Now, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Nigeria, Bubakamalami, has spelt out reasons why President Mahmada Buhari would not sign the new electoral law. He insisted that the law has not captured the interests of all Nigerians, saying it has excessive cost implication, its discriminatory as well as supportive of insecurity. He said the signing into law will only initiate a crisis that will lead to court cases. Now, to discuss this with us, is Professor Richard Wokocha, he's a professor of law at the River State University. Thank you very much, Professor, for joining us. Thank you for having me. So, let's examine the AGF's position on Mr. President's reasons for not signing this bill into law. One of the things that sticks out as a sore thumb, I beg your pardon, is the fact that he says that it gives room for insecurity and it discriminates. How exactly do you think this fits in? I think none of those reasons appear to hold water to me. The reason is simple. I don't know what they are making of the process of direct primaries. Because the idea of direct primaries is not entirely strange or new to our law. We do have a law on that. If you look at section 87, subsection 3 of the Electoral Act, you'll find it provides for what we should do should the party want to hold this Congress by direct primaries. I don't know the idea of, according to us, a meeting of the party in every world. Every world will vote against the prefer. But they must ensure that all candidates or all aspirants, all candidates or aspirants of the party seeking to be the flag bearer are given equal opportunity to be voted for. So all they simply need to do is hold world meetings in every world. We are the candidates to be presented and members of the party in every world will state their preferred candidate. The result will be transmitted to the center of the party. So I don't understand, and they are on to INEC. So I don't understand where they are talking of being too expensive and security implications. Are they saying that we don't hold world meetings of parties? It doesn't require INEC raising staff everywhere and that the party sending officials to every world of the party. No, that is not the law. There is a statement of the law right now on what needs to be done if direct primaries is to be followed. It doesn't support what they are saying. He also insisted that this particular bill that was returned to the National Assembly does not capture the interest of all. Now, of course, we also know that the Attorney General, as we speak, is a political appointee of Mr. President, even though he is a legal practitioner and he is the Attorney General of the Federation, he does obviously, at one point or the other, have political leanings. So when he talks about representing the interest of all, is he talking about the interest of the All Progressive Congress and the party of his principle? I guess it's as good as mine. Which power is he referring to? Primaries is a party affair. It's the process by which a party selects its candidates who are to represent it or bear its flags at elections. It doesn't concern me if I'm not a member of a political party. Neither does it concern you if you're not a member of a political party. It's simply the process by which party members decide who they want to represent their party. So which All is the Attorney General talking about? The Attorney General of the Federation talking about? It's the business for all. So we see that there is some form of a drag within the National Assembly as to which way this is to go. It also puts the average Nigerian in a state of limbo as to we do not necessarily understand or know where the pendulum might swing in the next couple of weeks, especially with the House of Representatives coming back into session right after the holidays. What do you presume would happen in the coming days in terms of this bill and making it to see the lights of day for 2023? I think we're going to experience intense lobbying from the executive department. Obviously, this bill was resisted as it were by the governors and by the body of governors. For obvious reasons, for if you decide that the bill should stand and should become an act and the direct primary should be adopted, there will largely lose control of the party process or candidate selection process in the respective states. So they almost collectively opposed it across party lines. It didn't matter whether they were PDP or APC. They supported that the bill should not stand. And lobbying even the general defederation to stop the president or discourage the president from signing the bill into an act. So we're going to experience intense lobbying from the executive, not that the federal government has accepted the lobbying by the governors and have accepted the same position. We're going to see them lobbying the legislators and the senators and the House of Representatives to get them to back down on doing what the law says they can. In this situation, they are supposed to meet and attempt to override the digital of Mr. President by raising two-third majority to vote that bill into an act or into a law, in which case the presidents are sent to no longer be necessary. OK. Well, Professor Richard Wococcia is a professor of law at the River State University. Thank you very much for speaking with us. We appreciate it. Great pleasure. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hey, what's good you guys? I'm here back at Pristine Auction, brand new set. Got all the Christmas gear up here. What you're looking at in front of you is something you have never seen before in a Pristine Auction video. I know you're used to a crazy amount of boxes stacked up here, but today, we've got the James Bond, heavy duty, crack the safe, Pelican, for one of the craziest sports car boxes I think I'm ever gonna open in my entire life. So every time we open a crazy box from Pristine Auction we're always talking about all of the insane stuff you can get, but one thing I don't talk about a lot is their insane collection of sports cards. So for this video, Pristine Auction has locked up some insane, insane sports cards in this box. I don't know any of them yet. So before you go anywhere, make sure you check out Pristine Auction's website. There's a link in the top of description and if you use code MMG, you'll get $10 off on your first order. I can't wait to open this thing. It's absolutely, oh my goodness. Dude, I feel like a real collector with the Pelican. Just in case I lost my Pelican and I wanna make sure it's mine. I feel like I'm cracking a safe right now. What do we see? I haven't seen it yet. Oh no, I'm breaking stuff already. Yo, wait a minute. Dude, I think there's layers to this. This first layer I got, there's at least one, two, three, four, five, six, seven cards and then look under it. Oh, there's another layer down there. Oh my goodness. Matt, it's always a great time when we can get together for the holidays. We appreciate you stopping by the warehouse and checking out the new studio. Keep up the hard work on YouTube and be sure to use registration code MMG for $10 off your first order. All right, boys, where do we start, man? We'll go right down the middle. Card number one in the Manila folder. Keep in mind, as always, we'll be giving away everything that we pull today. I might keep like one thing though. No way. Oh my God, what is that, a rookie? Camaro, oh my God. It's a rookie patch auto, graded a nine 2017 Panini origins. Alvin Camaro, oh my goodness. I don't know if I've ever seen a Camaro rookie before. That's how you start an opening, boys. Oh my goodness. All right, hey, I hope there's some saints fans in the building. Alvin Camaro, we'll be giving this away for sure. Let me walk you guys through the process of buying an item on pristine auction. There are plenty of formats, but let's see what's going on in the 10 minute auctions right now. As you can see, every item here is sold in 10 minutes like this signed Dan Marino jersey. I saw this Jared golf card that I wanted to pick up. It was a little bidding war, but I did catch the W. And once you win, all you gotta do is check out and your order will show up at your doorstep. It's super easy. You can use code MMG at registration to get $10 off your first purchase. Check out that link in the top of the description and thanks to pristine auction for sponsoring. Look at this thick, dude, that's the dictionary. That's the Bible. Oh my goodness, what do we, what is this? Whoa, dude, it's one of his spikes from his cleats.  Where is this from? This is a one of two. So one other person on planet Earth has a Saquon Barkley cleat. It's a Saquon Barkley 2022 Panini Flawless, Flawless Spikes. Oh my gosh, I have never seen a card like this. Third one up. Before I show you it, I'm just gonna show you the back. I'm just gonna show you the back. Yo. Justin Herbert 2020 Leaf Trinity Patch Auto Platinum Spectrum. Wait a second, is that Oregon? Oh my God, it's in Oregon, Jersey.  Isn't that a patch from the duck? Oh my God, wait a minute, I've never, I'm pulling this one out. I've never seen this before. So it's a Justin Herbert Oregon Patch Auto, but the patch itself is straight off the wing of the duck. Oh my God, 32 of 50 Leaf Trinity, graded in eight and a half. So I guess you could be a Chargers fan or you could be an Oregon fan. We'll be giving this one away too. Oh my God. Dude, this is the first layer. They went all out. Jamar Chase 2021 Absolute Rookie Premier Material Autograph Quad. This is a Jamar Chase Auto with a football and three patches of his jersey. We got an Oregon Justin Herbert, a rookie Jamar, Saquon's Cleats, and a rookie Camara already. Rookie Jamar Chase Quad. I love his signature too. We're crazy. Oh my goodness. Dude, I feel like every single one of these can be heat now. Oh my God. There's no way. Bro, it's like every best player you could think of. Material Treasures Justin Jefferson Patch Auto. 2021 Justin Jefferson Patch Auto. Dude, you can build and look at the team you could build from this. Herbert Jamar, Jefferson, Saquon, Camara. Hello. This is only the first layer, man. What? This is... Oh my God, Jared Goff signed Absolute Jumbo Cleat. That's the Nike Swoosh off of Ram's Jared Goff Cleat that he signed. Where do you even find this? Jared Goff Absolute. This is a player-warring Cleat. You could get anywhere on the Cleat. They got right in the middle of the Swoosh. This is heat. This is the final pack of that top layer. This is the eighth. All right, I'm letting you guys see it first. You guys see it before I see it. What team, Mills? Colts? Oh my God. Rookie Andrew Luck. It's a nine and a half. This is a 2012 Andrew Luck 2012 Momentum Rookie Patch Auto. We actually saved the best for last on accident. That's crazy. I think this is the best one. I feel like that Justin Herbert's pretty crazy. And so is that Jamar Chase, but dude, a Rookie Patch Auto Andrew Luck. I was not collecting trading cards back in 2012. I've never seen this before. A nine and a half, too. All right, insane start to the opening. I have no idea what's in this second layer. So let's find out. What?  