My Queens County deserves a closer look and it does here on Community Matters. I'm Jay Fiedel and I'm thinking obviously for the former dean of the William S. Richardson School of Law joins me for this discussion because he is in Queens right now. Welcome, Avi. Thank you, Jay. It's good to be here. Home of the famous Americans. Not only Jay Fiedel. I can tell you about Queens because ever since we decided to cover it, I've been thinking about Queens because I grew up in Queens and I know a lot about Queens because I rode my bicycle in every neighborhood in Queens everywhere. Well, you can take the boy out of Queens, but you can't take the Queens out of Jay. Something like that. But first the news, right? But first the news. They always say that. I always like to say that. You may have heard, but Trump has announced his candidacy, his wish to be president in 20 years. Another Queens guy, I believe. That's right. And he grew up not too far away from me and we're going to have a map here. We're going to black out that section of the borough in his honor. But the one thing that strikes me, I woke up on this, is that she was. What about section three of the 14th Amendment? It says if you're involved in an insurrection, you can't run for a federal or state office. It just seems to be dead on here. The problem is, there's no mechanism expressed in section three of the 14th Amendment. So in the actions of language, structuring a mechanism, what do we got? Do we have a mechanism? Is there a default system for implementing that provision? Well, there are a whole lot of things that go on in constitutional law for which there's no mechanism. So that should not be in any way a complete block. And it was very important at the time of the framing of the 14th Amendment, not surprisingly because a civil war had just ended. And what the Republicans realized was unless they did something to make sure that the unreconstructed Southerners had some barrier, they would be outvoted very quickly because the South suddenly, since they gave blacks the vote, would have much more representation than they'd had before. It was no longer three-fifths representation. So this was the hotly debated issue, but it's never been invoked. And it could be, and the mechanism could be derived. So one shouldn't think that's the end of it. I want to say for a moment, Jay, the section two has also never been invoked and is I think much more immediately significant because it says that if a state abridges or denies the vote, then the state loses representation. And the first thing listed is the electoral college. So states that now should have been invoked because we know lots of states have put up major barriers to the exclusion of the votes through Jim Crow and so on. It's never been invoked, but it could be. And it's an answer to this argument that the independent state legislature can decide who the electors are. Right there in section two of the 14th Amendment is a text that says, no, it's not left to the state legislators. It's left to the people, to the vote. Well, how could that, at least in the possibility, how could those provisions be enforced? Who has standing to do that? Standing is important, isn't it? The standing is important, but not insurmountable. And we see the current court, when it wants to find standing, it finds a way to have standing. And that's particularly true of some of these, in my view, rogue district court judges who think, oh, I can join something across the whole country.  And that's an example being the college's loan forgiveness. And there are lots of other examples of that. So standing is a pretty malleable concept. So I don't think that's an absolute barrier. But we have to talk about Queens and not Constitutional Law, Jay. Yeah. Okay. We'll get together and develop an approach on the Constitution later. But now it's Queens. So you're living in Queens. You like New York. You like NYU for sure. That's my school. I had to go there twice. You know, the first time wasn't good enough. I had to go the second time. And as you may know, as everybody may know, that I am in the book. If you walk into NYU Law School and you ask about me, I'm in the book. I'm in the book twice. How do you like that? Yeah, Jay got a master's as well as his regular JD degree. And they talk of him still. But they won't let him in when he has to use the restroom these days. No, they did. They did. And I said, gee, I paid all that money, spent all that time. And I get this incredible benefit to use the restroom. And it was very helpful at the time. So Avi, what is your impression of the borough of Queens? Because it's really different. It's like the islands. They all have their own personalities. And certainly Queens has a different personality than the Bronx or Brooklyn or Manhattan, or for that matter, Staten Island. What's your impression of Queens? Well, I am very surprised. And I must say pleasantly so. I were here for family reasons that I spent a lot of time in other parts of New York because my whole family on both sides were New Yorkers. My folks were sort of the only ones who broke away, but it was a close extended family. Cousins in New York. I worked in New York some. But Queens was always a place that was off the map. There'd be dragons out there. So for other family reasons, we are here in Queens. And our daughter and her family, now two grandchildren, for us, are living in Jackson Heights. And Jackson Heights, I read a little bit of history, but I really asked Jay a question, which has led to this discussion. And that is, what's the history of Queens? So I know only really about Jackson Heights. And that history is it was started as an exclusionary neighborhood. They wanted to keep out Jews in particular, but also blacks, of course. And no one was thinking about Latinos at that point. And that was the 1920s. And now it boasts as being perhaps the most diverse neighborhood in the country. And it is true. You walk down the street, you hear six or eight languages. You see many different costumes, as were cultural and ethnic and religious reflection in the way people are dressed and restaurants and markets. It's really quite incredible. So Jackson Heights in 100 years has changed from its founder's vision to this incredibly diverse place. And we now have walked through or seen a few other nearby neighborhoods. And I'm also struck by how they were clearly ethnic neighborhoods at one point. And now they are much more diverse. So one thing to be said about Queens is it's changed even since, and maybe because Jay Fidel left. You know, my thinking back out of Queens is not only much more diverse than it was when I was a kid. You know, when I was a kid, you had My Block, which was a combination of Jewish and Irish. And then The Block down the road was all Irish. And then The Block down the road from that was all Italian. And when we were kids, and I'm talking about less than 10 years old, we didn't go to the other blocks. It was dangerous that the kids of the same age on the other blocks would somehow be aggressive with us, although it never happened, I have to say. And over time, you saw what went on. I mean, it was all these buildings being built. All six store must have been the law. Six story apartment houses owned by one landlord. And sometime in the 50s, I guess they invented rent control, which the landlords really hated because they had invested in order to make money on these six story apartment houses. And they were very nice and they put nice appointments in these apartment houses and put them in the same thing. But then rent control came and they couldn't make any money and rents were so cheap in the level of the struggle and strain to make more money and they couldn't do it. I don't know the circumstance now that I'll say that a good part of Queens is six story apartment houses. And they're middle class and they're well appointed and they're large apartment. And that's the kind of building I grew up in. So of course in June, when I was back in New York for a return visit, the writer of return, they have the writer of return in Queens. So I went back to my old neighborhood and I'll tell you, obviously it was neat as a pin. It was like suspended and just suspended all those years. It's really extraordinary how some things don't change at all. Though my building, my block, it was frozen in amber from how many years ago. And it was spacious. My recollection as a kid is it wasn't that big, but it seems like it's bigger now. Maybe it's supposed to go in reverse, but the fact is it's a very comfortable dimensions on the streets and the intersections. And the buildings are clean as a pin and everything has got landscaping. I don't remember the landscaping. I think that's relatively new. Maybe rent control went out so the landlords could afford the landscaping. Everything is rental. There's really no condominiums to speak of. It's all rental property. But nearby, after the war, developers built these row houses, which are also very nice. And you could buy a row house when I was a kid for $12,000, $14,000, and it would be a real first-class house. We always admire the kids who lived in the row house. And if you look at them today, they're lovely. The streets are wide and clean and bright and well manicured, and the houses are painted and what have you. I was so impressed by the quality of the neighborhood and the neighborhoods around my neighborhood, which was Forest Hills adjacent to Regal Park, which is kind of a continuum along the subway. This Queens developed along the subway. Was there a subway in Jackson Heights? Yeah. The Roosevelt stop is a big one, right? It's overhead at that point, so it's very loud underneath. And our two-and-a-half-year-old loves to go watch trains, and we count the cars. They almost all have 11 cars for some reason, but the big subway stop. Actually, a lot of people change at Roosevelt. We lived only a block away from the Long Island Railroad, which was elevated, and had been there like forever. And it was built on a mound of earth, so it was elevated without having steel structure under it. And it was like part of the landscape. And it went all the way from Manhattan, where it was underground, coming out of what, Grand Central Station, out to Long Island, where it forked into the North Shore and the South Shore and all that, all the way out. I think we're coming out of Penn Station, and one of the big breakthroughs is the Long Island Railroad is going to go to Grand Central. They're advertising. But now this is a big thing. It's going to be at Grand Central as well as Penn Station. Penn Station, yeah. And of course, people took the subway. Everybody took the subway. Now, when I was a kid in the 50s, the subways weren't all that clear and clean. There was a lot of graffiti, a lot of tawdry characters on the subway, and as kids, we had to be careful. We had to travel in groups