Morning Theo. I'm gonna spend the day with Oma today. Are you pumped? Are you super pumped? Yeah? Are you gonna have fun? You're gonna party hard without mom and dad around? It's for its Mother's Day gift today. We're going to Thermia in Winnipeg. It's like a... I think it's called a Nordic spa. It's like saunas and hot tubs and pools. We have an hour massage.  I'm gonna miss you. But it's gonna be fun. You're wearing the right shirt today too. I am. Alright, Oma's waiting. Let's go see. Let's go to Oma's house. Alright. Car seat there. I installed the base in her car already. Just in case she needs to go somewhere. The bass net for her. We have to make diesel breakfast this morning. Oh yeah. How was said diesel doing? You can tell he's not feeling good. He's got a little bit of mouth pain. But he ate some eggs for breakfast. Couldn't get him to eat his regular breakfast. I feel... Does he have... Who's that? Are you gonna get used to that camera? Yeah. Oh yeah. This one doesn't have the big fluffy mic on top. So he doesn't exactly... Not as interesting. Not as interesting, yeah. Yeah, you were happy. I guess I haven't updated you guys yet. You guys heard diesel was still... Didn't really have much of an appetite this morning. But we got him to eat some eggs. And we got his meds into him. His antibiotics and his pain meds. So he ate something and he was drinking. So hopefully... I have coffee. I got Tim Morton's in the car. First time. First time parents. First. He throws up a lot too. Are they trying to be prepared? No way. Not me. Love you. Bye. Love you baby. Have fun. Start the car. I'm just kidding. I don't need a break from you. But it's still fun to go. We have arrived. This is the spa, honey. This is the spa. And it's a full day. You can come here at open and leave it close. There's a Corvette. It's like it's a pretty busy day. Look at this. Ooh, parks like this. Goofballs, that's who. Oh, you got Americans here. They came all the way from North Dakota for this. Wow. This place is full. We came here on a Thursday. It's Thursday when I'm filming this. So that it wouldn't be so full. Can you imagine how busy it must be on the weekend? Well, I think it's also a golf course back there too. So maybe some of the retirees maybe. Those guys over there with golf clubs. Yeah. Taking up all the parking, you golfers. I think I found a parking spot. Found a parking spot. Yes. If we don't fit, we can just move the car over because it's a little go cart next to us. A Mazda 2. I've never even heard one of those. They're so small. I've never even seen them. All right. Smokes a parking spot. That guy that we just saw must have been leaving. Not looking for a parking spot. Thank you, Mr. Golfer, for leaving early. All right. So this is like a full day thing. I can't take cameras in there apparently. They're anti-camera. Well, it's like a health facility. Yeah. You'll just have to believe us when we tell you it's going to be awesome. We'll tell you all about it later. We'll try to put a good picture in your mind. Lots of people. So I've checked us both in and we get these fancy wristbands. And we're just getting all our stuff together and then going in. But I just noticed or Britt actually noticed there's deer right here in the city. Just to complete this spa experience. When they're all close, they let me get... They're looking at me. I don't want to scare them. They look pretty young. Just hanging out right in the middle of the city. Like, look at this. There's a golf course here, this spa, and then that's like, we're literally in, what is this neighborhood called? Wildwood? It's on Pembina Avenue, north of Bishop Grandin. Between Bishop Grandin and McGilvery, Pembina. So this is not even the outskirts of the city. This is in the city. So... Even the car is excited. That was a good day, wasn't it? It was great. We're going home to our sun, so let's do it. I'm sweating. I'm sweating. And then there was a polar plunge and Britt talked me into it. It was a bad idea. Bad idea. So cold. Shocked my system. I wasn't ready. I was not ready. And then there was the steam vapor rooms. And then there was a hot tub. And then there was like a regular pool. And then, like I said... And then there's the sauna. And then the... what's your my call it? Where they had the off-kiss? Where they like do a towel dance and like blow the steam around the room with this towel. It's like this Nordic experience or something. It's like a Nordic ritual. A Nordic ritual.  I like you guys.  Yeah, it's good. It's a good kind of crazy. Well, yeah, it was a whole Nordic experience from Finland, I believe. This is like a fin-finish experience is what they said. Thermia. Does that mean something in Finnish or Swedish? I don't know. It means sweat. That's what it means. But I had fun. It was good. As long as she had fun. It was a wonderful day. It was a perfect day. I'm so relaxed. Me too. I feel good. My whole body feels like it's like 10 years younger. And now we have a happy reunion. You had a good day, yeah. Best part of the day. Perfect end to a perfect day. What you doing? You waving at the vlog? Okay. Oh, oh, oh. Go on, Diesel. Can I bribe you? Eat your food, buddy. You're doing good. He still hasn't regained his full appetite since his procedure, but he's getting there. Wrapping up this vlog here again. That was an incredible experience. Like I said, I had gotten two tickets for Mother's Day and she decided to take me. I didn't ask to go with her. I wanted her to go with whoever she wanted to go with and she decided to take me. Pardon me, and I was excited. And we each got an hour massage. So what do they all have there? They have the vapor room. You walk in there, it's like a hot steam sauna. It's the only way I can describe it. They have dry saunas. They have a bonfire area that's all sort of closed off. It's sort of like a log cabin without a roof. There's a big nice bonfire. I don't know where they get the wood for the bonfires there, but they have little bonfires burning all over the place. And just the smell was amazing. Whatever wood they were burning was just amazing. It's sort of like a beach. It's all sand and you can lay on these beach loungers and they serve drinks and food down there. And this infusion thing that happens every hour. They come out, they ring this gong and everyone sort of piles into the sauna room. It's like a steam room. And then they they drop this ice ball infused with scents like eucalyptus and orange onto the hot rocks sort of like at the front. We're sort of like in a U-shape or a V-shape around them, right? And they drop it on. This Nordic towel dance with music playing. They dance to the music while they move the steam around the room. Really cool. They have these hot rocks. What was it called again? This room where there's like these hot rocks we can go lay on and relax. They got chairs and loungers everywhere. They have a hot tub, massive hot tub, huge pool, polar plunge, which is like ice cold water that you can jump into. I did it once. I didn't like that part at all. But a lot of people did. Apparently it's really good for the body. I don't know how, but apparently it's really good for the body. You go into like a hot steamy vapor room which is also infused with scents as well.  You smell great. But you go into these hot steam rooms and then you jump into the polar plunge into this ice cold water and apparently that's really good for you. It didn't feel good for me. A lot of people there really liked it. They got a nice restaurant there. Like I said, our massage.  I had a blast. And Britt really had a blast. And that's what it was all about. It was all about Britt. It was her mother's day gift. And I'm glad she enjoyed it. As for Diesel, as you can see there, he's sort of struggling with his appetite. I think his mouth is hurting. He's got pills too because he's got antibiotics that he's taking. And pain pills. We had to get creative with how we could get him to eat those and get that into his belly. What we ended up doing, I think we show it in tomorrow's vlog, I don't want to spoil it. We found ways to get him to eat anyways. So he is doing fine. And as of me filming this ending here, he's doing great. He fully recovered. It was a fully successful procedure. Great again. Honestly, it smelled like death. I'm not just being hyperbolic or I'm not just over-exaggerating. It literally smelled like death. It smelled like he ate a dead squirrel. It was so bad. So that's totally gone now. And totally fixed. And handled it like a champ. Everything went well. So thanks everybody for hanging out today. And I will see you in tomorrow's video. Take care. Leave me a comment down below. Thanks.


