Okay, so my clock now says it's 10 past three. So here we go. Yeah. My talk is about DVD9 and how we connect to OpenStack. Let me jump right into the topic with looking back for a few minutes. So this is an illustration that shows how DVD8 works, and we will go through that so that you can easily follow me when we go to what is DVD9 actually doing. So what we have been doing for the last 14 years is we built H.A. systems and we really focus on the storage part of H.A. systems. So those two orange boxes illustrate the Linux kernel, and in that we have an so-called IOS stack, that's this page cache file system DVD thing, and we have a network stack. And in the IOS stack, we can insert certain things in certain places, and there where you see this DVD box, this is exactly the same place where things like LVM hook in, where software it goes in, and so on. So now DVD mirrors all the writes it gets in, so it sends it over the network to the other node, each and every write is written on the other node, and acknowledgement goes back, and only if we have both acknowledges, that from the local disk and that from the remote side, we send it up to the application above us. So that's synchronous mirroring. We not only do that, we also do asynchronous mirroring, and you know, that doesn't happen one after one request. In a real system, you have here hundreds or thousands of these operations going on at the same time, or 100,000. Okay, so the basic properties here, in case anything fails in such a constant, you know, we're only concerned about things that fail and how we can recover from that. So if a node fails and comes back later on, DVD will re-sync up all the writes that are missing on the previously failed node. It finds out about that it has to do a re-sync, it finds about the direction which blocks it needs to sync up, all that without that anybody has to care about it. We're quite proud about our performance. So this 160k ops we measured on the systems that was packed with reasonable SSDs, and reasonable networking in between. You can't do that with one kicklink, right? Yeah, we do multiple volumes per resource. That means, well, that's better known as consistency groups. You need that when you have, you know, an application like a database using two different types of storage. Imagine your database uses an SSDs where you put your logs and you have RAID 5 where you put your tablespaces. If you mirror such a setup, you want to mirror those two volumes as one logical group because you cannot recover if replication fails for one of those two. Yeah, we have pacemaker integration. We do that locally and over the van, even over the internet if you like. Yeah, and Linux upstream since 2009, it was released in 2010. So this is the old stuff. If you want one thing, what you take from this presentation is DVD9 has four new features. And if you really are eager to learn something, you have to remember the four features. Okay, we can now do 32 nodes so we can copy your data 31 times if you like.  Why? We need to. Oh, yeah, we have one, gentlemen. Perfect. Okay, the other important feature, order promote, I will come to that in a second. This is more like an agenda slide. Then we have this transport abstraction layer. That means we got our RTMA support. Very cool. I will come to that. And the fourth feature, DVD manage. I will also come to that. So four, just remember the number four. Okay, order promote, what's that? So for those of you who have already used DVD, I'm assuming that's not too many in this crowd. Okay, it's a few. So before it was like on the left side of the slide, you have, at first, you have to use an explicit command to promote the device on this node. And after that, you were able to use it. And after using it, you have to demote it before you can promote it somewhere else. Now, in DVD 9, we got this feature order promote. And that works that way. You open it for read-write access. And in the very moment, it promotes itself to primary. If you try that on the next node, you open it for read-write access, and, boom, you get an air null back. Because it's already promoted. So I wonder why we didn't came up with that earlier. Yeah. The promotion process. Well, it's in... Yeah, it's in milliseconds, whatever. It depends on two round trips. So it's basically a two-phase commit. You have to execute all the nodes. So if you have nice networking equipment, you will not notice it. Yeah, that was easy to explain. Now, the network abstraction. Yeah, so up to now, we had this TCP transport built right into the DVD. That meant we only were capable of using TCP to communicate between the two nodes. Now we abstract it out. Now we have transport modules. You can load on the fly. You can load one or multiple of those. And here we see the options. So with the TCP module, you usually use TCP software implemented in the Linux kernel on top of IP. And then you use Ethernet codes, which use an Ethernet switch and so on. So that's... everybody knows that. So then there is this RDMA side, the green stuff. That's the new one. And RDMA, that's interesting because it's really a new API and that allows you to... to saturate pipes of 50 gigabits or even 100 gigabits. The old API, the TCP API, the problem lies in the API. So that's cool. We're really proud about it. Yeah, and the hardware you usually use are adapter cards from... well, which do either directly infinity band or you can have this rock key standard. So that means you have those new cards, this new API and then you use switches you already know because nobody likes to learn about new infinity band switches, right? It took years until you understood VLANs and all that stuff and suddenly, why should I use new switches? Okay, then also iWARP is an interesting option. Here on an iWARP card, you have a complete TCP stack in... on a network card, in the firmware on this card. So you get the new API, which is very performant and you can run it over the internet, which means you need a 100 gig... a 100 gig internet connection. Who has one? Okay, somebody will. Yeah, so I think that's also easy to get. Then that was new feature number three. Now we're coming to new feature number four. That's dbd-managed. So how so far, so for the last 10 years, it was like that. dbd is a driver that lives in a Linux kernel and it is virtual driver. So you need to configure it. You need to tell it what it should do. You need to tell it, okay, mirror this disk and use this IP address and so on. So there's a small user space tool, dbd-setup. It has earthly long command lines. Nobody wants to use that. You give all the information on the command lines. Well, so that anybody can use it. We have this tool called dbd-adm that reads config files that are written in a declarative way.  Now OpenStack is about automation, right? So let's put some automation on top of that. Here it is. So dbd-managed is a daemon on top of that. It can spit out config files on your nodes. It can create the logic volumes where your data lives, which will replicate. It does that for you. And it has a debus interface to a CLI tool. So pretty easy, right? So what you need to use it is a few nodes with storage in a volume group. So this is your part, your preparation. And what you get out of it is you can request replicated resources by simply giving a name, a size, and a replica count. And it will take care of the rest. So it will find nodes where there's enough space. It will create the LV and will put the config files there, initialize dbd metadata, and all that stuff. Okay, so here I have an illustration that shows the software architecture of dbd-managed. So we have the command line interface at the top. That's easy. You call that on the shell. That uses debus to connect to a locally running daemon. And that daemon writes things it thinks are important to a control volume. So what is the control volume? That's a rather small volume that you have to manage. It will create on your nodes. It's about four megabyte in size. And when it writes there, you know, it does it open. Open leads to an auto-promote. So it gets primary. It can write the data. And when it's finished, it closes it again. It becomes secondary again. The other nodes have this dbd-event channel. So the daemon on the other nodes gets notified, oh, somebody else wrote to it. So maybe I read it. So this is a replicated database. Well, a very simple one. And dbd-9 itself is used to replicate this configuration and as communication channel at the same time. So this is this eat your own dog food strategy, right? Okay. So this illustration shows how you can imagine that with real volumes on a real service. So that should be full servers. On each, you have this control volume. It's mirrored over all of them. And then you have user volumes. And usually, well, most of them are two ways redundant. You can have volumes that are three ways redundant and so on. When you add a new node, you can do things like rebalance it, you know, increase the replica count of d and afterwards, remove it from another node to create bigger chunks of free space. You can use the new space and so on. One thing to mention here. Unfortunately, I don't have an animation for that. When you lose a node, when it goes down, dbd-manage does nothing because all the data is available. And it needs outside knowledge. Will this node ever come back or is it gone forever? And in case it's gone forever, just simply tell it, dbd-manage, remove node, rebalance. And that means that all the replicas that were lost are reallocated on the remaining nodes. But it cannot know by itself if the node will eventually come back or not. So this is outside information you need to provide. So it is a provisioning solution for dbd. We have implemented that in Python. It manages LVs and so on. Yeah, it also does snapshotting for you, if you like. If you want that it can do snapshots, it will create all the LVs in thinly provisioned pools. So thin LV. Yeah, when you create snapshots, you can also give replic accounts with the snapshot so that you don't lose the snapshot, blah, blah. Yeah, and right now we scale to 32 nodes, but we have it in the design, in the current code that we will scale up to many more nodes. So how we will do that? We will add a concept we call satellite nodes. So simply speaking, you can have this replicated config database only on those 32, but those 32 themselves can manage more nodes. So on these satellite