and have sort of an akamai sense of how you avoid tawdry characters. But later on, they put new cars in there, and they cleaned it up. And right now, taking the subway is a good experience. It's automated. Months and while there was some violence, there was about a year or two ago, and somebody shot up a subway car, but mostly it's safe. And people take it. It's part of their lives to commute. Queens is a commuter community. And I want to take a moment at that because when it was first developed, it was the borough of cemeteries. And so cemeteries in some industrial just over there. After you cross over from Manhattan in midtown, and you start the long trek on Queens Avenue, Boulevard, rather, that goes all the way out to the city line, where Queens is adjacent to what, Nassau County. You have these cemeteries that go on and on. And they started in the 19th century, and they got bigger and bigger. And every ethnic community has its own cemetery out there. And if you wanted to see your relatives, you can go out and it's all labeled. And it's a database where you can look people up and see the graves and all that. It's a real industry, I think. But the problem is that between Manhattan and the residential areas, like Jackson Heights, have miles of cemeteries. Can't they do better than that? I mean, really, in all this valuable property, it's all invested in cemeteries. Well, one of the things, Jay, so your description, I think, is an accurate one, but it's an unusual one where people go back to where they're from. And usually, it's a story of decline. But you just told a story that's the opposite. And I think you're right. I think Queens has made a lot of progress. And the row houses you were talking about really do look very well kept. I'm sure the price is a lot more than it was in your time. But I think they're still affordable, certainly by New York standards. That's very rare. And affordable is a matter of some relativity, of course. But you see a lot of families. You see a lot of kids. And there are parks for those kids. And there seem to be a lot of schools around. There certainly still are a lot of religious institutions. But the cemeteries are still there. And I want to put in a plug for the new LaGuardia, because it used to be when you went to LaGuardia, past cemeteries, and that's about all you saw. And then LaGuardia had not changed much from the New Deal days when it was built. And now they have renovated one of the main concourses. And it's gorgeous. They've done a terrific job. And it's airy. And there's a lot of food options. So it makes some sense to fly into LaGuardia these days. And you're, of course, closer to the city than if you fly into Newark or Kennedy. Yeah, LaGuardia used to be a kind of second-rate airport. And my father used to take my brother and me. We go and we stand next to the fence on the flight path. And we watch the planes come in, by the way, no jets at all at that time. Well, we're living now, which is East Elmhurst, right next to Jackson Heights. It looks like they're going to hit you in the head because they're coming for a landing. They work very close to LaGuardia, actually. Well, remember, too, that it's not too, it's five miles away. And it's Kennedy. John F. Kennedy International Airport, which is the South Particle. Jackson Heights is in the north, near the Long Island Sound. And what do they call that? Fringe Verzano? Or is it Verzano-Narrows Bridge? Fringe Staten Island, right. I know. The one I'm thinking of is the one that goes up north. Well, the Queensborough, which is no longer the... Oh, I know what you're thinking of. It used to be the Triborough. But Bobby Kennedy, it's now named after... The Triborough Bridge is now Bobby Kennedy. Really? Why do they rename bridges like that?   You're really very close. And as you said, the subway goes underground, and there you are in the middle of Manhattan. Yeah, and it doesn't take very long. I mean, from my neighborhood forest hills, Rigo Park, it was, you took the express train, but the thing was like 20 minutes, 25 minutes, right into Manhattan. So there was a real benefit there. And if you could not afford Manhattan, which was always much more expensive to live in and still today, then you go to either Queens or Brooklyn. Now, Brooklyn was an older neighborhood. Downtown Brooklyn was established before Queens. While they were building cemeteries in Queens, they were building downtown Brooklyn. And it was a business district and a lot of good residential neighborhoods. But then the Dodgers left, Jay. And Evans Field came down a tragedy which people have still not gotten over. But a friend of ours, whose name is Danny Greenberg, grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And he likes to say these days, well, it's just a great country. Think of it, the United States of America in one generation from Brooklyn to Brooklyn, because Brooklyn is now as hip as it could be. That hasn't happened to Queens yet. Gentrification isn't quite here yet. Well, like I was saying, they have different profiles, different persona. Brooklyn declined for a long time. You wouldn't want to go there. A lot of terrible, Fort Apache type slums, dangerous. You got out of the subway and you needed police on all sides to protect you. That's not like that anymore. It's gentrified. Friend of mine bought a brownstone in the 70s and he was so excited. But he said, I'm making a bet. I'm making a bet that the Fort Apache line will stay away from me. And the gentrification line, I'll be within it. He was wrong. It turned out the other way. And before you know it, he was in a slum. But I think his brownstone is probably worth a lot more now because the line has gone the other way all over at least that part of Brooklyn. And so, and Queens is different though. I mean, Queens is really middle class. And I would say that it is completely diverse. True. Why? Because the people in the United Nations, you know, in the 50s after the war, they had to have a bedroom community. They could not afford and they didn't want to stay in Manhattan. A lot of them talking about staffers and representatives of all kinds. And so they wound up settling in Forest Hills. A lot of them.  And as a result, you know, my friends, my classmates, were very diverse. This was way back in the 50s when I was a kid. And some people say I'm a kid now. And I have the same sensibilities now. So I really enjoyed that part of it. And it was very diverse. The food was very diverse. You know, the whole experience was very, and the religions were very diverse, although they changed. You know, and that's the piece we should focus on is that as constant as some of these elements in Queens are, they're also dramatically changing. And so in Italian bakery, for example, that really reminds you of what a little bakery might be in Italy. Those are still around. But I think they're celebrated across the lines that you were talking about used to be scary to go off your block. And now people, you know, of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds go to that Italian bakery because they like a particular kind of pastry. And there's a lot of that on the same street. Yeah, everything, anything and everything you want. I wanted to have a conish when I went back in June. And sure enough, the conish place was still there. The only difference was that the person serving the conishes was from Russia.  And I was disappointed in that, but I understood. Queens Boulevard is a remarkable, remarkable phenomenon. I mean, it's so well designed. And I wanted to take a moment and just remind you of Robert Moses. Robert Moses in the 30s. Everybody considered him a dictator, a municipal autocrat, if you will, a corrupt, you know, city official. And yet he built the Bilt Parkway. He built so many roads and well designed. I don't know if he was involved in all of the subways, but at least some of the subways. And he created, what do I call it, the boroughs around Manhattan, if not a good part of Manhattan. And it was towering leaders like that that made New York possible. Right now, two and a half million people live in Queens. And I think they would all say it's a good solid middle-class community worth commuting to. Well, I think we differ about Robert Moses. I mean, there's a play that I guess just came over from England about Robert Moses. And we differ particularly because he did a lot of building of highways and other things across minority neighborhoods. And he paid very little heat to who was living there in order to make what he considered progress. I don't think he was regarded as corrupt in the usual sense of corruption. He just was sort of a God complex. And he wanted to put the roads where he thought the roads ought to go. And in some cities, not just New York, it really led to terrible problems. Putting, I mean, New Haven is one of many examples where there was just a highway right across the Black neighborhoods. And it was kind of the end of New Haven, though it was called the model city for a few years. So a lot of arguments about Robert Moses and about Jane Jacobs on the sort of counter. She was the protester who said, you need neighborhoods. You need people who are out on the streets. It makes it safer and it makes it more colorful and more enjoyable. And I guess maybe we're both in agreement that Queens has a lot of that still. There's still a lot of that, it seems, in Queens these days. But I'm no expert at all. I've just been here for a few months. No, I don't disagree. I agree. He was a bullet in the finish up. And he created these things in the thought, it was a visionary thought. He was wrong, but in the thought that you needed that to develop the city. And he didn't care that it was a Black neighborhood. I'm only as a foil for you. And it's not curses foiled again. I just want to hear you talk about Queens, Jed. Well, I want to talk about Flushing Metal Park for a minute. 1939 World's Fair. They set aside a huge amount of land around Flushing Metal Lake. It was really beautiful in the middle of a pretty dense borough and city. There you have this fantastic open space. And when I was a kid, it was only like a quarter mile, half a mile from my house. I would go down there and play. And they left one significant building after the fair, which was the New York City building. And they made it into a roller rink on one side and an ice rink on the other side. And I was down there every weekend. Me and everybody I knew were down there learning how to skate. And it was a wonderful phenomenon, a wonderful facility for all of us. Flushing Metal Park was part of a sort of depression.  And then you had the neighborhood in Flushing, which was north of that. And then you had this depression. Depression moved around between my neighborhood and Corona, which was an Italian neighborhood. Notice how I still associate the ethnic thing. And in the depression, I mean the depression of the land, between my neighborhood and Corona and Flushing, was where the troops came back after World War II. And there was no housing for them anywhere.  