Hello, I'm James Randi. Now this video will be somewhat different from the usual material that I offer you for consideration. It's prompted by a letter I just received from the Reason Corporation in California. A letter that has me infuriated and dismayed. In fact, I must admit that I'm embarrassed at the fact that this video will be viewed beyond the bounds of the United States of America and that I have to share this with audiences worldwide who may very well choose to snicker at those crazy Americans. As many of you may know, I was not born a citizen of the USA. I chose to become a citizen and I worked hard at it. That's why I believe that such matters as the one I'm about to discuss with you take on a more than ordinary importance for me. In late 2007, a man named Charles C. Lynch was arrested on federal drug charges for operating a medical marijuana dispensary in California. Now, as you may know, medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996, as well as in 12 other states. Mr. Lynch was doing all that he legally could to help people get the medicine they needed to manage their specific health problems. One prominent example of his work was providing doctor-approved medication to a teenager named Colin Beck, who is suffering from bone cancer and had been told by his oncologist that using medical marijuana would help ease the pain of losing a leg to the disease. Owen Beck played football at soccer for his high school. You know, pretty oblivious to all the problems in the world until it happened. I was playing soccer and it was really hurting one day when I was running. So I just kind of had to stop playing soccer and I went and got an MRI and it was just a medium-sized tumor just in the middle of my leg. Doctors told Owen he had bone cancer. I started crying. Owen's parents, Debbie and Steve. And then they said to Owen, doctors said to Owen, this is going to change your life. Actually, at the time I was just concerned with, you know, me getting through the next day. The whole family's calm California life stopped and the Beck's headed to Stanford Medical Center. I was worried that he was going to die. 17 years old, your life just stopped. Chemotherapy began right away and the chemicals attacked Owen's hair follicles, stomach cells and mouth.   And for Owen the athlete, yet another blow. Doctors amputated his leg to try to stop the cancer from spreading. All the powerful medications available in drug stores seemed worthless.  Debbie and Steve searched for anything that would help Owen feel better. One option, however, just wasn't on their radar. You know, I don't think I've ever thought about that in his situation because of his age. A new kind of drug store had recently come to the nearby city of Morro Bay. It offered medical marijuana. State government allow us for medical marijuana and local officials welcome the new dispensary and its owner, Charlie Lynch. Before we even opened, I had the mayor and the city council members all came by and toured the facility. That's the mayor shaking Lynch's hand at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The new dispensary helped spark discussion between Owen and his dad. I was just talking one day with my dad and we just, we brought up the subject of it. And it was like, that'll work, that's what we're going to do. This is only one example of how Charles Lynch has been able to help sufferers, ethically, correctly and in a perfectly legal and approved manner under the law. In March of 2007, federal agents raided Charlie's dispensary and home with guns drawn. A raid by armed federal agents.  The Arroyo Grande home of dispensary operator Charles Lynch was also raided Thursday morning. They came in and threw me on the ground and rushed through the house like I was a criminal or something. The dispensary was later reopened with the city's approval, but was then shut down again after the Department of Justice threatened the landlord with foreclosure if the dispensary wasn't closed. That dispensary was permanently closed down in May of 2007. Mr. Lynch was forced to the ground at gunpoint, then arrested and charged under federal statutes with distributing marijuana, conspiring to distribute marijuana, and providing marijuana to persons under the age of 21. He stayed in federal custody until his family posted a $400,000 bond for his release. He was placed under house service for nearly 10 months and forced to wear an electronic ankle monitor. Just to show you how understanding the federal agents were, I'll tell you that the cord on the man's ankle monitor was too short to even reach the bathroom. He had to find a way around that problem. Now consider, the average first degree murder sentence in California is only 20 years. I repeat, for the first degree murder, a killer usually gets a 20-year sentence. Charles Lynch faces up to 85 years in prison if convicted. Something else you should know. In courts, Charlie's lawyers were precluded from discussing the actual legality of his dispensary. They could even mention the term medical marijuana, and statements from his character witnesses were incredibly edited from the court record. No, this is not a backward two-bit nation somewhere out in the wilds. This is the United States of America, though I think that you'll be finding this hard to believe, as I do. The verdict, Charles Lynch was found guilty on all five counts. Sentencing was delayed until late March 2009, two years after the initial raid on the dispensary. A week before the sentencing was scheduled, Attorney General Eric Holder told a news conference that the Obama administration now planned to target only persons who violate both federal and state law. Perhaps thanks to this change of emphasis, the federal judge again postponed the sentencing procedure. On this matter, Google returns over 100,000 links. I hardly think that using Swift to emphasize my outrage over this matter will make very much difference to the outcome of the case, but I had to come here to you to save my peace. The reason people drew Kerry, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Facebook, John Stossel of ABC News, Larry King, Time Magazine, the people at Google and NBC's Al Roker on an MSNBC documentary had been very active in publicizing this matter and rightly so. It is an egregious misuse of authority, a shame that no American citizen should have to live with. Are you angry and dismayed as I am? If so, I urge you to go to www.reason.com and express your concern. This is James Randi, and I thank you for your close attention to this matter.


