Good evening. I'm Mr. Barrick, one of the characters in the Mollay Mystery Theatre, which follows right away. I just want to remind you that although next winter seems very far away, right now is the time to do something about next winter's heating problem. The government says that fuel of all types is going to be scarce, so if you want to keep warm, you should go to your dealer now and get whatever kind and quantity of fuel he can let you have. Or say you should check up on all your heating equipment and make sure that you're not wasting fuel. And lastly, protect your home against loss of heat by installing insulation and weather stripping. Those are the ways in which you can protect your home against next winter's cold. And now the Mollay Mystery Theatre, presented by M-O-L-L-E. Mollay, the brushless shaving cream that guards your tender skin with its special protective film. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Jeffrey Barnes welcoming you to the program that presents the best in mystery and detective fiction. Tonight we bring you an unusual tale of the supernatural by Oliver Onions, entitled The Beckoning Fair One. It is a gripping study in human terror, the eerie story of a strange rebellion, and the terrible consequences that followed. So here it is. The Beckoning Fair One. My name is Paul Ollaran. I'll tell it from the beginning, just the way it happened. I don't ask you to believe it. Just listen. I was working on my new novel, Romilly, when I decided to move. I looked over a couple of places and finally discovered one I liked. Of course, it's not a new house, Mr. Ollaran, but we'll do the place over for you any color you like. There's certainly quite looking rooms, aren't there? Many of atmosphere here.  Are you sure you won't reconsider about taking the whole house, I mean? You never know who might rent the other floors. If you don't mind my saying so, Mr. Barrett, you're not likely to have many people interested in living in this old relic. No, it's not as bad as all that. But I rather like the idea of being the only tenet in this venerable mansion. Just as you like, Mr. Ollaran. Leave it to me, Mr. Barrett. I'll make my corner of it cozy enough. I was thoroughly pleased with my new quarters. There was an air of ancient charm about the place that appealed to my imagination. Then I discovered the handle in the window seat. That meant there was a box underneath. But the lid was stuck. I went to work on it with mallet and chisel. The paneling rang and vibrated. The whole house seemed to echo. Finally, I loosened the lid and tried it out. I drew out something soft and yielding, covered with dust. There was some kind of a large bag, triangular in shape. It had wide flaps and buckles. I couldn't imagine what it had been used for. I soon lost interest in it, depositing it in a corner of the room. Then I set about removing a large nail out of the slum of the lid. I spent the rest of the afternoon putting my manuscripts into the box. In the evening, Elsie Bengo paid me a visit. Elsie worked on a newspaper and she was always enthusiastic over my work, especially the new novel, Romney. Well, Elsie, what do you think of the place? I don't know, Paul. I like the last place. In spite of the black ceiling and no water tap, has Romney come in? Uh, not very well. Are you stuck? Yep. Can't seem to get on with it. Paul, would you like to read me some of it? You don't understand, Elsie. I haven't done any more on it. Not a line. Paul, you're joking. Perfectly serious. We were considering scrapping the whole 15 chapters and starting over, making Romney a different type of woman. And you're really going to scrap those 15 chapters? You seem more concerned about it than I am. Well, maybe I am. You've got what you've been working for almost within your reach. A novel that'll make you famous. You still have a lot of confidence in Romney, don't you? And now you just want to scrap the whole thing. Paul, it's unforgivable. Oh, it's just... Elsie, the important thing is I'm happier here than I've been for a long time. I didn't mean to let you with this. But I feel so close to Romney. In the corner here? As far as you tell me. What? It's a harp cover. It's been used to wrap up a harp before putting it into its case. Oh, it must be a very old one. Oh, thanks for solving my mystery. Paul? Paul, who lives in the rest of this house? Nobody. I'm the only tenant. Paul? Yes? May I tell you frankly what I feel about this place? Why, all me? You'll never work here. Oh, why on earth not? I don't know why. But you'll never finish Romney here. That night, I sat by my fire pondering over Elsie's prophecy. I looked around the room. It filled me with a sense of calm I'd never known before. The more I thought about Elsie Bengal, the more I became convinced I would have to destroy those 15 chapters. Unwittingly, I put too much of Elsie into my character of Romney. And those qualities I disliked in Elsie Bengal, I found objectionable in Romney. Then I became aware of the dripping water tap in the kitchen. It had a tinkling range of three notes on which it seemed to play a tune. In my mind's eye, I could see the gathering of each drop, the little tremble on the lip of the tap, and the tiny musical sound of its fall. I found myself waiting to hear each drop over and over again. Oh, the best, Mrs. Grayson, the best.  I don't mind it a bit. What the caretaker's wife for, if not to take care of things. Hear me, but that's a very old tune. I haven't heard it in these four years. What tune? The one you come in. It's called the Beckon and Fair one. Sing it for me. Hear me, I haven't got any voice. Come on, it went something like this. Very pretty. They do say it was on to a harp. The tune must be at least a hundred years old. And I was humming it? Indeed you were. It's sad. I thought I heard that tune last night, dripping from the kitchen faucet. Silly idea. A faucet singing. As time passed, I became more and more attached to my apartment. But Elsie Bengo did not share my enthusiasm. It just doesn't belong to today at all, Paul. You know, this is our dead house. Everything in it reeks of decay. That's all in the point of view, isn't it, Elsie? Is Romney coming any better? I think she is. I'm laying the foundations of her new character. I'll begin the actual writing soon. You mean you discarded the old Romney? Yes. Where's the manuscript? In the window box. What do you want it for? What's the matter, Elsie? Cut my finger. You ought to take that nail out of the lid, Paul. But I thought I did. Oh, let me bandage it. Please don't worry about it, Paul. It's running out of scratch. Look what you walked me down the bus. It'll do you good to get out for a breath of fresh air. I can't, Elsie. I really must get down to work. No. No, that isn't why you won't go out. Oh, Paul, move out of here. Everything's wrong with this place. Oh, Elsie, please. Here. Let me see you to the door. I put my foot through.  Let me help you. No. No, don't let me go. Elsie. Please, please let me go away. I'm not wanted here. Alone that night before my fireplace, I found myself considering Elsie's two accidents. Well, I had removed that nail from the lid of the window box. But then I couldn't be too certain I hadn't left a bit of it still in the wood. And the staircase was an old one. Though it seemed strong enough to me, the step might have collapsed under anybody. Poor Elsie simply happened to be the victim. Oh, my imagination was beginning to play tricks with me. I actually fancied I heard my name in the sound of the dripping water tap. And I laughed at myself. That's what came of too much thinking. Suddenly, I stopped laughing. I heard a rustling sound. It seemed to be coming from the center of the room. For a moment, I couldn't identify it. It was a long, sweeping sound. Faint. What is it? What's there? Who's there? It's a woman, combing her hair. I've got to get out of here. I fled the house. I walked for hours in the cold, clear night. Gradually, my fear left me. I began to laugh at myself. Of course, I hadn't removed that nail. Of course, the wood in that step had been rotten through. I saw the invisible woman brushing her hair. I'd been dreaming too much, that was all. It was morning. By the time I got back to the house, I hadn't been to bed at all. I was tired. I found Mrs. Grayson, the caretaker's wife, waiting for me in my room. It's a liberty of coming in, Mr. Oloran. Seeing as the door was open and you weren't home. I've been out for a walk. You needn't bother about breakfast this morning, Mrs. Grayson. I'm not hungry. From now on, Mr. Oloran, you'll have to make other arrangements for getting your breakfast. I won't be sat in foot inside your door again. Why? What's the matter? I'm a respectable woman, and I'll not be serving a man who makes the habit of entertaining ladies in his room. Ladies? I'll make your bed for you this last time. Make up my bed? I haven't been to bed yet. I haven't been here all night. Somebody spent the night here, Mr. Oloran, because your bed's been slept in. Well, Mr. Evans, do you think Paul Oloran's house is really haunted? Or is he bewitched by his own imagination? And is there anything he can do to save himself? Yes, Mr. Baum, there is. Listen to me. I was once bewitched, but I was saved by a magic word. A magic word? What word? Listen. My face was bewitched. Every time I shaved, I used to get invisible little nicks and scrapes. But then I learned the magic word. Mole! Well, gentlemen, there is something magical about the way mole protects your face against irritating little nicks and scrapes. But there's a common sense reason behind it. You see, mole has a special protective film, a slick smooth moist film with more real body and substance than light fluffy cream. Mole gives your razor something to ride on. Your razor rides along smoothly from the first stroke to the last without pulling or tugging at your whiskers. Your tender skin gets the very best of protection against aftershave burn and irritation. Mole is made with ingredients of assured quality, ingredients that meet the official U.S. pharmacopoeia requirements for medical purity. So, gentlemen, try mole. The brushless shaving cream that puts face protection first. And now back to Jeffrey Barnes and act two of the beckoning fair one. Paul Oleran writer had not been in his new living quarters long before strange things began to happen. Nails put themselves back into the wood. A leaking water tap played an old tune and an invisible woman appalled Oleran's soul by combing her hair. He has just returned to his rooms after spending the night walking the streets and contemplating the beckoning fair one. I looked at the rump of bed. The sheets bore a distinct impression as if somebody had lain on them. I knew that I hadn't been near the bed since Mrs. Grayson had made it the day before. I was face to face with it now. Something inhabited my room. But what? I was seized with the desire to know the thing, find out what it was. I lay down on the bed and tried to figure it out. It's becoming clear to me now the key lay in my half written novel, Ramalee. Or rather, in both Ramalees, the old one and the proposed new one. Looking back over it, I realized there was almost passionate hatred in the way the new Ramalee had supplanted the old. Somehow, all this was related to Elsie Bingo. One thing was certain. Elsie must not come inside this house again. That afternoon, I saw her coming up the walk. I hurried to meet her up. I'm sorry, Elsie. I'm just going out. I've got an appointment downtown. Do you want to walk along with me? Paul, you haven't any appointments. You just don't want me in the house. Well, I only wanted to tell you that everything's over between us. Let me see my Paul. Something strange is happening to you. Please, Elsie. But if you ever need me, Paul, somehow I'll know it. And then I'll come. Sorry to bother you so late, Mr. Barth. There's something I've got to ask you. Oh, glad to be of help, I can. As running agent of the house, you'd know something about the