for that. And if I remember right, I was reading that they are using Amazon services for this. So Amazon can get involved too if they really wanted to and try to shut some of this down. But like I said, I mean, their legitimate business are exploiting a valid security flaw in the operating system. It's going to be up to Apple to really shut this down. Well, the question really in large part, there's so many things in our world work this way. There's not so much what's going on because this is going to continue to go on. It's anonymous, right? It's going to continue to go on until somebody comes up with a solution. And the people who are engaged in this kind of surveillance, they're not going to go on the front page. They're not going to tell you. In fact, it's a much better idea not to say a word, not to say boo, and they weren't saying boo until amnesty caught them. I believe that's what happened. In any event, it seems to me that this is a press thing largely. So the press makes a big deal. Everybody gets excited. You and I have discussions. We speculate what it is and how it can be stopped and what the advice is to people who might be vulnerable. But after a few weeks, we'll have something else to distract us. I promise you, Attila, we'll have something else. I mean, just before the show, I saw that we have a new killer fungus. And it's distracting. On top of COVID now, we have a killer fungus. The bottom line is that while the press pays attention to this, it's on our radar. It's on our level of awareness that we talk about it. In a few weeks, there'll be something else. We won't talk about it. However, it will continue anyway. It will be there. It's like an endemic disease. It will be there and they will still do it. So we have to live with it. As you said, we have to take steps. Until somebody tells us there's a cure, we have to take steps to what we want to call it, minimize the effect of it. Bottom line is, there's nowhere to hide. You can go into the Pacific Northwest into the Arctic territories, the Northwest territories. You can't hide there. Walden Pond is over. Well, like you mentioned, the Arctic, that's a changing region right there. So who knows? You might be able to go there and hide someday. But yeah, it's kind of funny in some of my videos. I have like an alternate ego character that shows up who's like me from like 10 years in the future, who says, you know what, with all these compromises and problems, society just gave up on technology and now we just sit around and meditate all day and do yoga. So maybe that's the solution. It's just up on it all together. But short of that, I think we're just going to have ongoing problems. We do the best we can. Yes, it's true. We will get distracted by the next big catastrophe that's going to happen. I'm sure everything from climate change to killer fungus to who knows, political events, there's always going to be a distraction. Just the best we can. Well, if I'm the guy who comes up with a solution to the killer fungus, maybe it's one part vinegar, the other part ice cream. Who knows what it is. That'll save the lives of people who will become infected. Likewise, if you, Attila, if you find a way through some coded program, some simple median line coded program to beat this, my question to you is how much money do you think you would make in the short term? Well, and so I think you're hitting a real important point is that we often do talk to organizations that have the resources that have a problem, like a real problem, that's proven that we've worked with law enforcement on. And they simply won't do anything about it. I just don't understand. And that's been one of the frustrations I've heard not just from not just from law enforcement, but also private industry is that many times there's a problem. There's a solution. There are funds to solve that problem and still just not good stuff. So I don't know what that what that says about us as a human beings. But you know, if you really do want to take something seriously, you have to find the right people who care and make a difference. And you can't wait on somebody else to do it. But I'm sure there are people in, well, I'm assuming this didn't this. No, I know this did not originate in China. I don't know, however, whether China is using it or not. Maybe China is using it right now on American officials, on American military and American law enforcement. But let's assume that we're in China for a moment. Don't you think that China would be working really hard on finding a solution on getting its hands around this? I think what I hear you saying is this and this is a great point to discuss here at the end of our show. I have been hearing for years that we're in a kind of competition.  And then the white hats will come up with something to beat the black hats. And it's a spiral, isn't it? And it just goes on and on.  But on the other hand, if you say that nobody wants to actually address this, it's too expensive, there's no mileage in it, let somebody else do it, another country, another government agency would have you and nobody is willing to put the resources, the money into a fix. Then we're really one behind. Is that way we are going in this country? That's a very negative kind of future, isn't it? Well, I heard a comedian once, he was like a Norwegian community, I think, or Swedish, one of those countries in that area. And he says, you know, in our country, here's how we do things. We wait for the problem to get really, really bad. And then we wait until it just gets as bad as it can possibly get. And then we fix it real quick, as cheap as we can do it. And as I'm sure that that might resonate to some of your legal training or legal experiences, but that seems to be a pervasive human trait, not just localized to those Norwegian countries. Folks will often