Good aim 840 here. So I haven't done any videos or done any blogging for eight days because I assume I had COVID and I Didn't know about normal people. I think this is the third time that But I've had COVID but when when I'm sick like the last thing I want to do is figure out how to Get tested or go to a doctor or anything like that. I just want to like lie in bed And so that's pretty much what I've done. I got I've met my Yeah, my minimal obligations. I met my obligations as a 12 step sponsor I didn't cancel any of my appointments with my sponsors. I met work obligations stuff that I was able to just do from home And I did some minimal cleaning but pretty much aside from that. I just blew off every other Obligation or I didn't even want to talk to people so I'm kind of impressed that most people with COVID they you know go out and get to the bother of getting tested But I didn't want I've got a rapid antigen test here. I just I was so sick I just didn't want to figure out how to use it I had so little bandwidth like I just wanted to use my bandwidth to meet my my most pressing obligations and then just let everything else go and It's kind of a state of nihilism that you that I go into anyway when I get sick Not 100% nihilism in that I made sure that I still met my my 12-step oblique obligations of the sponsor Not out of my altruistic concern for my sponsors But because I knew that would be good for me I knew that I would feel better if I was actively engaged in being helpful to other people That that would give me a sense of meaning and purpose and strength The talking to sponsors and talking to them about their Compulsions and sharing about my own compulsions and addictions that would that would help me So I wasn't a complete nihilist, but I would say that overall the intensity of my beliefs You know probably dropped to about five or ten percent of what they are normally So I Mean I still believed in God like all through the illness, but I wasn't praying constantly to God I Guys honest truth. I wasn't thinking about God that much when I was sick. I wasn't thinking about Toyota. I Wasn't even thinking that much about the 12 steps Just my my basic obligations to my sponsors about all the thinking I did about the 12 steps for spiritual practices I did some Maybe five ten minutes of meditation a day I tried to keep certain things, you know reasonably clean while I was sick, but I let everything else go and I'm just kind of thinking about that now at 3 a.m. That there is a There's a productive and adaptive use of illness and and akin to sadness or depression in that you let go of Everything that you used to believe in right?  It was just so Painful, okay, I didn't even want to talk my throat hurt so much for about six days And so it's good to like I got out of you know producing any content, right? I didn't make any videos for The last eight days. I didn't make any blog posts for the last eight days. I Think I made two tweets Of course of eight days so kind of let go of everything I believed about the world I let go of almost everything I believed about reality and I just existed and It's it's useful. It's really adaptive to take that pause Like to step away from producing and step away in large part from believing in anything I was just so wiped out That I Couldn't even maintain commitment to watching any particular movie or TV program I tried to distract myself by watching a movie or a TV program and I couldn't even commit to that I just like alternate between different shows intensity of what beliefs okay, so I believe in God, but The intensity of my belief in God significantly dipped when I had covered like I was just miserable All right, I have you know, right-wing political beliefs But the intensity of my right-wing political beliefs dropped to about 5% of what they they normally are while I had covered I'm sure I've got various cultural beliefs and I've got oh, I got a belief about myself and the contributions that I can make and that you know, I have important insights to share and and And and the intensity of those beliefs just, you know, basically dropped away to zero for the eight days now, I'm not on any psychotropic drugs Haven't been on any psychotropic drugs since 2009 So Like how do you know if your wrist is healthy, right?  All right, there's absolutely no empirical difference between The behavior of people who believe in God and the people who don't except the people who believe in God have more little stronger in-group identity But there's just absolutely no empirical Basis for the things that you're saying now and the sand that's your faith statement just like some people believe in aliens and other people believe that we're really being controlled by lizard people and you believe that if You believe in God then you do the right thing without hesitation, but it's it's it has as much validity as belief in Lizard people. I mean, I know so many of my sponsors believe in God And they've been absolutely addicted to drugs to alcohol to sex to pornography to Deading to under earning to all sorts of emotional compulsions. So there's absolutely no connection between believing in God and doing the right thing All right, people can believe in God or in lizard people till the cows come home Does it necessarily mean they're gonna do the right thing or they're leaving come even closer doing the right thing? Or that they'll even be any more likely to do the right thing than atheists or agnostics There are people who claim to believe in God and there are people actually believe in God. Yeah, but there's no empirical way of Finding a difference between them. So it's a It's just a coping mechanism that people who believe in God and who believe that people believe in God The strength and the knowledge to do the right thing It's a coping mechanism for trying to account for why in reality There's no evidence that people who believe in God act in a superior fashion on a consistent basis than people who don't believe in God So you have to have some kind of coping mechanism. So you come up with oh my God if you are If only you like really believed in God And if you if you say you believe in God, but you're doing the wrong thing Then they're just you know, then you must not really believe in God like that's just a coping mechanism So the volume's too low. Yeah, I'm not gonna boom out my voice at 321 a.m. All right. Yeah, do people who have dogs Speaking of that, do people who have dogs have any consideration for their neighbors? Like, you know how annoying it is to have a yapping barking dog next door. I mean and Like having a live streamer next door at 321 a.m. Who's like booming their voice out? I kind of imagined that'd be a lot of fun either. So, yeah, I try to have consideration for other people Whether I have an incredibly intense belief in God at that moment, or I don't have any belief in God at that moment Just for my own welfare. I prefer to have Some consideration for other people and the effects of my behavior in my speaking have on them I have no desire to wake up people around me Just so that I could have stronger voice quality on a live stream Atheists in Neelus who have no principles. There's no empirical Basis for seeing that, right? Atheists raise children about as well as believers in God Most Americans believe in God and this belief in God is a mile wide and an inch deep and You just don't see any empirical difference between people who believe in God and people who don't believe in God Generally speaking People who have religious principles would defend their religious people principles, wouldn't they? Claire you're taking people as though what they say about themselves. That's what's true Right people generally speaking a religious for social reasons. It's the way they've been socialized It's the way they've been habituated. It's where their friends are and it's the way to socially signal that you're a good person in some circumstances Okay for every 100 religious people you'll have about one person who has a deep understanding of their religion and can can enunciate the major theological and philosophical Underpinnings of their religion just like for every, you know, 100 people who ostensibly have some interest in politics Probably fewer than 5% have any kind of coherent world view so It's like thinking that the war in Ireland between The Protestants and the Catholics is primarily a religious dispute You always hear it's like oh, it's you know Catholics versus the Protestants But they're not they're not divided by the finer points of Christian theology. They're just two different groups and religion is the uniform that Distinguishes the groups but religion's not the basis for the actual fighting Anyway I Going back to alright your your wrist is working Alright, if it does