Well, a dear archaeologist of Europe, I love you all very much, but most of you have no idea on what international law is all about. Although many of you might have high or at least some expectations on what international law can do for us, especially in this room because you showed up for a session called A Roadmap Towards a Global Convention. So what I thought I'd better start this lecture with some explanation on the key essence of international law and then move on to the key question what can international law do for us. Then elaborate a bit on what might be a good strategy to undertake some action regarding international cooperation. We might end up with a roadmap towards a global convention, but I shouldn't be too optimistic about that. Before drawing such a roadmap, it might be wise to give some thoughts on the need of a new global convention. What do we actually want to achieve? Ladies and gentlemen, in order to make you familiar with the principles of international law, I chose to highlight three historical events dated 1648, 1885 and 1946. And I start in the middle in the 19th century. In 1985, at the invitation of Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of a unified Germany, an international conference was held in Berlin and its outcome, not surprisingly called the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as a formalization of the so-called scramble for Africa. This conference was held in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, which eventually eliminate or overrode most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance. In 1885, the European powers divided the whole continent, even though in large parts of this continent, no European ever set a foot. Still, these lines on these maps in Berlin became a reality soon enough. And after a period of decolonization, we ended up with a fundamentally changed organization of African society. In general, a tribal-based order had been replaced by a nation-based system. And the recent elections in Kenya show that this is not without problems. These tribal forces are still relevant. But on the other hand, the African football cup shows that the process of nation-building has become reality even within, from an African point of view, these more or less random lines on a map, which has been drawn by some Europeans in the 19th century who had no idea what they were deciding about. This is a curious situation, I would say. And now you can feel proud of being a Cameroon and playing for the Cameroon national team. And so nationalism becomes self-fulfilling prophecy. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, as we are used to it, and we find it quite normal, but, and Michael Shanks was referring to it yesterday, it's only since a relatively short period of time that the world order, the organization of our world community, has been put into a nation-based system. This being, in itself, a system of territories. And the African example makes it clear, but it's true for the rest of the world. The stories of Asia and the Americans are different, but the system of nation-states has become reality in those continents as well. This modern state system was a European intention. When we go back in history, the system was more or less invented in 1648 at the peace treaties of Westphalia, hosted by the cities of Munster and Osnabruk. Thus ending a devastating 30-year war which raged throughout Europe. Lots of things can be said about this. And as always, we see a development in thinking which led to these peace treaties. And afterwards, we see a development of how it went on. But in the literature on the development of international law, it is generally accepted that in 1648 European powers agreed upon a totally new system of political order, later called the Westphalian sovereignty, based upon a concept of co-existing sovereign states. Interstate aggression was to be held in check by a balance of power, and a norm was established against interference in one another's domestic affairs. As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order. So these key principles of the peace of Westphalia are acknowledgement of the territorial sovereignty of states, and the fundamental right of a political self-determination, including the choice of religion, a legal equality between states, and the principle of non-intervention. Matters of war and peace have always been a main driver for the making of international law, and these bloody 30 years of law of war had such an impact and had such big disadvantages for all parties that the minds were set and ready for something else. Actually, the negotiating parties taught that these principles of non-interfering with each other would prevent us from having these terrible wars again, alas history proved otherwise. So we're stuck now with a nation-based system, and Sneszka Aquatvili this morning was referring to it, and he said, well, this nation system is being challenged right now, from upward and from downward. But we're stuck with this system, and as with all systems, it's not perfect. We have something to repair. There are certain matters which cannot be dealt with within this system. This repair action, actually the Resonator of International Law, is repairing the nation-based system, and I know there are nationalist movements who deny the necessity of international law, well, what can I say, but they're wrong. There are things in life you simply cannot deal with when you stick within the borders of some territory, large or small. Whenever I ask my students at Leuven University the question on why do we have international law, always at first they come up with very fine ideals, which help us moving on towards a better world. And of course it's a good thing that they react that way. Actually, they should react that way, certainly at that age, but the truth is much more down to earth. When you travel from one country to another, when you make a phone call or send a postcard, when you buy a foreign product, when you import goods, you should realize this is possible, because there are rules that make it so, and in this room right now are many nationalities present, and there are rules that facilitate this. In fact, that