just wait until there's a break in to put in an alarm system. They'll wait until they're on serious medications before they make changes to their health and voices. They'll wait until their finances are a disaster before they start learning about what money is. These are the kind of common human traits that I think we can all agree upon. So if you want to break the cycle, you got to do it differently than everyone else and not wait until it's a complete disaster and start putting in the effort early. You got to get ahead of the curve, you got to plan, you got to anticipate, and you got to see into the future. So yeah, I think that's a very good point. And let me say that if you were, if you were Cyber Command, if you were the government in general and you saw this happen and you realized this is a game changer, this is what it is, it's a game changer, what would you do now in the way of planning ahead of seeing down the road, picking that very same philosophy and making it protect us better? Well, let's also be clear, this is not a conversation that just you and I are having, but it's very active in Homeland Security. So they are aware, they are doing the best they can to notify the public and put in preventative measures. But there's not, there's so much happening, they're spread so thin and they can only do so much. This is kind of a reactive state in which we're in. And I hope that can change and I'm sure there's some preventative and proactive measures that they've taken, they've done the best they can to educate the community and they do reach out to private sectors, companies like us, so that we can collaborate and be proactive on things. But a lot of this stuff just comes out left field. I mean, we haven't even talked about the zero days from last week. I mean, the print nightmares, all this stuff from Windows. And that was all, it seems like old hat, but that was just like a week ago where IT companies were scrambling to try to patch essentially every Windows computer on the planet from vulnerabilities that came out. That's where Revol came from. Remember what we talked about in the last, yeah, I should put a link to that below. But the Revol ran somewhere. I mean, that supply pin attack that went through Casayas network, that was based on a zero day Windows vulnerability that still needed to be patched after all that. And it broke millions of computers, a blue screen then, print services stop working, IT departments are still scrambling to catch up on that. So zero days come from left field all the time, we just do what we can. I just wish Apple would be a little bit more transparent. And the services we provide about mobile device management, making sure that something weird doesn't end up on mobile devices. That's the best effort we can do to keep the community safe. And it is a much needed service. Looking at it here, you know, it's sort of the used this number again, the 50,000 foot level. What happened is a private company, have to be in Israel, they could have been anywhere in the world, comes up with something that would be interesting to government and government would pay for. Because government likes to surveil, especially, you know, authoritarian governments, they like to surveil. So it's a slam dunk. I'm here from NSO, and I want to sell you Pegasus, let me show you what it can do. And the government, especially the right wing government is going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, I want that. Then I'll pay anything for that. So you have, it's a political issue at that point. You have a government that says, I want to surveil. That's pretty creepy. I have a government that wants that and is willing to pay big money for it. The second thing is, now the government has it. And instead of using it for the purposes they intended, somehow it leaks. The government, you know, is porous, or maybe it spells it or, you know, allows it to be taken from them. And now it's out, you know, into the nether, it's everywhere. And it's, trust me, all the publicity is going to help it get out into the nether. It's like all the big advertisement for this product. So we have two issues of consequence around government. One is that the government would buy it, thus encouraging developers, even black hat developers, black hat and white hat.  Encouraging developers to develop things like this and B, the government can't be trusted, but hold its secret. So both of those problems led to our current situation with Pegasus. What can we do about that? Have a better government? Well, you keep saying government, government, but in my experience, it's not just been government, it's been espionage. So there's there's a lot of private money behind this as well. I certainly wouldn't say this is all 100% government. NSO's official stance is that this product was meant to prevent terrorism. And I think that's kind of a, what's the right word, kind of a weasley approach or weasley explanation. I think it would be legitimate if you could contain it, but they could not contain it. And that's the lesson you can't contain. You can't say we're going to use a black hat solution or such a powerful solution, you know, for the purpose intended, it will get out. These things will get out. And so when they surveil you and they get sensitive information on you, that's not going to stay in place. That's going to get passed around. It's not the world in which we live. It will get passed around probably the wrong people. So, you know, we've got to all be careful what we say on the phone. How many people are watching right now? I don't know. You know, we used to joke, are you listening? NSA, are you listening? But now there's no problem about that. We know there's a fair chance they can listen if they like it. It doesn't take much to do that. Well, I'm encouraged by this discussion. I