previous tenant, wouldn't you? Yes. The last tenant in your room was an artist by the name of Madley. He seldom went out of the place. As a matter of fact, Madley died there under rather peculiar circumstances. Yes. It was discovered at the post mortem that there wasn't a particle of food in his stomach. Starved to death? No, he started death all right. Only it wasn't because he didn't have any money. You see, they found a bank book in his room proving he had $10,000 in a New York bank. Suicide then? My starvation? Hmm? It's rather an uncommon form of suicide, isn't it? Then... Then why? Why? I don't know what's going on. Nobody ever found out. I returned to the house. That there was a strange presence there I was convinced. And now that I'd rid myself of Elsie Bingo within the old inspiration for the character Rommelie in my novel, I hoped to meet the beckoning fair one, she who was becoming the new inspiration. Once inside, I had to be calm, convinced of it. I didn't care whether she appeared or not. I left a candle in the bedroom, drew down the blind, took off my coat, I was stooped to get my slippers from under the bed. Straightened up? Reflected in the mirror? I saw a gleam of light in the centre of the room. It moved up and down through the air. It was the reflection of a candle on my comb. And each of its downward movements was accompanied by a silky crackling rust. I went into the living room and returned with the manuscript of the old Rommelie. The combing stopped immediately. I was no longer aware of the fair one's presence. She's just jealous. Jealous. Night after night passed, and still I did not see her. My life became one passionate and consuming desire to see the new Rommelie, the new heroine of my novel, who had fastened herself on my brain in the guise of the beckoning fair one. I want a bouquet of roses. Yes, sir. Got some duties today. Beauty is for a beautiful lady, huh? Here's a nice bouquet. That one will do. Nothing like roses to win the heart of the fair one, eh? What'd you say? It was just making conversations. You said something about the fair one. Just a manner of speaking, sir. I didn't mean any offense. Oh, of course not. I'm sorry. I'll take those files now, and I want you to deliver a bouquet of these to my house every morning for the next two weeks. I'd made the arrangements with the florists, so I wouldn't have to leave the house at all. I hoped the flowers would unbend her coy stubborn will. They did no good. I lost track of the days. I walked through my rooms with slippered feet now, treading softly, afraid of frightening her away. I kept the windows shut and the crimson blinds down. In this enticing, flower-laden place, I waited for the beckoning fair one. I searched my mind for some reason why she held herself back from me. Suddenly it came to me. The manuscript of the old Rommelie, those 15 chapters, I was a fool to think that the new Rommelie would show us up to me as long as there existed evidence of my former attachment. I took the manuscript from the winterbox and was about to throw it into the fire. Who's there? It's Elsie. Go away. I can't see you now. Please let me in, Paul. No. Paul, you're in trouble. I know you are. I'm all right. Go away. Paul, I only want to help. I promise I'd come as neededly. Paul. Paul. Please answer me. Paul. I didn't answer her. Paul.  Coming here where she was not wanted. Why didn't she leave me alone? Her voice only irritated me. Soon her calling stopped. I heard her footsteps going down the stairs. I destroyed the manuscript of my old Rommelie, page by page. Then I lay down to wait again. How long, how many days? I don't know. I was beyond the world of calendars and clocks. Gradually the strength drained from my body. I gazed vacantly at the star patterned ceiling. Sometimes I had a fleeting recollection of a novel to be written. It was like something far off. Sometimes I thought about madly the previous tenant who lived here before me. I wondered whether she had played her coy game with him. Elsie, how'd you get in here? Paul, this isn't me. You're not well, darling. Let me take care of you. I said I'd come when you needed me, Paul. Wait. She called my name. Paul, what is it? I don't hear anything. No. No, I won't leave Paul. Say, isn't this the part of the house where that writer lived, the one who was being executed tonight? Yes, yes, this is it. What was the name of that girly murdered? Elsie Bango. Of course it's not a new house, but we'll be glad to do the place over for you. The water tap leaks slightly. But it won't bother you.  Yes, Mr. Barnes, the voice gave him evil advice, but now listen to a voice that gives helpful advice. Put face protection first. Yes, gentlemen, Molle does put face protection first. It guards your face against annoying little nicks and scrapes because it's got a special protective film, a slick, smooth film with plenty of real body and substance. Molle gives your razor something to ride on. Your razor rides along smoothly from the first stroke to the last and you get a close clean shave without any pulling or tugging at your whiskers. You'll find that your shaves will get better, better and better when you use M-O-L-L-E. Molle, the brushless shaving cream that puts face protection first. This is Jeffrey Barnes again, ladies and gentlemen, inviting you to be with us next week when we will bring you L.A.G. Strong's dramatic story of premeditated murder entitled Breakdown. A man is caught in the complicated web of a love triangle, which he realizes is slowly driving him insane. He attempts to solve his problem with a carefully planned murder, but it comes to a disastrous climax. So, mystery fans, be sure to listen next week to L.A.G. Strong's compelling adventure in crime breakdown. The original music for the Molle Mystery Theater is composed and conducted by Jack Miller. The beckoning fair one was written by Oliver Onions and adapted for radio by Eric Arthur. Until next Tuesday, this is Dan Seymour saying good night and good shaving with the brushless shaving cream that puts face protection first. Molle.  Then listen, doctors may find that your fatigue is caused by a borderline anemia. Yes, a borderline anemia resulting from a ferronutritional deficiency of the blood. Decide now to throw off depressing fatigue with the help of iron-eyes yeast tablets. They're formulated to overcome borderline anemia by helping to build up red blood cells. Take IY, iron-eyes yeast tablets to get more vigor, more drive, more energy. This is the National Broadcasting Company.


I vaguely and dimly remember that a glass of wine can lead to casual sex. What I fail to recall is what on earth is sex. But whatever it may be, I will drink to it. Esteemed Collings My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm a professor of psychology in Southern Federal University, who is still in London, Russia, and a professor of finance and a professor of psychology in the outreach program of SEAPS, Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies. I apologize for inflicting this introduction on you, but it's part of my contract. Today I would like to discuss the psychology of casual sex and one-night stands. It's a much neglected topic, as you're all aware, and I would like to plug this whole pun intended. You notice that I've made a distinction in the title between casual sex and one-night stands. It's because I believe that casual sex is in a continuum. There is a whole spectrum, a whole range of casual sex activities. For example, I would classify pornography as a form of casual sex.  And then one-night stands and only then casual sex. Casual sex includes longer-term attachments and longer-term commitments. For example, friends with benefits. Usually casual sex is with acquaintances, with colleagues, with neighbors, with family members, with friends. It's on the way towards a relationship, while one-night stands in the vast majority of cases are with slight acquaintances or total strangers. So this spectrum, this continuum starts with the impersonal and ends with the totally personal. Starts with the visual. Casual pornography and sexting essentially is visual. These are visual cues and visual triggers. Starts with the visual and ends with the total, a totality of experience, incorporating the visual, the tactile, the olfactory and all the senses in effect. Also, memories, identity fragments, gender roles and so on.  And at one end there is the rudimentary, unstructured, narrative-less form of pornography. And at the other end there are essentially relationships, perhaps not romantic relationships, but relationships. If you were to ask, and people did ask, scholars like Lisa Wade, Catherine Helm and others, if you were to ask people who had participated in casual sex, and by the way also in group sex, if you were to ask them, does it create any bad feeling? Do you feel bad? Do you feel dissonant? Is there a problem? Are you egotistical? They will tell you no way. Casual sex is great. We've had fun. So many people claim that they are into casual sex because it provides them with physiological release and arousal and gratification on the one hand and with ersatz, improvised, warmth, empathy, acceptance, affection on the other hand. All in all, a positive experience. There's only one problem with that. It's not true. Now, you all know that in psychotherapy we never ever listen to what the patient says. If you listen to what the patient says, you're not a very good psychotherapist. Instead, we ask ourselves two questions. Why did the patient choose to say what he or she had said? The act of choice, the act of selection. The second question we ask, how does the patient behave? Is there any contradiction or discrepancy between the patient's behavioral patterns and the claims that the patient had made about her, for example, mental state? In other words, is there an abyss, is there a gap between observable behaviors and phenomena and self-reporting? In this case, the abyss is huge, unbridgeable.  Actually, less than 20% of women who had participated in a one-night stand had reported having an orgasm. The figure for men is not considerably better, 40%. Participants in all these types of activities, the entire spectrum that I had described, insist that these activities, these actions are emotional, emotionless, meaningless, that they had meant nothing, and that the partner in these activities is a nobody, is of no consequence. This is true even when we talk about friends with benefits. So there are no emotions, there's no attachment, and the act is meaningless. Many compare casual sex in one-night stands and so on to masturbation. It's like masturbating with someone else's body. Lydia Rangelowska had observed that it involves auto-erotic empathy. It's like when you see yourself through the partner's gaze, when you gaze into the partner's eyes, you see actually yourself reflected there, and you can conjure up positive emotionality and empathy in a way a kind of self-love. So the partner is merely an animated sex doll or an animated dildo, depending on the sex of course, and also a mirror, an imperfect mirror, which allows you to fall in love with yourself, to develop limerence and infatuation with yourself through an auto-erotic process. These are exactly the techniques deployed by narcissists and psychopaths when they groom and love-bomb their partners. So there's a close affinity between casual sex, one-night stands, stranger sex, anonymous sex, group sex in all its forms. There's a close affinity between these and the kind of sex one might expect in the initial phases of the shared fantasy with a narcissist or a psychopath. There are no emotions there. It's highly pyrotechnical and technical and mechanical. To the participants, the sex is meaningless. It means nothing. And the other partner is a nobody or just a body. At least that is the self-reporting. Well, if this is the case, why do people do it? The claim that casual sex is casual, this claim is easily falsified. It's easy to prove that casual sex is anything but casual. It's easy to prove that casual sex, like any other form of sex, involves intimacy and involves deep, meaningful activities and reactivity. Casual sex, one-night stands, group sex, anonymous sex, all these stranger sex, they are all full of emotions. And they are all very, very meaningful. So why do people report the opposite? They admit that the sex is seriously bad, nothing to write home about. Then why do they engage in it and why especially do they choose to say, do they choose to cast it? In these terms, emotionless, casual, meaningless, he is a nobody, she is a nobody, she means nothing to me. Why? Well, it's a narrative. This meaninglessness and emotionlessness and it's just for fun and it's nothing serious. And he means nothing and she means nothing and we just bumped into each other like ships in the night and it was just two hours. Always, these are narratives and we know from psychology that we come up with narratives in order to bridge across gaps. We come up with narratives to resolve issues, usually issues of dissonance.  