Good evening aspirants, welcome to the Hindu News Analysis session of Shankara A.S. Academy for the date 6th of October. So first I must congratulate the 360 plus candidates who have aced the UPSC 2020 civil service examinations from our academy, hats off to all the aspirants who have cleared the exam last year. So let us with that positive note, let us start today's discussion. See these are the articles we are going to discuss today, there will be five article discussion, one mains question and three practice prelims question. So before going into today's discussion, I wish all the best for the aspirants who are appearing for the prelims exam that is going to be conducted this Sunday. Keep your calm, do not study anything new, revise what you have studied, sleep will have a good diet and keep positive people around you. These factors will help you, yes this exam, so again all the best, give your very best. So now let us take up the first article for our discussion. Look at this article, this article is about the Nobel prize for physics for the year 2021 which was announced yesterday. See the Nobel prize season is upon us, yesterday we saw about the Nobel prize for physiology or medicine awarded jointly to two US scientists, David Julius and Adam Patapoutian. So today we are going to see about the Nobel prize for physics. See this year's Nobel prize for physics is shared among three people. They are Klaus Hasselman of Germany, Saiyakaru although affiliated to Princeton University of USA and Giorgio Parisi of Italy. See Mr. Siokaru Manabe and Mr. Klaus Hasselman received the Nobel prize for their work in the physical modeling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming. Their work helped us lay the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth's climate and their research also helped us identify how we as humans and our activities influence the Earth's climate around us. So moving on to Mr. Giorgio Parisi, he was awarded Nobel prize for his work on the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuation in physical system from atomic to planetary scales, that is from the small size to large size. He discovered the interworking of the disorderly state. His work has continuously aided the physicists around the world to understand and study completely random phenomenon in nature. This year's Nobel prize for physics is special since all the three are climate scientists. The Nobel selection committee by awarding the prize has signaled the world leaders ahead of the COP26 or the Conference of Parties 26 summit that is going to be held in Glasgow, Scotland that climate change is real and it is based on solid physical science. See here the names of the physicist can be asked in the preliminary exam. So please take note of that and climate change is a topic that is always relevant and it is one of the most favorite topic of the UPSC. So many questions have come up in the main exam relating to climate change. So for example here are three questions that appeared in the main examination. See in the main answer introduction is as important as the answer you write to address the exam. Let us use this question for example. Let me read out the question. It appeared on the GS1 paper in 2017. The question is climate change is a global problem. How India will be affected by climate change? How Himalayan and coastal states of India will be affected by climate change? This is the question. The question asked us two things. First is how India will be affected by climate change and the second is how the Himalayan and the coastal states of India specifically will be affected by climate change. See these two are very generic questions. Everyone will be able to write a decent and presentable answer for this. So the difference you can show here is through the introduction. See let us hypothetically assume that this question appears in the 2021 main exam. Here most aspirants will write their introduction using the IPCC 6th assessment report. The generic introduction would go like this. The IPCC released the 6th assessment report titled climate change 2021 physical science basis. This report sounded many alarm bell. The report stated in the coming years, heat waves and humid stress will increase, frequency of the heat extremes will increase while the frequency of cold extreme will decrease and for India the danger is very particular because the report mentions that the sea level rays around Asia would be higher than the global average. So we cannot ignore the climate change which is the global problem. See this is how the most aspirants will give the introduction if the question is asked in the 2021 main exam. See if 90% of the paper evaluated by the evaluator has interaction like this or similar to this in some form and now the evaluator takes up your answer paper and you give the introduction quoting the noble committee. So you write the introduction somewhat similar to this.  The noble committee through this has signaled that climate change is based on strong physical sensors. So the world leaders cannot ignore the climate change anymore and they must take efforts to address climate change and its global impacts. See now if the evaluator sees a introduction like this he will be instantly impressed by it because you have differentiated yourself from all the other aspirants. So he may probably award you more marks. See in the main exam every marks count two or three marks will decide whether you get the service or not and main exam is also about resourcefulness. This introduction can be used elsewhere even when the topic is not related to climate change. See if there is a question relating to the race of pseudoscience and the irrationality among the society you can also quote the noble prize for physics 2021 here. But here you have to modify it a little bit. You can write an introduction like this. The irrationality and pseudoscience has penetrated the society so much so that the noble committee decided to award the noble prize for physics for the year 2021 to three climate scientists. Just to make the world leaders understand that the climate modeling and the projected climate change is based on hard physical sciences. See here we have used the same information but modified it to a little bit to answer the question. So while preparing try to prepare attractive introduction which can be used in a variety of answers. This will help you save time and this will also help you fetch more marks. This will come only through practice like Ajanta ma'am keeps on saying you have to write answer daily that is you have to practice writing answers daily so that while appearing for the exam the writing part comes naturally to you. So just practice writing every day ok. Now coming back since we are discussing about the noble prize I just wanted to revise about various Indians who have been awarded noble prize in the past. This is just to revise ok. First is poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore who was the first non-European and Indian to get noble prize in 1930. He got the noble prize for his contribution to literature. Next India received its first noble prize in physics in 1930 when scientist Sir Chandrasegara Venkata Raman was awarded for his work on scattering of light and for the discovery of the effect named after him. This phenomenon is known as Raman effect. Then in 1979 Mother Teresa won noble peace prize. She was born in Albania. She founded the institution missionaries of charity in Kolkata and worked all her life for the poor. She became an Indian citizen as well. She received the noble prize for her work in bringing help to sufferings of humanity. Next is Indian physicist Subramanya Chandrasegar. He was awarded noble prize in 1983 for physics. He was awarded for the theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of stars. Then in 1998 Amartya Sen was awarded the noble prize for economics for his contribution to welfare economics. Again recently in 2014 Kailash Sathya 3 along with Malala received noble peace prize. He received the honour for his campaign aimed at ending child labour. Apart from the above mentioned people some important Indian Americans to win noble prize include Hargobind Khurana in 1968 for medicine, Venkat Ramana Ramakrishnan in 2009 for chemistry and very recently Mr. Abjit Banerjee in 2019 for economics for his contribution to experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. So in this segment we discussed about noble prize for physics 2021 and we discussed about how to be resourceful while writing main sanser and we also revised about Indians who have received noble prize in the past. So with this we shall conclude this segment and take up the next article for our discussion. Now let's take these two news articles and the articles here deal with the Aishman Bharat Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana. So with the prelims nearing let us revise the important points related to the Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana and then we will move on to the information given in the news articles. See the Aishman Bharat is a flagship scheme of the Indian government. It is in fact the world's largest health insurance or assurance scheme fully financed by the government. It was launched as per the recommendation of National Health Policy 2017. Its main purpose is to achieve the vision of universal health coverage and it is anchored to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Remember Aishman Bharat has two major components. First is health and wellness center and the second one is national health protection scheme. See then health and wellness centers mainly focus on the primary services while the national health protection scheme which is an insurance scheme focuses on the secondary and tertiary services. See this Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana comes under the National Health Protection Scheme of the Aishman Bharat. This is what is discussed in today's articles. Now for our discussion let's take only the Jan Aroge Yojana part. See under the Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana a defined amount of cover of rupees 5 lakhs is provided per family per year for secondary care and tertiary care. Though the amount here is not very important but note that this 5 lakh is for the family that is this 5 lakh is used to cover the entire family for one year. See these are the points which we tend to ignore which UPSC will usually pick up for the Prelims Examination questions. Now moving on. See the beneficiary covered under the scheme will be allowed to take cashless benefits. Note the point cashless benefits from any public or private enrolled hospitals across India. Note the cashless benefits here and the public and private hospital parts also. The benefits of the scheme are portable across the country and it includes both pre and post hospitalization expenses. Note here the pre-existing condition will also be covered from day one of the policy. See this scheme even has a defined transport allowance for hospitalization which will also be covered and paid to the beneficiary. Another point to note here is that there is no upper limit or no cap on the family size and the gauge for availing the benefits under the scheme. Let's recap one more time. It provides cashless benefit. Benefit can be availed both from private or public enrolled hospitals. It is portable across India, covers both pre and post hospitalization expense. It also covers pre-existing condition and transportation expense. Now moving on. Now let's see how the beneficiaries are selected. See the beneficiaries of Pradhan Mandiri Jan Arogyo Yodana is selected using the socio-economic and caste census database. Although the socio-economic caste census database is not made public, the beneficiaries for Pradhan Mandiri Jan Arogyo Yodana is made using this census database. Now coming to the implementation part. At the national level, a national health authority has been set up for the implementation of this scheme. This national health authority is an autonomous body under the Societies Registration Act 1860. This is for the national level. At the state and union territory level, the scheme is implemented through a dedicated entity called state health agency. Now coming to the funding part. See this is a centrally sponsored scheme. So the expenditure incurred in premium payment will be shared between the central and the state government. The existing sharing pattern is in the ratio of 60 is to 40 for states and union territories with legislature. For the north-eastern states and the three Himalayan states that is Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the ratio is 90 is to 10. That is 90% will be provided by the center and 10% by the respective state governments. And finally for the union territories without legislatures, the central government will provide 100% of the funding. Now coming back to the news. As the title hints, the scheme's health benefit package has been revised. That is the national health authority, which is the apex body for implementing the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana at the national level, is revising the health benefit package. And the revised version of the health benefit package is coined as health benefit package 2.2. And this new version is expected to be rolled out from November this year. See in this health benefit package 2.2, the rates of some packages have been increased by about 22-400% under the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana. The rate here means the premium for the insurance. And also the rates of around 400 procedures have been revised. And even a new additional medical management package related to black fungus has also been added. So this is the news here. And when you take the next news article, it talks about the study and the efficacy of the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana. This study was carried out on the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. And as per the study, a sizable amount of the population covered under the program were found to bear the hospital expenses for the COVID treatment from personal funds or borrowing. That is, the hospital did not take into account the insurance coverage provided by the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana. See all the points that we have discussed till now is important for the prelims examination. And mainly take note of the inclusion of black fungus treatment under coverage. This is a new change made, so they may ask a question from it. For the main though, we must focus on the advantages and challenges of the scheme. Now let us discuss some advantages. One of the main advantages of the scheme is the key design feature of Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana, that is portability. This portability, which helps to ensure that a Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana eligible migrant worker can access the scheme services at any enlisted hospital across the country, irrespective of their state of residence. You can mention this in your answer that how during the COVID-19, when migrant workers were going back to their state of origin, Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana helped them in covering their hospital expenses. This will add more relevance to your answers. Other generic advantages are it will help in the achievement of universal health coverage and thereby help in the achievement of sustainable development goal 3 that is good health and well-being. The scheme will also help in improved access and affordability of quality secondary and tertiary care services. This will also reduce out-of-pocket expenditure for hospitalization. And finally, this scheme will align the growth of private sector with public health goals. Now moving on to some challenges. Like we discussed in the article today, many enlisted private hospitals are not taking the insurance cover provided by the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana seriously and are charging the patient's money. Government must try to make the private hospitals address this issue firstly. The next important challenge is funding. Since health is a state subject and the states are expected to contribute 40% of the funding for the scheme, it will be critical to streamline and harmonize the existing state health insurance schemes to Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana. Even now, many states are refusing to implement the scheme. So in this segment, we discussed about the important salient features related to the Pradhan Mandirijan Aroge Yojana. Here we discussed about some benefits and challenges associated with that scheme. With this, let us wind up this discussion and move on to the next article. Now let's take this news article for discussion. This news article mentions that the state government of Tamil Nadu has announced the birth anniversary of Ramalinga Adigalar as Boundless Benevolence Day. So today we are going to discuss about Ramalinga Adigalar and his philosophy. See Ramalinga Adigalar was born in 1823 in the Marudur village near Chidambaram district of Tamil Nadu. He was a great Tamil saint and poet. He is one of the towering figures of the Tamil Renaissance movement. He questioned the Hindu religious orthodoxy. His voluminous songs were compiled and published under the title Thiruvarupa, that is songs of grace. His radical views deeply disturbed the Saiva orthodoxy, who condemned his writings as Marupa, that is songs of ignorance. See that is he continuously questioned the Hindu religious orthodoxy. So moving on, he established the philosophy of Jeeva Karunya. Through this philosophy, he expressed the view that those who lack compassion for suffering beings are hard-hearted and their wisdom is clouded. He showed his compassion and mercy on all living beings, including plants. Ramalinga Adigalar believed that all religions lead to the same God. He called this God as Lord Arat Perum Jyoti. Arat Perum Jyoti means graceful universal light that caused creation of all and governs all of the universe. Three things you have to remember regarding Ramalinga Adigalar. These are the important points which they might ask in the prelims examination. First is the Samarasa Veda Sanmarga Sangam. Actually he established the Samarasa Veda Sanmarga Sangam in 1865 and later it was renamed as Samarasa Sudda Sanmarga Satya Sangam, which literally translates to Society for Pure Truth in Universal Self-hood. Through this institution, he propagated the philosophy of Jeeva Karunya. The next is Satya Nyanasaba. On 25th January 1972, Ramalinga Adigalar opened the Satya Nyanasaba, that is Hall of True Knowledge at Vadalur. One of the primary teachings of Vallalar is service to living beings is the path of liberation, that is Moksha. He declared that death is not natural and our life's first priority should be to fight death and he declared religion in itself is a darkness. He laid a very great emphasis on being vegetarian. He said God is Aral Perum Jyoti who is the personification of grace or mercy and knowledge. He said God could be reached only through the path of compassion and mercy to fellow beings. So now we saw about Samarasa Sudda Sanmarga Satya Sanga and Satya Nyanasaba and the third important is Satya Dharma Sali. Actually Ramalinga Adigalar insisted in feeding all people. This was stated as the main focus of life. He insisted to feed everyone without any discrimination on the basis of religion. In 1867, he established a facility serving free food named Satya Dharma Sali in Vadalur where all people were