only have one more question for you, Tilla. Where can I buy one of those old motor roller brick phones? I'd like to know. Yeah, I really wish they'd work on today's networks. They just don't. They don't even work. So what's your closing advice to people? Well, you know, if this is a concern, take a look at best practices for mobile device usage. CMMC is a great place to start for that. It's about how you can segment your data between different devices, either a mobile phone and a tablet or multiple mobile phones, so that even if one is compromised, they don't have the entire pizza, right? Just part of it. And if you do run with sensitive information and you do require mobile device management, look for a firm that might be able to do something like that for you. I can think of a few. Hold on. I could think of a way. Cylanda. There it is. I knew I could see that. Yeah. Of course, there's the idea about going to the United States Postal Service and putting all that in envelope and hoping it will get to where it's supposed to go. But I won't feel real confident to that right now, either. Yeah, I have a lot of stuff in the mail. I think everyone has. But, you know, regular emails like putting a postcard in a mailbox, it can be read every step of the way along the way. So yeah, guys, make sure you use encrypted email, especially for secure communications. I can't tell you how many times. And this is just a general, you know, public service announcement. Guys, if you're applying for a job, do not send any of your private information by email. You see that all the time, it gets sent to HR. Like just drop it off in person with a piece of paper and ask how it's going to be stored. That's important. You don't want your private information flowing around out there. So there you go. Valuable advice. So tell us the rest. Cylanda, joining us from headquarters central at the Cylanda company. Thank you so much until I really enjoy these discussions. And I feel certain we'll have another one soon, because there'll be more news to discuss really soon. You got it, Jay. Stay safe out there.


And Mr. President, we are grateful. We're thankful for your unfailing commitment to work. We deeply appreciate your pioneer vision of new opportunities. We respect your courage to lead us to the challenges of competition. America may indeed be in the midst of a second revolution, and you are our primary patriot. As one of 5 million Missourians who are grateful for your friendship, may I assure you of our prayers for you, our work with you, and our hospitality and welcome to you. President of the United States and Mrs. Ronald Reagan. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. And before I begin my remarks, I think out of deference to those who accompany me here on the wagon, I'm going to dictate a change in the wardrobe of the day. Well, Governor Ashcroft, Mayor Potts, the distinguished guests here on the platform, and all of you ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. It's wonderful to be in independence, and I'm especially pleased to be here for the 13th annual Santa Cala Gondes Celebration. I was born in the Midwest, oh, some time back. Well, not that long ago. There's no truth to the rumor that I waved goodbye to the Donner Party when they headed west. But the trails that we remember today were still being used up until around the turn of the century. And when I was born, stories of the pioneers and what they went through were still close to our experience. The spirit that won the West is still, in my opinion, very much with us in this country. And that's good. We have great challenges ahead of us, and we're going to need it. Now, this is the first time that I've really been out on the stump since I was in the hospital, and I missed doing this. I missed it. I even miss hecklers. I'm very happy to be in proven country on this Labor Day. I want to talk about, I have to digress for a moment, because there was a wonderful sign down here that just told me to give him hell. And I'm very proud, and I learned directly from President Truman, that he had not said that. Someone had said it to him, and his reply was, I'll tell him the truth, and they'll think it's hell. Well, I want to talk about tax reform, and I wanted to be here with you, the men and women, who work hard to support yourselves and your families with your weekly paychecks. You're always there when your neighbors need help, when the community needs help. It's the working men and women of America who pay the taxes, foot the bills, and make the sacrifices that keep this country going. And I'm here to talk to you about a long overdue change in our tax laws, a change that is aimed at benefiting you. Now, tax reform has its enemies, especially among the people who have vested interest in the status quo. Status quo, that's a Latin name for the mesh that we're in with our present tax structure. Those vested interests just hate it when we talk about reform, and they loved it when they thought I was laid up and out of action. Well, I'm back and raring to go up for the battle. It's only just begun. In fact, when I think of all the good people who've pleaded with the federal government for years to clean up our tax structure, I'm reminded of a recent, very popular movie. And in the spirit of Rambo, let me tell you, we're going to win this time. I've been thinking about ways to sum up exactly how disgusted I am by our current tax structure. And I read a little story Harry Truman once told when he rejected a bit of bad policy. He vetoed a bill. And in doing so, he said, I intended to veto it all alone. In fact, I feel like the blacksmith on the Missouri jury. The judge asked him if he was prejudiced against the defendant. And he said, oh, no, judge, we ought to give the bum a fair trial before we string him up. Well, let me tell