nodes you will have only user data, not the control volume. And with that we expect that we can scale like crazy. Yeah, but that's on a roadmap. Okay, so far the foundation. Now how hard is to bring that to Cinder? I think not that hard. So we are at the OpenStack Summit. I'm not going to explain that, right? So we had this illustration of the control pane. So here the change is easy. You no longer use a command line client. It's connected by a Cinder driver. That means you create your volumes in the horizon dashboard. You configure there a few pools like two ways mirrored, three ways mirrored, or things like two ways mirrored in my main data center with one off-site replica asynchronously on the other end of the world. And then the user just selects from the pool. And yeah, and we do an estimation of how much space is available in your pools. Think about that for a second, how exact that could be. Yeah, and then everything happens in the background. So you no longer need to fiddle with DVDs, config files, or anything of that. Yeah. So if you have a Nova, right? When you create Cinder volumes, you usually want to do something with that. So you usually want to attach that to virtual machines, right? So if the Nova, well, if you have a converged cluster where you use the same nodes for compute and storage, and our driver finds out that Nova decided to use a virtual machine where we actually have a replica of the data, that's easy. The data is there. No ice-cozy needed, no blah, blah, blah. In case Nova decides to start the VM on a machine where we do not have a replica, we can use the DVD protocol itself for accessing the storage. So you do not need to layer ice-cozy on top of that. And that has a few little advantages, like when we have two nodes with storage, we can go to both to read the data, so read balancing. Well, when writing, we have to write to both, obviously. Yeah, so ideally we want to make Nova a bit more clever to take hints from our system. We're not yet there, but this is an open-source project, so eventually in a few years. Or sooner if someone decides to help us. Okay, so when you talk about storage in OpenStack, you always get different ideas, right? So some players think it's a good idea to put all the storage in expensive storage boxes. You connect to your compute nodes by a sand that probably is not managed by any of the existing software drivers which are part of Nova. So it looks something or similar to that. So where we are obviously going, looks like that. So we want to use simply more boxes of the same kind with storage, and you have an Ethernet or the network of your choice connecting your compute nodes and your storage nodes. And it's clear what's the next step is. Just converge the thing. Use one kind of nodes, have local storage in those nodes, and have Nova in Zyndom managing this set in an overlapping way. Did I mention that DVD is open source? Okay, so go get it. Try it out. DVD9 is right now in its release candidate phase. So we have scheduled that the final release will happen in five weeks from now, so mid-June. The release candidates are in pretty good shape. You can get the source code from here. You can get access to RPM repositories and message. We also have business, so you can get support from us. The usual open source business model. Yeah, any questions? Could you use the mic? Otherwise, I have to repeat the question. So I have two questions. One is related to the largest capacity that you deployed. It was a 50-terabyte volume that was the largest single-volume capacity to give more context. Our code currently has a limited one petabyte for a single volume. In terms of OutGrid, is it going to be a smooth cycle? How do you envision the OutGrid from A3 to 9 version? Sorry. Like the OutGrid cycle? Let's say you have version A3 now running. The UpGrid. Oh, the UpGrid. Now I got it. Thank you. Yeah, the UpGrid path is pretty smooth. The DVD metadata on disk, that changed, and you can convert that. The protocol, you know, if DVD9 finds out, oh, the other guy is DVD84, it switches back to DVD84 mode on a protocol level, so you can actually do really a rolling upgrade. We are in HA. Our customers expect that from us. Yes, I just want to make sure I understand something. Currently, you can have 32 nodes in your cluster, and I would do LVM on these, and each volume that I create then can be... I can decide what my number of replicas is going to be, and then the system will distribute this itself. Exactly, yes. And each volume then can be... You said it can be one petabyte? So how would... Yeah, that's the limit. How many of those could be one petabyte? Like A could be one petabyte. So that, of course, requires that on each system I at least have one petabyte LVM, right? Okay, just trying to make sure. I understand that. That's our limit, yeah? It could deploy smaller nodes as well. Right, but it's not like it would get striped across, and I could have a volume that's larger than one single node. Yeah, now I understand where the question is going. We cannot stripe it out right now. Right. So my question is, well, if your volumes look like self-polls and your replica sets, it looks like this would compete with self trying to understand if this... Is that your point of view, too? I mean, you can put dbd on anything that's a block device. Right. So if you like, you can put it on rbd, on radius block devices. No, no, no, I'm saying this would replace that, right? No? Is it computer technology? Yes, you can. If you use self to get block out of it, this is a perfect replacement. If you use self to get object out of it, this is not a replacement. Well, that object is on top of that block anyway, so if they can do it, you can do it. You can put a router's gateway on top of this, right? So, I mean... Sure. Okay, interesting. Thanks. Please use the mic. So if block device A is one petabyte, and block device E is one petabyte, you can have one virtual machine accessing... Does it work? You can have one virtual machine accessing both of them, just like two hard disks, and then do LVM or something like that on top so that you can do a two petabyte logical volume in the virtual machine, for example. So, Phillip, I mean, in cloud, we talk a lot about scale out storage, and self is a popular open-source solution for that. If you compare your solution to, for example, self, what would be the application scenarios where you say, well, scale out is a good, a better approach, and where would you say, well, this is the strengths where DRBD really shines and where you would advise people to use such a more classical, host-based mirroring technology? Mm-hmm. I think self shines when you need block storage, object storage, and maybe file storage from a single pool. I mean, that's really the awesome feature of self. Where we really shine is if you have fast storage and you expect that after your... after your software-defined storage layer, you still get performance. This is where this shines. So our whole data plane, that's in kernel, and, you know, we don't copy it around. If you use RDMA, that's... I mean, we're really proud of the performance we get out of that. All our customers who drive the development of our technology ask for performance performance and for performance. Okay, thanks. Yeah, please. I have a question. So you just mentioned a performance. Is there any performance number? Performance numbers. Yeah. Yeah, so with RDMA, with an RDMA interconnect network, the best thing I saw was that we have a write throughput of a full all-random write pattern 4K, a throughput of 2.2 gigabytes per second. But that was a machine crazily loaded with SSDs, sorry, a pair of machines. So this is a full SSD setup? Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, when we have hard disks, the hard disks are so slow. Those numbers are boring, right? With the converged model you talked about, computing storage all in one box. So with what you've talked about, I can scale to 32 compute nodes with storage. So how do I mix your synchronous, asynchronous model to go, let's say, to 250 compute nodes in the same converged model? Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, I don't have a slide on that. But just imagine you add here more and more and more nodes going beyond the 32 limit, and these additional nodes don't have a dbd control volume, okay? And the whole setup works as long as one of your nodes that has a control volume survives. Only one is needed. So the idea is you have your many thousand nodes and put one node with control volume in each of those racks. And you need one of them to survive and the whole system will survive. So this is the idea. Yeah, I really need to draw a picture of that. Okay. I have a question. Yeah, please. So DRPD only provided volume data replication, correct? Does it also provide volume management like a snapshot or clone? Just a message in the slide, it seems that it leveraged LVM to provide a snapshot. Is it correct? Yeah, yeah. So the answer is we use LVM to snapshot the volume, but the management of that, you know, is in this dbd manage thing in the demon and database and so on. So you tell it, oh, I have a three ways replicated volume. Create me a snapshot and the snapshot has to exist in two volumes. Two nodes, yeah. So it's managed in the system. So from the point of user, it is like, you know, the whole system can do snapshots. And as with the volume, you can also say, give for the snapshot the replica count. In other words, how important is it? Yeah, then how does it do volume clone? Just the dd copy all can do anything clone. So how to clone a volume? Just the dd. How we do, how we clone a volume if we want to, if we turn a snapshot into a volume again. Yeah. Oh, just a clone volume from a volume. Yeah, yeah. So we use this thin LVM on the nodes. Thin LVM. And that does all the tricks on the nodes. Okay, so the straight answer is yes, it does that in an efficient way. We don't use dd for that. Yeah. All the magic is in thin LVM snapshots and our management on top of that and dvd is the replication port. Okay. Okay. I'm back. So what happened if you have, let's say, a thousand VMs, a terabyte volume, and they're all right. So from the concurrency right perspective, did you test in a large environment where you have lots of concurrent rights to ensure that you have no blocking, you know, nothing with the scheduling, stuff like that? Yeah, yeah. So if we have here many, many nodes and thousand volumes with thousand VMs or even 2,000 volumes and 1,000 VMs consuming those 2,000 volumes, it's pretty distributed, you know. A VM writing here in the whole data path, there is only communication between the node where you issue the right and your standby machine. Nobody else in the cluster is involved in the data path. So during I.O., there is very little contention. The only point where you have contention is when you do management commands.  