This is a PSA certified Jerry Rice from 1960? Dude, what is this? Jerry Rice 2015 Top 60th Anniversary Throwback Jumbo Card with Jerry Rice's signature on it. Dude, what? That's crazy. Oh my God.  All right, boys. Let's keep going through the layers. Oh my God. Is this like a super layer? Is this just like a super layer with a ton of cards in it? Oh my God. It's a super layer. No way. Where do I even start? Bo Jackson 1990? Yo. Oh my God. This is a card from 1990. Bo Jackson. Yo. So what I just learned about these cards is Bo Jackson's under like a lifetime contract with Nike. So since he's wearing baseball stuff and football stuff in this, he was not allowed to sign these. Yo, the wheel of luck prestige. Rob Gronkowski. Patch Auto. Rob Gronkowski, Patch Auto. Yo, that's a nasty one too. 51 of 75. Rob Gronkowski. Dude, there's so many in here. Is that the boy? Is that the boy? Is that K-Dub? Is that K-9? This low key might stay in my collection because last time I was at pristine auction, I did sports cards. I pulled a rookie Patch Auto Kenneth Walker Collegiate and now we've got the Patch Auto Kenneth Walker and the Seahawks Uni. Oh, look at this young Randy Moss. He's so young. I've never seen him look like that, dude. He's got a little stash going. Look at that. He's got a little stash going. Those two. He knows what's up. Randy Moss, 1998 rookie record setter. I was born in that year. Oh, we got the boy Booper Bob. Our little Cooper Cup. Graded a nine. Cooper Cup five. Oh, that's a rookie Cooper Cup.  Rookie Cooper Cup. Got the signature on there. Five of 49. Bam. Oh, we got some Lions, dude. This is a nine as well. Also a rookie. Also the signature on there. Well, Aiden Hutchinson. Big hutch. Oh, dude, they got like all my favorite players here. No way. As I'm saying it, bro, who's my other favorite lion? If it's not Aiden Hutchinson, who is it? A rookie ticket. Oh, this is one of those seat tickets. I'm in real Saint Brown rookie ticket.  I really like this one. Dude, I got two now to add to the Lions collection. Hutch. Amenra. Got Cup. Canine Bow. Oh, Tony Pollard action. Another rookie ticket. This one's Tony Pollard. Oh, 1961. Guess the player. This one's from 1961. Johnny Unitas. Johnny Unitas quarterback for the Baltimore Colts. That's how you know it's old. Ain't the Baltimore Ravens and ain't the Indianapolis Colts. It's the Baltimore Colts. Dude, look at it. Look at how far sports carts have come. Are you ready to see how far sports carts have come? We got a Jalen Waddle rookie patch auto here. You're tripping on asset. You're not tripping on asset. You're definitely tripping on asset. You're not even considering it. This Jalen Waddle is dope though. Five more, boys. Starting out with Nick Chubb. Dude, I got a lot of Nick Chubb cars. I need him to continue to ball out. Nick Chubb Origins. This is a rookie patch auto as well. No way. What is this? It's a San Francisco 49er, boys. Wanna take some guesses? Christian McCaffrey national treasures.  So that's a patch of his jersey right there. Look at how perfectly that's cut down the middle. It looks so sick on this card. 10 of 25 national treasures, Christian McCaffrey. To get the jersey like that is so sick. Oh, it's the boy again, baby. What is this?  Okay, look, rookie signature locker, Sam Howell. Oh my God.  That is so sick. There's six different things going on here. So you got the Sam Howell rookie carpet, the signature on it. You've got a football jersey, jersey, jersey, helmet, helmet. I hope there's some Sam Howell enjoyers out there. I'll definitely be giving this away. Somebody's gonna love that, dude. What a card. This is so cool. Ooh, yeesh, dude. You could actually build a Super Bowl team with what we got here. This, is this today's first defensive player? Sauce Gardner. That's got three, three jersey patches. Signature 51 of 75 and it's a rookie card.  That's a nasty card. Final card, boys. Final card is an NFL legend, Chicago Bears running back. The final card, boys. Game worn jersey off a sweetness, Walter Payton. I love that vintage look, dude.  It's hard to replicate. All right, boys, let me give you a little overview of everything we just pulled because there's a lot of insane cards in here. We started out with Alvin Camara, Origen's rookie card. We got Jamar Chase rookie with the helmet and the jerseys and the signature. A Justin Jefferson.  You got, this might be one of my favorite ones. I don't know if it's one of the rarest but it's definitely one of my favorite ones. Oregon Justin Herbert with a patch off the duck. This is my favorite one actually. This is a nasty card. We're gonna make a Chargers fan real happy. Probably the rarest one, I really don't know. I'm not very good on the pricing of cards but a nine and a half rookie patch auto Andrew Luck from 2012. That's gotta be one of the most expensive ones. That's nuts. You got Saquon Barkley, one of two, one of his spikes, that's just crazy. We got a little grunt patch auto and a Kenneth Walker patch auto. This one I'm keeping. I'm keeping Kenneth Walker. Got some old school ones too. We got Jumbo Jerry Rice with the signature on there. You got a 1998 Randy Moss and you got the Bo Jackson OG card right there. That's so sick. A few rookie tickets as well. There's a rookie ticket Tony Pollard, rookie ticket Cooper Cup, rookie ticket Amunra St. Brown. You got the Otto from Hutch, Origins Chubb 1961, Baltimore Colts. Johnny Unitis. Probably the coolest thing we pulled and I'm excited to give this away to a commander's fan or maybe just a big Sam Howell fan. You never know dude. The Fold Open Sam Howell. What a unique way to make a really cool card. And to finish it up, we got Jalen Waddle. We got rookie sauce gardener and probably one of the prettiest cards. I think this is one of the prettiest cards. National Treasures, Christian McCaffrey to close it out.  Hey, I wanna thank you guys so much for checking out today's video. We'll be giving this away and another thing, Pristina Auction actually gave me a few $100 gift cards to give away to you guys. So I'll be reaching out to you guys on that. I'll find you guys for giveaways on all of these. Please don't flood my DMs. They don't work anymore. I'll most likely do giveaways during live streams.  Another amazing thank you to Pristina Auction for making these videos happen. I can't wait to do more. Make sure you check out the website. It's super easy to buy and sell training cards on there. Another awesome episode. I love you guys. Thanks for watching as always. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


We're going to use mics because it is being recorded by Channel 17, thank you very much. So even for the Q&A we'll pass a mic around so please make sure you use it. So thanks for coming to this evening, part of our critical conversations series that's part of the Emergent Landscape class for the Masters of Fine Arts in Emergent Media at Champlain College. So thanks for being here tonight. Right we have, I'm going to look at my notes, our talk is called Engagement in Community in the Digital Space, Reflections from the Arts and Humanities. And to tell you a little bit before I introduce our speakers, I'll tell you a little bit about the class that this speaker series is part of and about the program. So the Masters programs in Emergent Media are interdisciplinary programs designed to give graduate students the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of how humans interact with and are impacted by technology, allowing them to become thought leaders and designers of media solutions for tomorrow. So our students are learning about how to evaluate the social impacts of technological innovations and communications processes and they're using media in new ways to address creative business social and education challenges and to make a difference in the world. So this class is an introductory class to, it's called The Emergent Landscape and it's designed, it's a speaker series course that's designed to introduce students to kind of a wide range of different ways of thinking about technology in contemporary society, really. We've had people from the healthcare space doing human-centered design, we've had generative artists and technicians, we've had people from the digital humanities, we've had musicians, I don't know who else, a lot of others. I'm missing a few, I'm sure. So today I'm happy to welcome Peter Gilbert and Karen Middleman to join me for a conversation about, again, engagement in community in the digital space.  So the idea for this particular presentation began actually this summer when I had the privilege of being on the hiring committee for the new executive director for the Vermont Arts Council and we had the pleasure of interviewing, I had the pleasure of interviewing Karen Middleman who in the middle of the interview started talking about her vision for the arts in Vermont and how important digital media and the game space was to her vision for the arts and humanities in the 21st century. And she and I started getting into this conversation, this side conversation in the middle of the interview and we had to stop ourselves. So we chose her for the position and we brought her here and now I get to have this evening. I'm excited to introduce Karen Middleman. She has a PhD in US history and published her first novel in 2016. She was prior to being the newly minted executive director at the Vermont Arts Council. We're on month two. She was the director of the division of public programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities. In addition to that, she held a senior position at the National Museum of American Jewish History and was a curator at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Karen and I started talking about this particular talk early on in her tenure at the Arts Council about a month ago, actually before she officially started six weeks ago. And she immediately said let's invite Peter Gilbert who is our other guest and he is the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council. So we emailed Peter and set up a phone conversation and the first thing he said to us on the phone was I have no idea why you want me to participate in this conversation. I don't know anything about the digital space or how it impacts the future of humanities and arts. And Karen and I both said that's exactly why we want you to participate in this conversation. So I told him at the beginning just before that he's the Luddite of the group and so he can help us probe and ask questions from a different perspective. In addition to being the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council, Peter is a former litigator and teacher of English and History at Phillips Academy. He also was senior assistant to the president and associate provost at Dartmouth College. And this was, I thought, the most interesting since 1992, Peter, sorry, my notes, Peter has also served as Robert Frost's literary executor. So yeah, so there you go. So I'm going to start with Karen. She's going to talk a little bit about her time at the National Endowment of the Humanities and some of the work she did in bringing digital media projects to the NEH. And