served food free of cost without any cost distinction. This facility that is the Satya Dharma Sali continues its service even till now. Another Ramalinga Adigal proclaimed that non-violence in words and deeds is the way of life. He claimed or he believed that everyone has equal right to live on the earth and enjoy their life and no one has the right to kill anyone for any cause. He also believed wisdom alone can bring peace to a man and was opposed to superstition and rituals. Due to these principles, he was called as Arut Prakasa Vallalar. Actually in Tamil, Vallal means philanthropist. Since he exemplified the quality of benevolence, Ramalinga Adigalar was called Vallalar. Again for the exam perspective, you should know that he authored three books. They are first one we already saw that is Thiruvarutpa. It means the holy book of grace. This book contains more than 6000 verses and they inculcate wisdom to men. The second important book is Manumurai Kanda Vasagam. This book describes the life of Manunidhi Cholan. The third important book is Jeeva Karuniya Ulukam. So due to his established benevolence only, now the Tamil Nadu government has decided to celebrate his birth anniversary as the Day of Thaniparun Garunai. That is the Day of Boundless Benevolence. So in the prelims static part, UPAC might ask questions about social and religious reformers. And since they have asked the question from almost all major reformers, they might ask questions about social reformers who are not in the limelight very often. So let me give you some important figures of the Tamil Renaissance movement, gather few points that is just one or two important points about them, note it down and revise it before the prelims examination. They might ask questions from it. So some prominent personalities of the Tamil Renaissance movement are Maraimali Adigal, Bharathimar Kalinger, F.W. Ellis, Robert Gladwell, Manonmani M. Sundaram Pillai, Abraham Pandithar, M. Singaravelar and Ayodhidasar Pandithar. They are some important personalities in Tamil Renaissance movement. So in this segment we discussed about Ramalinga Adigal from prelims perspective and now let us conclude this segment and take up the next article for discussion. Now look at this news article. It reports about the Baba Budan Giri shrine issue. See earlier the Karnataka government passed an order in which it interested the religious ceremonies of the Baba Budan Giri cave shrine to a Muslim Mujawar. But the issue here is that the shrine is shared by both Hindus and Muslims. So on that line recently the Karnataka High Court quashed this order and had directed the state government to reconsider its decision. So as a response to this, the Karnataka cabinet has decided to form a committee to study the pros and cons of the court ruling and also to find out ways to proceed further on the issue. So this is the crux of the news here. Now based on this context let's see some important points about the Baba Budan Giri shrine which is mentioned in the article today. See the Baba Budan Giri Darga also known as the Guru Duttariya Pitha is a cave shrine which is located in the Chikmangulu district. Chikmangulu district is located in Karnataka. And this shrine is situated on the Chandradrona range of western gods. As I said earlier there is a religious tussle going on between the Hindus and Muslims for this shrine and they both have their own legends connected to this shrine. To understand better the Muslims believe this shrine to be a abode of the Sufi saint Sheikh Abdul Aziz Mekhi also called Dada Hayat Mir Kualandar and he is believed to be the companion of Prophet Muhammad whereas when you take the Hindus they believe the shrine to be the abode of Duttariya and this Duttariya is believed to be the incarnation of Lord Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwari. And apart from these two people that is the Sufi saint Sheikh Abdul Aziz Mekhi and the Hindu god Dutta Tariya there is also another person whose name is associated with the hill and the Darga and this person is also a Sufi saint who is referred by the name Saeed Shah Jamaluddin Makribi he is also known as Baba Budan. And this Baba Budan lived in the cave and became a disciple of Dada and thereby established his spiritual lineage. As we know the plantations in South India are considered to be the cradle for Indian coffee and one important point to note here is that the place of this shrine is known as the birthplace of coffee plantation in India and the main reason behind this is because Baba Budan is reputed to have brought the first coffee seeds to India from the Yamani port city of Moka and in fact this story is also part of the official history of coffee in India. So with this as a backdrop let us revise a little bit about western gods. Western gods is one of the eight hot spots of biological diversity in the world and it is spread across six states they are Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and it is one of the eight hottest hot spots of the biological diversity in the world. This Himalayas extends from Tapti valley to Kanyakumari. It is divided into four sections that is northern western gods, middle Sahyadri and Neelgri and southern western gods. Now let us take up the northern western gods. The northern western gods extends from Tapti valley to 16 degree north latitude and it has mainly basaltic lava cover. The highest point in the northern western gods is Kalsubai which is also a highest point in Maharashtra. Middle god and bore god are the important passes in the northern western gods. Now moving on to the middle Sahyadri. See the middle Sahyadri extends from 16 degree north latitude to Neelgri hills in the south. Earlier we saw that northern western gods is mainly made of basaltic lava cover. Here the middle Sahyadri is made up of granites and mesas. This area receives very high rainfall so this area is covered by dense forest. The average height here is above 1200 meters. The major peaks in the middle Sahyadri are Vawulmala, Kudremuk and Pushpagiri and the highest point of middle Sahyadri is Vawulmala. After middle Sahyadri comes the Neelgri hills. See the Neelgri hills joins the Sahyadri near the tri-junction of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. This point is also a junction of western gods and eastern gods. The highest peak of Neelgri hills is Dottabeta and another important peak of this area is Makruti. This mainly has granitic structures. The Neelgri hills that extends into Karnataka has another highest point called Mulangiri which is located near Baba Budhan Hills. This Mulangiri is the highest point in Karnataka and earlier we saw Dottapeta, right? Dottapeta is the highest point in Tamil Nadu. See Neelgri has two distinctive features that is Malanad and Maidan. Malanad are highlands and Maidan are plateau surfaces and coming to the last section that is the southern section of western gods. This extends from Palgaard gap to Kanyakumari. This Palgaard gap is actually a rift valley. Through this gap, number of roads and railway lines connect the plains of Tamil Nadu and the coastal plains of Kerala. See only because of the presence of this gap, the southwest monsoon can enter into the plains of Tamil Nadu and the plateau regions of Karnataka and cause rain during the monsoon season. If there had been no Palgaard gap, all of Tamil Nadu and the plateau regions of Karnataka would have been in the leeward side and thus facing very deficient rainfall. This is the importance of Palgaard gap. Now the important peak in the southern section of western gods is Anaymuri. Actually Anaymuri is the highest peak in the whole of southern India. This Anaymuri is located in Kerala. So here we saw about four important peaks. First is Kulsubhai which is the highest peak of Maharashtra. Then we saw about Mulangiri which is the highest peak of Karnataka. Then we saw about Dottabeta which is the highest peak in Tamil Nadu. And finally we saw Anaymuri which is the highest peak in Kerala and also whole of the southern India. We also saw three important gaps. They are Thalgaard gap, Borgaard gap and Palgaard gap. Map based questions can be asked using these features. So find which is located in the north which is located in the south that is the general direction of these geological features. So in this discussion we discussed about the issue related to the Baba Budhangiri shrine and we revised a little bit about western gods. With this let us wind up this segment and move on to the next article. Now our next news discussion is going to be based on these two news articles. And both of them deal with the deaths related to suicide. When you take this article it reports about a judgement made by the Supreme Court related to the suicide of a 14 year old at Rajasthan in 2018. And in this case a teacher was accused of insulting the boy. So in this judgement the court held that the disciplinary measures which are adopted by the authorities of the school for reprimanding a student for his or her discipline will not be considered equal and to provoking a student to commit suicide. And the court also added that a mere disciplinary action cannot be considered equal to that of a crime of abatement or instigating of suicide unless there are evidence of repeated and specific allegation of harassment or insult deliberately without any justifiable cause or reason. So this is the main take away information from the news article. Now with this background let us discuss about the legal provisions related to suicide in India. See whenever you talk about suicide two major conflicting laws come into limelight. And they are Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code and the other one is Section 115 of the Mental Health Care Act 2017. When you take Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code