I don't have numbers on that, but this is where the limits are, and I hope you can live with that. Just wondering, in DRBD-8, I had ended up briefly using the active mode with OCFS on top of that. Have you tested that on DRBD-9? Does it work out well? The active active mode is still there. So far, we haven't worked to scale that. So you can have only two primaries and 30 secondaries. So that is all still there. It is tested as we head to our release. So that's still there. So I think that dual primary mode, the active active mode has not that many use cases. I know people always ask for it. So what's your use case for using active active mode? What I ended up doing is a hack on top of things was key value store into a massive primary system. Oh, wow, cool. I really use case. So usually people come up with things like, oh, I put cluster and LVM on top of it, and then I have logic volumes here and there. And that's actually stupid, because it's better to outsource all that into DRBD-Manage. But if you have a distributed key value store, dual primary mode is cool. More primaries would be useful. We accept customers. Okay, do I have time left? Five minutes. Okay. So if the questions are exhausted, well, I can actually fire up a few VMs and try it out. I didn't do a lot of testing on that, so please don't grill me if it fails. Okay, there's a terminal. Here's my mouse. Let's change the colors. Is it better? Yeah. Okay, that will fire up 10 virtual machines on my laptop. You cannot see the CPU utilization thing that's on my side of the screen. The fan is coming up. Okay, the first one is running. Okay, so this is like the control node of my mini cluster. Okay, so we learned in a presentation that you need to have nodes with storage available in a volume group. So we're going to use this scratch volume group. And let's go to the second node as well. Here's also the volume group. Okay. Okay, that command starts a dbd-managed cluster. You issue the init on the first node of the cluster. That's it. Okay, so what happened here? The add node command adds a second node to the dbd-managed cluster. And it happened that I have my SSH key active. So the program found out, oh, there is an SSH agent in the environment. Let's try to SSH to the joining node and to execute the necessary commands there. If that doesn't work, I can show you that as well. Then you have to copy and paste this one command to the joining node. And after that, the node is joined. So node joining means it got the control volume and it got dbd-setup to mirror the control volume. So let's look at that. Yeah, so here's the control volume. That's the dot dbd-ctrl and status. And yeah, dbd-9 has a new status command. We no longer use proc dbd. And that simply says, okay, here it is. I'm currently secondary. My local disk is up to date. I have one pure that's called v1. And it's also up to date. And I can then add more nodes and then it would create volumes and so on. But apparently now the break starts. So I can offer you who is really interested to see the rest of the demo that you join me outside and we continue it there. Okay, yeah, and we have shirts. So if you like this t-shirt, stop by here. We have a few of them. Thank you.


The Navy's newest and largest destroyer, the future USS Zoom Wall, is at sea for the first time. Zoom Wall is currently undergoing sea trials designed to test many of the advances and new features that are hallmarks of this revolutionary ship. To learn more about Zoom Wall and what makes it unique, visit the Naval Sea Systems Command website. C&O Admiral John Richardson released a podcast describing what he considers to be the Navy's core attributes, integrity, accountability, initiative, and toughness. To hear his thoughts, you can download the full podcast from Navy.mil or from iTunes. Each year, World War II veterans from the US and Japan gather to remember their fallen comrades. During the black and canteen ceremony at the USS Arizona Memorial, they pour bourbon whiskey into the water as an offering of friendship, forgiveness, and peace. This event traditionally begins the Pearl Harbor Anniversary ceremonies. For these stories and more, visit Navy.mil.


Most teachers ask questions during a lesson and that's good because it's important to involve the students rather than just giving them the information. But the kind of questions that the teachers ask is the most important thing. Some teachers only ask questions about facts and students give answers that they have memorized. But in the question and answer method a new element is added called critical thinking. In this method we can ask questions that get students to think more deeply. The focus is on thinking not just memorizing. So in the question and answer method we ask three kinds of questions to get the students involved in the lesson. The first kind of question is about facts about the lesson. The second kind of question makes the students think about the lesson and the third kind of question helps the students relate the lesson to their own lives. We use questions that go beyond yes and no answers and just getting the facts to get the students to think more deeply.


Suppose you're having a night out with friends. You go to a favorite Chinese food place downtown, order up some family style items, some beer, and catch up on each other's weeks. Suddenly someone flags down the manager and asks, do you use MSG in your food? The manager nods affirmative, and your friend announces that he refuses to eat here. He doesn't want a hole in his brain, he says. Maybe the whole group leaves. Maybe you stay and let your friend leave. If you do the latter, and you start to get a headache, either that day or the one after, what it starts you wondering about the MSG in the food? Maybe it really is bad for you. Maybe you should stop eating Chinese. If you read enough labels, though, you'll find MSG in a wide variety of processed foods, in restaurant cuisines, and in things as diverse as salad dressing, crunchy snacks, and soup. Are the food manufacturers trying to kill us with a poison? Why are people so worried about MSG? MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is a food additive. We'll get to it in a minute, but the story begins with Japanese professor Kadune Akita. He noticed that his wife's soup, her dashi, had a good distinctive flavor that she attributed to dried seaweed called kombu. That flavor he called umami, which roughly translates in Japanese as savoury, or deliciousness. What causes this flavor is glutamic acid, a natural amino acid found in a wide variety of foods naturally. Tomatoes have a high level, parmesan has buckets full, mushrooms, seaweed, meats, eggs, and soy are all abundant sources. This may explain why savoury sauces have a common element of flavor. Soy sauce, dashi, tomato, and parmesan, even the garam, a fermented fish sauce in ancient Roman cuisine, were all essentially abundant sources of umami flavor by virtue of their glutamic acid. Modern MSG is a commercial product that makes glutamic acid from virtually any protein source, including yeast, bacteria, or soy protein isolates. They are combined with common salt to produce a crystalline product that dissolves like salt or sugar, and can be added to canned or packaged food to give it extra flavor lost in processing. So why do some people worry about MSG? In 1968, a New England Journal of Medicine article described an anecdote of Chinese restaurant syndrome, the feeling of hangover and numbness that some people reported feeling after eating Chinese food. This led interested scientists to conduct tests looking for some underlying cause. One scientist, Dr. John Olney, found that if he injected extremely high levels of MSG into mice, there were changes to the nervous system, including erosions of the retina. MSG, it seems, is an excitotoxin. Excitotoxins are substances that cause damage to nerves by forcing them to fire too often, essentially exhausting the cell and causing it to commit cellular suicide called apoptosis. The chemistry of MSG allows it to be absorbed very, very quickly in the gut. Some of it entered parts of the brain, and at very high doses caused neurons to die. Additional studies confirmed that if rats were fed a diet that was 20% MSG by weight, they developed brain lesions and other neurological damage. These kinds of results are scary, no doubt. It will make you look twice if parmesan and tomatoes are your next bowl of dashi. Clearly, the FDA and watchdog groups need to revisit the generally accepted as safe classification it had received. However, some scientists pointed out that the initial studies were at ridiculous dosages. We know that the dose makes the poison. Also all studies had been done on rats, mice, or guinea pigs. What if humans processed MSG differently? Human tests were run, and at very high, but still achievable dietary levels. There were no short-term or long-term toxicities observed. However, it's always dangerous to assume doses, or extrapolate for long-term chronic effects. So, where does this leave us on MSG? Well, I think both sides have fairly legitimate points. Let me lay out the case. 1. MSG is an excited toxin. At very high levels, it can cause brain damage. 2. It levels that would be normal or even high in a diet. Humans don't appear to suffer any brain damage. 3. It's possible that genetic differences between us may influence our tolerance for MSG and other umami agents. 