then we'll have a conversation. And we hope that you guys will participate in that conversation as well. So. Thanks, Robin. Do I have to turn this off? And I'm going to turn on the TV behind her because we're going to need it in just a minute. Thank you, Robin. And thanks for being here. First I have to clear something up. I am not, this is not the tech person and the Luddite. I am much closer to Peter than it might seem. I don't come to this conversation as a tech person at all. I am trained as a historian and a museum curator and I really started thinking about the digital space and the possibilities of digital humanities as a funder when I was at the NEH. So we had, I had been at the NEH for 20 years about, and we had a very vibrant digital humanities program that was founded, I want to say, 10 years ago. But in my division, the division of public programs, we really weren't doing much in the digital space. And most of what was going on in digital humanities was very academic. Not to knock academics, but it was not aimed at the public. And my mission was public education. The division of public programs funded a wide range of public program formats that delivered humanities ideas to the public. So documentary film, radio, museum exhibits, historic site interpretation, reading groups in local libraries, you name it. Any format that brought humanities ideas to a wide public, that's what we did, except for digital. We had kind of shied away from that. And about five years ago, six years ago, I said, this is crazy. You know, we have to explore this digital space and figure out a way to play a leadership role. There was tremendous apprehension at the time in my field, in the museum field, about the potential of the digital space. It may be hard for the students here to appreciate this, but the first reaction of a lot of folks in the museum field was to, you know, kind of be terrified by digital. They were convinced that if museum collections were put online, for example, no one would come in their doors anymore, that no one would want the real stuff. We know that's not what happened, in fact, that digital engagement drives people to want to engage more deeply with the real stuff. But there was tremendous fear and apprehension and resistance. So, okay, so fast forward to 2014. We finally pushed through all that resistance and we said, we're going to do this anyway. We're going to offer a new grant category called Digital Projects for the Public. And I'm happy to say it's still alive and well. And we started to fund some really innovative stuff. We originally had very modest expectations. We thought we would fund websites, museum websites. We would help museums get their collections online. We would help use digital tools as a way for people to access humanities ideas and resources. But it quickly became clear that the digital space was much more than that, which is no news to you, but it was sort of news to me at the time. So we quickly realized that what we had got our hands on as a funder was a whole new kind of learning space that had its own pedagogy and its own approaches and needed leadership from funders like the NEH to nurture along a sense of common practice and pedagogy if it was going to be effective in reaching the public. And remember, again, I'm thinking public. I'm not talking about what happens on the college campus or university classrooms. I'm talking about people, lay people. So we started funding digital field trips and experimenting with mobile apps, but I have to say that among all the things we funded, the most provocative and the most appealing to all of us on staff were games. And that's what I'm going to focus on tonight. The game space struck us all immediately as a really provocative alternative learning environment. And I want to talk about that on a couple of levels. And then I'll show you a clip from one of my favorites. So I think there's several things that make a game a really intriguing learning space. First, and some of these will seem obvious, but I hope during the conversation we can push deeper. So first, the most obvious one, access. People who don't, who no longer read books play games. Every generation can be engaged through a game that would not sit down and read a book. That's the most obvious. But also, there's access, so that's access on kind of the physical level, an intellectual level, but there's also access for people in China to visit virtually the Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection who are never going to set foot in the doors of that museum. So access on that level as well. In terms of the game environment as a learning space. It allows for situated learning. It allows for learning that is rooted deeply in a place or in a moment in time.  You long to be able to create an immersion for a student in another moment in time. I've taught history and one of the most impossible things to teach. Really not just in the classroom, but the most difficult thing for any of us to grasp is a sense of contingency and choice. So we know, for example, how the French Revolution came about. We know how it turned out. We know why and how the smallpox vaccine was invented. We know when and why slavery was ended in North America. We know all of these things because we learned them through history books or through lectures or from our parents. And there's a sense of inevitability that we absorb about history and it's almost impossible to unpeel that from your mind, from your understanding of history and not think that everything was just marching along the way it had to march along. What a game can do is it can take that away from you, that sense of inevitability, and pose an alternative ending. And play around with contingency so that you really are confronted with the fact that things really can work out differently if you make this choice or that choice at this turn in the road. And there's some fascinating, brilliant people working in the game development field who are playing around with the potential of the game narrative to affect our thinking about choice and contingency. So I hope we can talk more about that during the discussion, but I just want to put that out there. It's for me one of the things that's really deeply fascinating about the game space and how it can alter teaching, but really possibly alter our thinking about our place in this moment in time and how we got here. So, and I think because my background is history, that's probably the one that compels me the most. There's also a lot of potential for gaming as what's sometimes called an empathic narrative, an experience that can place you genuinely in the shoes of someone else, in the heart and mind of someone else in a different moment, different place, different point in time. I have to admit to a little bit of skepticism on this point and we can talk more about that in the break, but I've seen it work. In fact, a group of us were just talking about a game that a student said, moved him or her to tears at some point. I've seen games move people in ways that really surprise me. Because perhaps because I don't play them that much or I didn't until five years ago. But I'm much more likely to be moved by a film or a novel or a conversation with a person that I trust. But there's this form that is incredibly powerful as an empathic tool and an expressive and empathic tool. And I think we've only begun to understand that particular power. This is something that's completely fundamental to both the arts and the humanities, to the worlds that both Peter and I inhabit. The idea that a great novel or a beautiful dance performance or a great game can give you access to someone else's mind and heart. That's why we're in this business, right? I mean, that's why I'm in this business. And so that's, I think for me, why games are so exciting. Because we know that that depth of understanding can be genuinely profound. You don't have to have lived in 19th century Russia to read Anna Karenina and be profoundly moved, right? We know that a brilliant art form can push right through those particularities of experience that so often divide us. And I've really come to believe that a game, if it's well crafted and thoughtfully designed, has perhaps even more power than a novel like Anna Karenina to achieve that. So I put that out there for us to argue about later. Anyway, I think, I mean basically what this led me to is that if your mission is public education or teaching, you have to take the game environment seriously as a learning space. We just have to wrestle with what those possibilities are. So I'd like to pause for a minute and show you a clip of a game that I think will help raise some of these interesting questions. It's called Walden. It was developed by Tracy Fullerton, a really innovative kind of ground game designer at USC. She runs the game lab there. It was just released in June 2017 for both Mac and Windows. And in this game, instead of fighting zombies or surviving combat, you are put in a first person simulation of the life of Henry David Thoreau, the American philosopher. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau has just embarked on his experiment in self-reliant living. And as the player, you follow in his footsteps as he is walking through the woods, building a cabin, gathering firewood, finding food, sowing clothing, and more. And I will pick up this conversation after we watch it. This is about a two minute trailer that gives you an intro to the game plan. If we could all go to the woods to live in the good place. They reviewed this. They called this the world's most improbable video game. I mean, taking Henry David Thoreau, who we all think of as anti-technology and turning this, turning it into a video game. But I will tell you that the world's leading Thoreau scholars were advisors on this game and they love it. And they, in fact, one of them said to me, because NEH funded this, this game in part, one of them said to me that he believed if Thoreau were alive today he would be playing video games. I mean, he, in fact, was not the utter Luddite that we believe him to be. So the gameplay in this game is on one level very, very simple. There's about six hours if you play it straight through. And you're just wandering in the woods.  