Where do they go? They didn't want to go home. Maybe there was no home to go to. So the government built barracks for them.  And when I was a kid, you could go to the edge of my neighborhood and look down into the depression and see all these barracks. I was there for years, at least five years, until they got settled somewhere else. But that defined Queens. There was so much land, so many homes, these barracks. And then, of course, the developers got the notion and they built everywhere. And part of the building was, as you said, retail and commercial. And from points east of the cemeteries, all of a sudden, Queens took off in the 20s, the 30s, and became a middle-class community. And I think a lot of it, probably including Jackson Heights, was Archie Bunker country. He had to live somewhere. That's probably where he lived. It was either Archie Bunker or next to Elmhurst, maybe in Flushing. And at the north end of that, I'm sure you got to see it or you can go to see it, is College Point, referring to the Maritime College, right on the water. It's where you go if you want to get papers and serve on maritime ships. And over the years, it's had a close relationship with the Coast Guard. That's why I know this. And it's a fantastic institution also, right there in the heart of Queens on water. Beautiful location. You should take your kids and grandchildren out there and take a look at it. You left out Shea Stadium as one of the things that happened since those barracks left. And now it's City Field. So there's depression at City Field, too, these days, given what happened in the playoffs. And then there's the south part of Queens, which I actually used to take my bike to. My buddies and me, we get on the road and we pedal all the way down to Rockaway, which is part of Queens, not too far from the Kennedy Airport. And Long Beach is also a part of Queens, I think. No, Long Beach may be part of Nassau County, but it's right next to it. And there's a bridge between Rockaway and Long Beach. And all these clubs, oh, yeah, we're getting a map of that. There's the bridge. And on the way down there, I forget the name of the highway. There was a highway, two-lane highway, and everybody would go for the weekend and gem up on the highway. And on the highway, there were these fantastic Frankfurter places like Nathan's in Brooklyn. And the number of people that can stuff into these places is amazing. Thousands of people on a Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening enjoying the kosher food. I don't think it's there anymore. I don't think that area could survive as a recreational area with a pressure, the residential pressure coming south. Because the population of Queens is 2.5 million, maybe 3 million now, that's a lot. It's twice or more than all of Hawaii. And there's a lot of pressure for residential. There are a couple of neighborhoods that still do hang on, and they were badly hit by Hurricane Sandy. So there's been kind of a running series almost in the papers about the community and how it tried to help one another out, but they really got hit hard. So can the people been there forever hold on? And you're right. It's very valuable real estate, even though Hurricanes hit it. Yeah, they don't seem to change the value. In fact, maybe they direct attention at it. But we would be remiss if we did not mention of the Queens College by Alma Mater. The Queens College was actually a women's reformatory back in the 30s. And it had one distinctive thing about it. I mean, I don't mean the women who need to be reformed, but the architecture. It was really lovely. And it was reminiscent of like McKinley High School. It was that Arabic architecture from around the turn of the century. Rudolph Valentino architecture. And there were like six big, stuck-old buildings around a really large campus when I went to Queens College. And there was very little new construction going on. And we all went to classes in these old buildings. Little by little, they built more buildings. And of course, they were not Rudolph Valentino buildings. They were brand new modern buildings. And the city really liked Queens College because it had good academic standing. In those days, part of the city university in New York. It was as good as Brooklyn College, which was very good. And the city schools were terrific. Matter of fact, let me share with you that when you finish your second year at Queens College, you had to take a test. It was called the Language, Literature, and Arts Test. And unless you passed that test, you didn't go to your third year. You couldn't do it. You're done. It was just really a lot of pressure on the kids in school. But it was essentially free. And that meant a lot to changing the complexion of New York, changing the prospects for everybody who lived in Queens. As I recall, most people in Queens College came from Queens. So I went back in June, Abbey. I went back to Queens College, which used to have all these big open areas and fields and green grass and these stucco buildings, I told you about. You couldn't even see the stucco building. You had a search for them because they were surrounded by the towering edifices of eclectic. They invented the word eclectic around Queens College. It looked a little like Manoa. I'm afraid to say. But it was so jammed in shoehorn buildings everywhere. I guess that means it's a successful school. Yeah, probably so. So Jay, I learned something important about you from your description of calling the skating rinks. So that explains why you've been on thin ice ever since. And you just got there again with a little slam at Manoa. I wonder if it's still there. If it's still there, you want to take your family and see the city building. And also, I wanted to say that 1939 was only the first of two world's fairs. 64. In Flushing Meadow Park. The second one was in 1964, which was also very popular. And the city building was still standing in 1964. And I was still skating. But by then I had left Queens. And a lot of my friends had left Queens. And I wanted to say that if you went around Queens now, I mean, just kind of hypothetical, you wouldn't find my classmates in Queens. Everybody went to Forest Hills High School, left town. Everybody went to Queens College, including my classmate Paul Simon, left town. And it was a brain drain kind of thing. Queens is a brain drain. And new groups come in, immigrant groups, what have you, they come from other parts of the country. They play the role of the middle class serving businesses in Manhattan. But their kids don't stay. And that's too bad about Queens. You couldn't find any of my classmates in Queens right now. Well, there's always change, particularly in cities maybe. And I think it is surprising how many little kids they are around. And who knows if they're going to be able to stay, if they're going to want to stay. But I think there's a revival of a sort that you touched upon before of Queens no longer being sort of out there and dismissed people, I think are valuing Queens these days, Jay. Yeah. And it doesn't have that kind of special cachet that downtown Brooklyn has, but it's much bigger than downtown Brooklyn. And it has a middle class, solid feeling about it, a diverse tolerance. It's very tolerant. And the borough, my trip in June, very healthy. The businesses were healthy. There were no shuttered stores or anything like that. I don't know. Everything was atomic. And Brooklyn, you can have too much gentrification as I think Brooklyn is demonstrating these days. So it may not be a healthy mix. Well, every borough has its own. And so maybe next time we should do Brooklyn. I'm not suggesting you should move to Brooklyn. Don't do that. But we're only here temporarily and we're enjoying it, but we're also looking forward to getting back home, which we're going to, at the end of December, we'll be back. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the end of December. Anyway, this has been a great discussion. I mean, thank you for suggesting it at night. And it's caused me to look back on my own childhood and try to make this extraordinary jump from where we are. I'm sure you've done the same thing in your childhood places, where you think of a place as you know it today. And then you see like Proust, right? Looking through the keyhole. Remembrance of things past. You look through the keyhole and you see yourself.  You see yourself in another neighborhood with old friends and a life experience that it's not like today, but you're familiar with it. And that's my experience in thinking about Queens today. It's a good way to end this, Jay. Nicely done, but we should continue it. I got more questions about Queens for you. Ask me one more question about Queens. When did you leave? Oh, well, I was in NYU at law school and my first experiences. I moved in with a bunch of guys from NYU who shared an apartment, a big apartment in Forest Hills near my home. And we all studied group kind of thing, and we all took the subway to Manhattan to go to school. But that was not really sustainable. Too many people in too small space. And ultimately, I moved into Hayden Hall, Hayden Hall. I went to see Hayden Hall when I was in New York in June. And there it is. Very nice building right across the street, candy corner from NYU Law School. And that's where I lived. And actually, I never came back. Never came back to Queens. And that was right around the time that Kennedy was shot. So it was at 63. And from there, I lived in a graduate, I was a graduate counselor in an undergraduate dormitory by the name of Joe Weinstein Hall, the founder of May's department stores. And from there, Coast Guard and Hawaii. So I never moved back after Kennedy was shot. Well, we're glad you made it to Hawaii, Jay. Same for you. I didn't know your family originally came from New York. That is really something. And as you talk about free and good education, so my father was a product of CCNY in its heyday and its politically very active heyday. And my mother went to Hunter and they were both very good schools and they were free. This explains a lot. And I had only regard for CCNY. And like Queens and Queens College, it was a brain drain. Everybody left. Very few people stayed around from CCNY. The world was their oyster. It was the Harvard of Manhattan, you know what I mean? But free, a first-class education, paid for by the taxpayers. Who can imagine such a thing? And Hunter was the Radcliffe of Manhattan. Come from good stock, Avi. Thank you. You too. Hey, well, enjoy. We'll talk again soon. Thank you so much. Okay, so stay above that thin ice. Keep moving, Jay. Keep moving. Avi's time for Temporarily in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. Thanks. Bye.