4. Children may have an increased susceptibility due to their brain development. I think it's perfectly legitimate to search labels for your very young children and look for MSG-free or low MSG products just to err on the side of caution. However, for adults, there's not enough evidence to say that MSG poses a serious risk. Websites claiming links to Lou Gehrig disease, MS, autism, or other diseases are not using good research to support their claims. There are two associations that are the subject of active research. One is obesity. In one study of Chinese villagers, obesity was correlated with MSG in diet. I have my doubts about the statistics here, but it bears mentioning. There's another study that suggests high MSG at a young age can be associated with obesity later in life. Other studies both on rats and humans contradict these studies, so I'd say it's still too soon to commit. There's also some evidence that in young mice, exposure to diets of 2% MSG, which again is a very elevated dose, causes various disorders of the eye. This effect can be reversed by certain other nutrients in the diet. For example, vitamin C is very protective. This is partly why I could understand the parent of a very young child having concerns. There have been studies showing MSG is not involved in asthma, autism, and cancer. Anti-testing has repeatedly disproved the wild claims often found on internet sites. So, coming back to Chinese restaurant syndrome, why do some people get it and others don't? Well, one clue comes from a double-blind study. 19 people who reported sensitivity were challenged with both a placebo and a high dose of MSG, 6 grams. They were asked if they felt any reaction. Only two of the 19 responded to the MSG, but not to the placebo. A similar study found that only 22 out of 61 responded to the MSG, but not the placebo. Six responded to both, 16 responded to the placebo only, and 18 responded to neither. This suggests to me that there is a certain psychological component to the effect. When we're sensitized to look for specific symptoms, we're quite likely to find them, a form of confirmation bias. MSG is just one controversial food additive. Another very similar substance is aspartame. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener known by many names in various countries, neutrosweet is a common one. It's also an excitotoxin, and also based on an amino acid, two actually, aspartic acid and phenylalanine instead of glutamic acid. One big difference is that it's not a naturally occurring substance. It's primarily made by the same company that owns the MSG market, Aginomoto. If you've ever seen the Informant with Matt Damon, this is the company involved in price fixing for Lysine with Archer Daniels Midland. So these are definitely big evil corporations, and that always sparks a controversy. Just like MSG, aspartame is toxic at very high levels, but at levels that would represent very heavy consumption, there haven't been any confirmed health effects. I'd still advise caution, don't overdo it, be aware of how much you're getting, and err on the side of caution with young children. So to conclude, there are food additives that at high levels are toxic, are excitotoxins. Attempts to pen down specific health effects have been largely unsuccessful, although the book is not yet closed on some issues. I wouldn't be too upset if we, as a country, decided to revisit these two substances. I don't think we need to stop all consumption, close every Chinese buffet, and ban Parmesan and Diet Coke. But I would feel better if baby food were MSG free. What do they need deliciousness for anyway? They're babies. So if you find yourself at a Chinese restaurant that uses MSG, don't sweat it. And if your friend really objects, suggest you all head to an Italian place.  It ought to be entertaining. Don't be surprised if your friend develops a sudden headache and hungover feeling. Thanks for watching.


Hello, everyone, and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host of the chats that I produce with Mistress Joanne Gaddy. The fireside chats are a program of the Leather Archives and Museum. Today, I'm speaking with Greta von Brittenbach in Switzerland, who is gracious enough to meet with us today. So, Greta, in what city are you located? I am located near Basel, a little bit in the countryside, actually, the village I live in is Brittenbach. So, my name, von Brittenbach, is just a local thing. Lovely. Let's begin at the beginning. Please tell us about your early life, a little bit about your family, where you're from. Originally, I was born in Germany in a small town, and it was like, yeah, I felt like the only gay in town because it was a very small town, and my parents were very welcoming about it. They knew before I spoke out, and they always supported me, and, oh, if you bring someone home, it's okay. And they didn't use the term of girlfriend or boyfriend. They just always said, if you bring someone home. At this time, my life at school wasn't so nice because there it wasn't so popular to be gay, typical bullying, and all this happened to me a lot. This time is a bit special for me because my parents always encouraged me. They said, everything's fine, but my other environment wasn't so welcoming. Did you begin to learn about the fetish scene at that time, the leather scene? How did you learn about these? I was attracted by biker gays since I can think. Since I was a very small boy, I always looked at those motorcycles and motorcycles and thought, oh my God, they are so interesting, but it wasn't the machine itself. It was the rider on it. Later, I found out I have got leather and rubber fetish, and so I started to connect with a local fetish scene, but it was very small because it was in the early 90s, and here we haven't had so many possibilities to go out. You are the only active sister of perpetual indulgence in Switzerland, correct? Yes, that's right. I would love to speak with about that. I think many people will be interested to hear how you combine being a sister with participation in the fetish scene and the leather scene. How do you see that? Fetish is an interest of me too, and so I made some connections with some nice guys. In 2017, when I already moved to Switzerland, I had the chance to be the sash wife of Mr. rubber Switzerland in 2017, and later he was elected Mr. rubber Europe 2018. In this time, I had the chance to get a little bit closer to see what the sisters actually do, because until this point, I always thought, they're wonderful, but I don't know what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. In 2017, we were collecting donations together with the sisters, and they had the chance to get a little bit more about what's driving them on, what's going about it, and this is where my sister journey started. How did you get your sister's name? My sister's name is a little bit history. Greta is taken from the movie Bend, and this movie is about gay love in Berlin of the 30s, 1930s, before the Nazis were coming up, and Greta was ruling a nightclub, and she was giving the gays and lesbians and the people coming together, their space to have fun, to be their selves. She was in the movie played by Mick Jagger, and a very wonderful Greta, and Greta was the person who saved some lives because she warned them because of the Nazis, and she said, oh, be careful, they're coming. And this is because of the racism thing I choose, and Greta was said to give an open eye, an open ear, and an open space to gays, and this is what I would like to do. And von Breitenbach, as I told you, I live in Breitenbach near Basel, and this is just the local put together, like Liesl von der Post or something like this. Please tell me about the appearance of the sisters, the white face. What is the significance of this? Originally, the white face symbolizes the deaths of HIV, and the colors we have in our faces, the joy of living, we try to set against this, because when the sisters found their deaths in 1979, the first thing was to go out and have fun, and then later in the early 80s, it comes that the HIV crisis came over the gay community and all the people were dying. And so the sisters start to paint their faces white. And as a symbol of all the people deceased on this disease, yeah. And in the different countries, nearly all sisters have the white face. In Australia, there's a chapter, not using the white face, but they have the wimples and then the habits and something like this. But usually you recognize a sister by its white face. When you go out on a regular night, which do you prefer? It depends on what I would like to do.  But when I just would like to have fun or have some drinks, I got as a private me, and this could be in rubber more often. Oh, I see. How do people react to you when you are a sister in public? Usually they smile. They stop, they look at it, and usually they smile. And this is my biggest intention. I would like to give a smile to everyone. Sometimes if it's getting later and people are maybe a bit drunk, it could be a bit difficult. But as a sister, I never go out alone. I always have a guard or someone with me, and I have had the luck not to be involved in violons or something like this. And here in Switzerland, I had never ever a bad word. In Germany, it happened, yes. It was in Munich. We have been out together in a bunch of sisters and became a home lately. And there was a drunk guy and he was up for some, well, let's say, for some mess or something. I don't know what. But when we have this, we don't react to this. We try to avoid the situation and leave this guy alone. How long have the sisters been growing in Europe? In Europe, it's a long history, more than 25 or 30 years. We have had the first house in the beginning of the 90s. I think it was in Heidelberg. When they were starting to move over to different cities, most active one houses are in Berlin and in Munich. And we have got in Cologne. And we have got sisters in Paris. We have got sisters in Lyon, in Edinburgh, but I don't know when they actually started. How active is the scene in Berlin, for example, for the sisters? Before the lockdown, it was very busy because there's always something to do. Not always the fetish things, but a lot of sisters are going to the fetish clubs. But in Berlin, they're nearly every second weekend on the tour. And then try to spread condoms and try to collect money. How in Switzerland? Because if you are the only active sister, what's going on in Switzerland with the sisters? Yes, in Switzerland, it's a bit... What's going on here? This is going on what I do. I try to be present towards the fetish scene, but to other scenes too. It's not so easy to find someone who would like to spend a lot of time, a lot of educating himself into becoming a sister, because it's not just to put on the white face, put on some headpiece, and then you are made a sister. It's a little journey to go there. The biggest part is to take yourself, your personality back, to be there for the community. And all these orders may be a Catholic non-order or something. They all have problems in finding someone who comes after them. Do you have plans to actively draw people into this system? I wouldn't say that I have active plans, because here in Switzerland, I am here as a sister for two years. This is not much for a sister to do their work. So I take a little time and wait until maybe someone comes towards me and say, hey, what you're doing is great, and I would like to join you. But many people know that we have got guards, too, in our house. This is the male opposite of the sister appearance.  