CHAPTER XII. There was a moment's silence while the two captains eyed one another, broken by the attorney who said, Whether this story is true or false, it certainly has no bearing on the validity of the policy. If this happened, it was after the policy attached, and before the wreck of the titan. But, dear concealment, dear concealment, shout it, Mr. Meyer, excitedly. Has no bearing either. If he concealed anything, it was done after the wreck, and after your liability was confirmed. It was not even baritry. You must pay this insurance. I will not pay it. I will not. I will fight you in their courts. Mr.  Go ahead and sue. I will not pay. He was part owner. You have no witnesses to that admission, said the attorney. Mr. Meyer looked around the group, and the smile left his face. Captain Bryce was mistaken, said Mr. Austin. This man was drunk at New York, like others of the crew, but he was sober and competent when on lookout. I discussed theories of navigation with him during his trick on the bridge that night, and he spoke intelligently. But you yourself said not ten minutes ago that this man was in a state of delirium tremens up to their collision, said Mr. Meyer. What I said and what I will admit under oath are two different things, said the officer desperately. I may have said anything under the excitement of the moment when we were accused of such an infamous crime. I say now that John Rowland, whatever may have been his condition on the preceding night, was a sober and competent lookout at the time of the wreck of the titan. Thank you, said Rowland, dryly to the first officer. Then, looking into the appealing face of Mr. Meyer, he said, I do not think it will be necessary to brand me before the world as an inebriate in order to punish the company and these men. Barotry, as I understand it, is the unlawful act of a captain or crew at sea, causing damage or loss, and it only applies when the parties are purely employees. Did I understand rightly that Captain Bryce was part owner of the titan? Yes, said Mr. Meyer, he owns stock, and we insure against Barotry, but this man as part owner could not fall back on it, and an unlawful act, went on Rowland, perpetuated by a captain who is part owner, which might cause shipwreck, and, during the penetration of which shipwreck really occurs, will be sufficient to void the policy. Certainly, said Mr. Meyer eagerly, you were drunk under lookout, you were raving drunk, as he said himself. You will swear to this, will you not, my friend? It is bad faith with their underwriters. It annulls their insurance. You admit this, Mr. Thompson, do you not? That is law, said the attorney, coldly, was Mr. Austin a part owner, also asked Rowland, ignoring Mr. Meyer's view of the case. Unshare, is it not? Mr. Austin asked Mr. Meyer while he rubbed his hands and smiled. Mr. Austin made no sign of denial, and Rowland continued. Then, poor, drugging a sailor into a stupor, and having him on lookout, out of his turn while in that condition, and at the moment when the titan struck the iceberg, Captain Bryce and Mr. Austin have, as part owners, committed an act which nullifies the insurance on that ship. You infernal lying scoundrel roared, Captain Bryce. He strode toward Rowland with threatening face.  I told you to look out, said Captain Barry, treat my friend respectfully. He glared steadily at the first officer, as though inviting him to duplicate the offense, but that gentleman backed away from him and assisted the dazed Captain Bryce to a chair where he felt of his loosened teeth, spat blood upon Mr. Meyer's floor and gradually weakened to a realization of the fact that he had been knocked down, and by an American. Little Myra, unhurt but badly frightened, began to cry and call for Rowland in her own way, to the wonder and somewhat to the scandal of the gentle old man who was endeavoring to soothe her. Dammy! she cried as she struggled to go to him. I want Dammy! Dammy! Dammy! Oh! what a pad-little girl, said the Jocular Mr. Myra, looking down on her. Where did she learn such language? It is my nickname, said Rowland, smiling in spite of himself. She has coined the word, he explained to the agitated Mr. Selfridge, who had not yet comprehended what had happened, and I have not yet been able to persuade her to drop it, and I could not be harsh with her. Let me take her, sir. He seated himself with the child, who nestled up to him contentedly, and soon was tranquil. Now, my friend, said Mr. Myra, you must tell us about this drugging. Then, while Captain Bryce, under the memory of the blow he had received, nursed himself into an insane fury, and Mr. Austin, with his hand resting lightly on the captain's shoulder ready to restrain him, listened to the story, and the attorney drew up a chair and took notes of the story, and Mr. Selfridge drew his chair close to Myra and paid no attention to the story at all. Rowland recited the events prior to and succeeding the shipwreck. Beginning with the finding of the whiskey in his pocket, he told of his being called to the starboard bridge lookout in place of the rightful incumbent of the sudden and strange interest Mr. Austin displayed as to his knowledge of navigation, of the pain in his stomach, the frightful shapes he had seen on the deck beneath and the sensations of his dream, leaving out only the part which bore on the woman he loved, he told of the sleepwalking child which awakened him, of the crash of ice, an instant wreck, and the fixed condition of his eyes, which prevented their focusing only at a certain distance, finishing his story to explain his empty sleeve with a graphic account of the fight with the bear. And I have studied it all out, he said in conclusion. I was drugged. I believe with hashish, which makes a man see strange things, and brought up on the bridge of lookout where I could be watched and my ravings listened to and recorded for the sole purpose of discrediting my threatened testimony in regard to the collision of the night before. But I was only half drugged, as I spilled part of my tea at supper. In that tea I am positive was the hashish. You know all about it, don't you, snarled Captain Bryce from his chair. It was not hashish, it was an infusion of Indian hemp. You don't know, Mr. Austin's hand closed over his mouth, and he subsided. Self-convicted, said Roland with a quiet laugh. Hashish is made from Indian hemp. You hear this gentleman, exclaimed Mr. Meyer, springing to his feet and facing everybody in turn. He pounced on Captain Barry. You hear this confession, Captain? You hear him say Indian hemp? I have a witness now, Mr. Thompson. Go right on with your suit. You hear him, Captain Barry? You are disinterested.  You hear? Yes, I heard it, the murdering scoundrel, said the Captain. Mr.  Then Mr. Meyer calmed himself, and facing the two steamship officers, said slowly and impressively, while he poked his forefinger almost into their faces. Then is a fine country, my friends, a fine country to lead behind sometimes. There is Canada, and there are United States, and Australia, and South Africa, all fine countries too, fine countries to go to with new names. My friends, you will be bulletined and listed at Lloyd's in less than a half an hour, and you will never again sail under their English flag as officers. And my friends, let me say that in half an hour after you are bulletine, all Scotland yard will be looking for you, but my door is not locked. Silently they arose, pale, shame-faced, and crushed, and went out the door through the outer office, and into the street. CHAPTER XIII of FUTILITY for the Wreck of the Titan This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. FUTILITY or the Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson CHAPTER XIII Mr. Salfridge had begun to take an interest in the proceedings. As the two men passed out, he arose and asked, Have you reached the settlement, Mr. Meyer? Will the insurance be paid? No, roared the underwriter in the ear of the puzzled old gentleman, while he slapped him vigorously on the back. It will not be paid.  I do not pay their titan's insurance, nor will their other insurers. On their contrary, as their collision clause in their policy is void with the rest, your company must reimburse me for their insurance, which I must pay to their royal age-owners. That is, unless our good friend here, Mr. Roland, who was on their lookout at their time, will swear that her lights were out. Not at all, said Roland. Her lights were burning. Look to the old gentleman, he exclaimed. Look out for him. Catch him. Mr. Salfridge was stumbling toward a chair. He grasped it, loosened his hold, and before anyone could reach him fell to the floor, where he lay with ash and lips and rolling eyes, gasping compulsively. Heart failure, said Roland as he knelt by his side, send for a doctor. Send for a doctor, repeated Mr. Meyer through the door to his clerks, and send for a carriage quick.  