it criminalizes the attempt to suicide. As you can see here anyone who survives from having attempted suicide can be booked under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code and they shall be punished with simple imprisonment for up to one year either with or without a fine. And this provision is often criticized for being misused whereas on the contrary if you take the Mental Health Care Act of 2017 it bars the prosecution of a person trying to take their own life under severe mental stress. And you can see here in Section 115 class 1 this act has significantly reduced the scope of the use of Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. And it has made the attempt to commit suicide punishable only as an exception. Likewise through its class 2 of the Section 115 it has vested the responsibility on the appropriate state government to provide the necessary care treatment and rehabilitation to the persons who commit suicide in order to reduce the risk of reoccurrence of attempt to commit suicide. Now coming to the Constitution according to the judgment pronounced by the Supreme Court in the Guyan Kaur case of 1996 the article 21 only provides the right to live with dignity and not the right to die. To conclude see even till date these two provisions continue to remain conflicting that is Section 309 of IPC and Section 115 of Mental Health Care Act 2017 and despite many attempts and popular perception that Section 309 of IPC is repelled still the section continues to exist in the Statute Book. Now moving on actually a report titled Suicide Worldwide in 2019 was published by the World Health Organization. According to this report India has the highest suicide rate in the Southeast Asian region ok. This is a story state of affair. While the rate of suicide was 9.9 in 2017 it increased to 10.2 in 2018. Actually suicide rate here means number of deaths by suicide per 1 lakh population. So suicide is also an important area where the government must take positive steps ok. So having discussed about suicide here we will see what are the steps taken by the government to prevent suicide ok. First is the Kiran Mental Health Rehabilitation Helpline. It was launched by Ministry of Social Justice and Emporment. Actually this is a 24 by 7 toll free helpline to provide support to the people facing anxiety, stress, depression, suicidal thoughts and other mental health concerns. Second is Mano Darpan Mental Health Initiative. It was launched by the Ministry of Education. This initiative is aimed at providing psychological support to students, family members and teachers for their mental health and well-being during the times of COVID-19. So Kiran is launched by Ministry of Social Justice and Emporment. Mano Darpan is launched by Ministry of Education. You can use these government initiatives in your main censor to make them more legitimate ok. So in this segment we discussed about the legal provision in India relating to suicide and we also saw two government initiatives relating to suicide prevention. So with this we shall wind up the news discussion session and take up the practice prelims question discussion session. We have three practice prelims questions today. Let's take up the first question. Let me read it first. Coffee cultivation is found to be predominant in which of the following states. The states given are Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We must choose the correct code given below. See India is the only country in the world where entire coffee cultivation is grown under shade. It is hand-picked and sun-dried. India produces some of the best coffee in the world and it is grown by tribal farmers in the western and eastern Ghats. In fact Indian coffee is highly valued in the world market and it is also sold as a premium coffee in Europe. Know that in India coffee is cultivated in about 4.54 lakh hectares by around 3.66 lakh coffee farmers and among them 98% are small farmers. Coffee cultivation is mainly done in the southern states of India namely Karnataka which provides 54% of the coffee produced in India followed by Kerala which provides 19% then Tamil Nadu which provides 8%. Apart from this coffee is also grown in non-traditional areas like that of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha and in some northeastern states. So from that we know that coffee cultivation is not done in Telangana. So the correct answer is option D, 2, 3 and 4 only. Now let's move on to the next question. This question is based on the Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana. Okay let me read out the question. Who among the following are eligible for the benefits under the Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana? The statements are Families having only one room with kucha walls and kucha roofs. Scheduled cast and scheduled tribe households. Female headed households with no adult male member between age 16 to 59. Disabled member and no able bodied adult member in the family. Now look at this. These are the criteria for availing the benefits of Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana. So any person who satisfied any of these categories which are listed below will be eligible for availing the benefits provided by Pradhan Mandiri Jan Aroge Yojana. And from this we can infer that all the options given here come under the eligibility criteria under this scheme. So therefore all the statements given here are right and since all the statements given here are right the correct answer will be option D that is 1, 2, 3 and 4. Now moving on to the last question. This question is based on the Tamil saint and poet Ramalinga Adigalar. Three statements are given we must find the correct statements. First statement, he preached that feeding the poor is the highest form of worship. Second statement, he established Samarastha Suddha Sanmarga Sathya Sangam. Third statement, he authored Thirukural. Actually this is a very easy question we all know that Thirukural is authored by Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. Actually Ramalinga Adigalar authored Thiruvarutpa that would be the correct statement. So of the three given statements the first and second statement are correct. So the correct answer is option C 1 and 2 only. The mains question from today's discussion is displayed here. Like I said start writing the answers because once the problems gets over only three months will be there for the mains exam. So start writing answers daily. With this we have come to the end of the discussion session. If you like this video do like, share it with your friends and subscribe to Shankara IS Academy YouTube channel. Thank you.


Live from San Francisco, extracting the signal from the noise, it's The Cube, covering Oracle Open World 2015 from Studio C, brought to you by Cisco. Now your host, Stu Miniman and Jeff Brick. Hey everybody, you are watching The Cube. We are live at Oracle Open World 2015. We're on the exhibit floor in Moscone, South. A lot of action, a lot of video, but this is The Cube. We go out to the events, extract the signal from the noise. I think this is about event number 70. Busy fall tour. We're really excited to be here. Joining us next segment by Stu Miniman from Wikibon and a first-time, first-time guy at The Cube, Marcus Phipps, senior manager, data center, cloud marketing from Cisco. Welcome. Thanks. Glad to be here. Absolutely. So welcome to The Cube. So you are all about UCS. It tells me in my notes, you're the deep dive guy. I'm one of the deep dive guys, yeah. So we'll try not to go too terribly deep, but what I wanted to talk about today is the concept of UCS integrated infrastructures and really what we bring to the table there. Alrighty. So what exactly does that mean then? Okay. So what converged infrastructures or integrated infrastructures mean is it's basically taking computing, networking and storage and integrating them together into a predefined solution. And really when you look at where customers have been and really what their key challenges are, it really comes down to two things. Complexity and speed. Technology is hard. It's difficult. If you're trying to integrate all of this yourself, it can be really complex and it can take a lot of time. And the other piece that's really important is speed. How fast can I get a service up and running? If I have to take months to build out the infrastructure. That's not flying. That's not flying, right? You simply can't do it anymore and that's putting IT under tremendous pressure. Right. Yeah. Marcus, you know, we've tracked this phase for many years and I lived in an interoperability lab for six years during my career. So, you know, people tend to oversimplify things. They're like, well, first of all, I've got standards, right?  