Well, I do have to do this, so no. But in our house, it's possible to do this in the male appearance, too. How many people are, you mentioned in the house, how many people are active in that? In our house in the Bavarian Abbey, it is about 13 fully professed members. If I count it right, and one sister who's just starting. So this is what we call, how do we call this? Novice. No, no, no, no. Novice is postulant. It's something like a postulant sister. Oh, yes. So we have in our house, we have four things to do for steps to become a sister. The first is the aspirat. This is to just go with the sisters and see what they do without makeup, without just as you are as a private. Then you decide, okay, what they do could be interesting for me. And after this comes the postulant, like in a real monastery order, we get our first veil. It's a short one and you look like, it's difficult to describe, but you look a little bit like you're going out to make the cows. It's not so nice. But yes, it helps to get you into being more visible in the scene because now you have got a little white face and a little veil. And then this is the postulant, not the nicest time. Now that's not all right. It has been a nice time too. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, after that comes the novice time, then you get a white veil a little bit longer and similar to this. And after this, when you think you are ready and your community of nuns think you are ready to get the black veil. And the time is not set in stone for everyone. It takes how long you take for every step. Oh, I see. I see. I wondered about that. It's always about how much time you are able to spend together with the sisters so they can see how you are improving, how you learn the things you have to learn, how you learn about contents, how you behave towards the community because when we go out, we will get in touch with some very, very heavy themes and heavy discussions or maybe something which is very heartbreaking. And we have to learn about this. How long was the process for you? I was the fast runner. So I had six weeks of aspirate. Then three months of postulat, three months of novice yard and a half year. All together, it took me a year to become a sister. This is very fast, but I spend nearly every week and together with the sisters because it meant very much to me. But a moment ago, you mentioned that during all of this learning process that you had to deal with some very heavy topics. What did you mean? Sometimes we are the first people who get known of a recently HIV diagnosis. Maybe if we go out and see someone sitting there, maybe being depressed, we go there, ask, hey, is everything fine? And it could be that this guy maybe just received an HIV diagnosis or maybe something other different situation in his private life and our appearance and our being is there to talk to them and to listen to them. And this could be tough, yes.  I talked to someone who recently lost a good friend because of an HIV diagnosis, because this friend committed suicide. And this reminds me to my own way of becoming a sister. When I was younger in the 90s, a good friend of mine committed suicide of this too because he received this diagnosis. And to me it was okay. You find a way, we go through this together. But yeah, this was very hard for me because it was like a flashback. I'm very curious about the structure, the social structure that you depict in the house for the nuns. I don't know anything about it. Would you please explain a little bit about how the order works in that situation? So to be clear, every different house has its own rule and its own way, how they prepare and how they present that says. In our abbey, we have got a mother abyss. We have got a prioressa. This is the second sister of importance. We have got a tertia. She's always busy with doing all the writing protocols. If you have meetings and then there's the rest. It sounds like very, very strict, very hierarchical levels, but it's easier if you present something to be outward. And if someone has to do decisions for us, or to tell decisions, it's easier if this is one of those elected persons. But we are all allowed to talk to everything. I am very curious about the type of traveling you must do. Some of the places must find you very shocking, maybe. Do you visit places where it's difficult, like Poland, for example? I would love to go there if it's possible, because actually we have got a sister in Poland who's doing a very, very hard job. And I would like to support her. She's a wonderful person, and what she's doing there is outrageous. In Switzerland here, I've got a very lucky position, because in Switzerland, being gay is not a problem. It's not a topic. If I have the chance to go there, I will go there and support her. Yes, definitely. Okay. Do you think it would happen after COVID? Of course. We have the connection about the Berlin house. She has been made her sister education with the Berlin sisters, and I am in very good contact with sister Daphne from Berlin, and we will try to organize this to go there and support her. Lovely. But another question comes to my mind. In Europe, you have many different languages. Is the common language for you in English? Well, usually when I'm around in Germany, I tell everything in German, and when I'm in Austria, usually, even if it's a special event, we do all this in German. Here in Switzerland, I try to do this in German and in French, but yes, there's always the task to do it in English because we will visit international events like, it has been in 2019 in Austria, where I was together with the, for the election of Mr. Pappi, Austria, 2019, and it was very international. We had so many guests from all over the world, and I had to do everything in English, and it was a little bit, yes. Have you visited the sisters, for example, here in North America? Not yet, not yet. I mentioned the Mr. Pappi, Austria, election 2019, and there was able to met Papcona, Pap Sirius and Pap Keis, and they had the idea to invite me to IPOR in Indianapolis. And so, unfortunately, then came the COVID pandemic situation, and we have to postpone it, but this was planned to move sister greater to America. And yeah, it was planned to meet the sisters there too, which would be very, very interesting for me because what we sisters do here in Europe is, I think, a bit more different from what the sisters in America do. And what is that? I think in America it's, when the sisters go, it's different from what we do here because we are more in spreading condoms and being around. And I think in the sisters in America, they do a lot of voluntary donations, they collect a lot of money, they run bingo, they gather so much good things together to support the community because there's a complete different healthcare system and a complete different social care system as we have. And I would like to learn from them. I would like to go there and then see what's there, what's their drive to go on and how do they do it? You mentioned that the sisters in Europe tend to, for example, promote condom use. How do the people react to that? Different and that's a good way to get into the discussion because not only condoms are very good to be protected from HIV. We have got the prep, we have got the undetectable equals untransmitable commitment, which is in the world since 2008 and not many people know about it. And this is for us a good start to talk about HIV statuses or go to testing on a regular basis. We don't insist in using condoms. We say this is an option, but you have this option or that option too and maybe you didn't hear of U equals U is a way of HIV treatment too and it works to protect yourself.  They should go know their status, they should check the HIV status, the other sexual transmittable diseases. They just should check. Do you feel people do that? Sometimes we can reach someone with this message and we say, oh, think about today, it's testing day and it's over there, go there. And then he said, okay, I should go and he goes. If only one person goes, I think, yes, this is a good one. Oh, okay, okay. I'm finding nowadays fewer and fewer people are using condoms because undetectable is untransmittable. There's prep. What are your personal feelings on that? If it helps to release a sexual life inside whoever, then it's a good way because sexuality itself is good. And we have been taught very long time, oh, only use condoms and only this. And if you don't, it's dirty, it's not good. And we put so much guilt on other people. And I'm not the person who should judge about using condoms or doing whatever. I'm the person who would like to say, go to a testing on a regular basis. The rest is your thing because it's your responsibility. You've mentioned the puppy community and iPod. This is how we were introduced. Of course, for the audience, I can tell the audience that the original plan was that I would do the interview at iPod, but unfortunately COVID has made the world miserable. So we are doing it this way. What is your connection with the puppy community? I have very, very good friends in Vienna, and they were the ones who brought me together with the puppy community. They gave me the possibility as a sister to host some of their events and to be together with them. And this is where my beginning, to me, the puppy community starts. At first it was like, oh, yeah, for this.  