Captain Barry lifted the helpless figure to a couch, and they watched, while the convulsions grew easier, the breath shorter, and the lips from ash and gray to blue. Before a doctor or carriage had come, he had passed away. Suddenly motion of some kind, said the doctor when he did arrive. Violent emotion, too. Hear bad news? Bad and good, answered the underwriter. Good in learning that this dear little girl was his granddaughter. Bad in learning that he was a ruined man. He was their heaviest stockholder in their titan. The hundred thousand pounds he owned of their stock, all of which this poor, dear little child will not yet. Mr. Meyer looked sourful as he patted Myra on the head. Captain Barry beckoned to Roland, whose slightly flushed was standing by the still figure on the couch, and watching the face of Mr. Meyer, on which annoyance, jubilation, and simulated shock could be seen in turn. Wait, he said, as he turned to watch the doctor leave the room. Is this so, Mr. Meyer, he added to the underwriter, that Mr. Selfridge owned titan stock, and would have been ruined had he lived by the loss of the insurance money? Yes, he would have been a poor man. He had invested his last barthing one hundred thousand pounds, and if he had left any more it would be assessed to make good his share of what their company must pay for their royal age, which I also insured. Was there a collision clause in the titan's policy? Meyer was, and you took the risk, knowing that she was to run the northern lane at full speed through fog and snow? I did, so did others. Then Mr. Meyer, it remains for me to tell you that the insurance on the titan will be paid, as well as any liabilities included and specified by the collision clause in the policy. In short, I, the one man who can prevent it, refuse to testify. But, Mr. Meyer grasped the back of a chair and, leaning over it, stared at Roland. You will not testify, but you mean. What I said, and I do not feel called upon to give you my reasons, Mr. Meyer. My good friend, said the underwriter, advancing with outstretched hands to Roland, who backed away, and, taking Meyer by the hand, moved toward the door. Mr. Meyer sprang ahead, locked it, and removed the key, and faced them, oh, my good God! He shouted, relapsing in his excitement into the more pronounced dialect of his race. But I do to you, eh? Why you go back on me, eh? Have I not paid your doctor's bill? Have I not bade for their carriage? Have I not creed you like one gentleman? Have I not, eh?  Have I not been fun, gentlemen? Open that door, said Roland quietly. Yes, open it, repeated Captain Barry, his puzzled face clearing at the prospect of action on his part. Open it, or I'll kick it down. But you, my friend, heard the recognition of their captain, of their drugging. One good witness will do, two is better, but you will swear, my friend, you will not ruin me. I stand by Roland, said the Captain grimly. I don't remember what was said anyhow, got a blamed bad memory. Yet away from that door grievous lamentation, weeping and wailings, and the most genuine gnashing of teeth, interspersed with the feebler cries of the frightened Myra and punctuated by terse commands in regard to the door, filled that private office to the wonder of the clerks without, and ended at last with the crashing of the door from its hinges. Captain Barry, Roland and Myra, followed by a parting, heart-borne malediction from the agitated underwriter, left the office and reached the street. The carriage that had brought them was still waiting. "'Settle inside,' called the captain to the driver. We'll take another, Roland. Around the first corner they found a cab, which they entered, Captain Barry giving the driver the direction. Bark peerless, East India docked. "'I think I understand the game, Roland,' he said as they started. "'You don't want to break this child.' That's it,' answered Roland weakly as he leaned back on the cushion, faint from the excitement of the last few moments. And as for the right or wrong of the position I am in, why, we must go farther back for then the question of lookouts. The cause of the wreck was full speed in a fog. All hands on lookout could not have seen that bird. The underwriters knew the speed and took the risk, left them pay. "'Right, and I'm with you on it, but you must get out of the country. I don't know the law on the matter, but they may compel you to testify. You can't ship for the mast again. That's settled. But you can have a birthmate with me as long as I sail a ship. If you'll take it, and you're to make my cabin, you're home as long as you like. Remember that.' "'Still, I know you want to get across with the kid, and if you stay around until I sail, it may be months before you get to New York, with the chance of losing her by getting a foul of English law. But just leave it to me. There are powerful interests at stake in regard to this matter.' What Captain Barry had in mind, Roland was too weak to inquire. When their arrival at the barc, he was assisted by his friend to a couch in the cabin, where he spent the rest of the day unable to leave it. Meanwhile Captain Barry had gone ashore again. Returning toward evening, he said to the man on the couch, "'I've got your pay, Roland,' and signed a receipt for it to that attorney. He paid it out of his own pocket. You could have worked that company for fifty thousand or more, but I knew you wouldn't touch the money, and so only struck him for your wages. You're entitled to a month's pay. Here it is, American money, about seventeen.' He gave Roland a roll of bills. "'Now here's something else, Roland,' he continued, producing an envelope. "'In consideration of the fact that you lost all your clothes and later your arm through the carelessness of the company's officers, Mr. Thompson offers you this.' Roland opened the envelope. In it were two first-class cabin tickets from Liverpool to New York, flushing hotly, he said bitterly. "'It seems that I'm not to escape it, after all.' "'Take them, old man. Take them. In fact, I took them for you, and you and the kid are booked. And I made Thompson agree to settle your doctor's bills and expenses with that sheenie. Tis and bribery. I heal you myself for the runover, but hang it, you'll take nothing from me. You've got to get the young and over. You're the only one to do it. The old gentleman was an American, alone here, hadn't even a lawyer that I could find. The boat sails in the morning, and the night train leaves in two hours. Think of that mother, Roland. Why, man, I travel round the world to stand in your shoes when you hand myra over. I've got a child of my own. The captain's eyes were winking hard and fast, and Roland's was shining.' "'Yes, I'll take the passage,' he said with a smile. I accept the bribe.' "'That's right. You'll be strong and healthy when you land, and when that mother's through thanking you and you have to think of yourself, remember, I want a mate and will be here a month before sailing. Write to me, caravloids, if you want the berth, and I'll send you advanced money to get back with.' "'Thank you, captain,' said Roland as he took the other's hand, and then glanced at his empty sleeve. But my going to sea is ended. Even a mate needs two hands.' "'Well, suit yourself, Roland. I'll take you mate without any hands at all while you have your brains.  And say, oh, man, you won't take it wrong from me, will you? It's none of my business, but you're too all-fired good a man to drink. You haven't had a nip for two months. Are you going to begin?' "'Never again,' said Roland, rising. I have a future now, as well as a past." CHAPTER XIV of FUTILITY or THE REC of THE TITAN This is a Librebox recording. All Librebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librebox.org. FUTILITY or THE REC of THE TITAN BY MORGAN ROBERTSON CHAPTER XIV It was near noon of the next day that Roland seated in his steamer chair with Myra and looking out on a sail-spangled stretch of blue from the saloon deck of a westbound liner, remembered that he had made no provisions to have Mrs. Selfrich notified by cable of the safety of her child. And unless Mr. Meyer or his associates gave the story to the press, it would not be known. "'Well,' he mused, "'joy will not kill, and I shall witness it in its fullness if I take her by surprise. But the chances are that it will get into the papers before I reach her. It is too good for Mr. Meyer to keep.' But the story was not given out immediately. Mr. Meyer called the conference of the underwriters concerned with him in the insurance of the Titan, at which it was decided to remain silent concerning the card they hoped to play, and to spend a little time and money in hunting for other witnesses among the Titan's crew, and in interviewing Captain Barry to the end of improving his memory. A few stormy meetings with this huge obstructionist convinced them of the futility of further effort in his direction, and after finding at the end of the week that every surviving member of the Titan's port watch, as well as a few of the other, had been induced to sign for Cape Voyages or had otherwise disappeared, they decided to give the story told by Roland to the press in the hope that publicity would avail to bring to light corroboratory evidence. This story improved upon in the repeating by Mr. Meyer to reporters, and embellished still further by the reporters as they wrote it up, particularly in the part pertaining to the polar bear, but lasened out in the great dailies of England and the continent and was cabled to New York with the name of the steamer in which John Roland had sailed, for his movements had been traced in the search for evidence. After it arrived, too late for publication, the morning of the day on which, with Myra on his shoulder, he stepped down the gang plank at a North River dock. As a consequence, he was surrounded on the dock by enthusiastic reporters, who spoke of the story and asked for details. He refused to talk, escaped them, and gaining the side streets soon found himself in crowded Broadway, for he entered the office of the steamship company in whose employee he had been wrecked, and secured from the Titan's passenger list the address of Mrs. Selfridge, the only woman saved. Then he took a car up Broadway and alighted abreast of a large department store. We're going to see Mama soon, Myra. He whispered in the pink ear, and you must go dressed up.  Those old clothes won't do now. But she had forgotten the word Mama, and was more interested in the exciting noise and life of the street than in the clothing she wore. In the store Roland asked for and was directed to the children's department, where a young woman waited on him. This child has been shipwrecked, he said. I have sixteen dollars and a half to spend on it. Give it a bath, dress its hair, and use up the money on a dress, shoes, and stockings under clothing and a hat. The young woman stooped and kissed the little girl from sheer sympathy, but protested that not much could be done. Do your best, said Roland, it is all I have. I will wait here. An hour later, penniless again, he emerged from the store with Myra, bravely dressed in her new finery, and was stopped at the corner by a policeman who had seen him come out, and who marveled doubtless at such juxtaposition of rags and ribbons. Whose kid ye got? He demanded. I believe it is the daughter of Mrs. Colonel Selfridge, answered Roland haughtily. Too haughtily, by far. Ye believe, ye don't know? Come back into the store, me tourist, and we'll see who ye stole it from. Very well, officer, I can prove possession. They started back the officer with his hand on Roland's collar, and were met at the door by a party of three or four people coming out. One of this party, a young woman in black, uttered a piercing shriek and sprang toward them. Myra, she screamed, give me my baby, give her to me. She snatched the child from Roland's shoulder, hugged it, kissed it, cried and screamed over it. Then oblivious to the crowd that collected it, incontamnately fainted in the arms of an indignant old gentleman.  