I'm Divya Mehra, Principal Product Manager in the JBoss Middleware Division at Red Hat. I'm responsible for this product strategy and roadmap for Red Hat JBoss Data Grid. Red Hat JBoss Data Grid is a distributed in-memory NoSQL data store, an in-memory data platform that gives you high performance, linear scalability, and elasticity for getting superior user experience for the end user of your application. It also supports a variety of distributed compute frameworks, which makes it not just a data grid but also a compute grid for real-time distributed computing. JBoss Data Grid allows you to have highly responsive applications. So if you are designing applications which are highly data-intensive, where you want to process data in real-time, large volumes of data, and give your end consumer the best user experience, that's where JBoss Data Grid comes in. JBoss Data Grid traditionally was used as a distributed cache, but increasingly we are seeing usage of it as a primary in-memory NoSQL data store, where developers are considering it as an alternative to a traditional NoSQL data store. It can also be used as an event broker because it has the ability for your application to react to changes in the data in real-time and at scale with something a vanilla NoSQL database cannot do. And finally, it also supports a variety of distributed computing frameworks. So if you have to process large volumes of data in real-time in a matter of sub-seconds instead of minutes, then JBoss Data Grid is a solution for that. JBoss Data Grid is the leading fully open source in-memory data grid in the market. It has been rated by independent analysts as the best open source option, both on the basis of its feature set and the ability for Red Hat to support the product effectively for the needs of the enterprise. JBoss Data Grid enables a developer to develop highly responsive applications that allow the developer to process large volumes of often-changing data in real-time so that the users get the most engaging experience. For example, if you're designing, if you're developing for an e-commerce platform by storing relevant product catalog information or user behavior information or location information, you can drive real-time product recommendations while keeping the page load time to a minimum which gives the user the best user experience. JBoss Data Grid implements some of the standard user interfaces, developer interfaces. For example, in JBoss Data Grid 7, we added a distributed version of the Java 8 Stream API. So developers who are familiar with the Java 8 Stream APIs and the functional operations can use the same on a much larger scale on a distributed data set. JBoss Data Grid also provides an integration with Apache Spark and Apache Hadoop, which are the well-known analytics frameworks. So if you are familiar with Spark and Hadoop, then the same interfaces are available with JBoss Data Grid available as a high-performance, highly scalable data store for these computing frameworks. JBoss Data Grid, in addition to a Java API, also supports three remote protocols, the highly-performant Hot Rod protocol, which is a binary protocol used by most of our developers, as well as REST and Memcached. We support the Hot Rod protocol for four programming languages, Java, C++, C-sharp, and Node.js. So if you are developing in any one of these popular languages, you can use JBoss Data Grid as a high-performance, highly scalable, fault-tolerant in-memory cluster. JBoss Data Grid provides comprehensive data security options for the developer. For example, our data grid supports, JBoss Data Grid supports role-based access control to the caches so that only authenticated and authorized users can access the data in caches. Similarly, as you add and remove nodes to the cluster, there is also node authentication and authorization so that you cannot have a rogue node enter the cluster and take a portion of the data. We also support encryption between the clients and the server using transport layer security and also encryption of the communication within the cluster using any cryptographic algorithm compatible with Java cryptographic architecture. Consider a cluster with N nodes. As a developer, you have the option of storing anywhere between one to N copies of the data. So the most extreme case is if you want a fully replicated cache in which you are storing N copies of the data. That gives you the most fault-tolerance that whenever up to N-1 nodes go down, the data is still available and the user experience is not impacted. The application continues to run with access to the data at high-performance uninterrupted. To balance that with scalability, you can also specify typically between two to four copies of the data so that you are using the memory more efficiently and it's more scalable and that's called a distributed cache and in that, if you have, say, specified K copies of the data, you are fault tolerant for K-1 failures of the nodes. Moreover, you can hint to JBossDataGrid to have different copies of data on different physical servers, racks, or even data centers to give you fault-tolerance against server failure, rack failure, or even data center failure. JBossDataGrid can participate in a distributed transaction which ensures asset compliance of your data. In this regard, it differentiates itself from other no-SQL databases that can at the