These could be axiological dissonances, clashes of values, value, breaching of values. Everyone has a belief system or a value system.  So they would create an axiological dissonance. It could create a moral dissonance. For example, if it involves cheating, cheating of the spouse or the intimate partner, it could involve a cognitive dissonance. If it conflicts, if the casual sex and the one-night stand conflicts crucially head on frontally with one's self-image and self-perception. For example, if you believe that you have self-respect and self-dignity and then you trash yourself, drunk in a sleazy hotel room with a stranger, this would create a dissonance. So the only way to exit the dissonance, to resolve the dissonance is to devalue the partner and to devalue the situation to say that it was meaningless and the partner was meaningless. So no problem here, move on, nothing to see. And this narrative intends to paper over the dissonance which is triggered essentially by a lack of subsequent bonding. Sex inevitably always, never mind the circumstances, creates bonding on the physiological level, on the hormonal level. And we associate bonding with long-term. We tend to try to perpetuate attachment and bonding. We never consider bonding in terms of one hour. And so this creates a break, a cognitive break and also an emotional schism, chasm. When the sex act is finished, is done and you have to say goodbye and never see this person again, it creates enormous dissonance. It's like short-circuiting.  Everything becomes garbled. It's very disorienting and dislocating. It may even lead to dissociative reactions. Try to forget. Try to pretend that it's not you, deep personalization. Try to pretend that it's not happening, derealization, amnesia. So the sex act, even in a one-night stand, leads to expectations of continued bonding. Many of these expectations are, of course, unconscious. A lot of them are grounded in physiological and hormonal processes. But they're there. The expectation for continued bonding is there.  This creates enormous reactions, psychological and physiological. And the narrative to compensate for this, to somehow reconcile it with who you are, then you create this narrative. Ah, it's okay. Anyhow, he didn't mean anything to me. He's a nobody. And this situation, it's nothing. Okay, I can move on. It's like the famous story with the fox and the grapes. When he couldn't get the grapes, the fox said, well, actually, I never wanted the grapes. They're horrible. Okay? Casual sex is anything but casual. And it is a narrative.  Even when both parties are fully aware of what's happening, even when they had communicated and negotiated in advance, even when they had formed a consensus and a new mutually agreed upon script, even when it's consensual sex and they are not inebriated or drugged, even then it's a rupture, nothing short of a rupture. And I'm going to prove it to you using six points. Intimate partners react with extreme jealousy and even break up the relationship when their mates have had one night stands. Why? If one night stands unmeaningless, if they are emotionless, if they don't involve any intimacy, if your partner will never see the other guy or the other girl again, if it's just two ships passing in the night, 20% of all casual sex encounters, one night stands are anonymous, no names, why the jealousy? Why the aggression? Why the hysteria? Why is this a significant deal breaker? Presumably, your partner has had his share of casual sex. He had experienced it firsthand. He knows it's meaningless. He knows it's emotionless. Why is he reacting this way? Why is he all over you? Why is he angry at you? Why is he jealous of what had happened? If he knows that it's meaningless and emotionless, because it's not. Casual sex and one night stands are not meaningless and emotionless and your partner knows this. Because he knows this, it's a deal breaker. The behavior of the partners in the case of one night stands which constitute cheating, adultery, extramarital. The behavior of the partners is prime proof and evidence that casual sex and one night stands are not perceived as meaningless and emotionless.  That's why people break up after one night stand when one of them had cheated with someone else. Proof number two, some one night stands, not all, small minority of one night stands, evolve and become full-fledged relationships. How can this be? If casual sex is totally emotionless, totally meaningless, involves no intimacy, it could never ever evolve into a relationship. You cannot go from zero emotions, zero involvement, zero commitment, zero intimacy and zero meaning to anything meaningful, emotionless and intimate. There's no way to do this. So the fact that some of these encounters become more serious, more long-term, more committed proves that the seeds of emotionality, the seeds of investment and commitment, the seeds of meaning exist in every single sex encounter, regardless of its character.  Nacent and bryonic, reduced, minimal, very true, but it's a relationship. Even a quickie, a five minute quickie, is a relationship. Proof number three, participants in one night stands and casual sex report negative or positive emotions after the sex. Many of them report shame, guilt and anger. This is very common among women or following substance abuse, alcohol and drug abuse. So people who got involved in casual sex and one night stands feel these negative emotions. They feel shameful, ashamed, they feel guilty, they feel angry at themselves and at their partner. Others feel satisfied, they feel proud, they feel elevated. Their self-esteem is restored and this is more common among men and among women with personality disorders. They use sex to regulate the sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Still, it produces positive results. But how is this possible? If casual sex and one night stands are devoid of emotions, divorced from any meaning, insignificant, the partner is a nobody and a nothing, how can these encounters produce any type of emotion, negative or positive? We react with emotions to meaningful events, to meaningful people, significant people, significant others. We react with emotions to circumstances which somehow are significant to narratives that make sense of our lives and of ourselves. We react with emotions to loss, we react with emotions to gain. If we, the fact that we react emotionally, never mind how delayed the reaction is, the fact that we react emotionally to casual sex and one night stands is absolute proof positive. 100% distilled proof signifies that the sex was meaningful, a meaningful experience and that it triggered an emotional cascade. Now here's the fact, all people, 100% of people who participate in one night stands in casual sex had reported emotional reactivity following the sex. All, not one of them said, what? Sex? Ah, yeah, I remember. No, I had no reaction. It meant nothing to me emotionally, not one. Some of them were smug, some of them were guilt-ridden, some of them were extremely unhappy and remorseful, some of them were in the sky with elevated arrogant grandiose self-esteem, but all of them reacted somehow to this allegedly totally meaningless and insignificant act with a meaningless and insignificant other. You see the impossibility, you see the paradox.  Did you hear that well? A one night stand involves at least 4,000 discrete and distinct steps. There's an initial exchange of information followed by hormonal cascade, followed by the formation of short-term memories, followed by the relegation of short-term memories to the long-term memory bank in the hippocampus, activation of every part of the brain, 7 or 8 major parts of the brain, amygdala, hypothalamus, they all activated.  Sex takes over the body and the mind totally, let alone a one night stand which usually consumes one or two hours and usually follows a period of getting to know each other, which is another two or three hours. That's a long, very long sexual act. In married couples, the typical sex act is about 15 minutes. Ironically, one night stands are much longer than any sex act within married couple. And you want to tell me that one night stands are less meaningful, less imbued with emotion, and less physiologically arousing than... Of course they are not. The body is fully mobilized, followed by the mind, the handmaiden of the body. Number five, many, there are no exact numbers, but among college students, majority of people use alcohol and drugs to alter the perceptions of the potential partner's attractiveness. So they use alcohol and drugs so that they can find a partner more attractive. They use alcohol and drugs to enhance intimacy. Drinking is a ritual. Drug consumption of drugs is a ritual. So the ritual, the ceremony, bind. So they use alcohol and drugs to inhibit, to remove the layers of inhibitions imposed by society via the process of socialization. The use of alcohol and drugs is a massive feat of brainwashing, reprogramming, deprogramming. There's a lot going on when you consume alcohol and drugs. Why would you want to change your perception of the partner? Why would you want to enhance fake intimacy or perceived intimacy? Why would you want to engage in bonding and mating rituals and ceremonies? Why would you want to disinhibit yourself and overcome socialization? Why would you want to change the locus of your empathy? Because when we drink, we are much more empathic towards strangers. Why would you like, in other words, to reprogram yourself?  Because one night's tents are emotionless, apazard, meaningless and significant and passing and fleeting. If they are, why go through the, why go through the, let me drug myself, let me get myself intoxicated? Why do you intoxicate yourself and drug yourself and alter your consciousness if what you're about to do is meaningless? Insignificant, emotionless, stupid, passing and the person you're doing it with is of no consequence. Why? Why not just get to it, go straight to it, just do it? Why do you need this period of preparation of essentially altering your brain and consequently altering your mind?  You need to have a different mind and people use drugs and alcohol to secure this alternative mind. But they do this because casual sex and one night's tents are very, very momentous events. I'm using the word momentous, not meaningful, much more than meaningful. Because one night's tents and casual sex involve breaking social mores and norms. They are defined in antisocial acts, I mean, as perceived by the environment. There's a lot going on, it's a taboo in many ways. So you need to overcome yourself and your inhibitions just to do it. It's much more meaningful than consensual sex within a loving, committed relationship. It requires a massive effort, investment and alteration of the personality and your dating and sexual scripts. Number six, casual sex and one night's tent involves trust. You have to trust the partner not to be a serial killer. You have to trust the partner not to beat you up.  