We've caught you. Officer, take that man to the station house. I will follow and make a charge in the name of my daughter. Then he stalled the kid, did he? asked the policeman. Most certainly answered the old gentleman. As with the assistance of the others, he supported the unconscious young mother to the carriage. They all entered, little Myra screaming for Roland from the arms of a family member of the party and were driven up.   For such is the stultifying effect of a civilized environment. End of Chapter 14, Recording by Tom Weiss. Chapter 15 of Futility for the Wreck of the Titan. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Tom Weiss. Futility for the Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson. Chapter 15 In New York City there are homes permeated by a moral atmosphere so pure, so elevated, so sensitive to the vibrations of human woe and misdoing that their occupants are completely removed from all consideration of any but the spiritual welfare of poor humanity. In these homes the news-gathering, sensation-mongering daily paper does not enter. In the same city are dignified magistrates, members of clubs and societies who spend late hours and often fail to arise in the morning in time to read the papers before the opening of court. Also in New York are city editors, billiars of stomach, testy of speech, and inconsiderate of reporters' feelings and professional pride. Such editors, when a reporter has failed through no fault of his own, in successfully interviewing a celebrity will sometimes send him news-gathering in the police courts where printable news is scarce. On the morning following the arrest of John Rowland, three reporters sent by three such editors attended a hall of justice presided over by one of the late-rising magistrates mentioned above. In the ante-room of this court, raggot, disfigured by his clubbing and disheveled by his knight in a cell, stood Rowland with other unfortunates more or less guilty of offense against society. When his name was called, he was hustled through a door along a line of policemen, each of whom added to his own usefulness by giving him a shove, and into the dock where the stern-faced and tired-looking magistrate glared at him. Seated in a corner of the courtroom were the old gentleman of the day before, the young mother with little Myra in her lap, and a number of other ladies, all excited in demeanor, and all but the young mother directing venomous glances at Rowland. Mrs. Selfridge, pale and hollow-eyed, but happy-faced with all, allowed no wondering glance to rest on him. The officer who had arrested Rowland was sworn and testified that he had stopped the prisoner on Broadway while making off with the child, whose rich clothing had attracted his attention. Distainful sniffs were heard in the corner with murder remarks, rich indeed the idea, the flimsiest prince. Mr. Gaunt, the prosecuting witness, was called to testify. This man, Your Honor, he began excitedly, was once a gentleman and a frequent guest at my house. He asked for the hand of my daughter, and as his request was not granted, threatened revenge. Yes, sir, and out on the broad Atlantic, where he had followed my daughter in the guise of a sailor, he attempted to murder that child, my grandchild, but was discovered. Wait! interrupted the magistrate. Confine your testimony to the present defense. Yes, Your Honor. Failing in this, he stole or enticed the little one from its bed, and in less than five minutes this ship was wrecked, and he must have escaped with the child in. Were you a witness of this? I was not there, Your Honor, but we have it on the word of the first officer, a gentleman. Step down, sir, that will do. Officer, was this offense committed in New York? Yes, Your Honor, I caught him myself. Who did he steal the child from? That led him over yonder. Madam, will you take the stamp? With her child in her arms, Mrs. Selbridge was sworn in, and in a low, quavering voice, repeated what her father had said. Being a woman, she was allowed by the woman-wise magistrate to tell her story in her own way. When she spoke of the attempted murder at the Trophale, her manner became excited. Then she told of the captain's promise to put the man in irons on her agreeing to testify against him, of the consequent decrease in her watchfulness and her missing the child just before the shipwreck, of her rescue by the gallant first officer and his assertion that he had seen her child in the arms of this man, the only man on earth who would harm it, of the later news that a boat containing sailors and children had been picked up by a Mediterranean steamer, of the detectives sent over, and the report that a sailor answering this man's description had refused to surrender a child to the council at Gibraltar and had disappeared with it, of her joy at the news that Myra was alive and despair of ever seeing her again until she had met her in this man's arms on Broadway the day before. At this point, outraged maternity overcame her. With cheeks flushed and eyes blazing scorn and anger, she pointed at Roland and all but screamed, and he has mutilated, tortured my baby.  And last night at bedtime, when I told her the story of Elisha and the bears and the children, she burst out into the most uncontrollable screaming and sobbing. Here her testimony ended in a breakdown of hysterics between sobs of which were frequent admonitions to the child not to say that bad word, for Myra had caught sight of Roland and was calling his nickname. What shipwreck was this? Where was it? asked the puzzled magistrate of nobody in particular. The Titan called out half a dozen newspaper men across the room. The Titan repeated to the magistrate. Then this offense was committed on the high seas under the English flag. I cannot imagine why it is brought into this court. Prisoner, have you anything to say? Nothing, Your Honor. The answer came in a kind of dry song. The magistrate scanned the ashen-faced man in rags and said to the clerk of the court, Change this charge to vagrancy, eh? The clerk, instigated by the newspaper men, was at his elbow. He laid a morning paper before him, pointed to certain big letters and retired. Then the business of the court suspended while the court read the news. After a moment or two, the magistrate looked up. Prisoner, he said sharply, take your left sleeve out of your breast. Roland obeyed mechanically, and it dangled at his side. The magistrate noticed and read on. Then he folded the paper and said, You are the man who was rescued from an iceberg. Are you not? The prisoner bowed his head. Discharged, the word came forth in an unjudicial roar. Madam, added the magistrate with a kindling light in his eye, this man has merely saved your child's life. If you will read of his defending it from a polar bear when you go home, I doubt that you will tell it any more bear stories, sharp instrument. Which was equally unjudicial on the part of the court. Mrs. Selfridge, with a mystified and rather aggrieved expression that faced, left the courtroom with her indignant father and friends, while Myra shouted profanely for Roland, who had fallen into the hands of the reporters. They would have entertained him after the manner of the craft, but he would not be entertained. Neither would he talk. He escaped and was swallowed up in the world without. And when the evening papers appeared that day, the events of the trial were all that could be added to the story of the morning. Futility or the Wreck of the Titan by Morgan Robertson Chapter 16 On the morning of the next day a one-armed dock-lounger found an old fish-hook and some pieces of string which he knotted together. Then he dug some bait and caught a fish. Being hungry and without fire, he tried it with a coaster's cook for a meal, and before night caught two more, one of which he tried it the other sold. He slept under the docks, paying no rent, fished, traded, and sold for a month, then paid for a second-hand suit of clothes and the services of a barber. His changed appearance induced a boss stevedor to hire him tallying cargo, which was more lucrative than fishing, and furnished in time a hat, a pair of shoes, and an overcoat. He then rented a room and slept in a bed. Before long he found employment addressing envelopes for a mailing-firm, at which his fine and rapid penmanship secured him steady work, and in a few months he asked his employers to endorse his application for a civil service examination. The favor was granted, the examination easily passed, and he addressed envelopes while he waited. Meanwhile, he bought new and better clothing, and seemed to have no difficulty in impressing those whom he met with the fact that he was a gentleman. Two years from the time of his examination, he was appointed to a lucrative position under the government, and as he seated himself at the desk in his office, could be heard to remark, Now, John Rowland, your future is your own. You have merely suffered in the past from a mistaken estimate of the importance of women and whiskey. But he was wrong. For in six months he received a letter which, in part, read as follows. Do not think me indifferent or ungrateful. I have watched from a distance while you made your wonderful fight for your old standards. You have won, and I am glad, and I congratulate you. But Myra will not let me rest. She asks for you continually and cries at times. I can bear it no longer. Will you not come and see Myra? And the man went to see Myra.