you why we ought to take our current tax system out and string it up. It's been tried and found unfair, unworkable, and unproductive. It is a system that yields great amounts of revenues, but even greater amounts of discontent, disorder, and disobedience. It's a system that yields a lot of things that we have to have, of course, that money, but a lot of things we don't need at all. Our current tax system is anti-family. It gives a measly little deduction of just over $1,000 for each dependent. Our current system is an assault on personal improvement and effort. It taxes you at such rapidly increasing rates when you work overtime that the harder you work, the smaller the share of your income that you take home. Our current tax law is anti-growth. It discourages enterprise. And it discourages productive investment. Our current tax law is unfair. It clobbers people who don't have a team of legal advisors and accountants to look after their interests. It's supposed to be, quote, progressive, meaning the highest earners are supposed to pay a greater percentage of their earnings than, say, the typical mid-class family. But does it work out that way? Recently, the Treasury Department completed a study on the taxes paid by those in the top brackets. It wasn't a very pretty sight. True, nearly half paid the heavy tax. But a sizable number took advantage of the so-called loopholes and tax shelters. In the year 1983, there were 260,000 persons who had incomes from all sources of a quarter of a million dollars a year or more. Almost 30,000 of them paid virtually nothing at all. There were 28,000 people who made a million dollars or more in 1983. More than 900 of them didn't pay a dime in taxes. And 3,000 of them paid less than 5% of their million-dollar-plus incomes. Treasury added it all up. And they found that 17,000 taxpayers whose income was anywhere from a quarter of a million dollars a year to millions of dollars a year paid taxes of less than $6,272 apiece. Now, the reason I use that figure, it just happens that $6,272 is just about the tax that is paid by a family of four with two workers in the family and an income of $45,000 a year. Now undoubtedly, some of these high-income people had legitimate losses from bad investments. Or maybe there were cases of lawsuits and legal decisions that went against them. But for a great many, it was simply the opportunities provided in the present tax law with all its complexities, its shelters to hide in, loopholes to get lost in, the legal scams that are worked by people who don't want to pay their fair share. And the middle class gets stuck paying most of the bills. We all agree that the current system is bad. But we've never quite reformed it. Why? Well, one reason is a good, healthy skepticism on the part of our people. They've heard too many promises by too many politicians about how their lives are going to be made better. They have been hurt too many times by elected officials who promised better and delivered worse. Well, maybe another reason we haven't changed the tax structure is that in a democracy like ours, it's hard for us to get worked up and united over something unless it's truly dramatic, like, say, a very sensational murder. Well, our tax code, present tax code, is not a sensational murder. It's more like a daily mugging, and we've begun to get used to it. But another, and maybe the biggest reason we haven't changed the tax structure, is that change has been resisted at every point and is being resisted today by vested interests, those who profit from the status quo. Organizations that enjoy special tax advantages, special interests, and various professionals who are doing just fine, thank you, under the present unfair system. There's a whole slew of people in lobbying groups who share a kind of self-righteous self-interest. They're well-represented in Washington, and they're not dumb. They never say, we're against tax reform because we're in fat city. Their favorite word is, but. We're against tax reform. Well, they say, I like it, but. We can't lose state and local tax deductions. Then they say, I like it, but. I don't like the capital gains part or whatever other part it is they don't like. Well, all I can say to the, I like it, buts is, our tax reform bill isn't for special interests. It's for the general interest. And I'm here to declare to the special interests something they already know and something they hope you won't find out. Our fair share tax program is a good deal for the American people and a big step toward economic power for people who've been denied power for far too long. We have just received a report from Congress from the House of Representatives, which is controlled, as you know, by the Democratic Party. The House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families has called our tax plan the most pro-family of all the tax proposals before Congress. Now, this congressional committee says it is fair to low-income working families, fair to large families, single-parent families, and average income families. Now, that sounds like a pretty fair appraisal, and it doesn't come from the people in my own party. It's coming from the majority party, the Democrats. On this issue, I'm pleased to say that, apparently, we're not Republicans and Democrats on this. We're Americans, and we've got something to do for America. Under our plan, middle-class earners will be helped by an increase in the personal exemption from the present $1,040 a year to a more reasonable $2,000. Take a family of four, that means $8,000 is untaxed because of exemptions. And another $4,000 is untaxed because of the standard deduction which we're raising to $4,000. So in all, that family of four will find the first $12,000 of earnings won't be taxed one penny. Now, we're going to keep the itemized deductions that speak