It should all work together. And I should be able to take any application and throw it on, you know, any infrastructure, you know, you know, where's kind of the hard work and what is Cisco doing to really simplify these? So you can always do that. You know, we always tell customers, if you want to assemble it yourself, you can absolutely do that. But what's happening is, yeah, I mean, the plugs are going to work and frankly, you know, an Oracle database is going to run on UCS. The challenge usually isn't there. The challenge is in how all of the integration of the systems come together, right? What's the best way of connecting UCS to storage? What's the best way of implementing software to find networking over the entire infrastructure and then deeper into the networking infrastructure? How do you do that? There's probably about 10 different ways you could do it. No customer is going to want to do each of the 10 different ways to figure out what the best way is. So they're really looking for Cisco and our storage partners and our application partners like Oracle to figure out what's the best way of doing that. So I can get that up and running as quickly as possible. So when you're trying to figure out the best way, I mean, what are some of the factors that determine the best way? Because it's horses for courses. It's application specific. It's what do you need? So what are some of the things that you guys look at when you're trying to optimize and figure out the best way? So what we'll do first and foremost is we'll take the core systems that you see of the integrated infrastructure and there's really three of them that we bring to the table. There's the computing component, which is UCS. There's the Nexus component, which also includes application centric infrastructure for software-defined networking. And then there's the orchestration piece. So at the first level, customers are going to want to understand, okay, well, how do those pieces work together? What should my configuration of UCS be if I'm running an Oracle database or I'm running a business suite? What does my service profile look like? Are you familiar with the concept of service profiles? Yep, yep. So for the benefit of the customers watching this, you basically define a server in software, apply it to the underlying infrastructure, and it just works. So there's different ways you can configure that service profile. Here's the best way of doing it, for a database, for e-business suite, and so forth, so that when you're applying that to the underlying infrastructure, you know that it's just going to work. Why? Because we've tested it, we've validated it, we've taken a lot of hard work and made it work. These are your validated designs that have come up. These are the Cisco validated designs that you can find on DesignZone.com, yeah. Okay. So Marcus, we've actually done quite a bit of research on this and kind of the further up the stack you go, it kind of gets exponentially more important as to those integrations. Because even if I've got the infrastructure all set, you know, when I set my applications on top of it, I need to know how that interaction, how the performance has worked, how I balance everything. So I guess the question, you know, we're here at Oracle, you know, why shouldn't all customers just buy an entire red stack where everything from the silicon, all the way up to the application itself, is owned by one vendor?  You know, that full integrated stack versus, you know, Cisco, of course, works with lots of applications including Oracle. So we found that what customers were really looking for is a tremendous degree of flexibility. You know, they have existing processes, they have existing vendors, they have in many cases UCS for a lot of their high performance applications or frankly any application. And so that flexibility in terms of infrastructure and being able to tweak things as necessary to bring in, you know, EMC as part of a V specs or NetApp storage as part of a FlexPod or IBM storage as part of a versus stack and then have the ability to configure that as they need. That's why we've really seen the UCS integrated infrastructure construct take off. In fact, according to IDC, I think Cisco had about participated in about 47% of the integrated infrastructures with V block and with FlexPod alone. And we're actually over 50% because EMC is tracked separately but we actually participate in their V specs program as well. So in the integrated infrastructure or converged infrastructure category, we're seeing a lot of success because customers want that kind of flexibility. And even kind of breaking it down a little bit further, you know, you do have the reference architecture piece which is what FlexPod and versus stack and it's the new solutions we're working on with Nimble are today. And then you have the, you know, the kind of preconfigured ship from the loading dock or I should say from the factory floor to your loading dock. And that's what VCE is delivering which even more tightly integrates UCS and EMC storage and VMware virtualization. So maybe could you talk a little bit about the piece that gets overlooked when you put these pieces together is the management and the orchestration piece of that. So I know it's been key to Cisco's architecture from the beginning, but maybe you can give us an update there. Yeah, you know, five years ago when we were talking about the initial integrated infrastructures and that was, you know, V block and FlexPod, you know, it was enough to be able to spin up a VM very quickly because that's really at the time what customers were looking for. They wanted to see, give me a VM, I'll put an application on it and I'm done. We're seeing more and more that customers are now trying to build a private cloud type environment where they want to say, okay, I want to offer you a VM as a service, a database as a service, you know, an instance of an application as a service. And to do this, right, if I can go to a public cloud and get it in 15, 20 minutes, well, I'm going to have to be able to do something like that internally. Now, even with the CVDs, if I have to configure each of the individual components, we can do it quickly, but still it's going to take an element of time. If I can automate all of that, if I can automate the UCS piece, bring it together with the Nexus piece, bring it together with our partner storage piece, you can then get that service up and running much, much, much, much, much faster and you can meet the expectations of the cloud. So the orchestration piece, you know, which in Cisco is Cisco one UCS director and above that Cisco one enterprise cloud suite. We have APIs that connected to our partner storage ecosystem. So now when you say, you know, click, I want to add a service, you can now automate the provisioning of that and it can all come up and running very, very quickly. So with the foundation of it, being the standardized infrastructure of standardized storage for our partners, standardized UCS, standardized Nexus, and then the services that you can deploy on top of that with, you know, never really called it software-defined computing, that's kind of what it is with UCS and then software-defined networking and then what our partners are delivering with storage, it's really easy now to automate these capabilities. Yeah, and you bring up software-defined networking. So the newer component from Cisco is the application-centric infrastructure or ACI. I have to tell you, the whole SDN discussion has been a bit fuzzy. Most customers really haven't gotten it. You know, Cisco and VMware have kind of led in the marketing of it and starting to see customer adoption. It was here at VMworld a month or so ago and it really seemed like security was, you know, the tip of the spear in what they were doing. So, you know, ACI, it's many things, but, you know, what's the key value that customers are having, where's the adoption and how does it fit into this discussion that we're having? Well, at a high level, I mentioned earlier how UCS, you can figure what the server looks like in software and you apply it to the underlying resources. What SDN is doing, or what ACI is doing in the context of SDN is you basically define as I'm leaving my server and I'm going out into the big bad world out there, what does that application require? What does it require for load balancing? What does it require for security as you asked him a second ago? And then how do I automate that? So, if I can say, for instance, here is the web front end to an Oracle eBusiness Suite application. Who can talk to it? Who can't talk to it? How can the web tier talk to the application tier, talk to the database tier? If I can pre-configure that in terms of when you leave the server and you're going to another server, what the network must do there, I can pre-program that with application-centric infrastructure. I can create that template. I can define what that application requires and then I simply apply that under the underlying switches. Now, with the ecosystem that we have for ACI, we have a very broad spectrum of partners around the security realm. So clearly Cisco sells security. We sell firewalls, intrusion protection. We also have partnerships with the Citrix, F5, Checkpoint, et cetera so that we can extend those policies to those partners as well. So therefore, as you're leaving the server going out into the network, you're guaranteed that security will follow that at every point in the network and that's huge from a security standpoint. Yeah, so if we look at kind of the demands on the CIO and IT in general, biggest challenge they have is really operationally.  Spends 70, 80% of our budget on keeping the lights on. Server virtualization unfortunately didn't really move the meat needle for us much. Do you have any metrics as to, how these solutions are helping customers from an operational standpoint? How does it really simplify kind of on day zero as well as during the lifetime time of the product? So let me give you a couple of numbers that we found in talking to our many customers over the years of leveraging and delivering integrated infrastructures. You know, the first is 80%. 80% is about the reduction time that we've seen in deploying infrastructure. So, you know, where it used to take weeks, it can now take days and that's huge. So if I have a team of people or even one person deploying, you know, a flex pod or a V block and they can get that infrastructure up and running within a day, that's a huge time savings compared to where they've been before. Another number I'll give you is 77%. And that's the reduction that we've seen in cabling and infrastructure costs, right? So people often don't realize that the lifespan cost of a cable is about $1,000. And that's the cable itself, that's terminating the cable, that's cable trays, that's maintenance, that's shooting the cable. So I can reduce that cost using the unified fabric capabilities, you know, that are inherent in UCS. That's a huge cost benefit, both CapEx and OpEx. And the other number is 61%. And that's the reduction that we've seen in ongoing operational and management costs for the system.  