And the internet's reaction has been fascinating, and that's what we're going to be talking about today. What is up, everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I like to do typically is take different topics going on in the YouTube community or pop culture, try to see what lessons we can pull from them to improve our mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And yeah, we'll be talking about Belle Delphine, something that happened on Instagram. But before we do, make sure you follow me on Instagram and Twitter at the Rewired Soul. I love engaging with all of you beautiful people out there, all right? So this is a risky video for me. YouTube doesn't like you talking about certain things. So in an effort to try to stay monetized, I'm going to be calling a certain website Pee Hub. Now don't giggle. I'm just going to abbreviate and call it Pee Hub, okay? All right, cool. So anyways, for those of you who don't know who Belle Delphine is, Belle Delphine is a cosplayer who takes some risque photos.  And most recently on YouTube, I saw some people freaking out because she was like playing around with like a seemingly dead octopus instead of was her best friend. And that was kind of weird. But anyways, this girl knows how to get attention. Like that's something that we have to give her credit for. So anyways, what happened was Belle Delphine posted this picture on Instagram. And she said, if this picture gets one million likes, I will finally do it. I will finally make a Pee Hub account. All right. And something that a lot of people talk about is how she has a young audience who follows her on Instagram and is just trying to get a little, just get a little peak, right? So anyways, they, they band together and they get this girl one million likes on Instagram. So she holds true to her promise and she makes an account on Pee Hub. But people are pretty upset with her because when they went to go check out her account, they found this time for me to share one of my most deepest, darkest, saddest stories that I ever held inside and not told anyone in over 15 years. That's right.  It's not something I'm proud of to make sure that this happens to no one else. I was young. I was foolish. And this could happen to anyone.  You have to be aware at all times. Otherwise, you run the risk of experiencing the same pain I did long, long, long. By the way, by the way, can we, in the comment section, can we give it up for my beautiful girlfriend Tristan? I had to look at her and be like, Tristan. All right. I know you're doing homework right now, but if you look up and look at my computer monitor, I'm doing some research for a video, nothing more. How weird would that be though? If I was just looking at that one. Okay. Anyways, back to the story.  But anyways, like the reaction to me is really, really fascinating, right? Like there's so many different reactions and I just wanted to talk about it. So the first thing is like, I love a good troll. I love me a good troll. So to me, this is absolutely hilarious. But anyways, her fans are not happy. Like these young horny dudes are not happy about what she just did. So let's take a look at some of these comments. Just mass report her account and get it taken down. She's nothing without her social media. Everyone unfollow her. Search up her name on Pee Hub because she just scammed you guys. She hasn't learned from her mistakes and still continues to scam people for years. This girl who even lies about not having a boyfriend makes money from scamming lonely men who believe they have a chance with her. Okay, okay. First off, I have to pause right there. That's nothing new. That's nothing new. Like, God, okay, whatever. I'll get real with you guys for a second. In my younger days, me and my buddies, we go to strip clubs all the time. Like all the time. And I'm like, that's what they do, right? Isn't that what they do? They make you believe that they're actually interested in things like that? So like, this is nothing new. And maybe these kids will learn someday. That's just how the world works and things like that, you know, but like something I learned at a young age when I was an 18 year old young man here in Las Vegas going to strip clubs with my friends. I'm like, they are not interested in me. No matter what, they are salespeople trying to get money from me and things like that. Sometimes I would just hang out and have conversations with them. You know what I mean? But anyways, like, that's nothing new. And these kids, they will learn. The next one says, we need to unfollow her all and unlike everything we did, we take the clout we gave her and force her into making an actual pee because that's what people have been into ever since she started. Put her in a clout drought and feed it to her as a reward, like a little pet, which is actually giving us what we wanted. Can we get massive unfollow boys? She doesn't deserve it. Plus, you could just view her content without following. Like, man, like, this is what I'm talking about. Like, people are so upset. Like, God, like, this is just something that I've always just been fascinated with with my kind with men.  Like, it's like, whoa, chill out. This was a troll. But what's interesting to me is like, obviously, like these like young, horny kids, you know, are very upset. I'm really interested too to see if PewDiePie like talks about this and like Pew News or, you know, something like that. But anyways, what's really interesting is like, I'm looking at the response from women on Twitter about this. And that's what I think is interesting too.   But they're like talking about how they stand her, right? And like, I think that's interesting too, because we recently had the whole story about Bella Thorne. Those of you who don't know what that story is, a hacker hacked into her phone, you know, allegedly and found like, you know, in decent pictures that she took on her phone, threatened to leak them. Bella Thorne, she ended up leaking them herself to kind of take her power back. You know what I mean? So this is interesting here because like, I don't know, with so much going on and that's been going on for thousands of years since, you know, the history of men and women existing on this earth, right? Like women, you know, taking their power back is something that's huge, right? You have the whole feminist movement and everything like that. I feel and maybe you ladies can help me down in the comments below and let me know if I'm, you know, on point with this.  But anyways, the next comment that I saw and I've seen this a few times on Twitter, but this comment right here, talking about Belle Delfine mocking people in this industry, right? And like, this is, this is always fascinating to me too when it just comes to like outrage culture because people get offended by like everything. Like a lot of comedians who I follow, like I listened to like the Chris Dalia podcast and, you know, other podcasts and things like that. But something that I remember Chris Dalia saying and a lot of comedians say is like, every joke is going to offend somebody, right? And it's just interesting to me because this is like nothing. This was harmless. And, you know, I'll talk a little bit about her just getting attention to how she's actually pretty good at it. But anyways, like I don't think she meant to offend anybody in that realm in that, you know, feel like some of her past things that she's done. Like I've seen some people in like the cosplay and, you know, selling pictures and videos and things like that, getting upset at the things that she was doing and like ripping off fans and stuff like that is something to get upset about, right? Because it is tarnishing the name of that industry. But this, this right here, this was not nearly as deep. But anyways, this is just something like another prime example of influencers who know how to play the game, right? Like you see this all the time, like Logan and Jake Paul, no matter what any of us think about them, those two dudes know how to get the internet talking about them, right? And this whole thing right now happening with Belle Delphine, like regardless if you love her or hate her, she knows how to get attention. She knows how to get buzz going. She knew how to get a million likes on an Instagram photo, right? For this whole thing.  And yeah, like even Philip DeFranco said, like he wishes he could talk about this today, but on this Friday show, it's a little bit different. But yeah, everybody's going to be talking about this. Hell, look at me, I'm making a video on it right now. So let me know your thoughts down in the comments below. Like what do you find interesting? Like is it kind of interesting seeing like the guys reactions versus the girls reactions? And let me know if you think this was like offensive. All right. But anyways, that's all I got for this video. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and Twitter at the rewired soul. So if you're going to unfollow Belle Delphine, follow me at the rewired soul. All right. But if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos and a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And welcome to all the new patrons. You're all amazing. Those of you who are anticipating my new book coming out, you sign up for patron, you get free copies. Click your top right there. All right. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.