most support eventual consistency. Relational databases can support strong consistency, but they are not scalable. So JBossDataGrid gives you the best of both worlds, high performance and scalability that you will not get with a relational database as well as full asset compliance that you will not get with a no-SQL database. JBossDataGrid is a certified JCASH caching provider. It fully implements the API that is specified in the JSR107 spec. This allows you to migrate your applications from any other data grid or caching provider that supports JSR107 to JBossDataGrid. JBossDataGrid is a highly configurable product, and it enables you to configure both declaratively as well as programmatically. Customers or developers that choose the embedded Cache architecture can create caches very dynamically, create and destroy caches very dynamically, and manage the lifecycle of the caches directly from the application. On the other hand, customers that use the client server mode, which uses a standalone data grid cluster, delegate the management of the lifecycle to the data grid server, which can then keep it running forever as hundreds of applications can connect to it at the same time.


session of 2023 for 2024, whatever the heck that may be. And we're going to talk about exactly that today with the wonderful Professor Emerita Bernilla Randall from the University of Dayton School of Law, now in Orlando, Florida, and having had the luxury and respite of having Florida be essentially brandy Santas free for months at a time. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you, Iowa and New Hampshire and whoever else will take this guy for how long they can take him because I can't. And David Larson, wonderful, immediate past chair of, well, recent past chair of the American Bar Association section of dispute resolution. Professor at Mitchell Hamlin School of Law in Twin Cities in Minnesota, which is about to become substantially more inclement than we are here in Hawaii or Professor Randall is in Orlando. So David, you have our perspective sympathies, but hopefully it's still fairly decent there now. Yeah, we're in the mid 50s today, which doesn't happen in Minnesota in December. So we have very warm weather. And mid 50 in December is twice what it could be. So yeah, easily. So how are things where you are, Professor Randall? It's really nice. The winter is the weather is nice and winter is nice. And it's very nice. I mean, you know, we still we're losing people moving out of the state, which is professional people, people, especially university level and college level people. I know personally, at least a half dozen people, black people who have moved out of state because of the politics of Florida. And it's Ron DeSantis, but it's more. I mean, he doesn't do anything in a vacuum. He's got a legislator. Get the word right. I'm being trumped now. He's got a house in a Senate. George Bush and Donald Trump. Who are willing to pass the most radical laws. And implement them. And so that means that that hasn't changed. We have a state that has one of the highest health and uninsurance rates. The state is in a poor state for people who are struggling. So, but the weather's nice. What can I say? No, and that's really good. And I mean, I have to admit, I have an advantage that nobody in any other U.S. state has being here in Hawaii. I am. I grew up in and am a refugee from Wisconsin, which has since gone to very dark places in its legislature, trying to fight for its political survival. And it's a struggle. It's up in the air, so to speak. But, and people asked me, so, so, so, Chuck, how come Hawaii is such a blue state? We have a handful, not even a dozen Republican state legislators, right? We haven't had Republican governor for a while. We haven't had a Republican mayor for a while. We haven't had. We haven't had Republicans for a while. I can't tell you what aside really, and so people ask, how come, how come that is? I said, look, we are 80% Asian Pacific. We are a culture that is spiritually, morally, ethically, wiser, more grounded, more balanced, more big picture long term than any other in the country. I'm not bragging. I'm just recognizing a fact, right? Asian Pacific Americans are far stronger in that area than the rest of the country. And Alaska Airlines has just bought Hawaiian Airlines, and that's fine. As long as they let the indigenous Alaskans run it. Can you imagine the indigenous Alaskans and the indigenous Hawaiians together running an airline to get out of the way, United American Delta, all those guys? What if those airlines, the merged airline, were run by indigenous Hawaiian and Alaskan women? Well, I mean, you know, I certainly don't know the Asian American culture like you do, so I can't really talk about that. I do know that they're pretty conservative on the mainland as a group. And I work with, I'm in coalitions with many. I guess I'm reluctant to identify a specific racial group as being better than all the rest of us in sort of spiritual things and stuff like that. I think that there are groups and there are locations and there are people who definitely have their stuff together, but I also think that those features cross many cultures. And that's certainly true, and I apologize, David, but I really need to respond quickly to that. I think that's true, but it's true because in large part, here, the Asian