The presence of the technology that Thoreau abhorred and wrote about changing the pace of human life is there. You saw the railroad going by, there are other hints of that technology that we're encroaching on the world of Walden Pond. And you can write about that and reflect about that. There are quests built in, for example, as you explore the natural environment. You come across arrowheads and you can pick them up and in the process learn about the history of the Native Americans who inhabited Walden Pond before Thoreau arrived on the scene. The seasons change. You saw that in the trailer. Each one presents its own challenges and its own opportunities for reflection and inspiration. If you don't take the time to reflect, if all you do is hurry about the business of survival, the game changes. The music and the colors start to dim. The music gets thinner, the colors dim. And as a player, you lose energy. You start to feel faint. So in other words, you have to figure out that you need nature to replenish yourself and that you need reflective time if you're going to go about the business, return to the business of survival. It's that balance between survival and reflection, between the reflective life and our basic human needs for survival that really was what Thoreau was grappling with for those two years at Walden Pond. That's what you are forced to grapple with as a player. Nothing in the game tells you that. You have to figure it out as you're playing. What else? I'll read you what the game developer Tracy Fullerton says. She says, players cultivate through the game their own thoughts and responses to what they discover. When have you ever heard a game that is about a player cultivating their thoughts and responses? It's not about action. It's about reflection. The piece, this is Tracy Fullerton again. The piece has a subtle narrative arc in homage to the original text, which is not an adventure of the body pitted against nature, but instead an adventure of the mind and soul living in nature over the course of one New England year. Ultimately, what Tracy was hoping to do, and we can argue about whether she did it or not, was to prompt reflective play instead of fast paced first person shooter kind of engagement with games, but ultimately to also raise questions about the personal experience of the natural environment and the personal costs of human progress. The project includes a very ambitious outreach campaign. She's trying to get it into schools across the nation, and we don't know yet how kids are engaging with it. It was just released, but I'm really looking forward to the research on how it works in the classroom. I know for a fact because of the focus group research that I've seen that in the early days of developing it, kids were responding to this game who were never going to pick up Walden and read it. So in terms of access, it's clearly opening up the world of Henry David Thoreau to a whole new audience that is not going to encounter him in a book. So I don't know that Walden embodies all of the qualities that I think kind of the ideal game might embody, but I think it captures the way the digital space has enormous potential to invite discovery and to spark the imagination in ways that are substantively and I think profoundly different from a novel or a dance performance or any other art form that we are used to in our world, used to funding and thinking about. So this work that I've done over the last five years, I will say, has really challenged me as a historian, as a writer, and as a funder to think about my work differently. And so I'd like to throw out a couple questions and then I'll finish. I'm interested in opening up a conversation about in what ways do these new digital forms challenge us to change our practice? And when I say us, I mean artists, teachers, humanists, thinking people. What ways are we challenged to change our practice of engaging with each other and thinking about our purpose? And I think that challenge, for me, is clear in three areas. First, on the level of creativity, the most obvious one, right? The new possibilities for artistic expression that are presented by digital space are, we can talk about that for hours. The potential for collaboration, a digital app that lets a composer in Peru collaborate with a composer in China. The possibilities for artistic collaboration and expression that weren't there before. But also, and I think this is the most provocative, changing our ideas of narrative. So we're used to narrative as something that's linear, whether it's a text or a performance that has a beginning and an end or a museum exhibit where you enter there and you exit there. And you know that in the digital space, nothing is linear. So what does that do to our pedagogy as teachers? What does that do to our encounter as students with new ideas? When we're not encountering ideas in a fixed sequence? I think that's really fun to think about. So that's a whole bucket of questions about creativity. Second, inclusion. Not just access to new audiences, like the kid I mentioned who's never gonna pick up Walden but will might get engaged by the game. But in what ways do we, with digital space, are we able to include people in the conversation who otherwise might not sit down with us to talk and to interact? And then related, a whole set of issues about community. So there are games that pose ethical choices that are profoundly about our relationship to ourself and to others. There's a game that puts you in the role of a border guard deciding who gets to enter a refugee camp. There is a game actually that takes place in the Syrian refugee camp and tries to get you to think about what would your experience be, fleeing your country and settling in a new land. There's a whole movement of games that are motivated by goals of getting people to think about social change and social justice. So what are the possibilities for the game space for having us think about ourselves and our relationship to each other and our communities differently? When I went to a couple of weekends ago to a terrific conference that Peter Shupp put on here at the University of Vermont on the double-edged sword of technology, one of the speakers quoted Benedict Anderson's book, Imagine Communities. And the quote was about the idea of community in anonymity. And what Benedict Anderson was talking about was a group of people, I think in a public space, on a subway train all reading the same newspaper in isolation, not talking to each other, but because they were all experiencing the same narrative bounded by that printed page, they were in some sense engaging in a belief that they were connected in some way. Talk about a metaphor for digital space. So I think the digital space, everybody's talking about the digital space and its potential to forge a community, but what are the dimensions and the depth and the texture of that community? How do we enact it? How do we nurture it so that it's really meaningful to ourselves and to the wider human community? I'll leave you with that question. Peter, did you want to? Sure. Well, those are terrific remarks and just to pick up on one thread that Karen mentioned, empathy I think is a key ingredient to the humanities, whether it's whatever the discipline is, it has to do with not feeling for someone else, but feeling as someone else. That's what literature, great literature does. That's what history does. It helps us experience the narrative that happens in the past. That's the miracle of the written word of history, of literature is you can actually know the thoughts of a person who's been dead for 2,000 years. When you think about that, that is really bizarre, that's really extraordinary. Unfortunately, I think we've lost, many of us have lost that lesson. We've lost the lesson that literature can be enormously powerful. I'm glad that we have emerging media that are picking up and capturing people through different means, but I'd also like to grab those people and show them the power of a short poem, the power of a sentence, the power of a short story, the power of a movie, you all know all of those things. A lot of, a book, a game like Walden will I think engage some people, bring them to the table in some way. How far, how long they sit at that table, how far they go along this journey, we don't know, but my hope would be that some of those people would say, this is kind of interesting, I gotta find out about this guy thorough. I'm gonna pick up that book, and then they'll sit down and maybe read a little bit in it and about it and follow those threads other places. Why, because it started here, it started somewhere for them. So anytime we can have experiences that put us in the shoes of other people, we're doing a wonderful thing. Too often, I think the stereotype would be that we objectify in the violence of video games, antisocial behavior and do things that are really pernicious to individuals and society. There are ways, as Karen has pointed out, that we can do just the opposite, or that the opposite can be done. Those shared texts, those shared experiences are, whether it's all reading the same book in private, that's what journalism does, that's what when we make a passing reference to something and everybody smiles because you know that song by Madonna, or you know that poem by Frost or whatever, there's a connection there that matters a lot, not only in the subtlety and the efficiency of communication, but also the bonds that they create. So we really do want this to be a conversation, so I'm hoping to pass the mic to somebody and start a conversation. Does anybody have a question or comment that was raised? Hi, I'm really interested in the idea that we all experience the information that's being provided, whatever the medium is, simultaneously and therefore experience some sort of connection. When we're talking about digital media that allow us to manipulate the experience, have we had any kind of connection? What do you think? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think, so let me start with a story. In the 1990s, when the internet was a new thing, I know some of you won't remember that, but I remember it. I was at a New Year's Eve party with my best friends and we stayed up late drinking too much wine and we were arguing about, don't laugh, is the internet a good thing or a bad thing?  But the substance of our question was, is it going to isolate us or is it gonna bring us together? And we were passionately on opposite ends of that spectrum. And the question that you raised is really, for me, the crux of the matter, if you, how do you forge something shared from a digital experience? And that's what I meant by saying, how do we nurture it and enact it and build it so that it's meaningful? Because just saying that we're both on the same, looking at the same digital information is not community. Any more than those people sitting on the subway both reading the same newspaper, they might have had the perception of community, but one was taking away this message and one was taking away that message and if they're not exchanging ideas or affecting each other in any way, to me that's not community. So that's, I'd love to know what other people think. One quick response or addition to that, it may actually make it more shared and more authentic and more connected because in life we have the two of us see the same thing or read the same book and we do have radically different, sometimes, reactions to it. You found that character sympathetic. The person we just met, you actually thought he was a decent guy, I thought he was a scoundrel. Then there's a little exchange about that and I learned a little bit from you and you learned a little bit from me. The fact that we art in lockstep is closer to reality. It's closer to the way we live our lives, whether it's in art or literature or a game. Well, and I'm glad you said that because I recently had sort of rebuilt this argument with a new friend and I was saying, if you're existing in this digital world over here and talking to people like you and looking at photo art, you're the architecture of this environment so you're choosing what images you see and who you interact with and I'm creating my own digital environment over here. How can we find a shared map of the world? And she basically looked at me and said, Karen, we've never had a shared map of the world.  