Welcome to computer support for IT professionals understanding soft skills. In this learning activity, we'll go over what soft skills are, why they're important to the IT professional, and how to improve your own abilities. What are soft skills? Soft skills, or people skills, are necessary social abilities unrelated to your area of expertise. For example, as an IT professional, you're probably fluent in network cabling, Linux, and C-sharp. You may not be as experienced in soft skills, including communication, teamwork, adaptability, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Employers expect you to have simple people skills including good communication and the ability to make eye contact. To more advanced skill sets including engaging the customer, controlling the conversation, effectively working with other team members, and easily adapting to change.  Employers have found a direct correlation between an employee's job success and their level of people skills. These abilities directly correlate to how they function on a team and whether or not they'll be a strong leader. This explains why many companies are now reprioritizing their search for IT professionals and are seeking job candidates who display good soft skills during the interview process. Soft skills are so important that 67% of employers won't hire a candidate who has great technical skills but can't work with people. Instead, they'll hire a candidate with strong soft skills and fewer technical skills. These companies prefer spending time and money training a candidate on the necessary technical skills when the person meets or exceeds the company's expectations for getting along and handling customers. You may be asking, why not hire the candidate with the greatest technical competence? Many employers have found out the hard way that employees lacking soft skills are often unable or unwilling to learn them, which makes them less productive and more disruptive in the long term. It's easier to teach technical skills to a great people person than it is to teach a technical whiz to have soft skills. How to Improve Your Soft Skills Many people are sure they have good soft skills, but how do you know? One way is to ask friends and family some simple questions such as, how can I improve my listening skills? What are my weaknesses when communicating both verbally and in writing? When in a conflict situation, how do I behave? Am I a good team member? Answers to these open-ended questions will start a discussion on where you can improve. Don't worry if you have identified an opportunity for growth. You can improve your soft skills. With time and practice, you can get better. Other ways to improve your skills include taking a communication skills course through your local technical college, finding a mentor to share ideas with and practice skills, and volunteer with a non-profit organization. This may seem odd, but working with a non-profit organization lets you work with people, handle conflict, and demonstrate leadership ability. Plus, it adds a verifiable skill to your resume. Committing a small amount of time each day to practicing your people skills adds up. Improvements will make you a better and more successful IT professional. So the next time you're looking for a new job or going for that new promotion, keep in mind the importance that soft skills play in IT and ensure yours shine during the interview. You have completed computer support for IT professionals, understanding soft skills.


What comes in our sink school explain in this video on causes of anemia? So I've always broken this down into erythropoiesis. This is another video that I have where it goes into what it takes to produce red blood cells. This is just another video that kind of breaks it down to the type of what happens to the red blood cells. Why are we anemic or why is the patient anemic what causes that reduction in the red blood cells? So basically we have three categories here. We can have either decreased red blood cell production. We can have loss of RBCs or we can have destruction. So for some reason for one of those three reasons there is not enough red blood cells in the circulatory volume evidenced by low red cell count as well as low hemoglobin and hematocrit. So for low RBC production in my other video where I talk about erythropoiesis which an erythropoietin is a hormone that's required for red blood cell production. So if we have low levels of erythropoietin then we're not going to be able to produce these red blood cells. Also we have certain nutrients, minerals and vitamins that are needed for red blood cell production. Most common is iron. So iron deficiency causes anemia. And then also vitamins B12 as well as folate are required to produce RBCs and if we don't have that we're going to be anemic. And then thirdly here we have iron availability. So we already talked about iron in the nutritional deficiencies here but if the iron is not available to be used on that hemoglobin if it cannot bind to the hemoglobin then that's a different problem than we might have enough iron available but we just can't transport it to the tissues and that's another problem of the production here. Now over here we have loss of red blood cells. So for some reason we are just losing them and that's due to blood loss and that can be acute or chronic. So acute think trauma or you cut yourself in into an artery and you acutely lose a lot of blood which is going to cause acute blood loss anemia. But blood loss can also be chronic. So think about your GI bleed. So somebody who has maybe a small tumor or polybin in their colon they're not really aware of it. It doesn't really show signs and symptoms of black tarry stools or bright red blood. They might not know and they have this chronic slow leak of bleeding in their GI tract and then it can be a blood loss anemia but in this time in this case it would be chronic. And then liver disease also can lead to chronic loss of blood cells of red blood cells. And then over here in the third category we have destruction of red blood cells. So now we're producing enough we're not losing them but for some reason the body is destroying or something is destroying these red blood cells and then the count is going to be low. So that can be caused by sickle cell disease which is a hereditary blood disorder and then certain medications can cause destruction of RBCs. So make sure that you always read the side effect profile of any medication that you're administering to your patient or even taking yourself. And medications here are just as simple as antibiotics the class in itself. So certain antibiotics can cause hemolytic anemia as well as anti-inflammatory drugs and then anti-neoplastics or cancer drugs. So always make sure that you're well aware of any reactions the patient has had in the past and that you also read the side effect profile.  So not only can we lose blood acutely here in this category of blood loss anemia but also for trauma. So think about a maybe a severe pelvis or a femur fracture where there's a lot of hematoma that occurs in that region and that bone marrow is leaking through the bone which causes a lot of big hematoma and then these blood cells from just a sheer force of that trauma they just got destroyed on impact. So that's another cause of destruction of RBCs. Thanks for watching this video. Also check out my other video about erythropoiesis to see find out what it takes to actually build these red blood cells in our body and then the separate videos about the different types of anemia where I go on more into treatment and science and symptoms. Thanks for watching Nursing School Explained. See you soon.


I'd like to go ahead and introduce our next speaker. It's Sarah Cooper, and she is the general manager of IoT Solutions and Amazon Web Services. Sarah has over 15 years of experience in the IoT space. And she's going to be talking to us today about making IoT implementation easy. I just want to talk a little bit. She's very accomplished. So I want to do the mouthful of accolades for her. So she's the vice chairman woman of the Internet of Things Community, dedicated to education and information sharing among the IoT practitioner community. Formerly, she was M2MI's chief operating officer. And she was named an IS-50 Most Empowering Woman in Business, recognized top 100 wireless technology expert by wireless world, and is an National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering Award-E. So that is a mouthful. But please join me in welcoming Sarah. I think if I'm lucky enough to get invited back in another year, I'm just going to put down at the end, when they say bio, I'll just put mic drop. Thanks, Tim. Guy really set us up very nicely to start talking about how we experiment with IoT. And I would like to point out, now that I'm an Amazon employee, we do talk about gesture control. When an Italian manufacturer asked about connecting Alexa to the supply chain, we immediately went out and got those robotic arms, and started looking at how we could do some gesture control with Alexa. So one of the key areas that has been challenging for products across the board as the world changes and has continued to change at an ever-increasing rate is how do you make product changes after you've already installed something? The last thing you want to go do is buy the greatest smart home, fully integrated, completely closed software system. Everything is, a la 1990, wired up, and your home works really good day one.  But they don't work with the wired system that you just installed and spent 10 grand breaking out the walls. So figuring out how to sell products into that space and how to build an architecture around both the devices that are part of that product as well as the back-end systems that support that product is absolutely critical and even more so today than it was 1991. And also because I generally like to make people raise their hands, how many folks are part of the product design cycle? Because I can focus on the technology. Oh, we see some hands. Oh, very good. Because generally, even if you don't think of yourself that way, you probably are if you're touching somewhere on the device product chain. So design is generally where products start, as this is a beautiful example of design in my humble opinion. Design can be timeless, but technology rarely is. What's under the hood here is beautiful from a design standpoint, but from a technology standpoint, it's very rudimentary. If you were going to develop a car today, you would not use the same system under the hood, mainly because you would not be in compliance with the EPA, among other things. Also, design was really all that good, certainly at a first attempt, although it's a super cool car. Not something that post six months off the chain, people actually wanted to be driving in this. And just to be humble ourselves, that would be the first Amazon website. So yeah, a few things have changed since then, usually through a bunch of usability studies. So if we look at how technology has been changing, in 1873, it took 46 years for electricity to reach 25% of American population. In 1991, it took seven years for the internet to hit that same 25%. Things move a lot faster, and more things move completely decoupled from each other, mainly because of the variety of technologies that we have today. Just the minute you go to connect a device, how many different ways can you connect it? Let's see, you've got cellular, you've got Lora, next week you'll have something else. That breadth of technology at your fingertips makes it even more difficult to get things right up front. So if you think of a product, you've got to make a decision at some point about what you're going to put into it. You launch it, fabulous. Pace of innovation keeps changing. Somebody buys your product day one. They are accumulating technology debt until you hit the end of the lifetime product, and they're ready to buy version 2.0. Obviously, nobody likes to be in this particular place right here. And it's one of the reasons why we refresh technology. One of the other pieces about this, though, is that the price tag that you can actually charge your customer is based on the value that they think that they're going to be able to get in the length of time that they're going to be able to get that value. So if they realize that the technology change is going to mean that they have to refresh to stay competitive somewhere in the middle here, they're not going to be willing to pay as much for the product stack. So experimentation, being able to learn about your products that are in the field and being able to make changes to those products while they're in the field, being able to do things like personalization, which is great consumer and smart home, but also very important when you start talking about supply chains, many of which the robotics are still managed side by side with a workforce who's there to help maintain that robot, figuring out how to better adjust the communication between what somebody needs to see to diagnose the problem. That often comes into the background of that individual, also true when you've got a boiler to install. I don't know how many people here are from like industrial companies, but one of the things that's happened over the last 10 years is that the workforce of service technicians has aged. So now you've got your 50-year-olds