directly to how Americans live their lives. The mortgage interest deduction on the house you live in and a deduction on charitable contributions and medical expenses. But silly or unproductive tax shelters will be eliminated in our tax reform. Another reason for tax reform, even as we clean up the current system, we will be lowering rates for the vast majority of Americans. Lower rates will mean more money stays with you in your hands. More money for savings. More money for investment and economic growth. For each added dollar that you earn, up to $29,000 of taxable income, you get to keep $0.85 out of each dollar. Above $29,000 and up to $70,000, you keep $0.75 out of each dollar. And above $70,000, you keep $0.65 of every additional dollar. The highest percentage of tax cut goes to those who earn from $20,000 a year or less. They get a cut of 18%. The next biggest cut goes to those who earn from $20,000 to $50,000. They get a tax cut of 7%. And the lowest tax cut goes to those who make $50,000 or more. They get a cut of just less than 6%. Now, we think this is quite an improvement over the present complicated 14 tax brackets. Did you know that Einstein actually said he couldn't understand the form 1040? But still it remains, as you can see, that some of the progressive features are retained of the present system. But all this means an America bursting with economic opportunity, an America rolling out new jobs the way we used to roll out Model T's off the assembly line. And all of that means a better chance for our kids and a first chance for those who've been denied economic power for much too long. If our fair share tax plan didn't bear within it the promise of more justice, more equity for every American, I would never support it. A few minutes back, I mentioned Americans' skepticism about politicians. And when I did, I have a hunch you said to yourself, look who's talking. Well, it's true I've been in public office for more than a dozen years now, with another roughly three years and four months to go, the Lord willing. And since the Constitution limits a president to only two terms, there are no more elections for me, and therefore no need for political considerations in any decision that I'm called on to make. So like you, I'll be living the rest of my life with everything that we do in Washington in these next few years. And that's why I want tax reform for all of us. Now, what can you do? Will you write your congresswoman or congressman? Will you write your senators? Believe me, having been there a few years, I can tell you they do read the mail. They count the mail. And you do have an effect. They need to hear from you. Tell them to go for it. And if you do, I promise you we are going to win this time. Well, thank you. God bless you. And may I just add quickly here, as I said, I've been thinking a lot about Harry Truman. I remember when he took a step toward targeting tax reductions to help the poor and those in lower income groups. And I'm proud to be talking about this good deal in the home of the father of the fair deal. And I just figure we're taking another step toward independence in independence. I think Harry would be very pleased. Thank you all very much. God bless you all. Thank you. Mr. President, and if I could be so bold today perhaps it would be appropriate to say, Mr. Trailblazer, we would like to present to you on behalf of the city of independence and its citizens and the Chamber of Commerce who sponsors this Santa Calagon, this sculpture made by a local artist, Win Jones, as an expression of our deep appreciation for your presence here today. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, it's a delight to have you in Missouri where the wagons started as people blazed a trail west. And you're going to be blazing a trail through the wilderness of the American tax system. And I think it's good that we send a signal that just says who's the trail boss? You're the trail boss and we're behind you. We really are. On behalf of the people of this state, it's my pleasure to present this wagon with you so that you'll remember that there are those out here on the wagon train who are willing to support you as trail boss, and that as you go back to Washington to get that fairness in our system that all of us looked for, we want you to make sure that that fair and good deal for America comes. We want to thank you very much for being with us today. Well, I'm going east from here right now to get at it.


The Google Earth Engine, GE, portal provides researchers with access to satellite and other ancillary data, cloud computing and algorithms for processing large amounts of data. Despite its potential, however, the uptake and usage of this opportunity remain limited and unclear. To address this issue, we conducted a study to examine the usage patterns of the GE platform and determine if researchers in developing countries are taking advantage of the opportunity. Our analysis revealed that 300 journal articles have been published since 2011 that utilize GE in their research, distributed among 158 different journals. The highest number of publications were found in remote sensing, followed by remote sensing of environment. A significant number of papers were also published in prestigious journals like Nature and Science. Furthermore, the application areas covered by these papers were diverse, including forest and vegetation studies, malaria, and more. Landsat was the most commonly used dataset, comprising the largest portion of the GEE data portal. Data from the first through the current Landsat series is available for download in use. We also examined the geographic distribution of the data and found that the majority of studies originate from. This article was authored by Lullit Kumar and Anisamo Mutonga. We are article.tv, links in the description below.