If I can save some of that, then I can put those, you know, very high value employees, I can put them on new projects, right?  Mobility, any of these really kind of cutting edge type solutions, I can now put my resources on that as opposed to the proverbial, as you said, keeping the lights on. Yeah, I'm curious. If you talk about kind of the overall management task there, there's so many repetitive actions that, you know, we don't want to have to deal with. And many of them are just configurations, you know, on the networking side, it's always like, all right, how many hours do I spend configuring VLANs and figuring all this? You guys tie it in with things like ChefPuppet and SmallSaltStack to be able to really automate some of these processes? Yeah, we've been working with all of those vendors. And the good thing there is, you know, you can, again, define what you're doing once and then you can apply that, you know, through the infrastructures you need. And so when you look at the repetitive management task and simplifying all of that, this is really how you get down to the management cost savings and a lot of the TCO benefits that you're seeing with the system overall. So yeah, huge advantage. Switch it over to something policy-based. Make sure I've got APIs to tie in everything I'm doing and, you know, get out of what we was called the undifferentiated heavy lifting, which, you know, unfortunately, you know, keeps folks running around the data center too much and not getting enough work done. Exactly, and that's the whole policy mechanism that we've used, which underlies, you know, the integrated infrastructures. It defines what we're doing with UCS, with Nexus, you know, what we're doing with UCS Director at Cisco One, so that you can deploy these capabilities now much, much faster.  One of the interesting things that we heard, you know, how it was about five years ago now when VBlock was first coming out and, you know, customers were saying at the time, there's one customer that I remember saying, we love the technology, we just can't consume it. We're not organized effectively. We don't have those capabilities. Technology, awesome, but it's not everything. What we've seen with some of these same customers, some of these very large enterprise customers is that over the last several years they've been able to transform their organizations, which, you know, we talk about technology, but the people in process is really important here too. And a lot of these teams are now really coming together to be able to leverage this converged infrastructure and integrated infrastructure technologies. And that's where they're seeing a lot of the benefits, right, they have more effective teams and they've been able to get applications up and running, you know, within weeks, because the infrastructure itself can be deployed within days. So they can spend, you know, the hard stuff getting the application on the system, up and running, ready to go and out to their users. It is the driver more of the stick because they're competing with the card swipe at Amazon or is it more of the carrot and really seeing the opportunity to free up those resources and do other things? It's actually a little bit of both. We're actually seeing a little bit of both. We see customers that are saying, you know what, I really would like to get control or I absolutely positively have to get control. How do I do that? But there's a lot of forward thinking CIOs who are looking at this and saying, you know what, there's some really interesting opportunities I have. I can really get into this new DevOps type of environment. I can really now work with my application teams to see how can I create the next level of infrastructure to allow them to be more productive. All right, so we're at Oracle Open World. Anything specifically, you're looking forward to this week, presentations, any announcements we should know about? Well, I'm presenting actually in about 10 minutes at the Cisco Theater over here. Always looking forward to- What's going on at the Cisco Theater for the folks that are having to stop by here? So I'm going to be talking about integrated infrastructures again. So for those who just caught part of this, but we're like a little bit more detailed, so they can come by the theater and you know, happy to talk to it, talk about it again. All right, well Marcus, thanks for stopping by, spending a few minutes with us in theCUBE. We are live at Oracle Open World. It's our sixth year we've been here. We're pretty excited to be here once again. We're down at the exhibit floor. Stop by booth 801. You're watching theCUBE. We're going wall to wall for three days. We'll be back with our next guest this short break. Show the value of integration with theCUBE. All right, we're out. That's good. Is that good? I think it's good.


Hey, what's good y'all should boy down from the down showing friends and we back for another k-pop reaction and guess We got back in the building. You know Sam. We got the bro here a Lonnie. Yes. Yes. Yes He's back in the building of course. We got the bro. What's poppin? You all I'm saying What's goodie? Word ain't no big person. Oh my god We see we getting yesterday's bro. How we have y'all been doing. Yes. I've been doing great too. I miss you guys I really did the hug. Oh my goodness. I'll do the screen. I'll do the screen So look today. This is what we got going on. We have BTS spring day dance practice Okay, this is choreography by BTS. So we're gonna check this out Please make sure you hit the like button for the algorithm Please make sure you hit them comments boom and please make sure you subscribe All three of us here that belt. Yes all three of us is here. Yo, it's been a long time. Yes Yes, so it's about to get crazy. So We're gonna do a BTS one. Yo shout out to the people in the studio all white studio. Yeah Oh, yeah, nice. Absolutely. Let's give it a buck Absolutely. See what we got. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and go back a little bit more. We want the beginning There it is. Let's get it Nice see what we going in sync No pun intended Yeah, that's true Hmm, very more dramatic. Yeah very much dramatic Very nice. No I like that. Let's go. What we doing? Wait a second off the rip like like here's the thing the patients People don't understand how hard it is To just not move Right? Oh my gosh. Like like just to like Just to like not move just in the sense, but it's a bit like like To see how like like that takes a lot of patients mentally It does it does take a lot of you because you because you're It kicks up your anticipation when you're waiting for that instrument. Yeah beat to drop and heart's pounding A adrenaline going up and you want to be right. You want to do it right and you want to look so good And like like on time And mind you and and and just and to mind you there's a lot of people that mess up when they do that. Yeah. Oh, yeah It happens we wait it's happened to us. It's happened to us. It's happened to all of us, y'all But we also had But we've also had Chris Chris clean performances as well. Yeah, true. And that's and that's And like having those experiences it takes hella focus it does a lot of focus. That's true. We only 32 seconds in and we have And one more thing like the people that were in sync You know, so you had it was like, you know, you have this like it was a staggering Because I was wondering who's like you got the lead in the middle and then there's like the Connected through the windows. Yeah Like it's it was it was perfectly offset. Yeah And you got everybody ever noticed everybody's in a different pose when we pause Yo, I want y'all look at this. That's a nice 32 seconds. This is a perfect If they had a facebook, I don't know if they got a facebook. That's a cover photo. That's a That's a cover photo for sure. That's They cold, man. They nice I wonder how the end is going to be that's what I'm interested in See what we're working with Less is more. Yeah They're not doing a lot. No less is more. That's how you know what type of music video is going to be to be honest Very more contemporary Somebody been taking contemporary or he doesn't just be a b-boy himself doing that Like to grow back see what we're doing They You know, we like footwork. Yes And a ripple, of course. Oh, you know, I love them ripples. Oh, yeah Come on Come on They're going up, you know how they do what they're going up Here's a thing What's up with it? I like how they're on the same timing but they're now in the same movement And it gives like a different texture As they're in their little yes yes Pockets So to speak This is yeah, it's nice I love the fact that these artists They have a way of doing this choreography where if you even playing this on mute You can know if it's going to be like a high energy Or it's going to be like it's perfect to the music chemistry, you know another thing about taking consideration is You know chemistry is so It's so on top tier with them Because you can have an aesthetically pleasing Uh performance, but if the chemistry is not there, it's gonna it's gonna seem bland Yeah And so their chemistry like the way that each and every one too. Oh my goodness. Oh, yes Like like because I'll tell you this much like how they're because y'all know in past views. I'm very big on transitions So Not only are the transitions great, but how they transition from one person leading to the next. Yeah Is just so it's it's yeah, it's amazing to watch Like I I think You know, that's a that's one thing that I think a lot of people don't pay attention to everybody gets the spotlight Yeah, there's nobody selfish. There's nobody Nobody's above us as a unit. Yeah, that's why I like about and just see That and you just see that you like you see a contemporary person You see a b-boy you'll see you just see so many so many different dynamics, which again as james said it gives us so much texture Yes, oh my goodness. Oh, it makes you feel some type of way that uh, yeah That was nice They waste they're wasting no movements. I don't know Everything everything matters everything is saying everything matters everything Everything is saying something I would have just slide indeed. I would have just slide in and pick them up.   