Pacific are in their own culture. There, they're in an adverse culture dominated by people at their expense. Of course, they're going to be conservative to protect themselves. That's what conservativeism at its best is. It protects rights, values, and relationships. It's not what it is now politically for the Americans, but that's what conservativeism at its best really is. That's what Lincoln Republican is once and could be. But that kind of argument, we all should be conservative. Yes, if we're in environments dominated by zero some people at our expense. And all in on the mainland, every group is in that kind of situation. That's absolutely right. But every group has not adopted a conservative viewpoint related to politics in the United States. I guess I don't want, I don't, I really don't want to go down the road. I'm just challenging the idea that, I mean, that we can name that. I don't know about Asian specific Islanders in Hawaii. I have no clue. And so I can't speak to that. But I, but the statement you may seem very general and to encompass all Asian Pacific Islanders. And I just know that my experience and, and I'm not faulting them. I'm just saying that my experience is they tend to be more conservative as a group. And so, yeah. But you raise a really, really good point. I agree with your 100%. Everything you said is true.  It's not the people. It's not the race. It's the culture that is conservative in the sense that it's protective of the relationships and values that most deserve it. It's the culture. They could be green. And if that were their culture, that would be their thing. But then race is nothing but culture. Race is a social construction based on the environment that people come from, been grown in. It's not a biological thing. It's not even a color thing. It's the culture thing.  And I'm talking about descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States. I'm not talking about immigrant blacks who come from different cultures. But descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States have a culture that's born out of that. And people identify us as a race because that's the crazy thing that America does. But we are against you. And we can't, and we have a hard time getting people to want to say, yes, you are a culture. And in fact, one of the things that I tried to get the, and I did, I have to admit I didn't really push it real hard, but I did write a couple of letters. I think, for instance, that the, what am I trying to say? The Census Bureau should put dais, descendants of Africans enslaved in the United States are something similar as an ethnic group that can be identified for black people. Are you dais? Do you come from that culture? No, you're exactly right. And I want to, and I apologize, but I want to, for our listeners and anybody who views this, I want to remind people, you are now listening to truly the ultimate authority, not just in Orlando, not just in the U.S., but probably in the world on racism, what it really is where it comes from and its impact. And what, Professor Randall, you just pointed out, the most core, brilliant insight of all is that for blacks, as for Asians, hopefully, and Pacific Islanders, race is a resource. It's a strength. It's a cultural resource. But for people opposed to that group, it is a weapon. And that distinction of who defines race as what, which definition and application predominate continues to be central. I think the points you've just made highlight that in ways that, for me, I'm only 77. That's the first time I've ever heard anybody articulate that core conflict intention, that clearly. Thank you. David? Earlier, I was going to echo something that Professor Randall said about location. I've had the opportunity to work from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean, American West, from Minnesota to Mississippi, to Philadelphia and Washington D.C., to Omaha and Nebraska. And there are distinctly different cultures as we move around the country. And we had a discussion before we came online. Professor Randall was saying that people are leaving Florida and educated people are leaving Florida because of that location, because of what's happening in the culture around them. And they're finding it intolerable. So I'm in Minnesota where we're kind of clean to kind of our blue heritage. But we're right next door to Wisconsin. And Chuck was mentioning that Wisconsin has gone some dark places. Now, these are very demographically. They're not very different. And geographically, they have a long contiguous border. So there's a lot of exchange going back between the two states. So why are we so different? And we are different in our politics, taking some very different positions in terms of our legislation. And a lot has to do with the political process and how it's been organized. And in Wisconsin, there's been significant gerrymandering. And they've arranged the electoral districts. So it's impossible for minority populations to get any representation in the legislature. When you have statewide elections, then it's sweepingly democratic. But in the local elections, they've got these bizarre lines that are making it impossible to get any representation in the legislature, which then means that the legislature can pass very conservative legislation. So, yeah, I think a lot has to do with where you are and what political