the things that you'd want your wrist to do so my wrist work I have no problems with my wrist my wrist have no no pain And so my wrist is is adaptive, right it because it does everything it needs to do so too with With with your beliefs like your beliefs are adaptive if they make you happy and make you a Pro-social person and they enable you to do the things that you want to do Then then your beliefs are adaptive and so too with your emotions like I Think going through, you know crushing experience like like covert if you've got a severe case So I'd say that mine was like a seven out of ten. So I was able to work from home I was able to meet my minimal obligations I was able to meet my obligations of 12 set sponsor and that was it for for eight days So other than that I was just in retirement. I just there was nothing Almost nothing that I believed in beyond that, right? I had some light belief in God and in commitment to my 12 step sponsors But other than that like Donald Trump, right is his home at Mar-a-Lago is rated And I was just struck by very low intensity of my reactions So I think that's really adaptive that we that nature has has built in these mechanisms where we kind of pause and Lie back from our beliefs, all right. I Suspect most people when they're sick that they have a similar experience to me that the the intensity of their beliefs diminishes and This is the thing that I would find a Good analogy to that when I flew back to Australia November 16th, right? I Go back to Australia November 17th. I think I arrived in Australia 2021 and when I have time I open up my laptop and I check in on the LA Times and I find as I'm reading the LA Times that the the news about what's going on in Los Angeles and California has about Five to ten percent of the of the interest to me that it normally has like simply shifting my location and Everything that was once important to me is pretty much considerably diminished The people who are most important to me in LA because they weren't around it kind of diminished the intensity of that that connection. I remember I left America I left California for a year after high school went back to Australia and that largely broke my sports addiction. I remember I came back to Sacramento in June of 1985 and The World Series that fall I think it had featured the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals And it was the first World Series in like seven years that I just didn't care about Because being away from California or you know all my sporting Beliefs and attachments just got attenuated because they didn't receive any social support And so too with being sick. I just I just struck by how I I'd step back from from all my ideological commitments and cares and concerns and Just kind of kind of felt distanced from my life because I wasn't really participating in my life And so I think it's it's being sick in that way is kind of similar to to sadness and depression that these can serve a An adaptive function because this is an opportunity to step back from the things that you do habitually and Ask yourself, you know Are these things that I typically commit myself to and put a lot of energy into and really believe strongly about are they worth it? Like are my commitments worth it? Are my beliefs worth it? My practices worth it is my life how I'm living it worth it Is the way I'm spending my time worth it and so with depression or illness you have that opportunity to just step back from your routine to reassess your your beliefs your your practices your life your your commitments and then to think through new possibilities new beliefs new commitments new practices and then also to Work them out in in your head like okay after kind of this soul-shattering experience of a strong bout of illness You you come out of it changed and affected and My dad who meant my dad the Christian preacher very strong beliefs, but he would he would come out of illness with this lethargy and And a sensible you know verging on nihilism if the illness was severe enough But that just didn't really care about anything very much like he would need his obligations he was he was a good man and But he would he just didn't care as much anymore Claire call says I'm never depressed. In fact, I'm rather surprised at the robustness of my mental health Yeah, it was Interesting about Claire car. Even though she's always falling out with people never a cursor that there might be something that she's Done that has played a role in other people falling out with her So Abby if that's if that's one's vision of good mental health to never introspect It's oh, you know, maybe there's something that I'm doing. Let's cause all these other people to turn away from me She never has to has to struggle with that kind of introspection.  And so I was just watching this Netflix series on Manti Teo who who got catfished? All right, he got this girlfriend, but it was actually a guy who was calling him He never actually meets his imaginary girlfriend. And then when the the relationship becomes a little too intense the guy kills off the the girlfriend character and Manti Teo who was a linebacker at Notre Dame? He looked like the biggest fool in the world so for a while he had like the number one feel-good sports story of the year and all these sports publications were Saying what an amazing story it was that Manti had because his grandmother and his imaginary girlfriend both died on the same day and so Manti Teo had I'm not fazed by rejection.  It really bothers you. You obsess about it. You can't understand it Anyone talks to you and you'll go.   It's it's just stunning to to see But Manti Teo had this hero system where he was like dedicating his life to the memory of his is like dead girlfriend Who he never met and turned out didn't exist was the was the catfishing creation of some dude And and so I think it's good to step back from one's hero system and that naturally happens when you're either depressed or sick and and reevaluate, you know, how real how true is this and And and is this helping me to be to lead the life that I want to live and so Manti Teo this national football league player like he had a hero system that worked until it didn't until it became exposed that it was all you know a catfishing scheme and In many ways, that's that's no different from other hero systems. All right, we all Choose a Hero system right those those who are You know cognitively developed if you don't just simply accept the hero system that's handed down to you by society by your family by your community but if you actively choose a hero system, you're making a leap of faith and So it's I think it's good to step back sometimes from your leaps of faith your leaps of commitment and like reassess Is this real? Is this true? Is this good? And it's so funny in the Manti Teo story He played for Notre Dame and there's this talk about, you know, what are our values, right? All right, football is an incredibly damaging sport. I mean football does incredible damage to people like You know cognitively damages them physically damages them and so these football playing institutions That are moralizing about the values of their institution. You're an institution that destroys people You're an institution that wrecks lives for the entertainment of viewers and I enjoy the entertainment value of football But come on now. I mean obviously These these football Institutions that believe that they have these profound, you know value systems. It's a tremendous delusion and Most of us probably live, you know by a considerable amount of delusion and sometimes delusion serves you and sometimes it doesn't So is you and how can you? reassess your delusions and assess, you know, whether or not they're serving you by a good bout of illness or Depression, right? That gives you the necessary distance from your illusions and delusions and beliefs and hero systems to think a second time about whether the whole thing is serving you so I Think maybe God even created nihilism, right? Because The temporary application of some nihilism to your life during illness and depression it gives you the distance to reassess often what are arbitrary and and Invented and delusional hero systems that one might be living by I Mean if you listen to interviews with athletes, they're always hyping themselves up With with delusions like oh, they you know if we win this game, they can't take it away from us You know, they didn't respect us. I mean the delusions of you know sports fanatics and and athletes are a legion and To some extent these delusions serve them, but then you see with the mentee-tea story how sometimes your delusions don't serve you and Who's the who's the real hero in the mentee-tea story? It's his Dead transgender girlfriend. You know, he really missed it gay dead transgender girlfriend So while I've been sick over the past week, the only thing that's kept me going is mentee-tea is dead transgender girlfriend I dedicate this show to her and It's interesting He would never have been nominated for the Heisman Trophy and he almost won the Heisman Trophy Right the Heisman Trophy is voted on by sports writers and they love a good story and so He received all this acclaim and was nominated for the most prestigious award in college football For a completely nonsensical delusional, you know catfishing story Where he imagined he was in in a relationship with someone who didn't exist so I appreciate the distance that illness has given me from my hero systems and And let me see things with even greater clarity going forward Talk to you later