That's not the nature of human experience. It's just that we're reacting to these new tools if they're altering our experience. Not sure I buy that 100% but it's... Well, you have much more to say. I'm there with you 80%. You have much more to say about a movie that you've just watched with somebody who disagrees with you than somebody who says, yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. That's not very interesting and it's rare. I have a question about learning through play and I wanted to ask it about the Walden game because I think it's exciting and a really great case study. And so I've sort of bridged two worlds in my life. One, the sort of digital media making world and one, the free play unstructured play experiential ed outdoor play world.  And so I think the Walden game is really exciting but I can think of my mentor at Play Core in Providence saying, if they play that game, they're looking at screens and they're not going outside into the world and having their own experience where like, which isn't circumscribed by a narrative designed by somebody else. And so my question is, how can these two forms of play be in productive conversation with each other? And is that possible? That's a big question. Hi. So my background is I did history for my undergrad and I'm a game writer for my masters. So what I thought of immediately when you were talking about that is unstructured play to me, and I actually got to play Walden and it's a great game. It's a really cool game. And I didn't actually realize there even was a narrative. To me, it was simply unstructured play. And then structured play to me is another term. It means the same thing to me as the emergent narrative, which is also something that Karen was bringing up. An emergent narrative is, it's not the story that anybody hands you. It's rather that somebody creates a world for you to explore. And it's a story that you as a player or the viewer create for yourself by virtue of your actions and your choices that you make in the world. So for me, emergent narrative is really the same thing as unstructured play. And I think as game designers, like something I'm working on is moving away, precisely moving away from linear storytelling and into creating spaces that are really just opportunities for players to make their own stories. So I think that there's a lot of overlap in what you're talking about. So this makes me think two different things. First, the people who are at Walden Pond in Concord have installed a kiosk so that people who actually come to the physical space play the game, which if you think about it, I'm a little makes no sense, right? Cause they're there in this beautiful natural environment. Why don't they just take a walk and explore Walden Pond? But in fact, what they are finding, and it's still, you know, this game was just released. So I think we have some time to figure out how this really works. But what they're finding is that people move back and forth almost seamlessly between those experiences. So, and this gets to your point of how can those two worlds be united productively? I think in fact, if you just let children alone, in particular, they do move very readily back and forth between those two modes of experiencing the world. And they don't think it's jarring the way that we do. There's some really good research in the children's museum field about that, in fact. And I have a hunch that's what they're gonna find at Walden Pond. And that's what the curators interested in seeing. People don't do one in place of the other. They feel like they're mutually reinforcing and that one deepens their experience of the other.  But I know that that's not true for other people. And I see the research and I see it happening sort of the light in people's faces when they're discovering this environment through the game. And those two modes do, there is a way that they, I don't think we have to do anything to facilitate that experience, it happens. So, I mean, you're asking a bigger question. I think a pedagogical question about how can we as teachers facilitate bringing those worlds together, which I think is a really interesting question, which I absolutely don't have the answer to. But also, how can we create as humanist productive conversation between those two groups that see themselves as diametrically at those and when they're clear in the mind. Right. But just, can I just ask, I don't know your name though. Okay, so Dana, so I have a question about the games that have that kind of self-directed narrative. And this is a question for anyone in the room who's played them. That to me feels like one of the most profoundly isolating experiences.  And I played a couple of them and they're completely mesmerizing.  But you are utterly, utterly, utterly creating your own reality in those five hours. That's to me a little scary. How then do you ever create a bridge between that experience and the experience of another person? That's, it's not fair to ask you that question. But, but I mean. What, in what way is it scary, did you say? Because it's so profoundly isolating.  Yeah, so I don't think it links me in any meaningful way to someone else in another room or classroom or country who's playing the same game. In the way that if two people are reading a great novel, they might, they might, there might be places that they can come together at their local library to talk about those ideas. They're, you share a great novel with your friends in a book club or with your mother or with your sister. You don't share the experience of playing one of those games with somebody else. Because it is a very deeply personal experience. So I think it's, there's something fundamental. So, so I find that really jarring when I think about its impact on us as a human community. I think there's a lot of hands kind of going up from some of us who've played some of these kinds of games. You find the other people that have online through forums, even in libraries looking up the same kinds of materials. I had assumed when you said it was isolating that you would have that kind of play experience. You build your own narrative and you would be unable to share that narrative with somebody else because it was self-driven. But I think of games where people have to face a similar challenge. And even if it's a real open world experience, you run into this particular challenge and you don't know how to get around it. And so you start finding videos of other people who played it and how they got around it. You start talking to other players about what techniques they were using. You start showcasing your own ability because you think that you've come up with a better solution than they did. There's a lot of community that can be built even in those very personal play experiences. And I think I saw your hand, but I'm not sure. You said most of what I was going to be and I'm going to add is that the companies that are making these games are the smarter ones actually doing things to encourage those communities to come into being and to exist, be it running forums or what have you because they know that increases the value of the product. I think too that a lot of those self-directed games run on the same kind of juice you're talking about with Walden. I mean, the experience is all about your sense of choice and agency and the narrative that emerges from that. So it has a lot of that built into it. And there was one other point I wanted to make about that. Oh, not to go off in this direction, but I've played some of those games and they do feel maybe a little bit isolating because you are sort of having that experience alone. And one of the things that's different about that from say reading a novel, which can be a very intimate experience even though you don't know who in the world is reading that novel at the same time is that there is not really as strongly felt presence of an author, authorial hand.  I know all about them. But you have that sense that another human being created this and that you're being kind of spoken to or communicated with in some way. And we know that these games are the product of large development teams and the good ones cover their tracks and they leave you alone. And so you really do feel alone. I get what you're saying about that. Well, and there's the illusion that's deliberately created for you that you are the author of your experience, right? So, I mean, that's a really interesting point because you don't have that imaginary connection to the author or the choreographer or the painter or that you're right. It's because the game developer doesn't want you to have that relationship. They want you to believe that you are the author of your own experience. And that's a profoundly different relationship to just experience than most art forms that I'm used to. Also, I think it ends. Like you said, you can get fully immersed into that experience for hours and hours on end and you are alone and isolated in that space while you're doing it. And, you know, you hear, you know, I've seen and experienced myself that I might sit down to play a fun little game and two or three hours have passed and I don't even realize it where when you're consuming traditional media, there is an end that's predetermined and you might read a book a second time or watch a movie over and over again but there's a finite time associated with it. It's not this bottomless pit which also I think feels isolating to me anyways because you're alone with the screen. Even if you're even with games, I think in which you're having digital communications through avatars or even through conversations. I mean, I watch my kids play video games and they all have their headphones on and they're playing virtually with their friends from the other side of town and having conversations while doing it but it's still you're alone with the screen for an undeterminate amount of time that also I think changes things for me. So I want to take things back for a minute to communities and specifically digital communities and it seems to me that when we're talking about sort of traditional communities, communities that existed prior to things like the digital age, one of the main basis, one of the main bases that community was founded on was dependence, reliance and consequence with other people. So if you have to live with people, you have to see them every day, you have to take responsibility for your actions, you depend on them socially, emotionally, economically, all those sorts of things. And I think anyone who spent any great amount of time on the internet can see that there's a lot of toxicity that can frequently come up in communities when anonymity is assumed. So that people do not feel like they have to respond to the consequences of their actions and therefore can just