forces are controlling the access to the vote. And we're seeing all of this unfolding right in front of us. One thing we had talked about before we went online was what's going to happen in this coming year? What are we going to look like in 2024? And sometimes it's scary to think about as we look at the presidential politics unfolding. One thing I've been thinking a lot about is how our lives are going to change with artificial intelligence, because in the news chat GPT, now you have chat GPT 4+, if you've got these iterations of artificial intelligence moving very quickly, and some people who are deeply invested in the technology field said you've got to slow down. This is getting way ahead of us and we're losing control of it. There's going to be all kinds of implications. Artificial intelligence is exciting and these generative AI models that can generate text and images are very powerful. I think they're great tools and we accomplished a lot of things with them. But if you look at chat GPT for example, you now have a chat GPT 4+, that's much more powerful than the chat GPT 3.0 and 3.5. 3.5 is available for free, but this supermodel which has capabilities that chat GPT 3.5 doesn't have costs. That's not insignificant. So when we start thinking about the ability of artificial intelligence to enhance our lives and enhance our productivity, not everybody's going to have access to that best technology and that's already true today. But I think that is going to accelerate and that to me is very worrisome because the power of these new technologies exceeds a lot of what we've had before and if only some people have access to it, to the technology that we have and if we have to have polarization and separation, that's only going to increase. So I think we really need to pay attention to what's happening in the AI field. And that point connects directly, as you said, to exactly what Professor Randall and we are talking about, which is if AI and we're going to talk about this next week's session is going to be as race and other concepts have of that zero sum 1% whatever you want to call them then it will do far more harm than good. If it becomes the resource of those most in need, most vulnerable, most underserved and those who are their allies and their supporters and their protectors, AI could bring a world of good. That's going to be the fight, that's going to be the tension, that's going to be the conflict and where that goes and who influences where that goes is going to be of critical importance. I guess I just go ahead. I'm reluctant to hinge anything on AI making things better. I mean if you get my viewpoint is racism and that's where I come from and any system born out of racism is going to promote racism and we have not sufficiently dealt with the racism and existing systems and in what we've done with AI, whatever generative or otherwise is used flawed programmers people who have stereo biases and prejudice and use flawed databases and while those while they are, the thing is is how do children learn racism? They learn it from seeing their parents and media and other things engage in it. AI will do the same thing. It will promote it will underpin and I don't know I would like to see, I mean we haven't, we don't have systems to assure food equity, health care equity health care equity housing equity I just AI is just going to be another water climate I mean you name a system yeah you name a system I just say AI is just going to be another system within an existing flawed system culture system yeah what I'm saying is I'm saying that like it or not, it's happening fast, it's exploding and to the degree that I think many of us understand that in many respects AI is backward looking because it's drawing on history and drawing on databases but what I'm saying is that let's acknowledge the fact that this is just too seductive and it's it's going to go forward and it's going to be powerful and it's going to allow people to do things efficiently at lower costs compared to other people and they'll dominate markets and what I'm saying is that we need to get on top of this as best as possible that I don't know if there's a quick solution there probably isn't but you know to be to kind of let it run unawares and to let kind of knowledge and expertise and power be concentrated even more than it is and so much more quickly is really frightening so let's David how is that different from people who had cars and who didn't have cars I'm talking at the beginning of when the technology was introduced not now even though there's a major we have major problems with lack of transportation but people who were able to afford cars who got cars who had cars when only a small percentage of the people had access to a technology that gave them an outstanding advantage telephone I remember when we got our telephone and we weren't the first and we had a what do you call it a party line but what about the people who got part the phones that didn't have party lines who could conduct their business computers when I was in law school I saw the impact computers were going to have and I spent my money being I was a single panel working for in law school and I bought a transportable do you remember what those are those kind of I bought one of those and I used to lug it to school every single day to take my notes on because I saw the advantage that