You have to trust the partner to be a benevolent, essentially good person. There's a lot of trust that goes with even the most minimal quickie in a restroom. So this trust, physical and emotional, there's a sense of safety. And that's why studies consistently show that women are gravitating, moving away from what used to be called alpha males to beta males. Beta males are much more safe. Women place a premium on safety. These women are becoming more like men. And so they are grandiose, they are independent, they are self-sufficient. So they don't need to import or to outsource these from men. What they do need is a kind, reliable, empathic, attentive, supportive, better male. And indeed a plethora of many studies, recent studies demonstrate conclusively that women prefer what is called beta males to alpha males. Even when it comes to casual sex and one night's tent. The emphasis now is on trust and on safety. Because in the sex act, you have to undress. And undressing means a suspension of defenses and an exposure of vulnerabilities. And when we take all these together, all these elements, trust, safety, no defenses, exposure of vulnerabilities. These are some of the most profound transformational emotional experiences one could ever have. These are the pillars of intimacy. What is intimacy? Intimacy is trust. Intimacy is safety. Intimacy is no defenses. Intimacy is total openness and exposure of vulnerabilities. These are profound elements, profound things, transformational, as I said. You can find them, for example, in therapy, in psychotherapy. You can find these kind of experiences in love when you're in love with someone. And all of them exist even more so in casual sex and one night's tent. You need to trust your partner much more in a one night's tent. And then on a date. In one night's tent, stand your potential hostage. You need to feel safe much more with a total stranger than you are with your lover.  It's a huge risk. It's a huge gamble. And it's done only in casual sex and one night's tent. In this sense, you could say pretty easily that the level of intimacy in one night's tent is higher than it is in established couples in committed relationships. However bizarre it sounds, it happens to be the truth, it would explain perhaps why we had discovered that casual sex and one night's tent are addictive. People who engage in casual sex tend to engage more and more until finally it becomes the exclusive mode of engagement. Sex is a drive. Sex is an urge as physiological foundations. But we channel it. We sublimated to use Freud's language. We convert it into socially acceptable, socially condoned patterns of behavior based on choices and decisions. We suppress our impulses, impulse control. We are not reckless, most of us. But one night's tent and casual sex, they dispense with sublimation. We are reckless. And you see that in this sense, we are closer to who we really are when we are having a one night's tent. Within a committed relationship with a loved one, society is the third partner, always. Inhibitions, rules, boundaries, do this, don't do this, I accept this, I don't accept this. It's encumbered. It's cumbersome. One night's tent is liberating.  With the help of alcohol or drugs sometimes. But often without. It's just a statement of pure interrelatedness, pure interactivity founded on unmitigated, unlimited trust, a sense of total safety. The suspension of all defenses, the exposure or revelation of all vulnerabilities. It's a total experience. It's exceedingly meaningful. And where there's meaning, there are emotions. Emotions like affection, comfort, empathy, support. Now we discovered that there's a lot of intimacy. Because of the aforementioned attentiveness, kindness, succor, compassion. Because one night's tents are usually a communication of lust or a communication of passion. The parties are telling each other, I find you irresistible. Directness, honesty, matching expectations. There's leadership sometimes. It's good time, it's fun. It's non-judgmental and non-critical. And it's totally an equal relationship. So what's missing? This is the definition of intimacy. All one night's tents and casual sex involve intimacy. In all its manifestations, the panoply of all the elements and all the figments of intimacy exist there. And many people use one night's tents and casual sex as a form of mate selection. It's like test driving the potential partner. Many attempt to convert a one night's tent into some type of relationship. Friends with benefit or even romantic relationship. But about 20% of one night's tents are with total strangers with the expressed knowledge that you're never going to see them again. And so ironically it is because you're never going to see this person again that you can be totally you. You're not afraid to be judged. You're not afraid to be reminded of your misbehaviour or faux pas or mistakes. You can be totally you. It's very, very calming and relaxing. And you can behave in any way in shape or form. And you can share your fantasies and your wishes expressly and openly. The sex is bad because there's no mutual acquaintance of the bodies. Your partner doesn't know which buttons to push. Never mind how much you verbalize. Still the practice is missing. But otherwise it's a very meaningful and emotional laden experience. It's an experience of liberation and freedom and liberty are always accompanied with emotions. Sometimes negative emotions such as angst, sometimes positive emotions such as happiness. So one night's tents in casual sex are opportunity driven. Because they are opportunity driven, the selective pressures much reduced even in a standard dating scenario or on dating apps. There is selective pressure. We respond to visuals. We respond to texts. We respond to speech. We respond to smell. So we are very, the potential partner has to go through hoops, jump through hoops. And the hoops are numerous. And very, very few people make it. And then finally when there's a committed relationship, the expectations are very heightened. They are increased, amplified. And as the expectations increase and are amplified, so is the disappointment. And so relationships which are longer term, more committed, more invested are very difficult to maintain. They are energy depleting. Not so one night's tents and casual sex. It's opportunity driven. Studies have established repeatedly that people end up sleeping with each other. Strangers end up sleeping with each other even when they find the other partner. When they find the partner unattractive, incompatible, foul smelling. Even when they regard the partner's behavior of putting. For example, if he's stingy or cheap, if he's pushy, if he's vulgar, if he's aggressive, snidey. Even so, it ends in sex. It's very rare. It's very rare that having failed a compatibility test, the sex will be off the table. When the two partners have made up their minds to seek casual sex, to engage in a one night stand. The partners' specifications, attributes, traits and behaviors are not relevant. It's not relevant because as I've mentioned before, it's essentially an auto-erotic act. And as Vangelovsky had mentioned, it involves self-empathy, which is the form of self-love. It's extremely powerful. Now, I would like to read to you an excerpt from a book titled Hooking Up. I think it was published in 2016, written by Catherine Elm, H-E-L-L-M. She says, Sternberg in 1986 views intimacy as a constitutive element of love that encompasses feelings of closeness, connectedness and bondedness. Components include emotional closeness, psychological relatedness, sexual intimacy, empathy, understanding between couples, interdependency and trust. Trust, which is the most important component of intimacy.  All of it. Actually, in the majority of cases, couples, people get to know each other before they have a one night stand. So they spend some time eating together, drinking together, talking and so on and so forth. Even in swingers' clubs, swingers get to know each other before they swing, usually they have dinner together. So there is always a preceding phase of getting to know the partner, which of course establishes and creates intimacy. Social scientist Russell Vanoy, V-A-N-N-O-Y in 1980, cited by King in 2009, argues that love is unnecessary and sex can and should be enjoyed for its own sake. However, the predominating value in the United States is that sexual relations should be reserved for emotionally closed romantic relationships, says Catherine Elm in her book, Hooking Up. The women report that they find sex unenjoyable outside the confines of a loving relationship.  The hook-up culture may change the societal view that sex and relationships go together, but this is still the predominant view. College students who have participated in research exploring hook-up culture often state that they are too busy for long-term romantic relationships and that Hooking Up fulfills both physical and emotional needs for closeness on a temporary basis. Drugs and alcohol are sometimes involved in hook-ups, which can influence one's judgment and make it more likely to hook up with someone an individual would not under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Let me read this again. Drugs and alcohol are sometimes involved in hook-ups, which can influence one's judgment and make it more likely to hook up with someone an individual not under the influence of drugs and alcohol would not. And here I mentioned studies by Lisa Wade and so on. Catherine Elm continues. Many college students report that they regret hook-ing up. Sometimes hook-ing up can lead to unintended consequences such as sexually transmitted infections, unwanted pregnancies, hurt feelings, relationship disappointment and or date rape. Research clearly shows that college students overestimate just how many of their classmates are actually hook-ing up. For example, surveyed college students reported that they believed that over 85% of their classmates regularly engaged in hook-ups. Approximately 60-80% of college students did report having had some experience with casual sexual behavior, but research finds that the actual number is far lower. Approximately 20%, only 20% of college students report having regular hook-ups. The more an individual hooks up, the more likely he or she is to continue casual hook-ups. College students who regularly hook up tend to have less experience in dating and long-term romantic relationships. Although college students may talk about hook-ing up, the majority of college students still engage in serial monogamy. Social psychologists and relationship experts fear that if the hook-up culture persists, the security of long-term romantic relationships will be at risk, as hook-ing up does not develop the necessary relationships skills one needs in order to initiate, maintain and be satisfied in committed monogamous relationships. Oxytocin is involved in the neuroanatomy of intimacy, specifically in sexual reproduction during and after childbirth, and also helps to stimulate lactation, breastfeeding. Oxytocin is released in large amounts during and after labor for maternal bonding directly after the baby is born. It's a very, very powerful omen. Oxytocin is the basis of life. Oxytocin is also implicated in orgasm, social recognition and romantic pair bonding during and directly after sex. Physical effects of oxytocin include increased sensitivity of nerve endings, stimulated muscle contractions, increased heart rate, plus an urge to touch and cuddle. The emotional feelings it produces are associated with affection, bonding, caring, love, peace, nurturing, security, attachment and even the afterglow of sex. Just to be clear, oxytocin is secreted during every sex act, including one night's tent. Catherine Helm continues, it is true that both men and women feel the effects of oxytocin, but they do so to varying degrees. It is believed that men's levels of oxytocin rise about three to five times during orgasm, but women's levels rise even more dramatically