is the first answer to the question, why do archaeologists need international law? Well, because everyone needs international law, and you need to come to Maastricht and listen to what I have got to say. The mere existence of national states and international relations of whatever kind entails the existence of international law, as the ancients Romans knew, whenever there is a society, there will be law, that is Cicero. And the absence of a single overarching authority is perhaps the most noteworthy characteristic of international law. It's as simple as that. We don't have a world government, we don't have one. We don't think we should have one, that's another question. Okay, now it's time to switch to another important event in history, and it's pretty well known under the name World War II. This war and the post-war period gave a tremendous boost to the development of international law. Actually, it looks like a bit like an explosion of international law, actually more than we can handle. And as you know, the most important organization in the field of heritage protection are of course UNESCO and European scale, the Council of Europe and the European Union. So, well, let's focus on them. The founding of these international institutions are a reaction to World War II. It's good to know that, but it is a different reaction than had been done in previous times. And this I find fascinating and actually I find it spectacular and unique in history. Think about UNESCO, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization. I repeat, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization talks about the need of such an organization went on during the war and it was agreed upon during a conference in San Francisco in the spring of 1945. The world was still in a big turmoil and at that moment in time the allied parties thought of an international organization whose aim is to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through soft values like education, the science and culture. Think about that, spring of 1945, spectacular. And it's more spectacular, they realized an organization that and we can be critical about UNESCO, but go back to these ideals, think about that. In the year 1946 the Treaty of the Founding of UNESCO was signed. Another event took place in the same year. A well-known British leader of the conservative party held his famous speech to the academic youth of the University of Zurich. I wish to speak to you about the tragedy of Europe. As you know, Winston Churchill spoke with a strong Dutch accent. There is, I won't go on like that. There is a remedy which would in a few years make all Europe free and happy. It is to recreate European family as much of it or as much of it as we can and to provide it with a structure under which it can dwell in peace, in safety and in freedom. We must build a kind of United States of Europe. And a little bit further, he said, the first step is to form a Council of Europe. Read this speech. Read this speech. And I assure you, these quotations are not out of context, as Mr Nigel Farage is trying to convince of us. Think of it, this is the same Churchill who had nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. The idea was brought further to conference like the one in The Hague in 1948, chaired by the same Winston Churchill. Watch his speech on YouTube. What do you do? It's on YouTube. The Zurich one is not. And of course it could happen because there was a new kind of political will all over Europe. Men like Winston Churchill, Conrad Ahnauer, Robert Schumann, Alcide de Casperi, Jean Monnet, Paul Henry Sparck, these men, they choose to overcome differences and feelings of hate and revenge. And they knew that if they would connect their economies of their nations to one another, the chance of war would be far less. And the first step was to come up with the European coal and steel community, which was an organisation of then six European countries to regulate their industrial production under a centralised authority. This community was the first international organisation to be based on the principles of supranationalism and started the process of a formal integration which ultimately led to the Maastricht Treaty. We are today celebrating and the European Union, Lisbon Treaty. In fact, it forms a step away from the non-interfering principles of Westphalia. Voluntarily, nations handed over a piece of their sovereign powers to an international organisation for the benefit of all. This organisation was first proposed by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann as a way to prevent further war between France and Germany and he declared his aim was to make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible. If you have no power over the resources of war, that was clever thinking, that was clever thinking. So we entered into a long process toward connecting the economies of the European nations toward a common market and that was, of course, a difficult process. It was a hard economy, what it was all about. And Snezka, quite frankly, has been talking about it and she made a remark that these cultural articles should have been in the Treaty of Rome already, but of course they weren't. They weren't ready to do it and as you pointed out also there was a parallel tragedy as well and things might come together now. Churchill's initiative led in 1949 in London to the founding of the Council of Europe so that was a soft line. The hard line was connecting these economies but at the same time there was a soft line. But the Council of Europe, an international organisation who stated the aim is to uphold human rights, democracy, rule of law in Europe and to promote European culture. And that's 14 members cover and covers approximately 820 million people. Unlike the EU, the Council of Europe cannot make binding laws. It lacks this supranational power but it does have the power to enforce select international agreements, selected international agreements reached by European states on various topics. Doing so, the Council of Europe has been playing a pioneering role in making international agreements on the protection of these soft values like nature and heritage. That's why