it could give me and it upset people in fact I got permission to take my law school exams on it and a petition started that it was an unfair advantage to allow me to take my exam that it was a advantage of the privilege and I was like well you know what I spent my money on a poor I spent my little money on a laptop you spend your money on a beer hey if you want a laptop you certainly got the money to go out and spend it but the point is it was a privilege it was a privilege when I had enough money to be able to make that choice and I went to school with people I had when I was teaching I had I had students who could not afford a laptop they couldn't afford meals they were going hungry just to stay in law school and I used to put students up in my house because otherwise they were going to be homeless this society is always given privilege to people who can afford things and disadvantaged people who cannot and I know that I totally agree with you because I hate writing and I've written a lot and so I have been going on AI and I I love it I would use it in a hot beat if I was still a professor I would generate text edited and slap some footnotes like nobody business but it would be a privilege I understand that and I understand the problem and I apologize for interrupting and David and Professor but we only got three minutes left and I want to put the hard I want to put the hard question out there that is how do we move the needle from that AI weapon to AI resource for the people who most deserve to make it an equitably available resource like cars like phones like computers have become how do we make it affordable and user friendly enough to be an equitable resource for those who most need and deserve it the underserved instead of those who will use it as a weapon against those very vulnerable people how do we do that? Chuck I would just insert the word more equitable because there are tons of people who can't afford any of the things that we just listed and so there's inequity still absolutely so one of my points is I agree with everything that Professor Randall says there's been cycles that have repeated themselves as new developments have come and my point is that we are now starting a new cycle something like the industrial revolution and we have an opportunity and maybe it can't be done but what I'm saying is that it's another new cycle starting so maybe to the degree we've failed to get on top of these previous cycles prevent the inequities maybe we can do something now make sure that the chat GPT skills are being taught in the schools make it part of the curriculum make sure that these resources are available in public libraries maybe we can be more proactive of making sure that a wider population has exposure to these things other than through the private marketplace and just having to buy the best to make sure that it's available for people at no cost that otherwise might not be able to afford it and I think maybe the school system is one way to do that so that is exactly the point and the question that's a fantastic example how do we make AI move in the direction of being a resource for more equitable access to the key life resources education housing environment make it a public good that capitalism can't infect if at least make it something that is highly regulated and a public good and that can't be based on for profit model so you're going to open up the St. Louis swimming pools right you know exactly what I'm talking about thank you the summer this is one reason why the CEO of OpenIA was fired if you call that to happen recently because there's a tension where mission is to make AI available and make the world better and also their mission is to make money and that tension is right there and that's what Professor Randall is pointing to so on one hand you want to make it more accessible and on the other hand you want to make sure that the people who are writing the programming that are behind the technology are a diverse population so that you get different viewpoints into the coding and into the platforms so it's access to finished product and make sure there's access to the construction of the product and we know and it's not that you're saying that people can't make a living off of it and a decent living off of it what you're saying is excess capital won't go to shareholders right it will go to making whatever the system more equitable, more available whatever but it won't go yeah or it will go to the zero sum one percent the way it always has and still does that's the question will it become the zero sum one percent weapon the people they have taken from and oppressed for so long or will it become a resource to build greater equity for those who most deserve and need it on that note we are out of time Professor Randall, Professor Larson we had no idea at the beginning of this that we were going to go this really is as we like to call them difficult conversation to make good trouble thank you so much Professor Randall thank you for inviting me Professor Larson incredible insights, incredible perspectives and incredibly hard questions about exactly what lives ahead for us and we need to stand up and fight for thank you Aloha, be well, be safe happy holidays all think tech support us because we are here to make these conversations and these thoughts and these stand up actions happen take care thank you