What's happening y'all? So um new pictures came out these different concepts and designs for the new Star Wars movie and these pictures are badass. Now let me see what the article says right here. Okay so it's real short says for the past several weeks we've been hearing lots of descriptions of episode 7's concept art by the way of our friends over at makingstarwars.net and now it seems a lot of that art has made its way online. An image shack account called the Millennium Falcon has popped and appears to feature much of the same episode 7 concept art that MSW was describing. In addition we've heard from a source close to production that these pictures are legit. So if you are trying to avoid all episode 7 spoilers stop reading now this is your official spoiler alert. If you're cool with saying it then scroll down and check it out below. Now I'm gonna tell you right now okay the the the the ones that caught my eye are the ones that are pretty much the one that's first up. This one caught my eye right away I was just like whoa who is that? Who is he?  He got the mechanical hand. He's all scarred up and he's holding Dar's helmet. Who is he? Anyway it looks like he's gonna be somebody pretty cool. Then of course anything with a lightsaber gets catches my eye but that's not that that that that woman with the man holding it the regular Jedi. The one with the female holding it with the reverse grip that's the one that caught my attention okay and then the last one that caught my attention. See because you know I'm looking at everything. Everything looks nice and there's just spaceships and stuff like that.  This was this was like during like they were released like I think maybe a little bit before I don't know when they were released.


So when somebody tells me that demon possessed, that don't know me, and there's people that come that don't necessarily know me, I ask them, what's my name? What's my legal name? If the demon can't answer what's my name, then there's not a real demon because the demon will supernaturally know what's my legal name. So let me get this straight. The demon that doesn't want to be there, all he's got to do to not be cast out is to not say your real name. Because obviously the kingdom of darkness will know my legal name. Is there any chance the demon would lie? As far as demons lie, I don't find any New Testament scripture where demons were lying when they were being interrogated. Why would they lie? Because they're demons. I think people that don't do deliverance are the ones that say that the most, and they're assuming demons would lie. Why would they lie?


Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to this webinar of the Geographical Sciences Committee of the United States National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Our speaker today is Dr. Doug Richardson, who will be providing an overview of the ethics landscape in the Geographical Sciences. This is just the first webinar in a series organized by the Geographical Sciences Committee on Ethics and Biases in Geographical Sciences. My name is Glenn McDonald and I'm a member of the Geographical Sciences Committee. I'll be having the honor of moderating today's webinar. Here's a few quick notes before we get started. Doug will speak for about 30 minutes and then we'll have a question and answer period for the remainder of the hour. We will be taking your questions through the Q&A box, which is located at the bottom of your screen. Simply type your question in the box at any time and click send. We'll be collecting the questions and then we'll be asking them of Doug at the end of his presentation. I want to tell you that this webinar is being recorded. Please understand that any question you submit may be read aloud and included in the recording. I'll link to the recording as well as a copy of the slides will be posted on our website within the week. If you have any technical issues during the event, please contact Zoom support. Before I turn to Doug, I just want to say a few things about the Geographical Sciences Committee. May I have the next slide, please? The Geographical Sciences Committee is a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The National Academies themselves are a non-profit organization with the dual mission of honoring the nation's top scientists and providing objective, independent advice on science, technology, engineering, and medicine. National Academies were established under the direction of President Lincoln and have been providing these services to the country for over 150 years. May I have the next slide, please? The Geographical Sciences Committee has a mission of providing advice to society and government at all levels on using the methods of spatial analysis representation. We address the geographic dimensions of human-environment interactions, spatial location and concentration, place-based research, and policy at all spatial scales. The committee also fosters international cooperation by serving as a liaison to other National Geographical Committees and to the International Geographical Union. The committee thanks the National Sciences Foundation for funding. May I have the next slide? Here's a list of the current members of the committee, and the committee membership does change and represents the breadth of geography. May I have the next slide, please? This just gives you an overview of some of the issues that the committee has tackled in the last few years and provided advice on and provided webinars on and provided a dialogue on. So quite a wide range. May I have the next slide, please? Now I have the pleasure of introducing today's speaker, Douglas Richardson. Doug is a distinguished researcher at the Center for Geographic Analysis and the Institute of Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University. Previously, he was the longest serving executive director of the American Association of Geographers. He had a highly successful renewal of that organization. He greatly expanded the AAG's membership and international footprint, developed dynamic and wide-ranging new research initiatives, and built a strong academic publishing and financial foundation which carries the AAG forward today and ensures geography's future. Prior to joining the AAG, Doug founded and was the president of Geo Research Incorporated, a scientific research firm that developed and patented the world's first real-time space-time interactive GPS GIS functionality. That's transformed the way in which geospatial data and geographic information is now collected, experienced, mapped, and used within geography, and many, many other disciplines as well. The concepts, technology, and innovations pioneered by Doug and Geo Research are now ubiquitous and at the heart of a wide array of real-time interactive mapping, navigation, mobile computing, consumer devices such as cell phones, and location-based business applications. They have also become central to real-time management, day-to-day operations of large government entities, corporations, and NGOs. Doug sold his company and the core patents in 1998 and has since continued to develop the field of real-time space-time integration in geography and the geographic information sciences through international and interdisciplinary research in areas such as health, sustainable environments, economic development, human rights, and coupled natural human systems. More recently, he's been working on the integration of spatial concepts, data, and analysis in the humanities and social sciences. So it is my pleasure now then to turn this over to Doug. Hello. Thank you, Glenn. Can everyone hear me? Well, I'd like to thank the National Academies and the Geographic Sciences Committee for hosting these, not only this webinar, but a whole series on the topic of ethics. So what I'm going to do is, because this is the first of several in the series, I'm going to try to provide a basic foundation for the whole series to do a broad overview of issues and