Welcome everybody to the next talk, Hacking Collective as a Laboratory. Our speaker is Martin Zarot, he's from Poland. This talk is about sociology and the talk will offer you an insight on the sociological research that has been done on hacker spaces and hacking collectives. And now I ask you for a warm round of applause to greet Martin. I have a lot of fun. Hi, my name is Martin Zarot. I'm a member of the Warsaw Hacker Space. I'm also a PhD candidate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Warsaw. Before I start, I ask you, please imagine a computer bug. It could be a software bug. It could be an exploit. It could be a hardware bug. It could be the bug that started your hacking career. It could be the bug that you are struggling currently. Please imagine any kind of computer bug. You do not have to be a hacker if you are just interested. It could be a bug that you just read about in a popular press. I do not care. Please imagine, let's 10 seconds, any kind of computer bug. So I guess that some of you, when imagine a computer bug, also thought about how it works. Some of you thought how to stop it working. Some of you thought how to exploit it, how to make money of it or how to make this bug for a good cause or any kind of cause. Some of you also perhaps thought how to make it visible or how to make it invisible or what machines, instruments would it take to make it to change the degrees of visibility? Would it need an oscilloscope? Would it need a server or any kind of software? Perhaps some of you thought about systematic bugs, bugs that are inherent to particular designs. Some of you might have thought about situational bugs that are exceptional, connected with particular sets of constraints that do not happen every time. Obviously, some of those questions are technological questions. Some of those questions might be connected with science or medicine because the question about knowledge is inherently connected with different kinds of scientific, technological, medical reasoning. But there are kind of questions that we, when we start asking them, we come closer to economical issues or sociological issues or philosophical issues. And sociology of science is about what is common for the people who are shared by the same thinking or similar thinking about particular categories of knowledge. So when we start asking questions, who may see that particular kind of bug? Or when we start the questions, what does it take to see that particular kind of bug in a sense of situational setting or sociological setting? Then we are starting to ask philosophical questions or sociological questions. The difference is when a philosopher asks about knowledge, he or she thinks about the individual. And when sociologist starts asking similar questions, he or she thinks about the group. So some of you might have thought about the particular kind of men in the middle attacks, for example, as described at Claude Fuller blog. It's okay. Some of you might have thought about syphilis or maybe not because this is different kind of bug and it doesn't, and it's not that closely connected with computers or is it? So when we think about the bugs or knowledge in terms of sociology of knowledge, we start to understand that learning to see a bug is also about belonging to a particular group. When we start to see different kind of bugs, when we learn how to manipulate them, how to exploit them in a different kind of way, we are also being closer and closer to particular knowledge or particular expert sub-societies or sub-social groups. And obviously the bug is connected with particular setting. It might be situational, but more often than not, it also needs an extra work to make it visible. It doesn't mean that this bug is artificial or natural. It just means that it's not obvious or it requires a special knowledge or a special social setting in order to make it visible. This is one thing that is shared between syphilis and men in the middle attack. They are not visible at the first glance. They need some kind of expert setting in order to become visible. And the sociology of science is about that kind of expert settings. So to see or not to see a particular bug is also to belong or not to belong to a particular knowledge group. And sociology of science has different strains. One strain is proposed by Merton and it works that science was a source of certified knowledge for the rest of society. The science was the only source of knowledge. The other types of knowledge was not certified. The Merton would go crazy if he thought about hackers, but fortunately he didn't have to. Other kinds of sociological thoughts would be proposed, was proposed for example by Bruno Latour and he proposed that technology is society made durable and it means that particular design decisions that were made or particular design decisions that seemed to be random accidental eventually became more and more stable, more and more constrained and more and more embedded into the fabric of society. For example, if we decide where do we put our bridges? If we decide what measures of our networks are enough to ensure privacy or security, we are making long-term decisions that will shape the societies that will come after us. Those approaches are good and many people are working within them with rather interesting results, but I wish to talk about approach proposed by Ludwig Fleck, Polish sociologist, Polish philosopher, Polish microbiologist and he proposed the notion of thought collective. It was in the 1930s, he published in German, so perhaps not all of you might have read about him. So he proposed that thought collective is a group of people who share the similar epistemological approaches. What do I mean if I say epistemological approaches? For example, if certain group of people agree more or less that something counts as a good evidence or something counts as truth or some methods of achieving truths are better or more reliable than other, then perhaps this group of people might be a thought collective. What is more advanced sign of thought collective? It would be the ability to recognize some patterns that would be invisible to other. That kind of pattern might be a syphilis bacteria at the microscope. That type of pattern might be many in the middle attack in the code but it's about seeing the pattern that other group of people would not see and learning to see that pattern is also starting to belonging to that particular group. And we, the sociologists of science, we are somewhat different than our friends from psychology department or our friends in cognitive science department because we think that thinking is a collective endeavor. We do not really believe that people think on their own. We believe that when particular individual starts thinking, he or she is thinking with his or hers books, experiences, histories, biographies and so on and so on. And many more advanced project, for example, open source software or architecture software or Wasserman test to detect syphilis was collective endeavor. And we also think that thinking involves minds but also involves hands and eyes. Sometimes we do not have the idea of solution in our mind. Sometimes we just come upon it with tinkering, with seeing things in microscopes or in code. So how does it work in practice? I spent some years watching and talking and observing my friends from different hackerspaces in Poland and in some neighboring countries. I gathered the data. I got privilege and access to many parts of their private or hacking lives. They talked with me. Then I gathered this data, I analyzed it. The first stage of analyze is called first stage coding. And this is looking for basic patterns, basic biographical patterns, basic situational patterns, basing, for example, group rituals, rather simple stuff. Then, basing on that, I devised some kind of models, I test them, and eventually I publish papers. So this is the classical sociological route of work but some of you might not know it. So what about the laboratory? So sociologists of science since Merton spent an awful lot of time in laboratories because laboratory for a modern society is a special place. This is the place where not only science is made, but this is also a place where future society is kind of shaped up. Not because in the laboratory we could devise any kind of knowledge or not because any kind of truth could be socially constructed no matter whatever, but because many of the decisions made in laboratories have significant political consequences. I'm not only talking about decisions made in programming communities, but it also dates back, for example, to program Manhattan or the Wasserman test for Syphilis. So what is the laboratory? Or what makes the Huckaspace a special kind of laboratory? As a rule of thumb, laboratory is a kind of separated space when you could make mistakes freely. The mistakes made in the open society cost more than mistakes made in the laboratory. And laboratory enables you to kind of limit the space or time or causes in order to manipulate them. Things in laboratory might happen faster, might happen slower, might happen on different scales, for example, in the scale of microscope, in the scale of macro sociological models, and you could, for example, limit some causes. And in the sociology of science, sometimes we say that in the laboratory the first relations are reverted. It means that in the outside world, the bacteria are stronger because they are harder to spot, they are harder to catch, but in the laboratory we could limit them. We could catch them in our networks, in our instruments. What is particular for the Huckaspace or any other kind of informatical technology laboratory that in the case of IT laboratory and Huckaspace in silico is the same as in vivo? It means that there is very thin line between theoretical model and practical application. For example, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, computer model is very much separated than the wet work, the bench work, the real work, whatever you call it. But in the information security, theoretical model could be more or less tested, but in many cases could be tested as fast as you may. There are exceptions, I know about the supercomputers, I know that not all theoretical informatics could be tested on the spot, but as a general principle, it works more or less. The particular laboratory, as we know from FLAC, is often linked with particular thought collective. Thought collective is a group of people that share, as I said, similar epistemological patterns, and in the case of Huckaspace, that kind of hacking thought collective could be recognized, for example, with accepting this principle, is to tinker with something, is to understand with something. It doesn't mean we would go with that