It was so welcoming. It was so enriching my life because it was so playful, so respectful, so including. And yeah, this is how I came in touch with the puppy scene. And of course here in Switzerland, we have some great puppies too. One is a very good friend of mine. And yeah, he supports me always when I'm around as a sister. And this is a very good feeling to have him by my side. Yes. So it's a very good joining of communities, yes. Definitely, definitely. I always wondered what it would be, what drives them on to do puppy play. And I'm still learning about it, but it's very fascinating. It's still fascinating. And it's so wonderful how they embrace me, not embarrass, it's not right, embrace. When you do the arms wide open and take someone. And this is what happens to me in the puppy scene. Is the puppy scene growing a lot in Switzerland? In Switzerland, I would say it's constantly, not growing like this way, like exponential growing, but yes, it's constantly getting more and more. Yeah, you admire us of it because it's a very, very interesting way to start with fetish. I think it's not necessary to have a fetish, but it's a good way to test things, to try out and yeah. How about the puppy scene in the rest of Europe? How do you see it in other places? Oh, we have a very active puppy scene in France. And one of those puppies who became Mr. Puppy Franz happened to be a guard of Sisters of Perpetual Indigence too. And we are in a very loose connection, but it's nice to see him somewhere at some events or when he's going on with his pack of other puppies and yeah. Are there puppy events, for example, in Munich or Berlin or other places? The events I have been to, they were very, very well organized. They were very, very structured. They were always the people around taking responsibility for everything. And they say, I'm here for this question. I'm here to guide you there. I'm here to bring you to this place. I want to introduce you to that. And to me it was very organized, very, very, very welcoming for newbies too. It was very playful and it pulls people inside. What do you hope you can achieve as a sister going forward? As a sister, I would like to achieve that everyone should feel welcomed. Everyone should feel happy. And our first thing is to spread universal joy.   You're too gay, too much, too slim, too, don't know what. And this is the second thing I would try to put out of the word this way of thinking how everyone should be. Everyone is okay like he is. And if he's bigger or plus sized, he is like it. He and she is like it is. And it's good. It's wonderful. You don't have to be something for someone else. You have to be for yourself.  No, not necessarily. Because it's not about how much money you can give. It's about how much love you can give.  We don't go there outside and say, oh, we need money to buy our outfit or something like this. But in our houses, we help each other. When we have a sister which has not so much money, it's not about how much money you have. It's not about how much money you have. I have got a dress which could fit you. Maybe it's something for you. I can support you with some makeup. So this is not in our house. And in other houses, I think this is like this too. It's not about how much money you have because much money doesn't make you a good person. True. Not always. Sometimes. You have a sister. Your particular house. Yes. And yes and no. When I was together with the sisters in Berlin, there have been the sisters from Berlin from Munich and from Cologne. And I have talked to all of them for a very long time there. And the decision to go to one of those houses. It's nearly the same time to go to Cologne or to Berlin or to Munich. And so I have had one of a friend of mine who was in the Bavarian Abbey too. And so I decided, okay, then I go there. It's easier for me. What do you feel is the biggest challenge. For the fetish scene in Switzerland. And I think it's the biggest challenge to grow together because we have the leather scene. We have the rubber scene. We have the puppy scene. We have not so much space in Switzerland that it's space for so many scenes. So my wish would be to come together, not put everything under the same hat. But a peaceful coexistence would be very interesting. And I think with time, I think, yes, it is possible. And it has to be made sure that every, every community stays, every community, not that the leather scene would like to take over the rubber guys. And the rubber guys are not taking over the puppies. And the puppies are not going to be on top of everything. What are your plans after COVID? Oh, my plans after COVID are going to Frankfurt. Because I have got a very, very strong connection to the Leather Club in Frankfurt. And I would like to see the guys there to support the local HIV healthcare there. I'd like to go to Berlin too, because a very good sister of mine is living there. Sister Wester, she was, she is in our house, but she has passed a very, very bad health condition. She suffered from cancer. And I would like to go out with her, of course, as a sister and just have fun. And I would like to visit my friends in Austria in Vienna. And of course I would like to visit some, or to host some Swiss events, which are going to hopefully happen. And maybe we will see what comes and when I will have the possibility, but I definitely would go out and I need people because this is what I'm missing so much. Yes. What is the biggest misconception about you? I cannot find words for this, but I think it's, that I think everything is fine and everything is good, but it could be good. This is a misconception, yes, because it isn't, but I would like to tell other people we can do this together. Yes. Great Yvonne Brittenbach, I thank you very much for participating in a wonderful interview. And I sincerely look forward to meeting you in person.


As I said, I'm from the National Museum of Denmark and I got a PhD project on something called the Head Collection. And at some point it became apparent to me that there probably was a lot of jadeite artifacts in the collection. So I had to try to find out if that was true or not because it had implications as both Sebastian and others have said before. Unfortunately, most of the jadeite artifacts quite have an old collection history. And we see a picture here from the most significant part of the collection history, the Danish-Dutch Archaeological Expedition in 1923. This was quite a long expedition, nine months long. It went both to the Dutch Antilles, the former Danish U.S. Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. And I had nine months and I sent back 22 tons of materials to the National Museum. So it's quite a significant collection, size-wise. And I had to split it up a little bit to focus on certain areas. And that was where the jadeite became important in my opinion. But I quickly realized that this I couldn't do on my own because I'm pretty much the only Caribbean archaeologist in Denmark. There's one more who is looking into ancient DNA. So I quickly went to Leiden to get some help and to Amsterdam to get more help. And so some of the slides will be a little bit similar and I'll just briefly skip them if we've seen them before. The expedition's leader was a very brilliant archaeologist called Gullman Hed and I don't know if it's this guy or this guy, or the one taking the photography here. But I know that this is his wife who was also an archaeologist, one of the first female archaeologists in Denmark. And her handwriting is a lot better than his, which is an advantage. And then there was the Dutch anthropologist Joss van de Jong, which is a big name in Dutch anthropology and archaeology as well. They went over, they did this expedition and Hed, in fact, posed the first chronology for the pre-Columbian Caribbean. A chronology that's in many ways still is intact. Of course it's been refined but it's still intact in many ways. They excavated more than 35 different places and surveyed the same number, approximately 70 different places from the expedition. And then we had a lot of donations by Danish traders, officials, ambassadors and whatnot that has also been put into the collection. So a very, very collection history. This map is pretty much what we've seen from Sebastian and Alves before. We see the different known source areas and then there's one hype of these ferrerized source area down here. And I put it in not so certain terms because we don't really know where it is. And then we have suspected, are now proven, jade artifacts from St. Vincent, Burden Islands, Dominican Republic and Cuba in the Hed collection. As an archaeologist, I couldn't say for certain if it was jade or not. But I couldn't notice that we had all these magnificent axes, highly polished and slightly green or very green. And then I suspected it would be jade or nifrite. There was also the laboratory artifacts, not so common as the axes or the axes. And I had some problems to utilize them in my research. So I also got a hold of Katarina Guto Falzi from Leiden to get her to help me out and rejoin in this project as she is doing the useware analysis. The first step though was to go down to France to Pierre Petrican. He, Lasse, introduced me to him. And Pierre and Michel Eirea, they are offered to do Raymond and microscopic inspection of selected jade artifacts. And of course Raymond is not a 100% sure method, but it gives a high probability that you know what you have in your collection. And this was kind of interesting. And now this is preliminary research and preliminary conclusions from Pierre and Michel. So don't say that I said this or certain. But in their opinion, there is no nifrite in the Hed collection. There's only jadeite. They think these artifacts that have been identified as nifrite by Hed was also very good at identifying stuff, just macroscopic. They think it's very pure jadeite. So for example this straw pendant in the middle, which I long suspected to be a fake because it was so unique. He said this in his opinion and Michel's opinion, then this is jadeite, jade straw and not nifrite. He just thinks it's very pure jadeite. That's interesting. But as I said, it's preliminary conclusion. So don't say, but Casper said you said so. No, he said this is what we think so far. The axis also, it was a little bit dangerous to say that this is from the Caribbean because in Denmark we have a little unfortunate history of thinking that jadeite axis, European jadeite axis, were imports from the Caribbean. And for example this axis over here, where you see there's a star of the drill hole, looked very much like some of the European axis. So that was also a thing we wanted to try to separate if it was possible. But luckily we can now