topics that are ethical issues and topics in the field of geography. I've also been asked to speak to some of the ethical dilemmas that I've experienced over the years in my long career with geography in many different sectors. So, next slide please. So the overview will do two things. First, I'm going to provide this overview of ethical issues and topics in geography. And the AG has been evolving a statement of professional ethics since 1998 with significant revisions and updates in 2005 and 2009. So we're going to survey briefly and discuss some of the most important ethical topics and issues in this document, particularly as they pertain to geographical research. And then secondly, we'll highlight a few pressing geographical and geospatial research ethical issues and go into them in a bit more detail, although we don't have a lot of time. But we'll look at dual use, geographic research, privacy and geospatial data, confidentiality, intergenerational ethics and human rights, and then COVID-19 and geographic health research. And in our discussion of COVID-19, I would also, we'll also have a poll set up for the audience to make an ethical decision. We'll pose a question to you about COVID-19 privacy and ethics. So it'll be interesting to see how that comes out. Next slide please. So the, before I start, I just, many, I know there are many students and people from other countries and on this webinar. And so I just wanted to clarify that ethics refers to rules provided by an external source, such as codes of conduct and workplaces and and morals, which are often confused with ethics refers to an individual's own principles regarding right and wrong. There's a wide range of philosophical theory and interpretation on the nature and basis of ethics. So people come from many, many different directions toward these, these topics next, next slide please. And so a few, few of the, the AG statement of professional ethics is quite lengthy and I've taken out a few excerpts that I thought would be most salient and that could be covered in the time that we have. Notice that this has been updated twice already. So it's an evolving document as all ethics statements should be. During my term at the AG, it was updated in 2005 and 2009. I played some portion, some role in that. So the preamble says that, you can read it here, the members of the AG recognized that the conduct of geographic research and analysis as well as the transmission of geographic theories. The concepts and information involves a wide variety of ethical considerations, almost everything that we do has some kind of a slice of ethical consideration. As I mentioned, it's very broad and this statement was great, it was drafted with the intent to encourage active thoughtful engagement with ethical issues both within the scope of the statement, and in relationship to various circumstances confronted by geographers. Something that you'll hear over and over again in discussions of ethics is discussion. And in conversation, really, these ethics mean a lot of different things to different people in their backgrounds and where they how and where they come to to get their ethical guidance and their moral beliefs. Next slide please. So, I'd like to raise the issue of ethical behavior during field research. This is and this is sort of the bottom one as well. Research involving indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups. Geographers, almost all geographers do field work and we're out all around the world interacting with people, learning from them and, and sometimes teaching them in our work. And that's one of the great things about geography, we don't spend most of our time behind a computer screen, some do, but, but we really do a lot of field work and I've had, I've been privileged to be able to go to almost every country in the world during my career. But there are some important guidelines and principles on governing field research. Places, people things should be treated justice researchers would like others to treat their own places, possessions and themselves. Now that's a little bland and sort of golden Rulish, but, but it's really a something to take very seriously. In the case of environmental studies focused on non human topics field research should be conducted in ways that minimize long term impacts. And it's that's important because most, most, most research doesn't doesn't really deal with the environment to the extent that we do. And not only physical environment but cultural and environmental studies may generate data that are co opted by others with damaging results. So it's, it's careful. You have to be very careful on how you handle and disseminate that those results. Now research involving indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, etc. Some of these groups are potentially vulnerable or marginalized, raise the special challenges and require special care regardless of whether the research is conducted by members of those groups. For indigenous communities researchers need to engage in a process of respect reciprocity and mutual benefit in the research. And I've commented on these, these principles are explicitly outlined in nine guidelines for research and indigenous peoples. And that those were led by Doug Hervin at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian it's a very, very cogent set of guidelines. I've had the pleasure of working with the American Indian tribes for many years living on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation for two years and working for a national organization representing 25 Indian tribes who had energy resources on environmental and economic issues. And I, you know, the, the, what I always did in those circumstances was, was to say, you know, I would always ask what is it you need, what is it you want, and how can I help you. And those are three good questions to ask wherever you go. I would not presume to have answers not presume to, to know more about things and to know about things in all of the different ways that people can know about things. So, it's a, it's a rich way I tell you it's something that I hope all of you get a chance to do is to really work closely with with indigenous peoples at some point in your career. You gain a lot and I always tried to make sure that they gained a lot and we did some very, very positive things during, during those times. Next slide please. Professional relations with one another collegiality is a core principle of ethics. I think for the most part are, you know, you see among geographers and you see people are pretty, they're pretty decent they're pretty good, not very many people get going to geography or for fame or riches. And they tend to be quite interested in what they're doing and quite straightforward and honest. During my tenure as a executive director, although I was, you know, I was exposed to a dozen or so incidences in the discipline, not involving me but in the discipline where unfounded accusations and rumors about colleagues became an issue and it's one of the most heartbreaking kinds of situations. And I think that if I were to say one of the most, I would say one of the most egregious form of violation of ethics is when that sort of thing happens. And I, I would hope their entire discipline would rise up and oppose that when it does happen. So, avoiding discrimination discrimination and harassment. This is very much I think in in our current culture, and the AG has developed also a professional conduct policy and procedures, which grew out of sexual harassment policies and so forth. That's been developed over the last four or five years. You can find this document, and you can find all of these statement of ethics on the AG's website just ag.com.org, and then go to governance and then go to statement of professional ethics, and you can find this expanded on in great, great detail. In the sustaining community, geographers strive to create a maintain a diverse pluralistic and inclusive professional community. And again here, I think is an issue is in an area where we really need to do a lot more work. We've been an organization for 115 years or so. We've not seen a woman or a person of color in leadership positions in our organization. Top leadership positions. And we, we, in our geography departments we were, we're, there's a lot of rhetoric and so forth but Joe Darden who's been a mentor of mine for years. And the rest is the point that that kind of change is only going to happen when in hires are made. And so, I think we really, it's no longer, I'm no longer making those decisions but I would urge all of you to, to think very, very seriously about what it would mean to our discipline. If we were to have a woman of color, for example, in a leadership position, strong leadership