after, so don't worry, but it comes with kind of cost because in the observed hacking communities, they are often brilliant engineers, they are often brilliant programmers or tinkerers, I couldn't pay more respect to them, but more often than not, they have some problems with stabilizing the knowledge. Often the manuals or tutorials or documentation provided by Huckas is limited or in the best case scenario, is often linked to the direct project. Huckers do not have much patience or do not put much attention to general principles. This is the difference from many natural scientists. Many natural scientists are looking for general rules, generalizations, whereas Huckers would go for application. For scientists, something is true if we could make a general predictable model and for Hucker, something is true if it works. Obviously, some engineers would do differently, some natural scientists also would do differently, but we would go with it in a moment. But if the Huckers have problems with stability of the products of the Huckers space, what is the most stable product of the Huckers space? I think that the most stable product of the Huckers space are the Huckers themselves. Not many products of the Huckers space have the similar amount of documentation or similar amount of autonomy as the Huckers. You do not need much to operate a Hucker, but you need much to operate the Hucking products. And they are much, how to say it, from the sociological point of view, the Huckers are much easier to handle than Hucking products. But to more comparison with natural scientists, if I compare the data on the Huckers spaces collected by me in several Huckers spaces in the period of three years and so on and so on, with the data on CERN and Max Planck Institute collected by Karin Knosetina, and we have some similarities. For example, compared with physics, Huckers, more often than not, would agree that the knowledge belongs to the whole community. Knowledge would be more distributed, one. And this is not very surprising because we know that open source models or open hardware has some similar roots with physics community in CERN. So the historical argument stands. But also what is less obvious is that Huckers, as well as particular physicists, also like to gossip, to talk about machines. We know that many physical instruments operate more or less or are calibrated more or less and they have good days and bad days. We do not always write about it in scientific papers, but if you remember about the issues of detection of Higgs boson and many false claims or problems with CERN announcement and their own limitations, you would see the trace of us of it. But comparing Huckers with physics is rather obvious. We know that there is a Huckers space near CERN and many of the electronic people or physics people from CERN are members of that Huckers space. It's really nothing new. But what is more interesting is comparing Huckers with biologists from Max Planck Institute is, for example, some biologists agree with the classical Hucking stance that to understand something is to produce that. You do not have to devise a general model, you just need to devise the tools. If you are able to manipulate it, then you understand it. Other thing would be the recognition of authorship in important chunks and the third thing would be the more attention to quick trial and error cycle. In this particular biological setting in the observed period, it was, I'm open to discussion, many of the biologists doing the wet work, doing the bench work, doing the laboratory work, relied on quick trial and error cycle without doing much formal calculations, without resolving much to formal models, just unlike the physicists. Physicists, you know, you need a lot of simulations before you put on your atlas. But this is rather interesting, classical sociological stuff, but let's do something crazy. Let's reverse the thinking. We were looking at the hackers as they were scientists. We have some differences, we have some similarities, but let's look at the hackers as some sort of social syphilis. I'm really sorry for that. We know that syphilis in the time of Fleck shown something about the society. For example, shown that many of respected middle-aged men were not as faithful as they claim to be. It's shown something about the need of public healthcare. It also shown something about who knows, who really knows something about small, tiny bugs invisible to other people. And up to some extent, and this is metaphor, you know, I do not claim that hackers are bacteria. I also think that hackers is a kind of... But... Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Might act as a bacteria in a certain settings in a scale of society. Because they reveal some things that otherwise would be hidden. And what is also a similarity is that hackers do not need a knowledge about the whole system. They do not need to understand the whole setting. Physicists need all the data. Biologists need all the data. But syphilis and hackers need only one access point, one entry point. This is obviously a classical knowledge or asymmetry between attacker and defender. And here I'm treating some hackers as attackers. But for the sake of metaphor, let it be. What if... If some kind of hacking history or history of hackers or sociology of hackers resemble, up to some extent, history of syphilis and biologists, maybe we could also think, or maybe we would see, that some kind of genetics. Genetics of exploits or genetics of hacker spaces. And this is made because people working on security are working on different generations of bugs and evolutions of bugs. And people working on hacker spaces talk about generation of hacker spaces. For example, MaxiGas. But also we know that many of the natural sciences, for example, chemistry or medical data, moved to automation discovery systems based on machine learning. I would be very much amazed if some parties weren't breeding machine learning systems on exploits and patches. We have automatic discovery systems on biology. We have automatic discovery systems in chemistry, in medical data. I'm almost sure that there is a beast in the Google or in the NSA that it's feeding on exploits, that it's feeding on blog posts, and that it's feeding on this presentation at this moment. But here comes the thing or interesting part. I said that hackers sometimes have problems with stability. Reports produced by hacker spaces are less standardized than inscriptions or reports or scientific papers presented by the formal laboratories. It means that knowledge from the formal physics laboratory is much more easier to chunk into machine learning system. It means that it's easier to standardize knowledge and it's me, but on the other hand, as my friend put to me, we're still feeding the computers knowledge about the computers. So it's the translation part is easier. So it goes both ways. But nevertheless, the issue of standardization in this kind, in this part, it's no longer a bug, it's a feature, or it's an issue. Less standardized knowledge, the whole set of blog posts, tutorials, YouTubes, Gossips, CTF reports, whatever, they do not resemble scientific papers, but maybe this is good, maybe this is what we need. So I know that people have found some cures for syphilis. It's good. But I really hope that, and when they found that cure for syphilis, many of the thought collectives collaborated, they merged, they changed, they were forced to collaborate. They need to understand and translate from one mode of thinking, one mode of knowledge production to another. They learned to talk to each other and they created something bigger. I really hope that some hackers would start, or will continue translating to other types of knowledge production. For example, knowledge production by journalists, we know that it is occurring, the knowledge production by the academic people, we know that it's occurring and so on and so on. And the last thing I really hope that unlike the syphilis and unlike the history of Fleck, I really hope that hacking would not be cured because we do not need the syphilis, but we need the hackers. And I really wish on this point, I really wish to express my sincere gratitude to all the participants of my study. For the three years I observed you and you granted me the privilege to be observed. You agreed to give interviews and I'm really grateful for that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Marcin, for your talk and all your insights. We luckily have five minutes left for questions and answers. So if you have any questions, please move to the microphones that we have throughout the room. Please, your first question. Please move close to the microphone. Is this working? Yeah, it is. Okay, so in your experience doing this research, did you ever find hackers in a research lab? And if you found any positive effect of this and if not and you ran a simulation in your head, what do you think would be a positive outcome of having hackers in a research lab? I've run into several accounts, for example, during this Congress when people have two affiliations, they were affiliated in particular hacking collective and then at the same time they were active in the academic field. We know that people exist. I haven't met many of them but I met several scientists turned hackers or hackers learning some things from science and I think this is beneficial. If you are more interested in that, please look into my papers about hacking collective as a trading zone. I have a special part of research done on this translation intergroup issues. Thank you very much. Second question. You said that hackers are like syphilis to the society and I'm sorry but I didn't understand in which way they are syphilis. Can you repeat it? Yeah, of course. This is a metaphor. I really... The hackers sometime in some sense act as a syphilis because first of all, they reveal some things about society that otherwise would be hidden. Second, in order to see the actions of the hackers, you need a different thought collective. And what is peculiar? I haven't talked much about it but this is the moment. In some cases, the same people that are acting would be the same thought collective that would be the cause. And this is characteristic for hackers because some actions done by the hackers could only be understood within the hacking community. So that is the extent of metaphor. This is not about causing harm or any kind of negative stereotypes connected with hacker. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? We still have some time left. So if you have a question or a comment, feel free to move to one of the microphones. It seems to me that this is not the case so please give another warm round of applause to Marcin. Thank you very much for your talk.