these heritage conventions are with the Council of Europe. So that was a good thing, this pioneering role. At the same time connecting the economies and there was another line connecting these. Keep this in mind, the Council of Europe is still the home base of the Valletta Treaty and the main objectives of the Council of Europe are human rights, democracy and rule of law. So always connect the subject of archaeology to these objectives. So what our EAA President, Philippe Criado Boado writes in his candidate statements makes sense. He wrote that the EAA amidst the current complex geometry and problems of Europe must faster the ideal of a trans-European value exchange solidarity communication and openness. He is thus making a connection with the ideals of post-war Europe. He's not here, I don't know if he knows, I think he knows. Cannot ask him right now. Because there is where we find the legitimation of our international agreements on archaeology. Let's cherish them, it's our home base. And this is one of the reasons that I as a member of EAA gave my vote to Philippe Criado Boado. He was casting my vote. I won't bother you too much with the theory of international law but it's good to know that we see a clustering of five, and now it's becoming a little boring, five reasons for international cooperation, international law and they're all relevant to us. It's war and peace. Most of the time, most of the time you are reaching international agreement after a war. It might be sensible to reach an international agreement preventing a war. That was some kind of a new concept. And of course there are rules how you fight a war. So that's of course there are the seas, the air and the outer space. The nation system is not out there. We don't have sovereign right on the seas. Economics, just trading, that's relevant for us. There's a lot of illicit excavations and the trading of these artifacts. Protecting the environment. Of course it's no use as the Netherlands becoming climate neutral if other countries don't. It's so obvious. International crime, when you want to cut, you want to cut. When they go across the border, after they murder someone, you want to get to them, don't you? I'm using the male phrase on that example. Human rights, the human rights that's of course the students in Leuven. They always start with the human rights. Okay. Oh no, go the wrong way. I take out this one. I find it such nice. And I realize you already seen these slides. You were... Mara Librem. This was about the situation in 1950. This is... There were no... The territories were not at sea. And then this happens. We got a united nation law, the sea conference. This become... And now we end up with this. It's an explosion of international... And this is one of the topics, one of the topics. So we related this as well. I'm not going to explain the system. I know the system. You can ask me. Here. Here is what... This is also part of the explosion. Well, there are a lot of international conventions on heritage, I would say. I don't know if we got a lack on internet. And to get a grip on that, I know... There's nobody in this room. I teach these conventions. And I'm professionally... I'm working with these conventions. And even I don't get a grip on them. There's so many words. There's so many words. How do they work out? How do they... Pretty complicated, I would say. But it's... The UNESCO conventions, they really match with these reasons for international convention. The war issue, the environmental issue, the illicit trade impetus. It's about economy and trade. That's the human rights issue. We interlink with these reasons. Okay. Where am I? Of course, we celebrate 25 years of Valetta right now. And I have to pay some attention to it. ESC has done so when we had our 20th anniversary and we had a publication on it and a symposium in Albania. So now it's 25. I think we're going to reach 30, for sure. Yesterday, Jors Gasselmans mentioned that it is probably the most successful or the most influential heritage convention of the Council of Europe. I think he's right. And I'm using the same phrase quite a lot. But this statement is probably more based on a feeling than on facts. The truth is we simply don't know how this piece of international law is working out in 45 countries who ratified it. We just don't know. The Council of Europe has a task to have an eye on this. But they have no resources to do so. ESC is trying to do a bit, but we need money for it also. We ended up not knowing how this convention works out. Okay. Well, we got a good feeling about it, so we might go on. And a couple of weeks ago, I took the trouble of rereading the text of the Velletta Convention and the explanatorial report. And I must say, well, at some articles, it had gone a little bit out of date. Today, we might use other words. But in general, I think it's still pretty good and useful. And you always can go and read the Farah Convention, which came on top of it and gave actually new meanings to the words of the Velletta Convention. Let's cherish that and do with it what we can. Ladies and gentlemen, these above mentioned conventions are usually called hard law. Well, this means conventions or treaties that are legally binding between sovereign states. Next to that, we have an overwhelming amount of so-called soft law. Soft law, declarations, resolutions, charters, codes of conducts, guidelines, and just road maps, agenda, strategic plan, etc., etc., regarding the importance of heritage. The term soft law refers to quasi-legal instruments, which do not have any legal binding. And I hope that I'm not offending someone, but the ICUM is Lausanne Charter for the Protection and the Management of the Archaeological Heritage, which was mentioned in the introduction text. It was new to me. What does that mean? I didn't know these words. It kind of surprised me. I didn't know. I should feel ashamed. I don't, but this illustrates an important point I want to make. It's not so much all these legal texts, which are important, but what people do with it or to be more precise, what we do with it, and how are they being brought to life? This is as much true for soft law as it is true for hard law. A question