position in our discipline. I think that would be transformative. And I hope that at some point in the future that will happen. So that's a thing to really focus on. Next slide please. Relations here with two different groups. Relations with the larger scholar of the community and relations relations with people places and things. Some of these are just sort of self evident but I'd like to comment on the first item here. Our scope is really an interdisciplinary discipline and we have a very core need, not, not just to, you know, go out and have lunch and go to meetings with, you know, other organizations. But our, our, our research really is entangled with so many other scholar like scholarly communities. And I think of core need for us it is to really the focus on impactful geographic research and scholarship which, if we do that, that will, we, I guarantee you we will have a great relations with the larger scholarly community. And that's the one way, one message I think that that I'd like to leave a lot of people with. It's also important because we learn, we also are learning a lot from everyone else. So, because we're so interdisciplinary in our work. The way we are going to grow our discipline and stature and in students wanting to come in is through that kind of research and scholarly work. There's been a lot of emphasis. I guess on public relations PR and so forth. That's, that's useful and it's important and so forth but I think that that it's, it's definitely secondary to our scholarly and research missions and teaching. Then relations with people places and things. This is something that geographers do more of, I think, then then probably most other disciplines, because we're traveling all the time. We're focused on places. When we're doing geographical research. We're having the same kinds of interactions that we talked about in terms of Indigenous peoples and so forth, but wherever we go, we're in a different culture and we really have to be respectful of that. And we have to enjoy it. So there are formal ways of guiding our research in addition to sort of common sense. And those are institutional review boards and they're kind of a, for most of us, it's a little bit of a pain in the neck, but it's something that you have to go through. When you are writing research proposals and then after they get funded, you really have to have that review and have your work reviewed and make sure that human subjects are being treated as they should be. And then our guidelines here also go on to state that research in the geographical sciences should be conducted only after careful consideration of these fundamental principles or four of them here. Some are a bit repetitive, but respect for persons and communities. And the state of individuals and groups to be informed that they are research subjects to be given adequate information so that they can make informed consent decisions, and to have content confidentiality arrangements to protect data interviews, etc. Other information to the extent possible. And that's pretty, that's, that's pretty important. You know, we have had incidences and geography. We had a research project in the Mojaca, Mexico that had been funded by the military and and there was perhaps some miscommunication or there wasn't enough clarity in terms of the funding and of that project that ended up being a very controversial event in geography's history and took a lot of energy and time. But I think lessons, good lessons have come out of it for everyone. It was a project by the American Geographical Society, but but all of us came together and tried to look at that and find out what we could then do looking forward so it was an important reminder that we need to really take this seriously. Now equity is another thing that parades are already all, not just a G's but all equity, all ethics issues, sharing of research research results to the practical legal with individuals and communities affected by the research now. And equity also is a key factor in so, so many ethical decisions.  If you have someone to go do that, whose family might, the person who you're paying may become infected, maybe his family or her family would become infected. So you'll have to look at equity issues almost all the time and disparate power relationships when you're looking at ethics. It's a precondition of coming to conclusion if people, you know, if people are not, you know, have no choice, but to do that sort of work. So we have to say, should I be going to the grocery store and getting that my own groceries or should I be further all of the risk of that to someone else by paying for it, just because I have more money than they have. And so that those kinds of issues and those kinds of thought patterns I think are important in equity is always and always should be one aspect of that conversation and that final decision. And I guess I think you hear about this all the time, the maximization of benefits and the minimization of harm from research. You kind of look at what you're doing, is it really beneficial.  So, and certainly you want to avoid doing things that harm others. And then respect for ecosystems. This one, this is, this is pretty straightforward, but it also is unique to not pretty unique to geography. We have in physical geography and our human geography and our GIS and GI science communities of researchers. We're always involved, probably more than others with ecosystems, biodiversity, natural resources, climate, landforms and so forth. I think this raises a point I wanted to make, and I'll do it here. I've been I worked with the triple AS for many years and we helped found something called the science and human rights coalition, which was a coalition of 30 or so. Disciplinary associations. And one of the issues that I chose to look at is sort of this intergenerational human right. And I think that that this is something that we all think about when we think about climate change, certainly, but there are so many other things soils, sustainable oceans and so forth. We really have to think about it. I think there should be an international human right to future generations to receive a livable planet from our generation. So, there's a lot of interesting work and conversation that can be had around this topic and I would urge urge you to kind of pick it up. Yeah, but and also get involved with the science and human rights coalition at triple AS. We know the AG not only helped found that I served as its chair for the first five of its steering committee for the first five years of its existence. It's a good, it's been very good and program and I'd urge you to check it out. Next please. So now, I want to talk briefly about dual use research in geography. I think most of you know, have heard the term dual use research that means that you're doing research that has can can be very positive to be very helpful for the world and so forth. But it can also then become used for other purposes.  You know, look at Robert Oppenheimer and his sort of regrets over some of the work that he did there and I would say even even in my own career. When we first developed the real time interactive GPS GIS systems and tools and did work around the world with those. I, you know, we started out we were we were doing environmental work, transportation work, energy work and so forth and with those tools and then eventually everybody we started getting a lot of interest from other countries we started getting a lot of interest from the military and defense agencies and and the intelligence community and so forth and and those those the developments that we we did there we were quite concerned about how they were in a final finally end up doing and now for better or worse. They're ubiquitous but they're also ubiquitous in in in how we fight our wars are our wars now are basically one great big real time interactive GPS GIS process where everything every feature every moving activity is all integrated in and monitor and act upon in real time with with location and with underlying geographic information of those areas so these are kinds of things that you kind of live with and you try to figure out how to make something happen and I think that you know I've chosen to do become quite involved in human rights and human rights active activities and organizations and and I think there's a that's useful but but you can also use technology upon technology and there's a a program that we're called the tech and human values initiative and that's designed to to leverage the university's resources to build capacity and collaborations that empower humankind to shape technology rather than be shaped by it and this is something that you know in my ongoing work I I try to I try to focus on on how you know there's just such a