who really know boilers really well. That's aged. And then you've got your 20-year-olds who know boilers that they read the manual. They know computers really well, though. So figuring out which of your classes just walked up to fix this boiler might mean that you want two modes. That's not something that was put into the boiler. Software or technology stack from day one, that's something that need potentially be an update or an upgrade to that system. Anyway, basically, if you can figure out how to up your technology game through the lifetime of the product, your customer maintains the value from that product, and they're happy with their purchase. Generally, customers are starting to come to expect this. They don't buy static products. They love the fact that Tesla did an upgrade for them and gave them autopilot overnight. That is amazing how many times that comes up in a week. Now, hey, can you help me make my product do this? Autopilot? Yeah, maybe. I can. Figuring out as well. And this was sort of an ideation slide for myself. I would love feedback on whether this really holds water or not. This is me thinking too much while I'm doing slides. It's always a bad idea. At some point, it feels like we reached the point where the product lifecycle early adopters to maturity, to, hey, this is old tech, is actually shorter than the product lifespan. When we hit that point, and for most technologies, we haven't gotten there yet, but when we hit that point, we have to figure out how to better assess risk of that product no longer being useful through its entire lifetime. And it seems like there are a couple of things that are happening in the marketplace. Maybe not necessarily to address this specific problem, but that inherently do. In IoT, we're seeing a lot of what's called the outcome economy, i.e. I'm not going to pay you for fertilizer. What I will do is pay you for the nitrogen fixation in the soil. That's where I get my value. That's the outcome I want, which is better plant growth, not the fact that you literally spread over my field. The other piece, and this one's a bit of a stretch, I think, but the sharing economy also distributes that risk. If I can move all of the value I'm getting to the front end of that by sharing that value and maximizing the possible use, cars is a good example. If it's a lifetime of 200,000 miles or 10 years, if I can do 200,000 miles in two years, I'm not sure you could drive that, but you have to drive fast. But if you could, then basically what you've done is you shorten the time where you're going to start building into that technology debt and you get a new car after two years. I'm not huge into the new cars. Personally, I keep forgetting where things go. So if this is the new paradigm for devices and products, that really the minute you install something, that's when it starts living. That's when you can start collecting data about how customers are using it, about how it's being deployed, about where within the processes that you thought people were going to use it, where you were wrong and where you can adjust. And this is where you have to start building in that experimentation layers. So a little tongue in cheek, we're not psychic. I personally have made plenty of design decisions, which six months later you look back and think, oh God, next time I'm not doing that again. Makes a lot more sense if you can go in knowing that yeah, I'm going to make those decisions. But I'm going to go ahead and figure out what are the opportunities within my architecture, within my tooling, to be able to make those changes. So three key areas, architecture, tools, and culture, the hardest one is culture. I don't cover that one. We do a lot of work with customers at Amazon talking about how we're able to innovate so quickly. I'm happy to have that conversation with anyone who wants to talk about it. But generally, architecture and tools are where you really need to be able to start. It's not if you build it, they will come. But if you build it right, they will play. So clearly, if you've got to know that you've failed, that something has failed, that either the performance of something has failed, you missed the opportunity to engage in a customer in a new way, you missed a cross sales opportunity in order to know something you need data. Thank you, Internet of Things, connected to the internet. Similarly, in an experiment that goes wrong, you need a small blast radius. That sounds fairly straightforward. And we'll talk a little bit about how you do that in an architecture and how you design that in an experiment. But that actually has a greater impact. It's not just the blast radius within the software. It's also the blast radius across the customer set that you might be doing an experiment with, I say with, not on. Mainly because I have a crash test dummy up there. But when customers are part of a beta program, you need to make sure that they are the right customers. And we'll talk a little bit about cohorts and how you make that decision, and how do you create an architecture which allows you to even apply something across a subset of your devices out in the field, the culture parts that shrug it off. So physicist, hence the doctor. For those of you who forgot, I don't know if this was fifth or sixth grade, the scientific method. But we do this a lot in product design, but we do it a lot in service design on the software side as well as hardware side. You've got to have an idea. Your question, your query.  You want to know that you've got a pretty good assessment that this might work. Sometimes that's instinct. Sometimes that's looking at related products. Sometimes that's data from your last set of versions. Your hypothesis is what you think you're going to get out of this. I think customers will have an easier time installing boilers if I give them an indicator that tells them if they completed the last section correctly. Obviously your experiment, whether it worked or not, you have to have your tests that say, yes, my experiment worked not. Necessarily, did I get the results? But did I actually test what I was trying to test? If not, you need to go back to the drawing board on the experiment, but maybe not necessarily your hypothesis. As it comes down, you've got to obviously analyze the data, make some conclusions, figure out whether you were correct or wrong. But these next couple things, these teal ones down here, not the scientific method, these are product to design components. You also then have to make sure that this is worthwhile for your customers and figure out, is it something that you can really introduce? Again, that rollout phase is part of the design. So when you look at how are you going to measure the impact? How are you going to create a baseline for what your experimental change is? Data comes with different temperatures. This isn't particularly clear, but obviously there are some things that you need to know very quickly. We call that hot data, things that you're looking over a population of historical data. We call that cold data. It's purely just to kind of give you a sense of where these things line up from a device standpoint. A lot of the diagnostic and contextual data has a cooler temperature. It's all very important in figuring out exactly what went on in your experiment. And it's one of the reasons why putting Easter eggs into products is kind of nice from an architectural standpoint, because sometimes that contextual information comes in handy when you see something you didn't expect. That correlation pattern is much more fun when you see something you didn't expect. Not necessarily more fun to explain to the boss. Only reason I throw up this slide is just to point out, in the product analytics side, there's streaming data. There's experimentation data. I'll talk a little bit about Lambda. Really, I just mean from that something that is discrete, something that is boxed off and has a separation of concerns.  And then, of course, you're heavy lifting. Being some of the machine learning, some of the AI capabilities, it gives you a broader spectrum of pieces in which to experiment with. So again, hot, warm, warm, cool. Kinesis is streaming analytics. Being able to set up, you can set up different experimentations with different types of data. Most of the experimentation that we see in the IoT space is Lambda. So I'll skip through walking through how this works. Behavioral analytics. Lambda here is being used really just to do some data cleansing and enrichment. Again, serverless architectures, these are function-based components of your architecture. They can be used with things that are more of a heavy lift, more of a cooler data side. Here it's EMR. But where we really see them from a product innovation standpoint, playing the largest part, is in things like this, where Lambda is used as the experiment holder. So we have customers that actually have an incentive program for their engineers. They'll give you 10 grand worth of serverless credits. In order you pitch your idea, you get 10 grand worth of serverless credits. You get a chance to prove your hypothesis. If your hypothesis is right, in this instance, we did an experiment with a solar panel looking at cleaning regimes. So the basic experiment was you've got three solar panels. One is actually dirty when you throw your hand over and you create a set of conditional statements and algorithms looking at, am I in shadow? Am I actually dirty? And then looking at a couple of different attempts to clean if clean is what needs to happen. We did three basic experiments. The first one was really just to pass a sheet of water over it, which turns out not to be terribly effective. Another one where you basically have a squeegee that comes in over the water, more effective, and another one that just has a squeegee. Not so effective. The point of this was really just to show that we could go through a very quick experiment, and this isn't really user behavior, but a very quick experiment and roll back and look at the architectural differences between the two. Lambda makes that really easy. That's not on the device. That's generally in the cloud, although that one did actually involve different components of the device. We've recently come out with something called greengrass, which takes that same ability. And again, I'm using the AWS components here because that's my new sandbox and playground. This is really an architectural design, so I have things that having functional components on your device where you can push, you can make a change in the cloud, you can simulate what that might do on your device, you can then push that down to the device and look at a group of devices out in the field with actual people using them. There are lots of different ways to do that. Probably many of you do that today, not using greengrass. The lambda functions here, what greengrass is, is it's lambda plus AWS IoT from a communication stack standpoint on a device. Generally Linux, go Linux. But here again we've got our same steps and processes. Hypothesis, measure your baseline. Determine your control and test groups. All of this can be done as part of your back-end architecture. This doesn't need to be a subset system. There are mathematical tests for figuring out what is your best baseline. Looking at historical data and who makes your best control group. You can promote back down to the device, collect the data, analyze the results, identify where this would actually be productive, which is the other nice thing about doing in situ experimentation is you can understand who, from your customer base, or what types of devices from an install standpoint make for the right targets for this improvement. It doesn't mean that you have to do a blanket update across the stack, which we see very, there's a lot of suppliers who have localization trying to figure out how do I maintain a centralized control over what could be thousands of SKUs. The other key piece to experimentation is having a very diverse, interesting set of characters to move on. Image recognition is the facial recognition over here. There's QuickSight, there's Alexa. These are all things within the AWS stack, but wherever you play, you wanna make sure that you have access to the next generation of tools without having to build them always yourself. Obviously, this is the Amazon playground. There's an incredibly diverse open source capabilities in all of these areas as well. So, I will generally end with one of my favorite cartoons. Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave the math machines and let's go play. The more from a cultural standpoint you can incentivize engineers, but really everyone across the spectrum to go out and play. The Amazon button, speaking of not having a screen, that button, literally a single button. All it does is throw a lambda function in the cloud for the most part. Look, I can do something, it's amazing how many people have gone out and experimented with that. And there is something that tactile sense of hey, I did this. It was bite-size, it didn't take learning the entire. Oh, thesaurus. Sorry, thesaurus is one of those words that you don't get to throw into presentations very often. So, I'm happy to talk to anybody afterwards about more about the culture of innovation and how to do that on the culture side. But come check out how we play at Amazon and what we do. Thanks.