I have gone through some submissions, fairly well written I have taken out some four printouts, what I will be doing is the following. So, this is a surprise presentation test you may call it, I will pick out some submissions randomly and invite those people to come here and speak on what they have written. Since they have written whatever they have written very recently it should be reasonably fresh in their mind. So, they should be able to state that it is not expected that you should repeat exactly what you have written that is not required at all. You might like to tell it as a short story. So, you just have to tell your summary and your critique roughly what you have written of course, I will have the advantage of reading what you have written. This is not an examination. So, if at all you do not match anything that you have stated, but use your own words to express yourself is ok. Very obviously, this is not going to be an example of a prepare presentation. A prepared presentation is one in which you spend time you rehearse what you want to speak at home and then come and make a presentation. So, this is more like an impromptu conversation. The idea here is to remind ourselves that while formally we would be making very many prepared presentations, there are routine occasions in life in fact more than the occasions for formal presentations where in informal discussions you communicate your ideas, your thoughts to others. And the point is even in that informal communication you should generally attempt to be as effective as you are when you are prepared to speak. So, this is an example not all of us would be able to do that. Some of us are good short storytellers, some others are reticent and speak very little, but the idea is to open up and try to say things. So, treat this as a sort of short storytelling session. I will time you, you are not limited. Generally try to limit yourself in about 3 to 5 minutes because to read one page actually will take less than 5 minutes, but since you would have the advantage of having your own page in your hand, you would be reciting from memory. Since I am going to pick up people randomly, I will give you a few minutes to think and recall what you have written and what you have seen. So, that you are ready for that. Is that ok? So, about 2 or 3 minutes. I must also tell you that I am glad on one more for one more reason. Today I found a lot more people physically present at 9.30 in the class. So, things are improving I suppose. There are still occasions like our friends are just walking in. You had a class? 8.30 lecture? Oh, you had? Not bad. And what about him? He is looking somewhere else. You also had a lecture? No. About 12 years ago in one of my classes, I had put a box outside. Any late comer had to put in a 10 rupee note inside in order to attend the class. And that money was distributed to people who came early and that that was so effective. Very soon I had zero money in the box and all students in the class. But that is not a very, I mean that that is that is a very sadistic way of doing things. I would rather see that happening voluntarily. All right. So, should I pick out everybody is ready or those who have come in just late. The idea is I will pick up randomly some submissions and those people will have to come here and present their summary and their critique in their own words in 3 to 5 minutes. And those who cannot remember exactly what they have written it is ok, but treat it as a short storytelling session about what you felt about the TED talk that you saw. By the way, how was the exercise? Does everybody feel that you actually benefited by looking at or reading a lecture or listening to a lecture? So, those lectures are good, right? There are 1500 of them. And before beginning these presentation sequences, I would like to tell you one more thing which is quite important from both the technical writing and reading point of view. You see because of the net the amount of overload of information is so much and it is realisably so much. Earlier also if you went to a good library the total number of books even those on topics in which you have interest would be so many that if you were to read all the books end to end it would take a lifetime. Today even if you want to browse through some of the material it may take a lifetime. Now, that creates a problem as I had once mentioned and if you do a Google search you get how many hits 100,000, 40,000, 30,000 answers. And what do you read? The answers on the first page. How many of you go to the second and third page of a Google search? Not bad. How many of you read through entire set of first 15 pages? Nobody. So, you see Google search is so much Google is now determining what we should read. You understand that? There is nothing wrong with it. Google is not particularly a bad intention group, but it is not a well intention group either. In fact, it does not know what exactly I want. It is just looking at a query typically written in a telegraphic English to find out something and give it to you. You are all comprehensive students so you would be familiar with the notions of page ranking and web search and so on. Have you done a course? Shaman's course, how many of you are doing? Only two. My God. Nobody is interested in searching for information useful he looks like. Or maybe that course is not offered in the first year. Is that a first year course? I am surprised. Does Shaman teach only two students? It is not possible. How many students are there in that course? Seven zero. One seven. So, the remaining 15 are not doing this course. Anyway, the point I am making is there is an overdose of information and typically what happens psychologically is when I do a Google search for example, 90 percent of the time I would read through the first set of responses that I get and I will open up something and read it. And because it comes from the great web, I will assume that that is complete and correct information. Even people who read Wikipedia, now Wikipedia is actually a reasonably filtered set of information.  So, let me ask you another question. How many of you have read Wikipedia articles on any technical topic? All of you? Some time or the other. Now, how many of you have gone to the references cited in the Wikipedia article and read all references? So, please understand this. Whenever somebody produces a summary of anything like you have done, the summary is based in this case it is based on a single talk. The single talk itself is based on heavy research that the speaker would have done, but scientific method demands that the speaker or in case of technical writing, the authors list the reference sources. So, you have data and information which is summarized in the form of Wikipedia articles, but you have primary data sources which are listed there and many times those primary data sources turn out to be not primary, they themselves depend upon something else. This is particularly hazard as when you are looking at historical, it says historical reviews, because history is replete with views which are so contradictory, opinions which are so contradictory and facts stated as facts which are so contradictory. That is why scientific method demands that all of us go and look at the primary sources of information. So, just one hand whenever you look at Wikipedia article, particularly when you wish to cite a Wikipedia article in any of your writing, do ensure that you look at at least some of the primary sources behind the Wikipedia article and confirm to yourself that what is written in that article is a reasonable reflection of the facts and opinions mentioned in that primary source that is required. So, by now you would have reversed as a background processing mode, you would have rehearsed whatever you have written. So, let me pick out some random samples. So, the first person I invite is Prakash Kumar Verma. The basic of this state talk was how leaders inspire action. So, means why some leaders are so different, why do they attract so much attention, so much audience, why do some organization are so successful, so so innovative that every product they launch crowd go after them, because they think differently, they think very different from others. All successful organization, all successful people are very different, but very same, they are very different from other crowd which are not very successful, but very same with those people who are very successful. They think they think same way, they communicate the same way that is very different from others who are not so successful. Most of the people think that think and market as what we make, how we make, we never know why we make, why we make something, why we make something, but great leaders, great organizations, they they do not they do not think about means audience want this or the market need this, they make something because they believe what we are making, this will change the world, this will change the course, this will change the course of the world, like with we can take the example of apple, means world neighbor, means crowd never wanted a smartphone, but they they thought that this device will change the world, this device will change the change everything, it will change how we how we see internet, how we see computers. So, they made product for that. There is one other example, Martin Luther came, the Americans Americans never never came to see him, Martin Martin Luther, Martin Luther announced announced that he will deliver a speech, but that time there was no internet there, then how come how come they know the exact time, exact date and gathered in such a massive number. They came because they came because they think what Martin Luther means, means thinking of crowd and thinking of Martin Luther King was same, they did not came there to to see Martin Luther King, they came there because they think what Martin Luther King think. So, this is so this thinking of most phenomenal guys are very different, they they do not think about audience, they do not want to lure audience, they think that this is right, this this should this should happen in society and people who think the same thing they follow them. So, so this this is the gist of whole talk. Thank you Prakash Sharma. I now invite Rinku Shah, she has seen the TED talk on the power of introverts, it is very interesting. Good morning all of you, I am going to talk about the title that is power of introverts, this one is yeah it is a this talk is given by Suzanne Kane and basically the summary on this is like she tries to talk about that intro being an introvert is not being bad, do not feel bad being an introvert. So, what most people think what an introvert is is a person who is very shy is considered to be an introvert. But what she says is introvert is not about shyness, it is about being alone and not being in groups, you do not love being groups, you like to be in yourself itself. So, it is not about shyness, do not try to compare it as a shy person. And then she tries to talk about like what the current scenario is like most of the institutes, schools, workplaces, etcetera they always try to amper the performances of introverts, they try to get extroverts into managerial positions because they think that extroverts are the people who can do better. But she said through an interesting research by Adam Grant, she says that Adam Grant has found out that most introverts turn out to be the best leaders.  