plethora of technologies out there but you know how can we either technically or through policies blunt the negative aspects of those things that we've done next slide types of dual use research in our evolving geospatial technologies are very extensive of course they involve all the things we've been talking about that have been involved in this kind of stuff for the first real time sensor inputs and so forth and then sort of from this became a spatial temporal data explosion of data gathered then the building of cyber GIS infrastructure to to house and manage it and spatial data analytics including now artificial intelligence and decision making I think personally I think that artificial intelligence is is really fraught with with some outcomes that would be not be to all of our advantages it's a way of making those who have access to certain things even more have have deeper access to it so it's also something that could be very dehumanizing in certain ways I think we should all keep an eye on that see what we can use it for that's useful and good and really take a look at where it might be going in the next five ten years and further on okay next slide so this was this is just the something about the kinds of work that we did next slide and this is the kind of a system that we built up with all of the positioning and attribute data gathering and sensors inputs and tracking and so forth next slide so dual use is really something to consider and something to act on to the extent that one can and particularly if you have the technical ability and the philosophical insight to address those issues I think it's almost an obligation that you have to have to follow through on it it's important we all I think everybody understands the geospatial data in its privacy and confidentiality issues but it's also important that qualitative research methods in geography require attention to research subject human subject privacy you know interviews lots of locations and lots of cultural things that may or may not be good to disclose are at play in qualitative research so let's not overlook that next slide please some good things happening around this area and that is quite a bit of research going on in trying to find solutions for data privacy and confidentiality issues I've been working with a team through three NSF grants to try to build up a geospatial virtual data enclave within which confidential data could be well it could be archived but also it could be analyzed within a safe environment and that's really important because you know if you can't everybody has to write data management plans whether you're getting an NSF or NIH grants you have to say what are you going to do with that data after you're done with this research that we're paying you to do and so you know right now the idea behind that I should say is the impetus to want to share scientific research so get it out there share it on your desk drawer don't keep it on your computer and not share that data and that research so there's a the institutions that fund research want to get it out into the world so others can build on it and replicate it but if you can't access it because it's confidential then you can't build on it you can't share it so a lot of the impetus in the management plans sort of came to a screeching halt when people began to understand locational privacy and location is so central to data confidentiality that it is really affects a very large number of research research projects at NSF all across the discipline sociology and psychology engineering and so forth and so what we've done is we've developed a virtual geospatial data enclave specifically for geospatial data research so that it can be shared it can be built upon by other scientists it can be replicated if you can't access if you can't replicate research you don't have science and it's a core thing that you have to do if and if you can't get the data then you can't replicate it so there you don't you can't continue to build on it as science should so we've had some very very promising outcomes in this pathway of geospatial virtual data enclaves and the good thing about them is you can access it from your desktop computer you don't have to go travel to three or four other states and enter a cement block area in order to look for the data so that project is really exciting and we're starting to see some major results coming out of it so there are good things happening in the data confidentiality realm for us particularly for geographers next slide I will let you kind of just read through this but this summarizes some of the research methods that we're using next slide we're also adding a lot of masking and spatial statistics software into this system next slide and also something that's been really it's about five or six years old but it's been sort of unhauled for a number of years we're working with several other universities to try to develop an international geospatial help research network or not to develop it to revive it we have universities in North America Europe and Asia who have been and will be on the steering committee of this new network that we're reviving next slide so COVID-19 as you read the newspapers if you turn on the television there's a tremendous amount of information going on about COVID-19 and geographic research there are now dozens of conferences, dozens of forums and so forth the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard held a forum a few weeks ago on the very topic here how can we look at geospatial research but also geospatial solutions to COVID-19 and it was very interesting so those of you who want an exploding research area of course I'm sure you've already jumped into this area I want to next slide please okay I should go back one if you would kind of like this so I want to address a little bit about some of the debate on COVID-19 and what turns out to be sort of locational privacy issues to a large extent whether we have Apple and Google do work on exposure notification that's all voluntary and it's not really location it's looking at gatherings basically who's near others doesn't really involve GPS it does give notions but it does look where people aggregate but there are lots of other methods that are going on that are perceived at least to be pretty more successful and that is where you're really looking at location you're looking at addresses you're looking at working with those people to find the people that they've interacted with that appears to be the most successful way of curbing the number of deaths and illnesses and ultimately the length of shutdowns that have occurred I'd like to have you all think about that the tracing the tracing of people sort of testing, treating and tracking or tracing is really a method that can be done very loosely and would probably require more than half of the population to adopt them as for them to really be useful but I think in conjunction with that there still is a question about how do we approach that thing with privacy so I'd like to propose a poll and a question to you could you put up the question for the poll please so the poll is the ethical issues, your own obligations to others, your own concerns to oneself and your own well-being the question is and this is kind of several different ethical aspects to it if you were tested positive for COVID-19 would you give up some of your privacy such as name, address, location and travel routines if it could be shown to be effective in reducing COVID-19 deaths and illnesses for others this is a question that involves dual use technology such as the systems that Google and Apple have proposed the same technology that they're developing and proposing could be also used by other countries but could look a dictator for example could use that same technology to say here's this person and then who's in contact with him that this person hangs out with and so forth there's a lot of dual use things that can come out of that proposal but then of course there's privacy issues so if you would please click this and we'll announce the results and it will be interesting so in one question we're looking at several different topics that we've discussed already when COVID-19 geospatial data and tracking and dual use technologies and their involvement okay next slide I'm going to click that off so here's just a list of a few ethics resources that you may not be as familiar with as some others and some of the work that's being done now at Harvard on ethics so there's a URL at the bottom can you roll that screen up a little bit so people can see so there's a URL here if you just go to ethics.harvard.edu you will have a lot of resources and again if you want to take a look at the statement of professional ethics just go to AG click AG.org click