say that this is in fact a Caribbean axis and it's not something we mixed up. It was also after Alice had a look at it with Garrett Davis, it's also quite clear that there was now very high likelihood that we had a lot of jadeite artifacts in the collection. And this just samples from the different islands in the Virgin Islands. We see up here the top one. It's been reused as a grinder on Hammerstone, like Sebastian also said. We have these very elaborate axes that are very polished. We have these with slightly asymmetrical bit end and then we have one here that's, in my opinion, is very interesting because if you look at the edge here, then it's really, really finely polished. And when I looked at it I thought they were just finishing the axe but had written in the diary that it's been repacked the surface here and this bit end was in fact the original. And I didn't believe him but then Peter Kahn also said well, this is the same as we see in Papua and Nicanilla. They call it washing the axe. So that was quite an interesting discovery that I was wrong and had 100 years before had almost got it completely right. And then, of course, we had these elaborate area artifacts that I also had some problems to use but I'll get into that or Katarina will get into that later, so to speak. Then there was also axes and artifacts from other islands because we have these donations from other people. And it was quite interesting that we had a couple of axes like more than 100 years ago that were donated to the National Museum of Denmark and they have a slightly different shape, these two human axes. They are slightly conical in the bottom. Of course we only have two, so it's a very small sample to say anything about but at least here the St. Vincent axe that we found looks more like the Virgin Island axes. And we have at least 300 Jedi axes, I would say, in the National Museum's collections. Both complete and reused. And then we also have from the Dominican Republic but that has not been part of the study so far because that would just have killed me in my research if I tried to do that as well. I hope it's okay with Alistair, but this is one you gave to me. And here we see Alice and the garret set up in Copenhagen with the assembly. We see we have an artifact here on the laser ICP-MS. Then we see up here on the screen you see the bladed area on the artifact and that's approximately one micro square millimeters that we see up there, that's what's getting laser at the moment. So even on pristine artifacts like these we can in fact get permission to do it which was a little bit of a persuasive effort to get that permission. But I would say it's a very good method because afterwards you cannot see the bladed area. You cannot feel it. You have to use at least 10 and more like 20 times magnification to see the bladed area. And then it shows up as a very distinct circular hole which is kind of very different from natural indentations. So you can actually see it if you want to say this is where the laser and this is natural. So now I'm very looking forward to hearing the last in the future here on the separation of the Virgin Island artifacts because that would be significant if we can in fact say where they come from. Then Katharina Kutcher-False, she also came to Copenhagen from Leiden to look at the laboratory artifacts. Now they have a slightly different history because much of our laboratory Caribbean material is in fact collected by amateur archaeologists that lived on the islands and donated to the National Museum often on the suggestion of Goldman Head in 1923. A lot of this has been suspected of being from the early ceramic age. This is what Katharina has prepared so I'm not going to go into arguing with that. But it looks like on recent ceramic analysis with the thermal luminescence that there is a problem with the way we are dating the ceramics which might also have implications for how we have put the laboratory artifacts into what time slots we have put them into our periods and ages. But normally it's been like Katharina presented on the slide here. We have the early ceramic age laboratory networks. They circulate around in the Caribbean. All these are confined on the same croix, especially from a place called Prosperity and Spread Hall. And we see that they have a lot of different materials that are not found on the islands so they have to be traded in some way or exchanged in some way. As you can see a lot of different materials. As I said before, the two major sites where there is a laboratory of materials are Prosperity and Spread Hall which is up here on the western part of St Croix. They show a strong similarity with the laboratory artifacts that have been found on the island of Iegis which is a small long island there close to Puerto Rico where there are two significant typesites called Advaita and Solci. And they have a strong similarity. Unfortunately, as I said before, a lot of the elements of the laboratory in the HED collection are in fact artifacts that come from Gustav Norbuys donations. And he gave three different big donations to the National Museum. One without almost any information from 1920. Just said St Croix or the Caribbean. Then HED and his wife came around and said we need to know at least the plantation and something like that. So there we have a little bit more information. And then in 1946 he gave a lot more mixed material. Catarina she sampled or examined 65 almonds and of course there was 33 beads, 29 pendants and three non-perforated discs. And the material is shown here. J.D.I. botanical rocks for tonight. Malachi quartz amethyst and high pressure also botanical rocks and then in deterrents. Because it's collected by this there's no different charge and no unmodified materials. That Catarina has from other sites in the Caribbean, but not in this from the HED collection. Then she has done low and high magnification of the artifacts. She tried to assess the biographies of the objects. She had a technical stage, production techniques. Two kids use were recycling through these microscopic examinations. That's Catarina. And then she had for me some very nice finds that you could see some of the techniques they've used for reducing the rock. The planner convex beads. She concludes they have used flaking. Some of the other they have used snapping techniques. And some of the artifacts have in fact broken during production. She has also been able to prove almost.  And especially on this frog pin where it also looks like it's been sawing and drilling. So this was a nice add-on to our knowledge about the HED collection, especially the laboratory. Because this was something we were completely unaware of before. And this strongly suggests that there must have been a quite extensive trade network in the Eastern Caribbean. Other examinations of very rare objects like percury teeth, dog tooth pendants and so on. Also suggests there's been some connections down to South America. And maybe to the foothills of the Handys. But this is a very rare object. To what extent has been this exchange is difficult to say. Katharina's primary conclusion is that the ornament production took place locally. But if the blanks or the preforms came from the source areas, she cannot conclude that. The most common ornament types are very similar to those found in laboratory workshops in Puerto Rico. And I know she's also looked down to the southeast to Granada. So that's significant that she says there's more similarities to here. That was also what I would expect from a strictly archaeological point of view. But now it's a more solid base, we can argue this. Then there's something that's a little bit strange in my opinion. But you find there's a low presence of ornament in quartz. Which suggests that the context with the sub was restricted. There is quartz in the head collection. But not so much here in the laboratory. Which is a bit strange. And then her conclusion is also that the JJ's height is not treated differently and other green stones are rock materials. Such as gas, the sedimentary malachite, and even calcite, as we have on the top. Where we have some artifacts we call patrician depillary artifacts. And the important is that as far as we know all the materials are not to be found on the virgin islands. So everything has to come from somewhere else. Which is of course important for understanding of the society. It's also interesting that even though there are different materials it's made into the same time of ornaments and using a similar production of technologies. The one exception is this proxy opinion. Which I originally thought might be a fake. Which has a more naturalistic depiction. And has been produced using more sophisticated techniques. That's not observed on other artifacts of the head collection in Copenhagen. To sum it up, in my opinion of all these inputs I've gotten and what I've seen myself and other research I've been doing I tend now to maybe agree more with Sebastian that maybe these jadeite artifacts are more closely associated with the later ceramic age than early on. And for sure they had extensive networks. And also with South America and the footers of the Andes. But to what extent is very difficult to say. I think it's been very limited from what you can see right now. And then also research I've done with thermoluminescence of ceramics suggests that there are some problems with our original dating. I would argue. But that's something that's not related to jadeite. But then it's very clear that Alice's research with Garadavis if they can argue well for this is from the Dominican Republic that was up the scale again for having extensive long-range contacts. Because when we look at the axis, one of the conclusions I had is and I think Tom would argue this later so I'll only touch it very briefly. But it looks like there's almost been like a mail order. I need these axes this size, this number. And then they've been exported to St. Croix and others. Because there's a strong similarity between some of the axes. There's almost like a cache of when we see here in Europe we see bronze, we see silks, we find these caches are all the same. I can see almost the same in some of the sites in St. Croix especially. So I'll say I've become wiser during my research with Alice and Tom and Katharina but I also still have a lot of questions which I hope we'll solve in the near future. Thank you very much.