You think that you are what are you thinking is the best and you try to amper the ideas of the others. Whereas most introverts try to think in their own minds, they keep taking ideas from other people and finally they can come up with good ideas and can become good leaders. That was the basic summary. Then she also talked about that being an introvert is also not the best thing. Extroverts also have their own good qualities. So, at the end she says she summarizes that you have to be to be a social to get a social performance, you have to be somewhere between introvert and an extrovert. So, that was the basic summary of what she said. And the critics on this is like after listening to the video, I guess every introvert gets motivated and gets relieved of the pain of being sidelined by the society. So, that is one good critique on this talk. And secondly if she would have added something about how to reach that balance between the two, then it would have been useful. That is all of the talk. Thank you. Being in life is a perpetual problem. All of us try to achieve it, introvert and extrovert. I hope you understand the point that the speaker has made in the critique that she presented. There is nothing wrong with people who are introverts, there is nothing wrong with people who are extroverts. But just as introverts feel that they are left out and therefore they need to participate and by such participation they only expand their own horizon. That is what the author is saying. But what the author or the speaker has not explicitly stated is the requirement for all extroverts of this world to occasionally sit back and do some introspection. Extroverts very rarely do introspection. Most extroverts turn out to be stubborn. They love their own ideas and they fall in love with themselves. So, that is not a good sign. You need to listen to others. You need to have an open mind and whatever you listen to, you need to reflect upon it back home. So, you see it is not 24 hours that we are in touch with somebody else or the other. Neither for 24 hours we are isolated. Sometimes we are alone. We have our own private space in our room, wherever or we can be alone even in a crowd if we just go into some thinking and sometimes we are forced to be in crowd independent of whether I am an extrovert or introvert. I will have to face both the situations and that is why this balance. In fact, the philosophies of the whole world including the Indian philosophies suggest that the golden mean in any activity is best. Extreme of any kind is not good. Let me invite Pankaj Gayakwar who has written on the topic of a mystery box by J. J. Adams. How many of here have heard the name J. J. Abrams? J. J. Abrams. He is one of the famous Hollywood movies slash series director and he has given the talk on the mystery box. It is about a box given to him by his grandfather when he was some like teenager or something, 5 or 10. Then he always the box always among him what is inside. It was a simple box kind of like this size and he always used to think about what can be inside that box. But he never opened that box because he think that the box is the key to the mystery factor. The mystery factor is the one which leads to the imagination and creativity. The creativity is the factor in the entertainment industry and in design industry. If you think about something or blank annulus consider like this some blank annulus is there and you have no idea what you are going to do. But if you start asking about questions what can be designed, how can be designed, which can be factors that I can represent on a blank annulus. Then your imagination power starts boosting up. So this is the factor he considered for his entire life, for his career. So as we know he is famous suspense slash thriller and mystery creator. All of his movies are based on like mysteries and all. Even if you see one then you will be eager to watch what can be the sequel. And regarding that box it is a simple tenants box. If I keep a box here empty box then how many people can imagine that this box is empty. Hardly 5 or 10 percent think that this box is empty. So the people who think that box is empty they have stopped imagining anything. They cannot imagine that there will be something positive or some good can be in that box. So this is kind of negative people. So they cannot lead their imagination power towards its best. So they can just stop thinking. But if you start imagining something good is in that box and if you keep on trying then many things can possibly fit in that box you can think about. So these are the things which leads to your creativity. And creativity is the key, creativity and curiosity is the key in our overall growth. In education what we are doing we are asking questions about certain phenomena how, what, who, why, when. So these questions come from your mind that what can be inside, what are the factors behind this phenomenon. So like that if you go on keep things in a mystery mind and if you go on exploring on these things then certainly at some point you can come up with good design and become a good designer and creative thinker. As I said there are two interesting aspects. One is sometimes mystery is better than knowledge because it can spawn off a lot of thinking inside. The more important thing is to be imaginative. So you can be imaginative not just about things which are mystical but even otherwise things which are very visible. And being imaginative is what is required to be creative. Good work. So let us go to the next person. I must admit that the next four are not strictly random samples because as the submissions were coming late night I think the flood started around 11.30 in the night, continued. Unfortunately we had forgotten to set the notification flag properly. So I started receiving mails and unfortunately all teachers of that course started receiving mails. So I got a very angry email at 2 o'clock from a teacher saying what is happening. So let me now invite Bharat Botu Kumar. Good morning everybody. So I had written about Maya Penn, a girl who was age 13 and she gave a talk and her talk was available on TED. So the talk begins with an animation that she has herself created and it is about Malicious Dishes. The animation says about Malicious Dishes. So Malicious Dishes is actually a restaurant where there is a customer and the waiter and he gives a menu and that Malicious Dishes, that menu consists of dishes like corrupted data, RAM, all this. It has a list of corrupted data, corrupted RAM, RAM sandwich, sprinkled with corrupted data and like that. So basically what it says is, so then she comes, then after that Maya comes on stage and she begins like, I started drawing since the, since the time I held a crayon. So she likes drawing. So she started drawing since the time she held a crayon and she had made animated flip books since she was 4 and she was inspired to become an animator by a TV series which showed that, showed jobs that most children don't know about. So based on that when she saw that what an animator is, animator, animator makes things that she sees on TV, she was inspired to become an animator. So then she started creating things and her dad taught her how to rip a computer and to join a computer again, reassemble the computer when she was 4. And her journey goes on, she went on to begin, then her trust comes like she wanted to and there were pieces of fabric around her house. She thought, okay, let me join this, let me try to make a ribbon, let me try to make a scarf with whatever fabric that was available in her house and she started sporting those. Some people like the way she dressed and liked the way that she had made pretty things and that made her give an idea, that instigated an idea that let me sell cool stuff, what I make, let me sell it. So she created a website, she learned HTML5 and she created a website in which she sold her pretty things and that website she made when she was 8. By the time she was 10, Forbes magazine contacted her to feature her in their article, in their cover page for being the most successful child. Even though for her business she doesn't know what, she doesn't know the dynamics of business, she doesn't have a business plan and definitely her parents are behind her to support her all through her endeavours. The best thing is like she has, she is environmentally very keen, she is a keen environmentalist and she wanted to give back to the environment. So whatever her proceeds are that comes in through her business, 10 to 20 percent she gives to charities, environmental charities, local and global charities, everything. So she believes in giving back to the society and whatever clothes she makes are all eco-friendly clothes because there is like the so according to her that clothes that we wear, the bleach, the dyes and all spoil the environment and that was the reason she made her clothes line which are eco-friendly. So by the age of 13, now she is 30, when she gave her talk in December 2013, she was 13 years of age and she has a company for, by her, she has a website, she has a clothes line, she has a company, she learns, she is learning python and javascript. So she is just developing herself and anyway she is in a Forbes list. So why I took that was when a 13, a little girl like that can do so much and we are at ages of about 25 and we are still at IIT and you are listening to me. So that's it. And the best part was the parents did not kill her creativity. When she was holding the crayon and when she was trying to make pretty things, her parents did not say, let her be, what she likes, let her follow her heart and they just let it and they never thought that she has done something. It will not go on sale, nobody will sell. So basically what I am trying to say is they did not suppress her, they just let her be. So that was something that I liked. So that's it. Thank you. As I said it's truly an inspirational story. In fact if we look around we'll find such inspirational people amongst ordinary folks that we know. We generally do not try to find out such things but these motivations are extraordinary. The bottom line as he said and is absolutely right is that people so young can do so much then we have a much greater responsibility to do something much more. It is not people who are young who do so much. You will also come across people who come from such humble backgrounds and have struggled so much in life and yet they have achieved extraordinary thing. That kind of thing puts a greater onus on us who are perhaps better looked after thanks to God, thanks to parents, thanks to our own self. We have a greater responsibility to do things. Sometimes there are hazardous mistakes that happen when you write your views. So I'll read out the critic which has written. The talk is inspirational and motivational when a girl of just 13 can accomplish so much and give back to the society it instigates us to take stock of our life. The verb instigate is generally not used in a positive sense.  