and continue to rise during subsequent orgasms. Women's brains also have more oxytocin neural receptors, and pregnancy may increase the number of receptors. Women's special connection with oxytocin may have wide-ranging influences. Some research suggests that the regret many women often feel after casual sex may be tied to increased oxytocin levels and a need for physical touch after sexual intercourse that goes unfulfilled because there is no continued physical contact after a brief sexual encounter. Additional studies imply that some women may have more addictive relationship patterns because they feel love and loss in relationships more intensely. She refers to a study by Callaford, K-A-L-A-F-U-T 2008. Clearly she says we know that strong feelings often strongly impact sexual intimacy. And this was Catherine Helm about lust in her book Hooking Up. As distinct from love, lust is brought on by surges of sex hormones, such as testosterone and estrogen. These sex hormones induce an indiscriminate scramble for physical gratification. In the brain, the hypothalamus controls hunger, thirst and other primordial drives, and the amygdala, the locus of arousal, becomes active. Attraction transpires once a more or less appropriate object is found, with the right body language and speed and tone of voice. And this results in a panoply of sleep and eating disorders should the relationship continue. A recent study in the University of Chicago demonstrated that testosterone levels shoot up by one third, even during a casual chat with a female stranger. The stronger the hormonal reaction, the more marked the changes in behavior concluded the authors. And this loop is a part of a larger mating response. In animals, testosterone provokes aggression and recklessness. The hormones readings in married men and fathers are markedly lower than in single males still playing the field. And still, the long-term outcomes of being in love are lustful. Dopamine, heavily secreted while falling in love, triggers the production of testosterone and sexual attraction then kicks in. Body secretions play a major role in the onslaught of love and lust. In results published in February 2007 in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated convincingly that women who sniffed androstudion estadionon is a male hormone.    And still, contrary to prevailing misconceptions, love is mostly about negative emotions. As Professor Arthur Aaron, A-R-O-N from State University of New York at Stony Brook, has shown, in the first few meetings, people misinterpret certain physical cues and feelings, notably fear and thrill, and they misinterpret them as falling in love. And so counter-intuitively, anxious people, especially those with serotonin transporter gene, anxious people, are more sexually active and falling in love more often. We are attracted to people with the same genetic makeup, the same smell. We're not sure that there are human pheromones, but the smell, the smell of our parents. Dr. Martha McClintock of the University of Chicago studied feminine attraction to sweaty t-shirts, formerly worn by males. The closer the smell resembled her father's, the more attracted and aroused the woman became. Falling in love is therefore an exercise in proxy insist, and a vindication of Freud's much maligned Oedipus and Lectra complexes. Stale McClintock's work is very controversial, because it contradicts other, less conclusive, and far more controversial findings regarding the major histocompatibility complex, MHC, or the human leukocytes antigen, HLA. Studies demonstrated either fewer HLA matches than were expected, over studies by Ober, or no such effect. Chakes, cow and donnelly in 2008. Weddekind conducted body or door studies, again with sweaty t-shirts, that demonstrated a female preference for MHC dissimilarity, not like her father's, especially during ovulation, but only in women who did not use oral contraceptives. Men also preferred MHC's disassortative mate choices. You see, the minute we meet, the minute we set eye on each other, from a distance of a few meters, we inhale, we inhale molecules, and these molecules convey information. They convey information about the genetics of the potential partner, about the immune system of the potential partner, and then a whole train of hormonal manifestations and processes sets in. The brain reacts, the body reacts, and then intimacy sets in, gradually a feeling of trust and safety, followed later by the act itself. And during the act itself, oxytocin creates bonding and attachment, and when the act is disrupted and ruptured because it's a one-night stand, there is a general malaise, there is a very negative reaction, psychologically and bodily. And never mind what people say, because they are likely, they are likely to rationalize the act, they are likely to come up with a narrative to bridge the gaps and to resolve the dissonances that they are experiencing. But these narratives, these stories, these resolutions of cognitive dissonance and other types of dissonances, they are not to be believed. The overwhelming bulk, the overwhelming weight of evidence is that every sex act, however casual, however incidental, with whoever, including strangers, involves deep intimacy, numerous emotions, hormonal cascades, physiological changes, brain changes, mood effects and memories, formation of long-term memories which later are incorporated into one's identity and have far-reaching influence. Thank you for inviting me to this conference.


The study reports the fabrication and evaluation of zinc oxide or silver nanoparticles capped with vitamin A or E-nanocomposite that were incorporated in weak gluten films for burn-wound treatment. The results show that the NPS vitamin composite-loaded WG films have significant antioxidant and antibacterial potential, promote wound contraction, re-epithelialization, collaging deposition with fibroblast regeneration, adipocytes, and hair follicle development in vivo. The biocompatible nature and biodegradable potential make the films a promising solution for burn-wound healing management. This article was authored by Nneela Sajat, Hussain Ali, and Muhammad Zia.


Hello, my name is Edward and I come from Vietnam. I resistently have graduated from the Bachelor's Program of International Management from DeSign University. My project was about identifying the key trends of the current car sharing market in Prague in Czech Republic. For example, what kind of demographics were attracted to the idea of alternative mobility and what sort of car sharing features actually helped to boost the reputation of the industry. I believe that the project benefited many stakeholders such as the current and future car sharing brands, government, environmentally conscious people and especially for the current and future drivers. So I have conducted the research by utilizing the methods of surveys and interviews by asking young people the age groups of 18 to 45 that were living in the capital city, including the major car sharing companies and experts in the alternative mobility field. However, the research eventually faced issues in regard to how the methodology was applied in the past during the first life of the global pandemic known as COVID-19. It prevented me from meeting the potential participants of my survey and interviews in person as the pandemic encouraged social distancing. Therefore, I had to conducted research mostly over the internet and reaching out to Czech based online form communities. I have concluded the findings based on how young people are familiar with the basics of the car sharing industry and seem to find the idea of the alternative mobility to be a positive influence to Prague in terms of being co-friendly and useful as a viable choice in terms of daily community. However, the sense of car ownership is strong among the local citizens in the ages of 30 to 40 as this means that it would be beneficial for the project stakeholders to target young people in the age groups around the ages of 80 to 30 as this specific demographic are more open and willing to try car sharing typically does not carry the same financial burden compared to car ownership which seems to be the major attraction of the car sharing industry as their marketing exposure increases eventually there will be more car sharing vehicles they may be in the future phase future regulations in regard to congestion or taxes as the Czech government is trying maintain a whole fee number of cars in the capital city and upon completing my dissertation I managed to learn discipline commitment and responsibility on a higher level which has allowed me to complete it successfully in a specific timeline in a high-pressure environment to be a sleep


These Washington state workers don't need to be reminded that safety must be their highest priority. Their life depends on it. But did you know these orchard workers can also be injured so badly that they have to take time off from work, simply from falling off a ladder? In a way, the orchard workers are more in danger. The iron workers are protected by nets. In fact, every year over 500 Washington state orchard workers filed injury claims with the Department of Labor and Industries from falling off ladders. And over 200 of them are injured seriously enough they need to stop picking, from a day or two to the rest of their lives. Before you start picking, make sure the ladder you're going to use is safe. Look for loose rivets or fasteners and crack their damaged railing steps and supports. Pay attention especially to the third leg, but the connections to the top of the ladder are all in place. This is not something you only do before you start using it. Keep checking the ladder for damage all through the day. If the ladder isn't safe, report it to your supervisor and set it aside for repair. You should only use a ladder which has passed the safety inspection. To carry the ladder, fold the third leg tight to the rungs and hold it there as you walk. This is the wrong way to carry a ladder any distance. The legs can hit and hurt other pickers or damage a tree. The tripod ladder is used in the orchards because a regular ladder would be almost impossible to set up on uneven ground. Used correctly, the tripod ladder gives a solid feel and a safe climb. But they can also be a source of injury. Linda Mackie is an occupational nurse consultant for the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries in Yakubah. She sees a great number of injuries connected with the use of tripod ladders in the orchards. Ask what she'd say to anyone using a tripod ladder in the orchard. I'd ask them to move slowly, safely and securely. For persons that make their living such as orchard picking, orchard thinning, orchard pruning, even a minor injury to the musculoskeletal system or even a minor injury to the head can be an employment stoppage situation for a long period of time. In other words, your time is valuable. Your time is best spent picking fruit or pruning fruit trees. That's how you support your family. If you can't work because you were injured falling off a ladder, that time is wasted, lost forever. As occupational nurse consultant Mackie said, time spent setting up and using the ladder correctly is time well spent. Your time is too valuable to gamble with it by taking chances. What are we talking about? Setting up the ladder on an unstable or slippery surface is the primary reason ladders fall over. Take the time to make sure the rail legs have a firm, solid ground contact, not on soft mud or rotting fruit. Bob Tallman has spent most of his life manufacturing tripod orchard ladders. He joined with his father and uncle in 1954 to build the first tripod orchard ladder using aluminum. Mr. Tallman says the correct way to spread the pole or third leg in an orchard is to stand under the ladder with one hand on the frame and the other on the pole so you can set the pole without damaging the fruit. A professional fruit picker or pruner would very carefully extend it while keeping the pole under full control. But so we can see better how to do it, Mr. Tallman agreed to demonstrate setting up a ladder in an open field. To set up a ladder on a slope, if you are setting it up directly up the slope, you want the base of the ladder downhill with the pole or the third leg facing directly up the hill.  