Hi everyone it's Steph from Little Bookish Teacher and today I thought I would share my reaction to the Children's Book Council of Australia shortlist for 2023. So for those of you who aren't familiar with the CBCA or the Children's Book Council of Australia they have a well their website says they have a purpose and a vision for enriching young lives through Australian stories and to see a thriving creative world and looking at embracing the transformational power of stories across generations and every year they have a notables and a shortlist process that culminates in Book Week which for us is towards the end of August and schools and kindergartens and libraries all across Australia celebrate Book Week and during that week the winners of the shortlist categories are announced. So what I thought I would do is actually go through the shortlist on the website with you yeah so that's pretty much what we're going to do today and then I am thinking that I'm going to do a series where I actually read the shortlist from various categories and then sort of report back on my thoughts. Alright so the theme for 2023 is Read, Grow, Inspire. Every year there's a new theme, they have new artists and illustrators who come up with these gorgeous themes. This is their website so there's information, there's a shadow judging process where kids can be involved in judging the shortlist so on and so forth. So there's a whole lot of things that you can find on their website which I'll leave linked in the description but the shortlist has I think five categories so the first one is a young adult category which is Book of the Year, Older Readers. At the top it does always say whether or not there are books that feature mature content and in particular any themes that might be triggering or challenging for people. It also puts in the age category so the Older Readers is designed for books for 13 to 18 year olds. I will probably not read through this category, I'll probably read through more of the primary aged books but you have Ask No Questions by Eva Collins, Completely Normal and Other Lies by Biffy James, The Greatest Thing by Sarah Winifred-Seal which I have read, this is a graphic novel and it is a story of friendship and navigating those tricky situations. There is Neverlanders by Tom Taylor and Illustrated by John Somervira, The Other Side of Tomorrow by Hailey Lawrence and What We All Saw by Mike Lucas. If I get a chance I might try and pick some of these up from my local library and read through them but they're not necessarily my priority just because of the age group of the kids that I work with. So then there is the Book of the Year Younger Readers which is sort of the middle fiction category. They can be fiction or drama or poetry, they're designed for students seven to twelve years of age although having read some of these books you could definitely hang them at a slightly older audience just because of the content in them. So there is August in Tones by Pip Harry which I haven't read and I do have plans on picking up and reading and Evie and Rhino by Nerida McMullen is also one that I haven't read but currently have out to read from the library. I have read The Raven Song by Zana Frailin and Brendan McDibble, I'll leave a link to my review of that book down below. So I have read that one, I've also read Runt by Craig Sylvie, again I have a review for this so I'll leave it linked down below. The Way of the Dog by Zana Frailin I think I talked about in my middle grade verse novels series, this one is about a dog who is raised in sort of like a puppy farm and ends up escaping with a boy and then the dog and the boy are separated and it's the journey of the dog finding his way back to the boy. And then Xavier in the meantime I have a review on this channel, this is by Kate Gordon. It's quite a heavy middle grade title, this one I would definitely recommend that you either know the child that you're recommending it to or that you read it with them because the main character Xavier is dealing with a lot of mental health issues including hospitalisation at one point so there's some very heavy themes but it is a very well written book and it's well worth reading just you need to be aware of your audience with that one. The Book of the Year Early Childhood is an age category range of zero to six, these are picture books and they are picture books that have to be appropriate for that age category will come to the picture book of the year in a moment which is slightly different. I have not read any of these books and I am so excited to pick them up because there's quite a few authors in here that I don't always see in this category which is really nice so there's Beben Kev by Katrina Jermaine and illustrated by Mandy Foote. I love this, I love giraffes. There's Jigsaw, a puzzle in the post by Bob Graham who's just a classic iconic Australian children's picture book author, Lionel and Me by Corinne Fenton and illustrated by Tracy Grimwood, Market Day by Cary Galash and illustrated by Hannah Somerville, Snapped by Anna Walker which Anna Walker just does some gorgeous gorgeous books and Where the Liarbird Lives by Vicki Connolly and illustrated by Max Hamilton. So I am pretty sure now I have all of these books so this will probably be one of the first categories that I read and then there's the Picture Book of the Year which again is picture books but this one the picture books can range in audience age range from zero to 18 years so some of these books can be for mature readers and the whole idea of this category is that the story, the theme or the concept is unified through the illustrations and the text and there's a really strong thread of that through these books. So I've only read at the moment two books in this category I've read Dirt by Sea which was written by Michael Wagner and illustrated by Tom Gillett and I've read Frank's Red Hat by Sean E Avery. I do have Farmhouse by Sophie Blackwell to read My Strange Trinking Parents by Zeno Sorter, Our Dreaming by Curly Saunders and illustrated by Dub Lefler and Paradise Sands, A Story of Enchanted by Levy Pinfold and I'm looking forward to picking these up because these are not always authors or illustrators that I see in this category and while I think there'll be some mature themes in this one they don't seem to be too many picture books in here where the themes are specifically for the much older end of this age category which it's been in the past there's been a few books that have really been for much older readers but yeah I'm excited to read through this. Then you have the Eve Poundall Award so entries in this one can be for zero to 18 years of age but these are picture books that document factual material. Again these can also feature content for mature readers or deal with challenging topics or be quite long dense picture books so it's worth reading through them before you give them to a child although the books in this category are pretty good this year I'm excited to read through a lot of them. So there is A for Australian Reefs by Fran Lesak which looks absolutely gorgeous I've borrowed this out from my works library, Amazing Animal Journeys by Jennifer Kossens, Come Together Things Every Aussie Kid Should Know About the First Peoples by Zaya Firebrace. This one I have read and reviewed and I adore this book I think it is incredible. There is Deep Delve Into Hidden Worlds by Jess McGeachon who does incredible kids picture books Opal and Dart by Vianne Brain and also Wild Australian Life by Leonard Cronin which I have also read and reviewed at some point I can't remember when I reviewed this one I must have been last year but this is a really gorgeous animal information book as well. And then the final category is the CBCA Award for New Illustrator and this is about recognizing and encouraging new talent in the field of Australian children's book illustrations. Again the age category for these can be from zero to 18 years so the content will vary depending on the book and at this point I have only read We Are Australians by Duncan Smith and Nicole Godwin and illustrated by Jandamara Cadd. So the other books in this category include Australia from Dawn to Dusk which is illustrated by Brentos, The Best Hiding Place by illustrated by Sylvia Morris, Natureopolis illustrated by Ingrid Bartkowick, oh gosh I hope I pronounced that right, Tiny Wonders by illustrated by Sally Solhahn and there's no such book illustrated by Jack Edmonton so I'm really excited to also try these because I love these categories I think there's a great variety of books in here and it'll be nice to be able to share these with you guys as well because they're all Australian authors and illustrators. Stay tuned in the next couple of months I will share some recaps of the books in all of these categories I'm really excited about it and if there's anything that you would like to see reviewed sooner feel free to let me know in the comments. Thank you very much for watching I hope that you've enjoyed this video and learning maybe a little bit more about how we recognize children's picture books here in Australia there are other prizes we have the readings prize and a few other bits and pieces throughout the year as well but the CBCA is one that's kind of recognized across Australia and is celebrated pretty widely in schools here if you have any questions or anything feel free to leave them down below otherwise I hope the reviewer in the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video thanks so much for watching bye everyone