Just he wasn't walking on the same time It's oh my oh like and that's ridiculous. Yeah, let's go back to play. Let me send 13 seconds. Watch. Just watch Watch this.  Yeah, you gotta stretch are you stretching before you do that? I love that No Yes, you can tell you hit that a couple times in rehearsal More than a couple I know their faces are not shiny. Oh, but they really like they really love the score. Yeah I can tell Yeah, when you hit no right, it feels good. It feels great No money Okay If you're gonna be dramatic Just just do it. Just do it. All the way. Maybe hold him back. No, I need you to go all the way with the drama This is outstanding. So we're talking about the way I was standing so They think so Hi, here's one thing, right? Oh my gosh BTS is one of the ones with Uh They're a smaller group. It's only seven of them. Mm-hmm. Like we've seen some with like eight nine 13 17 29 17 29, right Right Big groups. Yes, but though they have less members like Especially with a performance like this. Mm-hmm. They feel like they're dancing with like 30 people Like just it's so big and dramatic.  Yeah, this this show this Come on photo. I want you all to pay attention to performance dancing like Every step Should be aesthetic should there should be some kind of aesthetic to it Whether you're transitioning. Yeah Or hitting uh beginning like beginning middle end and the transition between the beginning middle middle end Is a photo shot like It's it's always if you if you look at the two in the back There has to be a formation for everybody to be seen at some point. Yes If not, then you're going to have to get out of it and get into a formation because Because and like let me just like one of them in one middle obviously the lead The anchor in this particular shot to off to the left. Yeah, highly dramatic ones To on the back. Come on like holding it, you know, also part of the anchor. Yeah to on the right Definitely, it's like more so the simplistic subtle side Uh dramatic of of the performance like Everybody's doing something that everybody has a part and playing them well playing them perfectly. Yeah deep game Nice There's sharpness This performance is breathing yo, yo, this performance is things is like four years ago That's my gosh, he's doing it's so clean. It's clean. It's really really clean Texture change real quick on them the texture Every little everybody else, man Everything matters Simple but dope simple, but so simple, but just on point Yeah, I know they're breathing hard us. Yeah, you see you hear that. Yeah It takes it takes a lot of feeling to dance with feeling. Yeah, you were here.  You think that's gonna be a top 10? That's a top five though Because look like again, that's a top five. Let's let's take note y'all. Let's really really take And it's not fine. Do you realize how much? Patience yes They showed patience throughout the whole freaking performance I mean, I mean super super super super patience because And and realize don't even come to a stop. No, I tell us at the right time And and also think about it. Listen to what you heard at the end. It was breathing heavy So that tells you even though they was moving Everything meant something they were moving with intention. Yes So there so it wasn't because if you dance without no intention It's gonna look feel and just be sloppy and flat It's gonna be flat. You're not gonna be breathing heavy like that But they put so much effort into everything they did That movement like every movement that they did Was there was effort put to it. Yeah, even with I want to be surprised that that was like dressed in sweat Literally it was like no joke No joke at all man I think it was great. I think it was great. I think it was it was I think it was the first time we did get a video like this um for a dance practice for these for these artists that we get a small group And dramatic and big shows a little bit a different way of moving because a lot of them move a lot of the hip-hop Crump and breaking movement. This got more Real sharp eye energy. Yeah, very theatrical. That's what I was thinking about this whole time as you know The bros they're so dope articulating how they feel about movement So I was just trying to think like, you know They they went through so many categories of dance and then this one just went real theatrical very dramatic And just it just it was there and every most of the moment they changed the texture of that That sharpness that ruggedness or as technical like their robotic tics And those are my favorite kinds of like performances those those dramatic theatrical ones. Yes, um, I do love high tempo and You know, you know you're showing the uh The intensity but I love the story. There's something different about stories. Yeah There's something there's something different about a story because to be able to take a style or styles and then talk with them It gives such a uh, such an abysmal type of feel It's so it's it's so deep and it's so hard hitting And I don't think um those particular kind of performances given like get enough credit or praise So, you know, so I mean I often want to say like Like shout out to them for that shout out Seriously, yeah, and uh shout out to y'all letting us know about this video. You know what I'm saying? Thank you so much Thank you keep dropping those comments. Yes. You keep dropping that flame. Yes We're gonna react to speaking of which Uh, we have two surveys coming out on the page. So be be ready. We got we're doing a poll for y'all We have our new uh, youtube channel We would have our membership set up and we want to know what some of the parts that you would like to have in this membership So when we do this poll, please be honest What are some of the parts that you would like to have for this membership? All right, this is for you Yeah, please Talk to my line. It's not back on my girlfriend. Talk to my man. Thank you James. Tell me. Tell me. Y'all see me fresh cut And y'all see me with a do rag all scruffy quit acting like y'all don't know me like that Come on man, we people's now y'all like We didn't know until the way too long y'all be happy. I'll tell you one thing we do though We ain't dirty I just play I like that you got me Yo, we love y'all. Yeah, right? We do we really do we have a blast doing this So please hit the like button on this. Oh and yes in 24 hours after this video There will be the don show Instagram don show in france instagram The don show in france instagram Now i'm just hoping across some fingers that we can get the don show in france instagram because somebody out there There's a lot of donuts in the world shut up And my name is james. I just think I feel Well, you got like never mind That's a disney movie with my name in it. Yeah, I got down on that. Oh, I got james and jane peach No We're out of here the bro is back as you can see, you know what i'm saying So get ready to see him more give us to see more videos like this We're gonna do the best we can because of our schedules, but in that we truly love y'all Thank y'all so much share this video y'all hit the like button hit the comments. We see y'all soon. All right. Peace


Alrighty, got a really quick construction update for you guys today, I was gonna post it because it looks like there's a lot done, and I wanna talk about Snoopy's Racing Railway, because now that I've been able to see it a lot clearer, I'm a little bit concerned about its opening date. But Tundra Twister, the footings are all done, as you can see here, I believe every single one of them is in, they're just working on the platform area now. That's all those little tiny footings there, it'll be for the foundation. So yeah, I think that big one in the center, it could be the Op Booth, not quite sure, or something else, actually I can't see that being the Op Booth, but usually you're gonna see like a footing for Op Booth, the foundation for the actual platform, and the support columns as well. But looking over at Snoopy's Racing Railway, I noticed, it's been really hard to tell with the snow that a lot of the footings aren't done, so I can't guarantee that, but it looks like a lot of the footings aren't done and a lot of new markings popped up, so yeah, that's interesting. They got a lot of the supports on flatbeds that have arrived, or sorry, that are gonna head on into the park, just a little confused because I don't really see where the footings for a lot of those taller ones would go. So yeah, this is really interesting. We'll have to see what happens because either I'm blind, you guys have a really good look on the screen, either I'm extremely blind, I had my team analyze it too, and I'm missing them, or they're there, and I've just not seen them. So comment down below what you guys see, but yeah, nonetheless, really quick update, just wanted to show you guys what was going on, you're gonna see me doing a little more frequent updates now, obviously I won't be able to fly Friday or Saturday, due to the snowstorm, but nothing exciting is gonna happen tomorrow, don't worry. And yeah, have a good one guys, bye!