kind of make a mess of things that other people would rather they didn't. So do you think that there's any sense in which digital communities should have more accountability towards individuals or more ways to make it so that consequences are more real to people as opposed to something that can be just sort of shoved off and you get more of an illusion of community where it's more just like feelings or ideas being exchanged rather than concrete currency of emotion or economics or those sorts of things? You're the humanities person you're talking about. I guess the question you asked is the one that society and the marketplace would be asking. How that decision is made would happen in a variety of ways I suppose. But I suppose if it gets so bad that nobody goes there anymore like Yogi Berra's full restaurant, if places are so toxic that people lose interest in the thing, somebody, a new sheriff may bring order to the place. And it's a balance between how about freedom and unity to coin a phrase, the tension between obligation and autonomy. Well I guess what I'm asking is would it be worthwhile to try to pursue making digital spaces have more accountability to individuals? Is anonymity destructive of communities when we're talking about digital spaces and would it be worth trying to have some way, like in some multiplayer games that I've had there is a great respect for the social community that goes on in these games in large part because there is a huge amount of time put into your character in the game and into the world itself and therefore when other players mess with that and when they do things with it there is a strongly felt emotional reaction against it which other players can act as sheriffs and act as real forces to try to get things back into a real kind of community control. And in other areas when anonymity is much more widespread that kind of social pressure doesn't exist in the same way and therefore it's a lot harder to create a real community one where people's actions mean things and where people are actually trying to pay attention to one another and have their actions have some reciprocity basically. So is there, might it be something that digital communities need to do to try to really reach out towards the people who are actually there and connect them more firmly than just having a name that comes up whenever you're espousing something on the internet. Is that kind of implied social contract that you're talking about? Is that something that has arisen organically or is it built into the architecture of the game that you're playing? This is largely organic. This is basically like the more time you put into something the more you care about it. I mean I would say there's your answer. I think those kinds of forms of policing or control should emerge organically and shouldn't be, I'd be really reluctant to say that it's anyone's job to create that kind of structure but that's just my, that's a philosophical question. Our society generally looks with some suspicion at anonymity. We permit it in places where it's needed to protect victims, to protect people who are in positions of weakness against a retribution and the like but usually our society says, no, no, let's, who are you? Put a face to a name. Put a face to a name so that I can understand where you're coming from. I can judge your credibility. I can find a connection with you. That's the way society, live society is built at least in the West. Absolutely. And I think this is also related to, you know, everyone likes talking about fake news nowadays and I think that there is a, I think that that lack of accountability towards individuals and the idea that you can just go on the internet and edit Wikipedia or you can just go on and post anything on some particular journalism website. I think there is something about the kinds of communities that spring up online that has this high potential at least for deception and for kind of creating areas in which policing becomes very difficult and I don't know, I don't really know exactly where my question is going, but I do want to bring up the link between anonymity consequence and what those things have to say about what kinds of communities are real and which ones are more illusory. My question is somewhat related. So as I'm listening to you speak, I'm hearing some similarities between some traditional, more traditional media such like poems and novels and the like and video games. They're both potential engines for cultivating empathy. I agree with that. And they both kind of operate by immersion. They achieve those effects in different ways. You know, in a short story or a novel we have to decode the language and that kind of unlocks it and we fall into it and it works in different ways in video games. But we've been defending literature, some of us for a long time on many grounds, one of which is that it provides a useful literacy. There's a link between literature and literacy, let's say. And so I'm asking the question now about these digital spaces. Have you thought much about the literacies that emerge from that? How did those stand up? And I think it relates a little bit to what you were saying because we're asking, so what do I become when I play these games and what does that matter in how I actually interact with real people? There's a huge literature on this that I'm not, I can't speak to except to say that it's there. I mean, Kathy Davidson has written some really interesting work on how the game environment and digital space affects kids cognitively and builds different skill sets than traditional reading a book or a poem. And there are psychologists and neuroscientists who are studying this. So the answer to your question is yes, there is a profound difference and there are different skill sets that are being developed, but that's not my background, I can't speak to that. I would also argue that if you were a dyslexic growing up 100 years ago, you are left behind, right? So our traditional form of literacy affords success to certain kinds of brains. And I think what we're going to find in the next, however many years, is that this new form of digital literacy is going to afford success to a different kind of intelligence. And we will change, right? How we'll change remains to be seen. And it also hopefully will change pedagogy in the classroom. I mean, there's a lot of evidence that we're very focused on individual learners and the proficiencies or skills that they develop that we can measure and grant them credit to graduate. And we know the little that I've read, I know that the digital space encourages a kind of collaborative learning that isn't just easily defined by, you have the skillset and I have the skillset. Kids in a classroom that's digitally, whether the pedagogy is shaped by digital tools from the get-go, they learn differently, they interact differently, and it's a much more fluid and collaborative kind of learning that doesn't lend itself to that kind of individual measurement. So talk about a vast sea change being required in our classrooms. We've been using the word education. I think that emerging media are excellent at experiential education, coming to understand something through experience. I'm not convinced that there is equal to books when it comes to information or knowledge. It's important to know a variety of things, citizenship, tolerance, and a variety of other important themes that one could learn experientially. But our society also needs people that knows about the balance of powers in our government and how many Supreme Court justices there are. That may sound dull, but if you don't have that fundamental understanding, you get real problems. I think that's pretty clear. And it's important for people to have a shared knowledge. And you know the best way that I know of, to convey information is the written word. That it hasn't gotten any better. You can have it said to you, but I can read faster than that, even if I'm not a fast reader. But information, that kind of knowledge of that the Civil War happened before World War II is gotten best most efficiently through reading. So there are different kinds of learning that happen. I wanted to revisit something that came up earlier about it seems like in this conversation, we've had a lot of worrying about digital technology taking the place of reading or them kind of being at odds with one another. And I had a professor, Ken Howell, who's a teacher here who said once that culture is a luxury item. And I think that as our technology gets better, as we are able to have more free time, we're actually spending more time entertaining ourselves in general, whatever that medium may be. A couple years ago I did a paper on eschatological themes in television and I was studying how television habits have changed over time. And separate from the whole Netflix and Hulu and everything else kind of replacing traditional cable television, one thing that I found that was interesting was all of these broadcast networks are kind of freaking out, worrying that people are gonna be watching less television because they're on the internet more. And it's true that people were spending more time on the internet in 2014 than they were in 2005, but they were still spending the same amount of time watching television. And so to extrapolate that a little bit further back, I think that we're seeing people just in general spending more time with all forms of media. And so maybe it isn't as much of a battle for real estate in people's minds as we're portraying it to be. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Holly, did you have a question? I just was gonna comment and I really appreciate the comment about television obviously, but the comment that you had Peter about a shared knowledge, I still can't get over the idea that when you create your own reality in a digital format, you aren't having an expression of an art form in the same way that creates a common culture, even though, to your original point Peter, people even see color differently and they have interpretations that are different. But you don't give yourself over to the attempt of human communication in the art form in the same way when you're doing this digital interactive experience. And I do worry, as a purveyor of Ken Burns' documentaries, that there is a need for a common culture that even goes beyond mere information. Just saying. Well, I'm sorry, go ahead. And I worry just to keep on the convergent-ness here, that I worry about, yeah, that's your job, I know I'm still your job. No, but I worry about abandoning linear narrative to be very traditional. I mean, Ken Burns' documentaries are a great example. I used to fund Ken Burns' documentary, sorry. You know, there's an incredible beauty and power to a narrative that's beautifully constructed to move you from here to here. It moves you emotionally, it moves you intellectually and you don't get to here without knowing what you learned over here. It matters that you go in a sequence. It matters the way the story unfolds. If you're in a space where you just get to bounce around and pick up content the way you choose, something is lost. I can't give up on that idea. And I'd love someone to push back against that who's younger than I am, because I fear I'm betraying my age here. Thank you very much. So I'm gonna have a question that's probably different than everything else about sustainability. And one of the things I've been talking about in some of my classes now is that it's really, we want to get into a more sustainable age where we're using sustainable materials and how do we teach the humanities using sustainable technology? For example, why would we use the books when it's more sustainable to use the digital technology because it can last longer and it doesn't have to destroy the environment as we do it? So I'm wondering, I know it's a different experience using a book to learn about the humanities compared to using another device, but how would we get into this future age where we can actually be sustainable but still learn about the humanities? Can I, let me push back on that. I mean. I'm on your one. You're on mine. You're on mine. I think you've got a couple of professors. I've had the same book in my family for 100 years and I can read the same one and I can hand it and lend it to you. You have changed your computer at least once in the last five years and that has a lot of toxic materials in it. It has things that are limited resources. It's really hard to recycle and a paper and it uses power and a book doesn't do any of those things. It's incredibly cheap. Once it's purchased, it is free. You can read it a million times. And it's free. That's true. And also I'm thinking about space. Like the amount of space a book takes up where a file is not that big and it can go on anywhere. I'm just thinking about the future of where we're going like we're not gonna have bookshelves in outer space or something like that. It's gonna has to be in a digital format. So I'm just wondering how are we going to deal with that when that time comes when we're like we can't use books anymore? Did you want a question? Well I would just suggest that you look into the carbon footprint of like Amazon web services for example. Like we at Champlain use Canvas as our learning management system that's hosted by Amazon. There's these giant cavernous warehouse buildings out in Nevada or something that are just chewing up electricity to keep those servers running and they're multiply redundant and all of that. So I mean there's actually studies done of like what the actual carbon footprint of a tweet is. And you know just multiply that by the billions that occur every day. Like those, there's power required, there's storage space required. The cloud, I mean we have a colleague Brian Murphy who talks about this and he's like the cloud is not the cloud, it's a physical reality. There's this massive infrastructure supporting it. So sustainability is a tricky thing in the digital age that is not as you know we can grow more trees. We can print more books if we want to go that way. But so yeah. I think the funny pushback would be like when it all goes to hell I don't think we'll be worrying about like how we're gonna be able to plug our laptops in because the only thing that will be left are books. So that would be, oh well we gotta read these now. I think a funny thing and we're talking a lot about where does all this additional media fit into the larger landscape? And I always think that if you look back historically whenever a new form of communication bursts onto the scene and gets sort of a foothold, the ones that were there before are freaking out, the new one always thinks it's going to take over the world and then it's going to be the only thing and the end result is always the same. The end result is always that the new thing just becomes another thing and then a new thing comes along and then the same sort of dance takes place. My question is and I have no idea and I don't know if anyone else has an idea because do you think that the human brain will ever reach a threshold where there will be so many things that will be spread so thin that we become sort of the jack of all trades and master of none intellectually? Like is that something that's maybe a legitimate concern that we have so many different methods of communication that we are not good at any of them? Yeah, no more new things, right? But I think you're right. I'm not gonna answer your question but I will kind of piggyback a little bit on what you said is that I think as these new media come into play, I think the old media gets to figure out what it's best for, right? And I think that as you pointed out, there are certain things in which the written word is better at communicating but I think there are certain things that the branching narrative possibility of a video game are also better at and now we get to stop making books do all of the heavy lifting for everything and everybody and we get to start diversifying that experience. I wanna hear what you have to say but I also wanna call attention to the time. I think it's a little bit after eight o'clock already so I think we should maybe have a couple of last comments and then we can wrap it up and if anybody wants to stay and talk afterwards but go ahead. I think you're absolutely right there and the trick would be in any kind of project like this is to use multimedia. They match up very well. If you use some emerging technology, narrative, you could also have text, you could have audio, you can have video and together those create a good balance and a good combination. They are also collaborative. I've got one thing and you've got the other thing. You've got the letters from that great person and we can put them on and you have a fabulous interview so I wanna use that and you have film of the place and together we can have a terrific product but it's the product of four things or five things or eight things and 20 people and not just one. So one of the interesting dynamics when we think about collaboration and community like this is an interdisciplinary class so there are people who are like more maybe traditional media makers, digital media makers like that coming together and that always feels like really, really exciting. And like I'm in that headspace too as like a creator and as a thinker, I do media studies but for me, but like one of the sticking points is about funding always. Who is getting money? And I was just curious about like your perspective on funding because I read a lot about like the crisis in the humanities and that crisis is necessitated by like a defunding that has been happening over the course of the past 20 to 30 years which is happening in the US at the federal and state and institutional levels. I see it playing out even in our own local sphere so the defunding of the humanities with the funding of like technologists who are creating humanities-ish type educational things to create empathy-ish and so but without the context or the experience of the humanities and then like the humanities people are expected to oh, let's come play with you and we'll collaborate but we're not gonna actually give you money. And so I'm curious as to how that dynamic like plays into this conversation about like education, humanities, and digital technologies and whatnot and what your perspectives are on it. I'm considering like you're both operating in those spaces. I have no money so I don't fund anyone. So I think the question for me as a funder is the one circling back to what Robin said which is what if I'm gonna make decisions as a funder, what is the best form to accomplish the kind of public community engagement that at the Arts Council or formerly at the National Endowment for the Humanities we wanna foster and sometimes that might be a traditional humanities form and sometimes it might be a new digital form. I don't think funders need to think strategically about what is the best medium to achieve their ends and it should be a blend of traditional and digital. I mean that's easy to say in an environment where you know STEM is ascendant and the humanities have to claw away to get any attention but I have to say maybe I'm an incurable optimist but when I left DC I did feel a bit that that was changing. I mean even despite all the threats of defunding the Arts Endowment and the humanities endowment I don't think that's gonna happen. I don't think there's appetite for that and I also believe that most of the funders of STEM are recognizing that arts and humanities can amplify and deepen the work that's happening in STEM because the research is there now and the research wasn't there 10 years ago.  If you can demonstrate learning change in the classroom, change in student achievement through engagement with the arts or humanities alongside STEM or instead of STEM, it matters. And so I feel like there is a change in the last, I don't know, I wouldn't wanna say an exact number of years but it feels like in the last maybe five to 10 years because of research and that funders are taking notice. That some of the larger foundations and government funders including the Department of Education are taking notice and there's a more integrated approach but again I tend to be an incurable optimist so. I don't know if you have the same perspective. I know that the Department of Education in Vermont just tired a STEAM content specialist not a STEM content specialist. So I think that's true. I think there is a little bit of a movement. A couple of quick comments. The first was I was actually going to suggest that you're, you worry less about the linear narrative and you take a deep breath because the fact of the matter is although the playground type approach, sandboxes are cool, the fact of the matter is the vast majority of games today are still fundamentally linear narratives with stuff we throw on top which is smoke and mirrors to make the player think they have some agency. The other comment I was gonna make just to support Sam a little bit is you were mentioning they've measured the carbon footprint of Google but have they measured the carbon footprint of the room I have devoted to books in my house and the room that every other friend I have has devoted to their books and all the identical copies of the Azamo Foundation trilogy? So I think unless there's any other last comments, questions, maybe I think we're good. I think we're good. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks.


PPAR is a transcription factor expressed by TH9 cells, which are involved in allergic tissue inflammation. It has been shown to drive activation-induced glycolysis, which in turn leads to increased production of the cytokine Illinois 9. This process is dependent on MTORC1 signaling, and it is also associated with increased glucose levels in the tissues during allergic skin inflammation. Paracrine Illinois 9 secreted by TH9 cells can also increase the expression of the lactate transporter MCT1, which further enhances the cell's ability to use glucose for energy. These findings suggest that PPAR-mediated glycolytic activity may be important for the development and maintenance of allergic inflammatory responses. This article was authored by Nicole Alberti, Oliver Steck, Fabian Luther, and others.