This one here, my fingertips are not touching the front of the ladder so it needs to be tilted just slightly more. We'll come around and we'll take the pole, set it out just a little bit further. Once again, the toes in front of the ladder, that's just a little bit too much, we'll drag it back. That's the proper angle. To ascend the ladder, keep both hands on the rail. Step on the first step and sink it into the turf just a little bit. Lunge so that that third leg is into the turf and it is now properly situated. To climb the ladder, put both your hands on the rails and climb so that you have the proper grip on the ladder. Keep your belt buckle area between the confines of the side rails of the ladder and don't overextend your reach as to lose your balance either to the left or to the right.  So there again keep your belt buckle area between the side rails. As you come down toward the base where the ladder is getting wider you have a wider range with which to operate and reach the fruit or prune the trees. To set up the ladder on a cross slope, we are now cross sloped with the downhill to the right. Once again you set your angle, get your proper angle of the ladder and then position the ladder so that the pole is slightly downhill on the cross slope.  It gives you better stability with a cross slope going this way and that third pole is slightly downhill for greater stability. Here again we'll position it in the other way. At this position we have the ground sloping to our left downhill. We'll set up the proper angle, adjust the ladder so that the third leg is slightly downslope. Check to make sure that the three points are firm. Ascend the ladder again with both hands and this gives you proper positioning for a cross slope that goes to your left. Mr. Tallman demonstrated how to set up a tripod ladder on sloping ground where most orchards are planted in order to give the fruit long exposure to the sun. On the other hand if the ground is relatively level the third leg should be approximately centered between the rails as you would set it up on a hill. If you don't put the third leg out far enough the ladder may fall over backwards when you start to climb it. Or if the third leg is placed too far out from the ladder there will be the danger of the third leg slipping all the way out and the ladder falling down. Never lean the ladder against the tree for support. The tree limbs can snap, break or flex. The ladder must stand on its own three legs. Before climbing the ladder make sure the rungs or steps are clean of any debris and that no branches are sticking out between the rungs. When you step on the first rung and before you start climbing test to see if the ladder is stable and to set the feet into the ground. This is another good time to check the ladder for structural damage. This is one job where wearing proper fitting clothing will make a difference. It is a lot safer if the length of your pants leg is short enough to prevent it from being caught on the heel of your shoes. The soles of your shoes should be relatively stiff to help prevent your feet from getting tired standing on the rungs of the ladder. You must have a proper heel to prevent your foot from slipping through the steps on the ladder. Tennis or sports shoes might be more comfortable in most situations but they don't belong on a ladder. Your foot and leg could easily slip through the rung of the ladder cause you to tumble backwards off the ladder hit your head on the ground or lower rungs of the ladder. This could cause a major injury to your head and back or even death. Again Nurse Mackie. Some of the more serious injuries that we see are loss of consciousness due to head trauma. Here's some simple rules for working safely on a ladder. Facing the ladder is always the safest way of going up or down the ladder. With a full bag of fruit you may need to turn sideways to keep your feet facing inward and your heels outside the rungs. We've all done this habitually. It seems to make sense. We're only on the first or second rung of the ladder and the fruit is right there. Why waste time moving the ladder? We'll just turn around and pick the fruit. Is the gamble in order to save time moving the ladder worth the risk? You decide. Since your foot is not secured to the rung of the ladder by your heel it is very easy for your foot to slip off the rung and hit the lower rung or the ground with your heel and fracture it. According to L&I's occupational nurse Linda Mackie We get a lot of falls where they land on their calcaneus so they've got a fracture in their heel. So it doesn't seem, you know, I mean heels are a nice robust bone but you bear so much weight top to bottom in terms of your balance every time you initiate a footstep between heel and first toe then even a minor injury like that will keep you from maintaining balance when you go up rungs of the ladder. So recovery and return to work is much delayed way greater than one would think. The risk is huge. It's entirely possible that you could lose the ability to work for the entire harvest season just from the relatively minor injury you sustained from slipping off the second rung of the ladder. Is it worth the gamble? Isn't the time you need to finish working the entire season to support your family worth taking the time to do the job safely to work smart? Keep your belt buckle between the side rails. If your fruit or your body extends too far beyond the rails you could easily lose your balance and tumble off the ladder. Start picking at the top of the ladder and pick on the way down. So when the bag or basket fills up you are near the bottom of the ladder. Keep both hands on the ladder as you climb or descend each hand grasping and sliding along the side rails always in contact with the ladder and ready to clamp on if needed especially if a foot slips. If you do this it is very hard to become unbalanced and tumble off the ladder. This is so important for your safety. Let us review that rule again. As the ladder has three contacts with the ground so your body should always have three contacts with the ladder when climbing or descending. Both hands and one foot. It is good idea to practice climbing and descending using the three point system until it becomes second nature in your work. If at all possible don't carry anything up or down the ladder in your hand. Of course we can't forget the reason you're climbing the ladder is to pick fruit. To save time you may be tempted to forget these rules. If you fall and are injured the time you wanted to save won't make any difference and remember if you are injured it's your loved ones who will generally be the most hurt. Work safely and do it right the first time. Don't step out on a branch to extend your reach. It is dangerous and could cause the ladder to tip over away from you leaving you dangling in mid-air before you fall. Or you could lose your balance and fall off the ladder either way. Injuries received from falls generally take a long time to heal. It's hard to support a family from a hospital bed. The risk is not worth any time you might say. Pick only the fruit you can reach while keeping your belt buckle between the rails and one hand holding onto the ladder. If you can't reach it safely descend the ladder, move the ladder over set it up correctly climb back up and pick the fruit you can safely reach. Don't try to walk the ladder to a different location. Walking the ladder is prohibitive because it is unsafe and it can cause the rivets to snap the braces to break and the ladder to become loose. Never climb higher than the second step from the top and don't sit on the top or any other wrong while picking. There the rules are simple and sensible.  The same can be said about your time. You are also a professional. It takes skill and experience to do your job. Your time is money. Don't gamble with it. Don't take shortcuts with the ladder trying to save a few seconds. You are gambling that you won't have an accident which might rob you of any time you might have to work. It isn't worth it. Real time comes from being able to use your time safely to make a living for you and your family. Work smart, work safely. It is also wise to get plenty of sleep every night. If you come to work all tired out you may be tempted to reach out too far or climb too high or not move the ladder to reach the fruit safely. That's when accidents happen. It's not worth it. It's also important to keep yourself hydrated during the hot weather. Drink water often. At the start of this program we compared the danger of iron workers high on the sky with fruit pickers on a tripod ladder. Both are in danger of falling and getting badly hurt or worse. But they both continue to work even with the danger. They do it by working smart. By not taking shortcuts that put themselves or their fellow workers in danger of injury. They don't gamble with their safety. They take the time to do it right to do it safely. Accidents don't have to happen. Accidents can be prevented by taking the time to do it safely. For more information please visit our website www.lni.wa.gov


Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting edition of A Week in Geekdom. Today it's a little bit different, different kind of setup. I thought I'd share my screen here as I was looking through some information and I remembered, hey, I haven't actually talked about these manga titles, just a quick little first impressions. Nothing too fancy for you guys, just sharing my thoughts on these brand new Shonen Jump titles. So the first one that we're looking at is Earth Child from Hideo Shinkai. And as it says here, a regular person falls in love with a superhero who protects the Earth. In terms of circumstances, ability, experience, they are from two different worlds, but they get to know each other, support each other, and then a unique love story on a planetary scale now begins. So I only read the first chapter, which was the only thing available as of the recording of this video, but I thought I talked about it because it was a slightly oversized chapter. I think it was close to 60 pages and it was pretty interesting. The art, not necessarily my favorite, the story, even though it was one chapter, it really did feel like I was reading 20 volumes worth of this epic romance slash action sci-fi story crammed into one pilot chapter. Obviously, when you finish reading Earth Child chapter one, you realize what the story is really going to be about. Not necessarily going to spoil it here for you guys, but I'm excited for it. It's a nice concept. It's tragic. It's romantic. It's simple. There's nothing too spectacular about it, but yet I want to read more. I want to find out more about this world. So at the start of this chapter, our main character that you can see here is saved by this awesome superpowered Earth Child girl. She has levitating powers and she can do all sorts of super heroics, but she ends up erasing the main character's mind because he must not know of her existence, I guess, and to protect her identity and keep the world safe and all that tropey stuff that we like from comics. So the twist here being that the guy actually does remember her and looks her up again and is able to find her and track her and just sort of back and forth banter ensues between the two of them and they sort of hit it off from there. There's not a whole lot to it. Just the fact that they explain her powers, they explain how she's operating in this futuristic world that's very similar to our own, of course. So it's a romance in the pilot chapter and we see them get closer and closer together. And of course, by the end of it, the nature of, you know, being an Earth Child is explained how she basically, you know, she is the Superman type character and has to protect the world when there is a catastrophe which does happen in the chapter. So at the end, a little nostalgia, a little bittersweetness to it, but I think it's going to make for an interesting read going forward. Naturally, it wasn't. It was kind of predictable as you were reading it, as you were going along with the story, but I'm excited to know what else this manga have up its sleeve. So as an introductory chapter, yeah, pretty interesting. Again, pretty funny that essentially you're getting a full series just crammed into one manga chapter and then sort of like this pilot for an ongoing series that we're getting. I thought that was pretty funny in my opinion. The next series I'm reading is of course Akane Banashi and I'm hoping I'm pronouncing that right from Yuki Suenaga and Takamasa Moe on art. So this reminds me a lot of Shoha Shoten in that it's taking the concept of entertainment and Japanese media and comedy and making a series out of it. And it's nothing supernatural. It's nothing fantastical. It's these human characters going through a very human thing. In the case of Akane Banashi, it is through the world of Rakugo, which is the one man performance art that is so emblematic from Japan. And you have the character of Shinta Arakawa, the father in this story. He's trying to make it. He has what it takes and unfortunately, or though predictably fails at some point in the opening chapters.  