When we're dealing with combustion reactions, we're usually looking at a reaction, oxidation reaction with atmospheric or ambient air. And so for these, we're looking at a reaction between a fuel and air. As soon as we say fuel, it's usually a hydrocarbon fuel. And in doing this, what we're going to do, we're going to make an approximation for the composition of air, and we'll approximate it as being 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen. In reality, there are other gases in air, atmospheric air, but that's what we'll use when we do the analysis for combustion. And so with that, the molar mass for air that we consider for combustion reactions would be 21% for oxygen. And then it's molar mass 16 multiplied by two because it's diatomic. And then molar mass for nitrogen 14 kilograms per kilomole two because it's diatomic. And what we end up with is 28.84 kilograms per kilomole. So that's what we'll be using for the molar mass for air. And for each kilomole of oxygen, because remember we're saying that it's an oxidation reaction. So oxygen is combining with the hydrocarbon fuel. So for one kilomole of oxygen, we have 3.76 kilomoles of nitrogen for a total of 4.76 kilomoles of air. So that's the balance that we have that we'll be dealing with. Now when we look at the nitrogen that comes through, the nitrogen usually does not react. Ideally, it will not react. Sometimes it does. And that leads to problems as we'll see in a moment. So what we see here is that nitrogen is typically along for the ride. And so it's not really reacting. It's what we would call an inert gas. But sometimes in the reaction zone, if the temperature gets too high, what happens is the diatomic nitrogen can dissociate into two single monatomic nitrogens. And then those look for other bonds. And quite often oxygen is available. And so then we get the formation of nitrous oxide and NO2 or NOx as are commonly referred to when we talk about pollution. And NOx are bad because what can happen is they can undergo conversion with ultraviolet radiation from the sun, resulting in what we would call photochemical smog, which causes kind of the brown cloud that you'll sometimes see over a city. And they can also react and create acid grain when they would be absorbed by water and leading to an acidic rain. So those are two of the disadvantages that we can have with nitrogen if the temperature gets too high. What I want to do now is take a look at a story that just appeared recently, recently being in 2013 in Hong Kong. And I was there recently. And in the newspaper, there was an article in the International New York Times. And the title of it was Green Solution Proves Troublesome for Hong Kong. And what they were referring to is that over the last decade, they've shifted over 18,000 taxis. There are over 18,000 taxi cabs in Hong Kong. And several thousand of their minibuses, which hold I think it's around 16 people, they've converted them all to liquefied petroleum gas. And this has taken place over the last decade. It's been a very expensive conversion process, approximately $5,000 per vehicle. So let's take a look at a little bit of a video clip of what transportation looks like in Hong Kong. So there we can see the waterfront of Hong Kong. And I believe that's the walk of stars. But there you can see the taxi cabs. There are also double-decker buses. A double-decker bus is still used diesel. But the taxi cabs have all been converted to LPG. There is one of those little vans, 16 seats. It holds 16 people in it. That has also been converted to LPG. And there you can see a typical taxi cab. Zoom in and you're able to see the little symbol on the side. It's LPG. And all of the vehicles now made by Toyota are LPG comfort. And there you can see the tank in the back of the trunk. And there's a little fuel gauge there enables the driver. And then you can see where you can put the fuel in LPG. When you look at the engine, the engine really isn't all that significantly different from a typical fuel burning car that would have liquefied fuel such as gasoline or diesel. But those are the vehicles that they have in Hong Kong. They've gone through a very extensive effort at greening the city. And that's a great effort for Hong Kong. And it's very nice that they've been able to do that. However, despite doing that over the last decade, they've noticed since 2008 to 2012, there's been a 20% increase in the amount of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. And that causes things like this. So you can see there in a video image, there's some smog in the distance. And that's not a good thing. And so the scientists started to wonder, well, what's going on? We've converted to LPG. That should be a nice greener fuel. It burns cleaner. Why are we getting more nitrous oxides in the atmosphere? And so they have done a study. And what they've found is these taxi cabs, remember, run almost nonstop, almost 24 hours a day, as well as a little minibus is they're running almost 24 hours a day. But what they found is that the catalytic converters in these vehicles is starting to get clogged or fouled. The catalytic converter completes the oxidation reaction for unburned hydrocarbons as well as nitrous oxide and the exhaust gas. So what they found is that they're getting fouled. And so they need to replace them. And what they found is that the fouling takes place over about an 18 month period. And so now the taxi cab drivers will have to replace their catalytic converters every 18 months. And they will pay for the first version of that, which is about 1,300 per vehicle. But after that, the taxi cab drivers themselves will have to pay. So let's take a quick look at what the catalytic converter is. And here we have a picture of a BMW. It's a V8. There are two catalytic converters shown in green. And then this is a picture of a Chevy V8. And you can see there's an oxygen sensor and the catalytic converter. It's basically something that is in the exhaust system of the engine. And what the catalytic converters do is they complete the reactions coming out of your engine. And so they're put within your exhaust system. So what the catalytic converters are doing is they're completing the reaction for the exhaust gas coming out of your internal combustion engine. And they will complete the combustion process or oxidation for the unburned hydrocarbons as well. They will help remove nitrous oxide. And what they're doing is they're taking carbon monoxide and oxidizing that. There will be a catalyst in the catalytic converter that enables this reaction to take place at a lower temperature. The hydrocarbons themselves will then react fully all the way to water vapor. And finally the nitrous oxides will then react all the way back to diatomic oxygen and diatomic nitrogen. So that's what the catalytic converter is doing. Unfortunately what they're finding in Hong Kong even though they have a greening solution it's leading to a fouling of the catalytic converter forcing it to be replaced. So it'll be interesting to see in the future how we as engineers respond to this challenge whether or not we change catalytic converters because that's a little pricey to have to go and change the catalytic converter as often as what they would find in Hong Kong. But that completes this segment looking at how we treat and handle air for our reaction equations.