He's never asked me to do anything. He's very patient I've tried online help, but it's all in vain because online they're suggesting things like Throat numbing sprays and whatnot just wanted some help on this.  That's so big, but Remember that in oral sex, it's not necessary to take the entire organ into your mouth There's a lot of different things that you can do as a matter of fact The Kamasutra recommends eight different types of kisses that one should use during oral sex and Several of them focus either just on kissing the side of the shaft or even just the tip and the reason I'm telling you this is You don't need to follow instructions. You don't even have to go and look up these particular kisses from the Kamasutra You just need to understand that there's a lot of different ways of doing anything and trust me They're all very pleasurable and for anyone else who is in the same situation Remember that there are no hard and fast rules for pleasure. There's no such thing as this is right and this is wrong It's your pleasure you experiment you explore you do it the way that makes you happiest and The other thing for everyone listening out there, please, please do not start using throat numbing sprays for oral sex You're not Linda Lovelace. You don't have to prove that you can do this. This is for your personal pleasure This is one medication that you do not need


The University Libraries holds a special place in the hearts of our students, faculty, staff, alumni, retirees, and even our community members. During my time as Dean of the University Libraries, I've heard many UT Library love stories like this one. I attended the University of Tennessee's College of Engineering for both undergraduate and graduate school. And during that time, I remember spending many hours at the Hodges Library where I had a particular study carol I would often use. That spot had a lot of fond memories for me among the stacks, and I guess I never realized the impression it made on me until after I graduated. Patrick, one of our first dates was showing me around town, and he had pointed out this special location, and I could see how happy it made him whenever he would speak about it. So I tucked that tidbit of information away, and I knew he had a milestone birthday coming up. So I reached out to the UT Library Department and requested if we could dedicate that spot to him. It was fantastic. They made arrangements and got balloons. We surprised him with the event. It was very, very special. We got you good. He was so touched, and we were grateful that we could do something for each other and also for the UT campus and the students. We'd love to hear your library love story. Happy Valentine's Day.


because of the failure to pay this money out? That was recognised even on the SNP benches. I think that Dave Thompson recognised the damage that is being done to the rural economy. Although I was concerned by Mr Thompson's suggestion when he recounted his anecdote about his encounter at the Black Isle show that he seemed to be suggesting that it was no longer acceptable within Scotland to hold a different political opinion to the Scottish national party, it seems, Deputy Presiding Officer, that we all have to conform to the SNP's view on the world or that we are not allowed to have a voice. There is a name for that, Deputy Presiding Officer. It is called a one-party state. Now, as we heard from a number of members, there has been a huge burden on farmers themselves with added time, expense and worry. Sarah Boyack and Elaine Murray gave a number of examples of this. I spoke just recently to one constituent farmer living in Highland Persia who told me that, because of the difficulties with their broadband and other issues altogether, they had to make the journey to Perth a return trip of two hours in order to visit the area office to discuss their application and entitlement letter. When they got there, they found that the area office could not access the IT system and never had great difficulty in assisting. There are many others in the chamber who will report constituents having similar problems. Throughout the debate, we heard from the SNP members on the back benches all the excuses about how that was such a substantial CEP reform, about all the individual claims that had to be processed, about all the farms that had to be inspected and about how much more complex the system was than that previously. Yet every single one of those challenges was known in advance before the IT system was put in place. Those excuses simply do not wash, because whenever this Government runs into problems, its default response is to turn around and blame somebody else. It is Westminster's fault. It is Europe's fault. In this case, it is no one's fault but their own. The buck stops with the Scottish Government. We heard the first line of defence from the likes of Rob Gibson and others on the back benches. I really think that people like Mr Gibson who well do come up with a show of humility for the failures of their Government on these particular issues. Then we had the extraordinary attack from Angus MacDonald on the leadership of the National Farmers Union in Scotland. I would like to thank Mr MacDonald for two things. First of all, for giving me some very helpful lines to deploy on election literature about the SNP's view of the rural communities. Secondly, I would like to thank Mr MacDonald very sincerely for circulating to all Opposition members the SNP's attack lines to deploy, on that is telling us in advance what the interventions will be in this particular debate. Oh, Mr MacDonald, of course I will give way. Angus MacDonald. I thank Mr Fraser. As the official report will show, I was highlighting that the NFUS leadership acknowledged last October that the three payment regions could lead to a deal in payments, but that that was a risk worth taking. I thank Mr MacDonald for reading out rebutto line number five on the SNP's lines to deploy. As we heard, when similar problems occurred in England with the English rural payment agency, they reverted to paper-based application forms, but at least their farmers got paid, which is more than we can say for the situation in Scotland today. Let me acknowledge the sets that have been taken by the Scottish Government. First, we saw the hardship scheme of £20 million. Then we saw the announcement of ELFAS payments, where the Scottish Government would use its own funds to make payments to the majority of farmers in March. Just last night, we had the announcement that £200 million would be paid to ensure that basic payments would be made by the end of April. I know how welcome that announcement is to the farming community. However, we have to wonder when this is a Government always pleading poverty, when they are always telling us that there is not money to be found for anything, how they can suddenly find £200 million down the back of a sofa to get the cabinet secretary out of a very deep political hole. It demonstrates the power of the Scottish Conservative Party as the real opposition in this Parliament. We schedule a parliamentary debate in our debating time. We put down a motion for action and within 24 hours the Government produces £200 million out of thin air to address the problem. What a pity, residing officer, that the parliamentary session is about to come to an end. What a pity that there are no more opposition debating slots for the Scottish Conservatives. Who knows what other problems we could solve by championing them here in the Scottish Parliament. I can imagine a long queue at our door from those in Scotland in need of emergency government cash. Sadly, they will have to wait until after the election before we can deal with those other problems. The Government action so far is welcome, but it is not the end of the story. Three things need now to happen. First, we need to know that the entitlement letters that have been issued are indeed accurate. I have had many constituents on to me saying that they believe that they are riddled with errors that will take a long time to resolve. Secondly, we need to know what the additional administrative cost of all this will be. We already know about the IT cost overrun so far. We know that extra staff have had to be drafted in by the Scottish Government, and we know that the latest move will involve extra administration. How much does this total, and where in the Scottish Government will this additional cash come from? Finally, we need a full independent inquiry into what has gone wrong. Audit Scotland has already done sterling work, and they understand that they are continuing their investigations. We need to see what they conclude, but we should not close the door on further scrutiny. Despite all the scuttling around over the past couple of days, there is no doubt that the cabinet secretary has lost the confidence of rural Scotland. The former NFUS president, Jim Walker, formerly an SNP supporter, someone who voted yes in the independence referendum, has called for the cabinet secretary's resignation and has said that he could never support a party, a minister or a Government who has been quite so incompetent and, frankly, naive. On these benches, we are more generous. We are not calling for resignations. We are not here to score political points or throw bricks. We will leave that to others. What Scotland's farmers want to see is firm action to make sure that our farmers get the money that they are due without any further delay. We want this matter sorted. It has dragged on too long and we need a thorough investigation so that it can never happen again. That is what our motion is calling for today, Presiding Officer, and I commend it to the chamber. Thank you, Mr Fraser. That concludes the debate on rural affairs. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15873, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out a revision to the business programme for Thursday 10 March. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15873. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15873, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15852, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out a business programme. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15852. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15852, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of seven parliamentary bureau motions. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion numbers 15853 to 15857, on approval of SSIs on block. Motion number 15858 and 15859, on suspension of standing orders. Questions on these motions will be put at decision time to which we have arrived. There are seven questions that we have put as a result of today's business. The first question is amendment number 15844.3, in the name of Richard Lochhead, which seeks to amend motion number 15844, in the name of Alex Ferguson, on rural affairs. Be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 15844.3, in the name of Richard Lochhead, is as follows. Yes, 62. No, 53. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore agreed to. The next question is amendment number 15844.2, in the name of Sarah Boyack, which seeks to amend motion number 15844, in the name of Alex Ferguson, on rural affairs. Be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 15844.2, in the name of Sarah Boyack, is as follows. Yes, 53. No, 62. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is amendment number 15844.1, in the name of Tavish Scott, which seeks to amend motion number 15844, in the name of Alex Ferguson, on rural affairs. Be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment number 15844.1, in the name of Tavish Scott, is as follows. Yes, 54. No, 61. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question is motion number 15844, in the name of Alex Ferguson, as amended, on rural affairs. Be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to a vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 15844, in the name of Alex Ferguson, as amended, is as follows. Yes, 62. No, 53. There were no abstentions. The motion, as amended, is therefore agreed to. I propose to ask a single question on motions number 15853 to 15857 on approval of SSIs. Any member who objects to a single question being put, please say so now. No member has objected to a single question being put. Therefore, the next question is motions number 15853 to 15857, in the name of Doverford's Patrick, on approval of SSIs. Be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motions are there for agreed to. The next question is motion number 15858, in the name of Doverford's Patrick, on the suspension of the order to be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next question is motion number 15859, in the name of Doverford's Patrick, on the suspension of studying orders to be agreed to. Are we all agreed. The motion is there for agreed to. Welcome. That can close the decision time. We now move to a member's business. Members who leave the chamber should do so quickly and quietly.