to you. Fingers up. Who knows the Venice Charter? Who's familiar with the Venice Charter? Who knows? I'm going to have a hard time making my point now. Who knows the Granada Treaty? Who's familiar with the Granada? Just about the same amount of people. I think the Venice Charter has been far more influential than the Granada Treaty. The Granada Treaty is hard law. The Venice Charter is some architects who joined in Venice in 1961 and came up with the declaration. This declaration has been of a big influence to the restorations throughout Europe and I think all over the world. This has been a pretty influence. It was just soft law. My point is it's not so much about soft law or hard law, because as we know it is inevitable that the wording of these hard law conventions are pretty soft. It's about soft values and the conventions have to leave a lot of room for nation states to make decisions on how to protect the heritage and to illustrate it. I made a first draft. I'm going to help you. I'm skipping that. I made the first draft on how a global convention for the protection of archaeological heritage might look like. There it is. Pretty good work, eh? It's all my words in there. This is a good beginning, I would say. It's a good beginning. Yeah, sure. What do you think? Good beginning? Yeah, of course. Well, it's more than that. Actually, this is a quotation of the Articles 5 and 7 of the World Heritage Convention. You know that, Chris. I know you know. The Articles 5 and 7 of the World Heritage Convention, which counts at this moment 193 party states. Think of that. 193 out of 197 states have signed and ratified this text. This is hard law. This is valid. I just replaced the words cultural and natural heritage for archaeological heritage. And I think I'm entitled to do so. Archaeological heritage, after all, is surely a part of cultural heritage, so it's legally correct what I did. But what do we do with these words? What do these words mean in practice? And what would we gain if we replace these words with other words who might be more specific on the archaeological issue? Of course, all these states who joined up with World Heritage Treaty, what did they have in mind? It's all about the World Heritage List, becoming a World Heritage List. There's a lot of people who want to be important. I'm important also. My piece of real estate is as important as the pyramids in Egypt or Stonehenge or Machu Picchu or Easter Island. And we forget about the other articles. But they're there, legally binding. Okay, might be a chance. And let's not forget about the other UNESCO Convention on Archaeology. This is the one. The Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, 2001. This is purely about archaeology. Until now, only 51 states have joined, only two in Asia. And how does it work in practice? I'm pretty much involved in the ratification implementation of this convention in the Netherlands. And we've had a hard time finding good examples of the profitable working of this convention in practice at this point. I'm almost there. I just want to sum up a few remarks now. Eight, got eight remarks. One, realize that international law is there to organize, repair the disadvantages of the modern world order of nation. It is not something you can turn to if you're not having it your way in your own country. Two, use the tools you already got, the World Heritage Convention, the Valetta Convention, the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, make a life what you already agreed upon. There are a lot of deaf words waiting for us. Know how the conventions work out in practice and use that information for appropriate action. Confront the people who you have to confront with these deaf words and say, well, they're dead, but you signed. This has been negotiated upon. Word for word has been negotiated upon that. And we voluntarily said, well, we agree upon. We ratified. We put it in a, well, that must mean something. You can remember people. That's what we've got to do. So this hard law often turned to be pretty soft and there's a task for us to take up. Four, influence and strengthen the international organization with deal with heritage. And I'm talking about UNESCO and Council of Europe. They are understaffed and badly financed and they're so easy to be criticized. Well, it's better to help them to do that job than just putting your wishes and your bad temper on their table. And understand why they are dealing with heritage protection. Make a link with their objectives. Five, don't forget, use your influence on a national and local scale as well. You can be busy trying, you can be busy trying to change the course of the European Union. But it might be a lot more effective and more close at hand to talk to the government of your municipality. And international NGOs can be pretty influential on a national and a local base as well. Realize that. So let's join forces as EA with other NGOs like Europe and Astra and Ikemos. Six, and don't expect too much from governments and from international law. People have the tendency to put everything on the plate of government, as is the case with these international organizations, but realize that government is formed by people, not by wizards or gods. Seven. As you figured it out by now, I'm rather hesitant to try and go for a new global convention. In the current political climate, it's not likely that this will be a success. And even if we reach a new convention, then the question remains how to prevent that these words turn out to be dead words again, as is the case with so many conventions. But if you go for a new convention, realize that the discussion and energy in the process of the making of, that is the important thing. It may be even more important than the final result. And now I'm going to stop after I made one last remark. Dear archeologists of Europe, as you know now, I love you very much. Remember, please remember the ideals of the men and women of the post-war period. They tried to do things differently. No, they did things differently. In a way that history has never seen before. And a lot of good came from that. And we are all profiting until this day on. Too often we forget. Well, doomed.


Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to Unfiltered. Pastor David, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for joining us as always, right? Every Tuesday and Thursday. There you go. Pastor, last night in your message in Romans, I feel it was a very rich message. And you were talking about God's grace. And I began to think about, as you were sharing last night, how people would use God's grace as a permission to sin and even reference it as a quote, unquote, cheap grace. But I started thinking about the purpose of God's grace. Is the purpose of God's grace for those who are, is it a permission for people to continue to sin? Or how does it play in with somebody who constantly may struggle with sin? Where is God's grace play into this? God's grace never gives us permission to sin. We know that. But just to be clear at the onset, God's grace was not given to us to sin. In Romans chapters one through five, as we've been going through Romans recently, Paul has been establishing the case of being saved by faith through the grace of God. And so he speaks concerning the things that relate to our salvation and the righteousness that is imputed to us through faith in Christ and the justification and all of those things that relate to our salvation and how sins are forgiven. He begins by sharing concerning the fact that the world is in sin, that gentiles are sin, that Jewish people have sinned, all have sinned, fall short of the glory of God. He makes this case. And then he begins to teach us how that, in spite of all of that, that God sent his son Jesus. And so we see that. So what happens, it seems in Romans, it appears this way. And the commentators who have taught and influenced me over the years point out that there are actually portions in Scripture that in Romans where Paul is obviously speaking of an accusation or something that has been lodged against him just by the way he formulates the words. So he says, what shall we sin so that grace may abound? That is obviously a response either to an actual question or a question that could be asked that he's answering in advance. And so are we to sin so that grace may abound? Why does he say that in chapter 6? Because he's been making the case for grace. And so with that somebody could say, well, wait a minute. You know, if somebody is sinning deeply, then that would only magnify the grace of God because the deep sin and the deep grace. And so Paul says, am I saying that?  How can we who have died to sin live any longer therein? He says later on, sin shall not have dominion over you. And so I believe, and I mentioned this last night, that in the different periods in the history of the church, there have been rediscoveries and a re-emphasis on certain cardinal doctrines, one of them the most obvious being the doctrine of grace and salvation through faith in Christ. And so when I got saved back in the Jesus movement and what they're today referring to as a revolution, what happened, I came out of a denominational background where grace was something you obtained through behaviors. You did something to get something, right? And so I was speaking about how that was an illuminating kind of exciting time for me as a person who had committed myself to Christ to realize that salvation is something that God does on my behalf and that by the faith that is even supplied, I can receive the salvation and so that is offered by Jesus. And so no, grace is never given to me as permission to continue in sin. And there are those today who seem to have either not realized that, John, or perhaps at one time understood it and have failed to pursue it to its deeper levels because there are some who say, well, wait a minute, seeing that I'm saved and I'm in the Lamb's Book of Life and my sins are covered and all of that, you know, it isn't that big a deal if I should do these particular actions and activities and all that. So that's called cheap grace. It's a grace without discipline, you know. It's a grace without an awareness that Jesus said, pick up your cross daily and follow me. It's a cheapening of the blood of Christ and the activity of Christ and the cross to die for us and all that went along with that. And so there are some who profess to know Christ when their behaviors deny him. And so that's what we spoke about.  You can't say that. You can't say, oh, Jesus understands I'm an alcoholic. Now, wait a minute. If any man is in Christ, it's a new creation. At what point are you no longer identifying as somebody who's addicted and when are you going to understand the power of the Holy Spirit that can set you free? You sit here as one who understands that. That happened to you. It happened to me. I had another God. It was Bacchus. It was the God of alcohol. I had another God, another spirit. But when the spirit of God entered into my life, he set me free from the spirit of the age, the spirit of the enemy. And I came to know that by the word of God and through the grace of God and by faith that you put into trusting God in these things.  