That is essentially what you need to know about this title. The artwork is absolutely beautiful, even though nothing really happens because it's about Rakugo and it's a more realistic slice of life series. The art is very nice to look at. I love the character designs in this. Gonna go ahead and share my screen here with Manga Plus legally, of course, you can see you can read all these chapters. And I don't know, there's something about the character designs which is really nice. And of course, that goes back to the artist Takamasa Moe. I really like how nice everybody looks in this. They look realistic. And I think the art does a good job of letting us know about the stories that these characters are telling. So of course, the main character, she doesn't like that everybody's calling her dad a deadbeat because it's a very awkward profession. It's not something that's glamorized in today's society. He chooses to do somewhat of an older art form that's really not relevant in today's society. And the whole concept of Rakugo is really interesting.  But what's crazy, it's just, it's one person.  So essentially, it's a pretty simple story. I'm enamored by these type of tales. Not necessarily the most avid reader when it comes to Shonen Jump, simply because I kind of get a little bored by the similarity between titles. But having stuff like this is much more appealing to me and I'm really excited to continue the story. I don't see it lasting super long, not because of cancellations, although that could be a possibility. Who knows? But just the fact that just the nature of the story really does lend itself for a nice beginning, middle, and end and not this, you know, overgrown story that could have been told in simpler fashion or smaller chapters. So just like with Shoua Houten, it relies on you liking these subjects and liking these characters. Because yes, it is about comedy at the focus of it. It is about drama theater in the case of this one with Rakugo, but it's more of a character-centric tale and how they are able to entertain audiences and in the case of our main character here, how she is able to get the message of cross of how wonderful her dad is and how, you know, Justice was not served in this case and she's going to carry on the family legacy and make sure that people know that Arakawa was a nice Rakugo performer. So yeah, overall these two series are pretty interesting. This was an interesting video to make as I usually don't use this format a lot, but hopefully you guys were entertained by my little musings here, completely improvised. Stay tuned for more videos on the channel. I'll be reviewing a couple new books that I got and all that fun stuff. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you for liking, commenting and subscribing. It really does mean a whole lot. Thank you so much for supporting your boy here at Weekend Geek Tim. That's it. I got to go. God bless. Stay safe out there. I will catch all of you on our next episode.


Hello, Oscillator Sync here. The Polyone Play is a groovebox with 8 tracks of sample playback and 8 tracks of MIDI control. Leaving aside the beautiful array of LED pads, which door on the front panel, its main distinguishing feature is its focus on generative algorithmic and chan space tools, designed to help you quickly create and iterate on musical ideas. Much has been said and demonstrated on the play with regards to quickly creating often intricate beat-centric music, and rightly so, as that is an area where it excels, but many of the concepts and features on offer here play equally well in the world of ambient music. So that's all we'll be doing today, making use of these features to put together a little generative ambient piece to chill out to, to demonstrate the workflow and the sounds. In the interest of transparency, Polyend kindly sent me the play for free for the purposes of making videos on it, but I haven't otherwise been paid for making a video, and Polyend haven't asked for nor if they've been given any editorial oversight into the video's content. It won't be much of a surprise to any regular viewers, but this video is going to be pretty chill, and I'll be taking my time to build up the piece from scratch, but hopefully there'll be some nice mellow music to accompany the journey, so hopefully you'll join me. And if you have any questions or observations as we go, be sure to hit me up in the comments section. So I haven't plotted out this piece properly, but I have got a kind of plan and a kind of vibe that I'm going to go for, and I've loaded up some samples to start us along that kind of journey. So in terms of the samples I've got in here, I've got some piano samples, which I made myself, they're not the factory ones, the factory ones are quite hard sounding, nicely sampled, but quite hard. I've got some of these lap harp plucks here, which is from the factory settings, and then I've got a bunch of stuff that I recorded on my kalimba, both in terms of intervals, some kind of percussive stuff in there, and then some velocities. Yeah, so that's kind of what we're going for. In terms of the layout of the track, I was thinking for the first two tracks we'll do some kind of piano phrases, which are of different lengths, sort of poly metric things, which are going to kind of cross over each other and phase around. And then I'll try and create a sort of generative accompaniment which moves around the key to recontextualise those phrases.  And then I wanted to have a little bit of percussion, sort of quite sparse I think to begin with, just because it kind of holds an ambient piece together sometimes. And then the other thing I want to be able to do is kind of progress the piece by making use of one of the particularly cool features on the play. So because we're going to be making use of generative ideas, which is pitch as well as a rhythm, the first thing we're going to do here is come into the menu and go into the scales menu, and I'm going to turn the scale filter on. What it means is that we get only play notes within the scale that we choose, and any of the randomness that we introduce that affects pitches will also always fall within this scale. So it means that we're able to use randomness, but it still kind of sounds right most of the time. So I'm going to choose a scale type here, and I think I'm going to go for the good old, where are we? Yeah, the good old standby of pentatonic minor. The pentatonic scales are really good for this kind of music because it's impossible to play two notes which sound bad next to each other. Basically there are no real discordant notes within there. The one downside of using the scale filters is that they are absolute and you can't break out them even if you want to. Currently you literally can't define a note outside that scale. So if you want to create tension when putting stuff outside the scale, you can't do it. But I think for our purposes that's going to be fine today. So on these first two tracks I want to have this kind of phasing, phrasing, probably a piano thing that's going on. And I want them to phase over each other rhythmically. So we're going to use that kind of polymetric idea. And it's really easy to set up on the play, so I can select the entire track here. And then in the track length I'm going to choose my length and I'm going to go for 23 for that one. And I'm going to go for 29 for that one. So we're choosing prime numbers here, just because that means that things don't repeat very often. Right, so let's find the first sound. I think there's a sound I'm going to go for, a piano sound. And I'm going to choose probably a pitch above where I want to go and then I'm going to tune it back down afterwards. So I'm going to find a nice rhythm then to find the notes afterwards. So I want to actually define the notes for these phrases. So let's start by putting down. Then we've got a bit of a wait. Okay, so let me pan this to one side so we can hear which one is which of the two phrases. So we'll just set up the panning for the other side for this one. So you can hear that these rhythms are never really repeating over each other. They're always phasing in and out with each other. Okay, that's good. So let's define their pitch a little bit. So the first thing we're going to do is I'm just going to bring the whole lock down and octave. Just because then we get that nice sort of tape slowed down kind of feel to it. Half speed is best speed as Heimbach will always tell us. I'm also going to just put a little bit of overdrive on these and maybe just drop the bit rate. Get some of that little bit of fuzz and air in the background. Okay, so let's choose some notes here. So maybe just mute one of these. Then we'll choose something for this side as well. Let's go down up first. So it's one lower instead. Quite like having that high note. Okay, let's see how those two sound together. Okay, yeah, let's do something neat I think. So at the moment this sounds kind of robotic and that's because each of these notes are changing pitch. They're all at the same velocity and that's kind of making it sound very sampled and sequenced. So let's make use of some of the generative features here to move that volume about a little bit. So I'm going to select the two tracks together. We're going to randomize here. The randomization type we're going to use is just volume. So we'll set our randomization amount. And this sets a range of a deviation from the current amount. Okay, so we'll hit save then that's going to apply that randomization that's just been generated and sort of bake it into the track. There we go. I'm just going to raise the overall volume of this as well I think and just drop the filter down a little bit. A little bit of resonance. Which will allow us to emphasize the top end. Right, let's think about this accompaniment part then. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to put a single piano note here. And let's go, let's stick with this particular sample. We'll just drop it down lower I think. Okay, so now we have this repeated note over 16 steps. I'm going to make that a bit lower I think. Let's put that back in the middle shall we? Let's bring that sample down an octave or two. So now we have this repeated note there. Now we probably don't want it to be a C every time. So here we can make use of the chance to choose a random note each time or choose a random note sometimes actually. So the action I'm going to choose here is going to be a random note but because we've defined the scale it's always going to be in the right key. Okay, I just need to actually apply that to that step sorry. This is me thinking like it's a dig attack when it's not the dig attack. So now it's going to use a different note each time. I'm just going to recontextualize those phrases. But just choosing a random note every single step kind of robs it of structure a little bit. So what I'm going to do rather than having it change the note every time I'm going to define a chance based on repeats. So the setting I'm going to use is let's try play to skip to. So you have two random notes and then two goes back to the C each time. So we've got a random and C sort of root it back in the key. So C again and then we should have two random notes which then kind of give us that shift in accompaniment that's getting somewhere. Alright, let's think about what we want to do next. I think what we want to do next it is slap some reverb on these parts especially on these two. So we'll select the whole of those two tracks and we'll just come to the reverb send here and I'm just going to turn up the reverb amount. So this is using one of the built-in reverb presets but we can actually set how we'd like now so let's do that. So we can come into settings here into master effects rather and rather than in here where we've got different presets we can choose custom and then we can define it. I think I was playing around with something earlier because that sounds nice. Yeah, so I might use this. I was playing around with this earlier. What I've done here is I've got the dampen fairly loud, I've got the size quite big and I've turned the diffusion down so it's not smearing the reverb so much but we're hearing a bit more of the individual echoes inside the reverb which I was really like. That's more texture. And already this is kind of perfectly pleasant to listen to I think. Let's take a moment to breathe and think about where we're going to take this next. I think what I want to do next is bring in some percussive elements, just something sparse but just to ground the piece as it is. So I'm going to use these bottom two tracks to keep out the way of my melody area here. So let's choose a sample, we'll come into the folder. I want my taps and knocks which is just me tapping and knocking on my kalimba. Cool. We'll make use of the fill functionality to populate this stuff. So let's choose a length for these two tracks.  So let's go something like 12 on that one. And 11 on that one. Let's try that. Yeah, so we've got 12 and 11 there. Cool. So we've chosen just one of the samples for the moment. And I will select this first structure has 12 steps and I'm going to come into fill here. And the type I'm going to choose is Euclidean. And I'm going to choose a length. Generally speaking I go odd numbers on an even numbered track. It just seems to work nicely. So I'm going to do three, no wait, that divides nicely. Let's go five. Five into the 12 there and hit fill and that's going to populate those tracks. So now on this next track here which has 11, we'll do a similar sort of thing. Euclidean there will go four into the 11 perhaps. That's all a bit much at the moment so let's pan these things so we can hear what's going on. Obviously sonically this isn't super pleasant at the moment. So I'm going to do a couple of things to it. First I'm just going to filter down a bit and take some of that. Then I'm also going to shorten it and let's also do that randomization on the volume that has more sort of movement in sort of back to front side of things. And then let's bring in some chance here and in terms of the chance that we're going to bring in I think let's go with the random sample. Probably not always so we still have that kind of knocking. Give it some overdrive. Let's set the custom parameters for that. Let's just take a moment to enjoy how aesthetically easy it is to watch all the tracks move across. I want to get a bit more sort of ambient kind of weird stuff going on here. So let's just move a couple of these tracks so we can hear what we're doing a bit better. I'm going to choose some of these intervals. So I was wondering if I could do some backwards masked stuff here. So to reverse the sample on the Polym Play it's slightly awkward. Frankly it'd be nice to just have a reverse feature. But what you do is you set the start to the end and the end to the start basically. So we'll do that right now. So we need to actually apply it to that step. Let's try that again. That's something isn't it? Let's darken that bit. Okay. Get a bit more saturation into it. Get some reverb. Now again somewhere. Okay. Let's see what happens if we go for a random note on that. Okay. That's cool. Right. I think what we'll do is slow this track down so it's not happening quite so often. Okay. Let's turn off the random note here. Let's turn off the random note here and let's slow this track right the way down. Tempo. Track speed. Which one of you synchronizes? Okay. So we've got a much slower track now and I'm going to just put one of these down. Every other track length actually on this track. So that's happening just every time there. What I'm going to do is I'm going to use randomize here and use it to randomize the pitch within one octave. Two octaves, a bit more space. Okay. Let's bake that in. Let's chance instead to lower the chance of one of these playing. Before we do that actually, let's pan them as well. So pan them individually. Give them some space. Okay. So chance. Send it down to like, try 30. Let's bring some of this stuff back in. Okay. Follow me. This is too high. So we'll turn that down a bit. Cool. Yeah. So this track, let's set its length to 14. No. Yeah. It's 14. Sure. And let's see if we can just get this to generate an entirely random useful thing. Let's see if we can do that. So we'll use fill to put down random notes. It's as simple there. That's nice. It's the pitch here. Also the clipper is slightly out of tune. So let's just slow that down by half. The chance here just to have it skip notes occasionally. But given that worked quite well, let's try the same trick again. But maybe go up. So for this track, we'll set the length sort of to 14 on that one. So let's do on this one. We'll use the random fill again, I think. Fill those notes. We'll just listen to hear something we like every time we change the randomize account. Also let's apply that randomization. I think again we'll slow this track down because these two are quite dry at the moment. So let's give them some reverb send. Again on this one, let's lower the chance that a step actually plays. Yeah. That's nice. So let's have a little think about how we can evolve this from a performance standpoint. One of the most sort of underrated features I think on the play is the variation feature. So we're kind of used to the idea with groove boxes that we have multiple different patterns. And by changing patterns, you're changing to a different pattern. Right. So that's a different pattern to the one I was just playing. And here's the pattern I was just playing. And we can switch between them during a performance and you're moving to entirely different patterns. Or almost entirely different songs or different sections of a song. Right. That's how most groove boxes tend to organize stuff. And you've got that on the play. What you also have on the play is this idea of variations. The variations work on a per track basis. So although we've got all of these different patterns within a single pattern, each track then has 16 different variations that we can switch between. So on this one track here, I can switch to a different variation. It's currently empty because we haven't built any variations yet. But it allows us to evolve just this one track here while leaving the rest of the piece alone. So if you want to create pieces which evolve over time, you can bring in different ideas without completely rebuilding the pattern every single time. This is an incredibly powerful feature. I think it's really, really underrated. And I didn't really get it when I first looked at the play. But now that I've played with it, I kind of wish my other groove boxes could do this as well. So let's look at how we can maybe evolve this track using the variations. So I think maybe a good place to start playing with this is in these rhythmic tracks here. Because that's obviously a really obvious way to start to evolve the sort of the push of the track. So let's just mute off some of these friends here. And what I'll do is I'll select this top of the two here and I'll copy it. I'll go into its first variation here. I can paste the same thing in here. Select this track first, sorry. So now we have two variations which contain the same note information, but we can start to make use of other ideas in here to evolve this particular track. So I think one of the first things we could do is add an additional note event course. And let's make sure this is in the right sample of course. And I thought maybe we could bring in some of the repeats as well. So these are like ratchets. It's not really working, are they? Let's try three over. So we've now made this track a bit more busy by introducing some additional notes and making use of some of the repeats. So if we go back to our initial variation here, things a bit more sparse. First variation. Let's do the same thing for this other rhythmic track here. So we'll copy that, make sure it's first variation. Some sort of work flow, that's some repeats. Cool, yeah. Shorten the sample a bit when we get busier. Maybe also pan things back to the first variations. And then let's maybe have a final variation which is just like what hit. So it's much, much sparser. So let's come into the third variations for each of them. And we'll just stick a single. Still got the repeat turned on because I copied a step by accident by quite like. Cool, so now we've got much, much sparser variation that we can move into there as well. Let's maybe think about variations for our melodies as well. So I'll copy this first one again. Move across to its first variation. Paste it in. And I thought what we could do for this one is just introduce a little bit more randomness into this one. So just remind myself what we're doing for chance. We're not doing anything for chance which is great because that allows us to easily introduce some randomness here. So maybe for a few of these notes, maybe these last three notes here, we can select all of them. We can introduce some random note chance in here. So action, random note. So now we have a version here which evolves naturally. So that's cool. That's actually the same for this one, same idea. I think that works really nicely as a way to evolve things. So we'll copy that one. Move across to its next variation. Track has to complete before it moves across to a variation. I'm sure it takes a little second there. Paste that in, lovely. And again, we won't do all of the notes random because it's nice to sort of ground it in something that repeats. We'll select those ones. And again, we will... Maybe on this accompaniment part, we'll add another note event in. Ding, ding, maybe like that. So we'll just copy this one again. Move across to the next variation and paste it in. So samples, let's move back to our piano. Okay, things are getting cut off a little bit there but we can deal with that a little bit. It needs to be lower, generally speaking. Fade out faster, we can probably get another click then. Let's have this be random every time as well. So now we have a couple of different variations that we can bring in to evolve our track beyond just music stuff. We'll have to massage this a little bit to deal with that a little bit though. And of course we can do similar things for these tracks here as well. But I think we've got something nice here. And we can go on and evolve this further. I think we'll leave it here for today. This is already a very long video. So thank you so much for joining me on this little ambient journey with the play. If you enjoyed the video then as always, a like and subscribe is massively appreciated. Till next time.