All my life, ever since I was a boy, I love science fiction. And there's this interesting thing in a lot of science fiction books. It's this trope called a generation ship. And this is a ship that travels great distances, like the distances between stars, at relatively slow speeds. And the people who start out on the journey don't live long enough to see the destination. It's their descendants who do.  A few years ago I was thinking about generation ships for some reason. And I started asking myself about the operational problems of such a ship. Let's say that this ship is on its journey for, you know, 20 generations, 30 generations. Well, it's a complex machine. It's got systems that have to be maintained.  Something that has to be maintained correctly or else. And the question is, who will be there to remember, let's say five, six, seven, ten generations in? What should be done and why? And what shouldn't be done and why? Like you couldn't just start out with this general idea that you should do the right thing. That's not specific enough. You can't start out with the idea that the most important thing aboard this ship is the freedom to do whatever you want. You could say freedom is important, but that couldn't be the highest value. Because again, no matter what, these systems that keep the ship alive, that keep its inhabitants alive, have to be maintained until the ship gets to its destination. And so that got me thinking that the real problems of a generation ship aren't technical, really. They're moral. What should we do and why? What should we not do and why? And then I got to thinking that that's really what human civilization actually is. It's a generation ship. And tradition is how the builders of that ship speak to us. People who are no longer here, right? It's a kind of a testament of their hands and their minds. And that's what we mean, I think, when we say we're part of a civilization. It means we live in houses built by the dead.


Hi guys, welcome back to my channel. Today's video is going to be my week 63 updates of my fitness journey and running and everything. I'm gonna say this week was pretty good. I ended up running four days this week, which is my ultimate goal. So I'm just gonna tell you guys what I did this week and then we'll get on into some cheater chatter and then the progress photos. I've also been incorporating some videos by Pamela Reef into my routine because I really wanna get back into doing the workout videos because I wanna have a good variety of workouts and stuff if that makes sense. So starting off Saturday, I don't work out. As you guys know, I just really take that day off and especially now since I've been having to get up super early, I definitely take Saturday to like sleep in and everything and kinda do a lot of like YouTube stuff or just take the day off. That's pretty much what my Saturdays consist of. Then on Sunday, I did a 1.92 mile run and I burned 186 calories. I like to keep Sundays pretty chill and stuff. Then on Monday, it was a very challenging run, I will say. So I did a 2.23 mile run and I burned 213 calories and that run was so difficult. I actually earned this little badge. I think it's cause I completed like week three on the couch to 5K app. That is what the little award looks like. I always love it when I get the little badges cause I'm like, oh, I'm like improving somewhat. And then after that run, I did a booty workout. So I did a hemorrhage booty workout. It was like 10 minutes I think and it was no equipment.  Then on Wednesday, I repeated what I did on Monday but I didn't do the booty workout. I just did the run because it was so difficult for me. So I ran 2.14 miles and I burned 205 calories. It was weird cause like I burned more and I walked a little bit more on Monday but I did the same run just because it was really difficult cause now I'm running like a lot longer periods of time. I watched this one girl's video and she was saying, oh, if you are having trouble with one run just do that run over. Again, like the next time you run. So you're not just like pushing yourself too much. You're like, you're improving by repeating what you've done the previous day or week or whatever your plan is. So I just decided to do that run again. And then today is Friday. I did a 2.51 mile run. I burned 242 calories and honestly, most of the run was an actual run. So now I'm running like a lot longer periods of time. It's just wild man. Like I can't believe like I'm actually doing it. This is what the app looks like that I just finished today. So I don't know like how long I run for but it's like the green things if you guys can see. So that's what it looks like. And that's the run that I did today. I might actually repeat that one again just because it's really challenging and stuff. Also I did an app workout today and I must tell you like, I don't know what abs I'm using but my abs, they don't feel weaker but because I've been using my abs in a different way, I guess doing the Pamela Reef like ab holds and like jack knives and stuff. It's actually like pretty challenging for me again. So I don't know like what's going on there. I was able to do it. It's just like for me, I felt like it was harder than it once was. So that's why I'm kind of glad I'm getting back into that. Okay. So moving on to the updates. Getting up early is getting a little easier. I'm starting to go to bed a lot sooner. So probably like 10 30 ish is like when I'm trying to go to sleep. Sometimes I'm just not tired and I just like lay in my bed like thinking, oh my gosh, I wish I was asleep right now. You would think with like getting up early I would get tired more easily, but it's fine. I've been doing a lot more stretches. I find that sometimes like when I start running like I can feel exactly where I'm sore and stuff. So that's also really interesting. This doesn't have anything to do with running but ever since I started getting up earlier. Okay. So I'm supposed to wear glasses, right? But I just don't because I don't want to. And I just have never, I've always been kind of like a rebel when it comes to that not that that's like anything dealing with rebellion in any way. It's just like, I just don't like, I just don't like to wear them. But I've noticed as I started waking up earlier the two different prescriptions that my eyes are seeing. So like right when I get up and I'm like starting my run or walk, I can clearly see that my eyes are two different like prescriptions, which is insane. And it's kind of weird. So honestly, I've been wearing my glasses a lot more after my runs and like when I start work or just editing on the computer in general because I feel like my eyes for some reason, if I get up early or like a little weirded out. So that's definitely something I've also noticed when it comes to working out and waking up early to do a run. Okay, so I'm going to get on to the story time. And this might inspire some of you to start running but why I really want to run and like try to improve and stuff is number one to like burn subcutaneous fat and just kind of like get that cardio in. And it's like in a fast, efficient way. My aunt said that my metabolism will become faster. And that's also good. Cause I mean, I don't know. I just want my metabolism to be healthy. And also because I could never run. Growing up, I would always joke around saying that if an intruder or whatever someone was trying to catch me and be like, okay, just take me because I can't run. Honestly, I don't like running it. Never liked running it. I would always get a stitch in my side when I would run. And surprisingly that hasn't happened.  Don't like running. I would rather do like jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers, that sort of thing. And we had to do this mile run. And I'm sure you guys have had to do like a mile run like in school and stuff. And my phys ed teacher in high school, like we had to do a mile run in the beginning of the year and a mile run after at the end of the year. So I did the mile run at the beginning of the year. And then when I crossed the finish line at the end of the year, my phys ed teacher was like, no improvement. And I'm like, oh shoot, man. I don't know if this story is like very entertaining, but that's another reason why I kind of wanted to start running and just like get motivated enough to do it because I was just like a hot mess when it came to like anything physical activity or sports. I mean, I did dance and I consider that a sport, but like I'm talking about like other things, you know, other things that will like make me sweat or anything. I just didn't want anything to do with that. I didn't feel bad cause I'm again, I was like, I can't run. So like I already like had that mindset that I couldn't run and I couldn't do it, but that's why now, like I can't believe I'm doing this. Like honestly, number one, getting up early and number two, running, it's kind of an insane. So I think that's pretty much it for like my rambly portion. I did want to tell that story and stuff. And I thought that like my telling you guys about my eyes would be interesting as well. So let's move on to the photos. So Alex on the left is the beginning of year two working out and then on the right is Alex now. And honestly, I know that my hips look like a little wider and maybe that's bad, but I don't know. I've always had the like hourglass shape so it doesn't really surprise me. And I don't know why I don't think I was like trying to flex in this picture. That's just what it looks like. And then here's the side view. I know that these photos don't look like at all like I've improved maybe to some of you, but honestly, I feel a difference in my body just like in a different way. It's weird. So how are you guys doing on your fitness journeys or just like being active or walking, running, going to the gym, whatever you're doing right now? I know that one of my friends is into cycling and I really want to try a class with her and stuff. So hopefully in the near future, like after I get vaccinated and wait a little bit longer until more people are vaccinated, I will go to the little cycle place because that's different. And I've also always wanted to try like hot yoga because all these things like when I see people I'm like they look fit. Like maybe I should try that. I don't know. I like trying different things to see like what I like and so far I've liked everything. I haven't really like hated anything. Make sure you give this video a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.