governance and then click on the statement so that's all I have and I'd like to turn it over to Glenn and when you get, do we have account for the poll yet? So this is interesting a very large number of you 85% would be willing to give up privacy information if it were help others. I guess this says a lot about geographers and their generosity and their caring so I was happy to see that. So with that I'm going to close out I want to thank all of you for your time and the opportunity to chat with you. I wish it were more of a two-way conversation but I hope it's useful and I've tried to design this it's basic in some ways but I was trying to ask to sort of set the groundwork for the whole series so I wanted to get a good range of issues out there and then also do that away so I can share some of my own experience with ethics. So thank you very much Glenn you have some questions. So thank you very much and yes the people who are viewing this do have a lot of questions and I'm not sure we'll get through all of them but we'll work our way through them and try not to be repetitive. Glenn was very interested in the updating of the AAG statement on ethics and of course you said that's a living document but what drove that 2009 update and they're wondering was there a specific controversy that arose that caused you to relook at that in 2009 and update the ethics statement? Yeah that was actually what happened this was the project, the American Geographical Society project in Oaxaca, Mexico and that became very controversial issue it was kind of part of it was because it was and I don't want to speak for the people who were involved in that process and I'm sure they don't have a strong ability to do it but that was the reason part of it was because it was funded by US military and part of it was because as claimed by some of the folks down there that they weren't as fully informed of all of that and I think that what I've done in my international work I always have written disclosures about where this funding is coming from and I think that that incident really resulted in quite a bit of rancor in the discipline and eventually we tried to say how can we learn from this at some point and so I think we did learn a lot from it and I think everybody did and hopefully that means that in the future we really look hard at the disclosures of funding, the disclosures of what's going to happen with the data and so forth. Thank you. So we have an international audience for this and I am going to ask a question that came from the international audience from another country and it really has to do about our relationship again and it goes back to the question you just answered, relationship as researchers to native communities, indigenous peoples and things like that and really the question, the heart of the question is is do you see that the progress and the work in terms of ethical ways of working in indigenous lands has been more focused and stronger in the social sciences humanities and how is it building and how is it being applied in the natural and physical sciences end of geography, the physical geographers going out in the land so that we are not seeing as a settler colonists in terms of our research and our taking of knowledge from the land. Yeah, you know I think that that's a lot of questions in one but I do think that our discipline has learned a lot over the years and you know working with the American Indian tribes for many years basically you have to ask what do you want what is your governing group want what do you want in this project and how can we help you. On occasion there will be something that people want that I say I'm not going there because I think it may be a little off base but in terms of doing that work not only have geographers become more sophisticated in these areas than the indigenous peoples have I can certainly say in terms of American Indian American Indians I worked for 25 different tribes and they have become so sophisticated they have a very keen understanding of what is in their self interest and they are very good at selecting people that they know they can work with and who will respect what it is that they want to do rather than trying to foist some kind of policy or sentiment on to them and that's happened as more and more people become lawyers become geographers we need a lot more geographers from that and most American Indian reservations are using GIS they are using a lot of very interested in geography and very sophisticated in how they move forward of course cultural heritage and legacy is very important too both current and historic we had a number of questions protecting group identity differences things like that and one of the questions was with big data and with things like remote sensing which we are using you might have the individual participants identity protected but what about the identification of the specific neighborhood the specific region things which you would register let's say on a satellite image you would write about which then would identify and classify a whole group by the location in which you are sensing it and studying and also then how do you inform you talked about informing the subjects of your research but if your research is a satellite analysis of an entire country or state how do you do that so how do we treat the fact that we are dealing with big data and we do have even if the individual is identifiable what their neighborhood is and how do we get consent for that that's a good question I think that part of that is that one has to look at whatever kind of data you have gathered and see and look at it in terms of should this be archived and not distributed and if there is a reason for that that would be one of the human subjects issues in a funded research project now people go out and do all sorts of things on their own and I think that we as geographers have to have a responsible approach to that and there are ways there are a lot of joint projects that involve big data and remote sensing and so forth which is becoming more and more used and of course much better resolution but there are a lot of country to country activities there and a lot of corporate activities going on in that same realm and I think that can basically only be monitored by either international organizations or major state government organizations so that's where the regulation of that should occur so we're almost up against the time I do want to ask just quickly one more question that's sort of come up and this is you talked about the difference between ethics and morals and this then at the beginning of your talk and this also arises where scientists and geographers the difference between objective science and then becoming advocates right where our moral values make us want to advocate for a certain position just in short answer how do we face this dilemma where our morals may not would cause some conflict between the ethics of objective research and things like that how do we navigate those those waters between objective scientists and advocates well I don't think that we have to choose I think you can do both there's no reason that I do it all the time writing letters trying to impact federal legislation we just did pass the new geospatial data act a couple years ago but yeah you're a person you can have your beliefs you can have your morals and your ethics and you can decide to act on that as you're doing other research now it shouldn't mean that you should skew your research to reflect a belief that you have if you're doing research you need to look at science and be accurate and straightforward and faithful to that research project that should not change but the projects you select might change but your research should not be you know twisted in some way because you want a certain political outcome to happen well unfortunately we've come to our time we have many many more questions I'm sorry I can't get to that I would like to thank Doug Richardson for providing a stimulating discussion today and thought provoking and I want to thank all of you for participating and for providing your questions and working with us in the poll I want to remind and I'll end with one last slide that this is just the beginning of the conversation that we're going to be having more webinars on this topic and we invite you to join us for those the next one will feature Dr. Marilyn Brown who's a Regents and Brooks Breyer's professor of sustainable systems at Georgia Tech and she is newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences and she is a professor of geoprivacy research at Globe Chalk Consulting and that's coming up on Thursday June 11th at 11 p.m. Eastern 9 a.m. Pacific so thank you again Douglas Richardson and thank all of you for joining us today