Firebenders are not SCPs, but if they were, how would the SCP Foundation contain them? Hello, I'm Dr. Theron Sherman and in this series we construct hypothetical containment procedures for non-SCP popular culture, entities and objects. Let's begin. Today's episode is brought to you by the Site 42 Patreon. Head to the link in our bio to get early access to Site 42 videos and other perks. As always, support independent artists. Firebending is a unique form of bending in the Avatar world. While earth, water, and airbenders require their element to be present to be bent, firebenders are capable of generating fire, lightning, and explosive blasts from nothing but their own breath. This makes them a unique containment challenge, but nothing we can't handle. Luckily for our research, the legend of Korra showed us a high-security prison specifically meant to contain Red Lotus member Plea. To start, an Antarctic site would be established as cold temperatures and distance from the equator both dampen firebending efficacy. A layer of ice would be utilized in the containment cell as well as industrial air-conditioning equipment. Many will wonder about the breath-of-fire technique that Zuko and Iroh have utilized in cold temperatures to maintain body heat. While true that it is a wonderful survival tool to stop oneself from freezing to death, the ability isn't meant to sustain firebending power levels in extreme conditions. To dissuade any lightning-based escape attempts, firebenders capable of the lightning bending technique would be placed in a separate wing reinforced with insulation. Ice is a poor conductor of electricity already, but we can't be too careful. Those capable of the combustion bending style epitomized by Plea and fan-favorite Sparky Sparky Boom Boom Man would be fitted with metal helmets covering their third eye. Even powerless, firebending culture has strong focus on martial arts acumen. To deal with this, all on-site security staff would be required to hold high marks in close quarters combat, as well as carry standard-issue equipment to prevent any altercations. Make sure to like and share this video, comment any creatures you would like to see containment procedures implemented for, and if you want to help us make bigger and better SCP projects, become a patron at the link in the description. Secure. Contain. Protect.


My mom was a really quiet, introverted person. She loved her family and close friends to be around and she laughed very easily. When my mom became ill over a year ago and it was a cancer diagnosis, actually one of the very first things I thought of was that someday we would need hospice involved. I didn't even have to think about the fact that we would want them involved. My sisters and I are not medically inclined and I just knew that we were going to need that support. So that was always something that from the time that cancer was even on the radar, I knew that we would at some point want hospice involved. The person who came in and did the interview for Mid-Michigan really seemed to know a lot more about what we were dealing with, my mom's condition, the nurses who came were just amazing. I can't say enough about the role they played in the comfort for my siblings and for mom. Every single one who entered that home were very, very special. They just had something about them that was extraordinary. I don't know if they realized the impact that they had for this family and it was short. I'm actually thankful that my mom didn't have to suffer a really long time, but I'll never forget those faces that walked in there and did what they did. I would say that if anyone is hesitant to pursue hospice care first of all, find out all that you can and talk with the people because I think if they met with any of you and realized what it is that you have to offer, I don't think they would hesitate anymore.


Hello everybody, Andrew Myeski here with Dental Tutoring and the video today I want to talk to you guys about how to study from a textbook because there is a right way to do it and there is a wrong way to do it. The wrong way will set you back. You will literally spend hours studying and it's just the wrong way so you won't actually retain any of that information and that's the worst thing you can possibly do. So I tell everybody if you have not signed up for a tutoring program you should because we make it so much easier for you to study the right thing. So that way you don't have to spend let's just say eight hours studying and seven of those hours you kind of didn't spend the time studying properly so you don't remember any of that information. So I actually don't tell people to study from a textbook because you might not be doing it the right way but if you're going to though I want to tell you guys how to do it and the answer may surprise you. So just take a textbook like this you know a big thick textbook it could be dental hygiene dental assisting it doesn't matter but a thick textbook don't start with the first page and start reading you know and then the second page and then the third page. You will get quickly bored probably after half an hour and you will go okay I can't do this and then you will just not study at all you might just not study for that entire day and then you'll come back the next day and go okay where did I leave off. I left off on page six you know you're not even into any of the study material yet. So another wrong way to do it is to just kind of go for chapter one just start studying chapter one and I don't know if you guys have looked into this textbook yet if you're a dental hygiene student but it's not an easy read at all. I actually tell you guys don't study for the port exam using this textbook there's much easier ways to do it. It's a good textbook to have to to quickly kind of research or to look up something but definitely don't turn to a page and start studying because you either study by reading everything over and over and over again or you might study by highlighting you might study from taking your own notes but doing it from a textbook is not going to help you but if you're really going to do it from the textbook because that's kind of what the whole video is all about what I want you to do is to literally go to the table of contents whichever textbook it happens to be and look at the different topics and the different chapters. Let's say you want to start with chapter 16. Start there. Read that entire chapter and then that's it and then if that maybe took you an hour then go to another chapter and read the whole thing. Don't go in order because if you go in order after like two hours you'll probably get done like 17 pages and then you'll be looking at the rest of the textbook going oh my god I still have all of this to do but if you just simply go by different chapters say chapter 16, chapter 2 and chapter 7 on Monday and then do chapter 13, chapter 1, chapter 20 on Tuesday you're mixing it up every single time and how you should study for a chapter. Now this is different for everybody if I was the one taking the board exam I would actually read the entire chapter once and then read the entire chapter again because for me I pick up things better by reading it often. I never take notes I never highlight. I shouldn't say never I do highlight if I kind of know something's important and I just want to quickly glance at it afterwards but that's the only time. If you guys spend the time writing out your own notes you'll be rewriting the textbook basically but if that's how you study better then only write in your own notes what's really important so then you might be wondering well what's really important and that's where tutoring comes in. That's where my courses help you is I pretty much took this entire textbook and other textbooks too. You guys have probably heard me say before but it took me many many years to develop my courses in the first place and now I update them every three or four months anyway but it's a lot easier to update a course than to write the entire thing so it took me years but I have literally taken let's say this this textbook page by page and wrote it in PowerPoints and a much easier to understand format so chapter 17 could be I don't know 50 pages. Well I take all of that and then I explain it and rewrite it in PowerPoint so my pages might be 20 pages. Depending on what topic it is of course there might you might see a PowerPoint of a hundred pages and then you might see a PowerPoint of 20 pages. It really depends on those topics and if you are to read my PowerPoints don't think to read the whole PowerPoint in one day. Some PowerPoints are so large that you want to do it over a couple days but that's where I make things easier for you because I will actually let you know and give you an idea. I might say well module one might take you two days to study so if it takes you three days not the end of the world but if it takes you a week you know you are moving too slow. If it takes you two hours then you're moving way too quickly so I do kind of help you guys that way too. All of my courses are in modules plus mock exam questions at the end to truly test your knowledge but as I said before if you want to study from a textbook don't read it from page one on. Read different chapters and mix it up every single day that will help you get the most from your textbook because there are probably there there are probably some of you guys out there who have only purchased textbook and that's how you want to study from but remember there's a right way to study from a textbook and the wrong way. The wrong way is to definitely just kind of go from page one and then the whole thing that's impossible you guys. You will be exhausted and I can tell you more importantly you won't remember anything and then you'll have to restudy everything again anyway. That's the worst thing to do because you don't have time for that. You won't feel very confident taking the board exam and did I mention you won't have time for that. You won't have time to read this whole thing and then study everything again no way. So I hope this helped you guys. Let me know though I'm kind of curious in your comments. How do you prefer to study? Do you like to study from a textbook and just kind of highlight? Do you like to read your own notes? Have you signed up for my tutoring program and those modules help you? Do you want to learn from modules, mock exams, case studies? How do you like to study for the board exam? Let me know and I'll see you guys in the next one.


So I know the difference from the field to the high tunnel. It's more than double what we can get producing under a high tunnel. I mean, it might even be triple. I can put it to you like this. I think our production is probably anywhere from maybe 30 to 40 percent higher. I would say we're definitely getting up there in the 80 percent range of harvestable tomatoes. Almost three quarters of our insects are eliminated. It helps to keep everything else that would have just walked in there or flown in there out of there. I don't have to spend so much time looking for bugs. I don't have to spend so much time trying to figure out what to do with the bugs. Just the fact that I have a barrier that's going to keep out some major insects, it's just going to be so much less time with having to deal with the insect pressure. To me, the netting saves so much time. I thought it was going to take a while, but a couple of hours we had it up in just a matter of no time before we even blinked. I know that when we put it on there, our production level went up. It went up tremendous. The physical barrier is the only thing that I've seen that in a lot of cases can do any good. It's a controlled environment obviously. So we can control the water, we can control the insects, then we can control the temperature at some point. We get a higher yield and a better quality. One more thing that you don't have to put on your list, but that program was super helpful. This project is what defines what extension does. It saves us the money of having to experiment, and he comes to us with good hard data exactly where it goes. When we put a dollar in, we automatically get a quick return on investment.