So I am sure this is not what is meant so you might want to choose a better word. By the way such things happen because as I said and as you all have noticed if I write something it is very difficult for me to correct things either semantically or syntactically and that is the reason why it is important that for any technical writer you always get it read by someone else. The next sentence in spite of extremely good intentions has become very funny because of the loss of just one word. The next sentence is of course there are achievements as well as are quite evident from our talk that is ok. The most important thing I learnt was that we should snub out the inherent creativity and inquisitiveness that are present in every child by making them join the rat race for excellence. You get what the sentence reads? We should snub out the inherent creativity and inquisitiveness that are present in every child by making them join the rat race for excellence. They should be given a chance to blossom that is the next sentence. The reader thinks that the only way to blossom is to join rat race and the only way to correctly shape the minds of young is to do exactly what he said exactly opposite of what he said and what the talk says. What is the missing word? Not. The most important thing I learnt was that we should not snub out and in this case I would think that the knot deserves to be underlined that is that is important. Now again it is very obvious from his talk that this is not at all what he intended to write intended exactly the opposite but it got written. It not only got written in his hand written thing it got typed also. What it means is when we type it should not be a blind type piece job that we should do but we should actually read understand and then type and correct ourselves. I had a fantastic type s who was typing my Ph.D. thesis. In those days you did not have Xerox and so on so Ph.D. thesis had to be typed on a you write with stylus on those cyclostyling what you call forget the name and then you take cyclostyle copies of that. So the typing there is very difficult you have to remove the ribbon from the typewriter and type it such that it actually works like a stylus. So if you make a mistake it is very hazardous you have to put a reading and then retype and you have to take out the whole stencil from the typewriter and so on very tough job. So you need a good typewriter type piece my type piece was good. So while typing I was sitting next to him he suddenly smiled loudly and I said what happens as Prasap Ph.D. you have written vision twice in the last one page and both the spellings are wrong. No not vision visual or something. So I said oh my god we should stop and correct he says no no no they have been corrected. He could correct while typing and he was just a typist. That is the kind of skill that we need to acquire. So please correct the not very important. Let me invite Dipali Gupta. Good morning everybody. So the title of my talk is the magic of Fibonacci number that was given by Arthur Benjamin. So he starts by saying that the mathematics today is full of patterns and what why we study maths why most study why most students study maths is because they have to pass an incoming exam or it will be needed in some next class. So we forget to enjoy we forget the joy in doing mathematics and in finding out patterns. So he presented one very beautiful example and very simple which is Fibonacci numbers and it very frequently occurs in nature like the number of petals in a flower is a Fibonacci number and the number of spirals that occur in a sunflower is also a Fibonacci number. So he tries to present some of some more patterns which can be achieved by just these Fibonacci numbers. So as we know these numbers are just can just be obtained by adding the previous numbers but when we when we look at their squares and try to add them like 1 plus 1, 1 plus 2 and so on we get another Fibonacci number like 4 plus 1 is 5 and then we add 4 plus 9 which is 13 which is again a Fibonacci number and then we try to add consecutive squares of these numbers like 1 plus 1 plus 4 which is 6 which is not a Fibonacci number but we when we multiply 2 and 3 which are Fibonacci numbers we again get a cad of Fibonacci number. So what author tries to present is just by doing this simple arithmetic we can obtain many beautiful patterns out of these. So what he tries to do is we can learn mathematics not just for application or just for calculations but for inspiration also. We can just try doing some simple arithmetic to see how beautiful nature is how these beautifully occurring patterns occur in nature. So that was the gist of his talk but I would like to say that what presently students do is they are so busy in making such complicated systems that we just forget we just ignore these patterns which occur in nature. So that is all. So how many of you know that Fibonacci numbers were not invented by Fibonacci 1, 2, 3, 4. Do you know that more than 300 years before Fibonacci was even born the Fibonacci sequence and the Fibonacci numbers were extensively discussed in the Indian mathematical literature. So Hemchandra numbers was the name given one time and now there is proof that even before Hemchandra in fact Hemchandra himself has quoted somebody else in the literature that he has written it has been proven that it has been used. The link has also been established that through the Arab traders and the Arab scholars who came here and knew about this work and translated into Arabic and Fibonacci happened to read the Arabic Arabic works translation into European languages that he came across this and he discovered just to set the record right. In fact the teacher coordinator of this course Professor Ram Subramaniam is actually one of the ardent researcher in trying to locate and appropriately allocate the credit for those Indian scientists particularly mathematicians who have actually discovered or invented a whole lot of things just for your information I thought I will let you know. Those of you are interested might read the Wikipedia article on Fibonacci series and the associated cross references you will find a lot of things here. Let me quickly invite Rahul Dev Parashar Good morning everyone that talk was about do schools kill creativity. So in that talk speaker says that nowadays schools are more focusing on the like only education not on the creativity these both things are completely different like part of body one side is creativity one side is educational like whatever we are learning things so what we are taught like mathematics and all the basic things but not how to be creative so a child is like not afraid of doing anything and he is creative in doing everything but we are killing the creativity so he takes a story that he takes few examples about showing that child are more creative and by the age of 15 they lost most of the creativity finally he takes some random examples but I do not think they are related with this theme like schools are killing creativity and he says that job of the schools are only producing university professors I do not think it is a well said thing so my critique on this is pointage find that schools are killing creativity but we cannot say that we should remove the educational system because it is providing the fundamental for students to build other things on that if we do not provide this educational system and let them do whatever they want to do then we cannot give them a flow like to learn not anything so saying that we should remove the educational system is not a good idea on that basis and saying that the job of the school is only to produce the university professor is I do not think it is any way correct finally makes one more point that funny point that men's on earth are killing other species if we remove the educational system from earth then earth will be more florist then it is now so it is I think well said okay so thank you everybody who participated I would just take two more minutes to emphasize a few things one is that you would notice that in an impromptu conversational speaking like we just organized it here people spoke but everybody who spoke here would have gone back and felt that he or she would have done better had she rehearsed a bit more that is the point I wanted to make that informal presentations you have to repair yourself and that preparation has to be fairly thorough including a rehearsal I would suggest two rehearsals one alone in front of a mirror preferably with that every corner which what I did by the way I think was a young teacher and the second in front of a small group so that the mirror perfection is achieved the second thing which Mr. Prakash with noted great delight I agree with him that at least the samples that we have got so far the more or less they are not on heavy technical aspects there are n number of technology related TED talks but most people have preferred human related TED talks which shows that humanity among us is alive and that's a great thing that's a great thing to understand so with this we close this session the next week is mid-same there is no mid-same I repeat so relax and do your work and we will meet immediately after the mid-same where I will announce the progression for the remaining time. Thank you.


When I went and signed with the Yankees, there were only six Red Sox left in from the 2014.  That's it. So it was a very tough decision because I knew I was the fan favorite and at the end of the day and back in those days, your team could only negotiate with you for six weeks after the season. There was not one discussion with the Red Sox.  So I called Detroit. It just lost 120 games. I knew they had some good players. Lakeland's right down the street from me. I'd like to come play for you and they're like, we would love to, but we have a young kid named Curtis Grannison that we are going to give a chance to this year. I thought the Dodgers were going to work out, but they just signed for a call. So now it's down to Boston and New York. Never did I think I would go to New York, especially never did I think Boston would let me become a free agent. So I started talking to Cashman and I told him when I wanted to make it worth my while, Boston hasn't offered me anything. I think they were going to offer me four year 40. They said they were going to offer that to me a year ago. I bought a house, everything. They haven't been very truthful to me. I know they're busy. I know it's a business and I know they really want to get me for one year for maybe $5, $10 million. Jacobi Osbury's coming. So I started talking to Yankees, got the four year 52 and it was a very tough decision, but I've been in the game, played with Kansas City, played with Oakland, played with Boston. I was going into my 12th year in the big leagues or so. I get it and what we veteran players really want is just straight up honesty. When I was with Detroit, I was told, thank you for your service, but you're not coming back. At least I knew I could start shopping around and that's the greatest part that I think GM and players can get along. Hey, let's be honest. We know it's a business. Let's figure it out.


Candida lipolytica has successfully produced a biosurfactant with desirable characteristics such as high yield, low cost, and non-toxic nature. This biosurfactant can be used in various applications where low cost and efficient surfactants are required. This article was authored by Raquel Deniz-Rufino, Giuliana Mora de Luna, Dalba Maria de Campos Takaki, and others.


The all-progressive Congress has suspended its state Congress in all your state over alleged fortune of documents meant for the exercise and other irregularities. The chairman of the Patis Keerthikar Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee, Meem Balabuni, gave the order for the suspension. He has also raxed the state Congress committee to fly to Abuja for further directives. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.