And you shouldn't say those things. But these are normally people, John, who are if they're going to church at all, don't go to a church that teaches the word of God normally. They're going to a feel good place where God accepts you all exactly as you are. Come as you are and stay as you are. No, you don't stay as you are. You may come as you are in the sense of I come to you as a sinner in need of grace and forgiveness.  You need God to. But you don't stay in that.  You know, but I can stay this way and still go to heaven. No, Paul would argue against that. And he does argue against that in Romans. He does it very clearly. And he would say, no, God's grace was not supplied to you so that you could continue in sin and go to heaven. God's grace was supplied to you so you could be set free from the bondage of that sin and its repercussions in judgment. So people will have a misunderstanding then. Some do. As it's a permission just to go ahead and walk that fine line between the world and. They're not even walking fine line. They're walking in the world and they're claiming to be Christians. No, I was at a, I was in a restaurant a few years ago now. And I was with a friend of mine who was going to be the master of ceremonies, if you will. He's going to be the one who was speaking in between an outreach, a Christian outreach, John. And it was going to include Christian music and then it was going to be an evangelistic message. And he and I were together with our wives prior to him going off for this particular event. And he turns to me and he says, do you see that those people there sitting at the table? I said, yeah. He said, that's the Christian band that's playing tonight at the event that I'll be the master of ceremonies in. I said, really? As they're being served their beers and alcoholic beverages and they didn't notice us. They didn't know us because they're not from this area. And so he told me later on, he said, Dave, I walked up to him and I said to him just before he went on. He goes, oh, by the way, guys, I was in the restaurant today and I saw you there. And I just wanted to introduce myself to you. He said, you should have seen their faces because they knew they were wrong. So here they are. They have no concern for even having the right attitude and spirit. You know, it's the same kind of thing, John, that sometimes worship teams are kind of laughing, carrying on, giggling, and then they go out and leave people in the presence of God. I honestly think that it's not a legalism, but it's an awareness of what you are doing, who you are representing.  I go over my notes. I prepare. My mind is being set. I'm praying, worshiping. Our worship team should be doing something similar. Why? Because we're about to enter into a special time of worshiping God. And so there are those who think, well, by the grace of God, I can continue in sin so that grace may abound. And the answer to that Paul said, no, no. If you have come to faith in Christ, live as if you know what that means. Is that simple? Well, thank you, Pastor, because even looking over some of the things I jot down is, how does that play into sin when somebody is struggling, if there's a legitimate struggle, which there is, versus, well, you know, God's going to forgive me anyway, so I'm just going to go out and do it. Well, there is a great difference, and maybe next time we'll talk about that. Yes, that would be great. Pastor, thank you so much for sharing on this. And I hope you guys were able to get something out of it. It's always cool to understand God's grace. What I want to get into next time, too, is interesting in Romans where he talks about God's grace, and he goes into baptism. And that would be something that would be cool to go to. Yes. Thank you guys for tuning in. We have a couple of reminders that we have our Sunday morning services at 8.30 and 10.45. This Sunday, invite your friends and family. We'll have a time in worship and in God's Word. And then, men, Sunday is the last day to purchase your men's conference tickets for breakfast. You can still get tickets for the conference up until the day of. So, look forward for you men to come on out. Pastor David, thank you again for sharing with us. You guys, thank you for tuning in. We love you and God bless you.


Most of this information comes from the tax guide for small business, for individuals who use Schedule C, Publication 334, Tax Year 2022. You can find on the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Looking at the income tax formula, we're focused online, one that being income, remembering that the first half of the income tax formula is in essence an income statement, although a strange one. We also want to note that this is basically a skeleton format that we can easily visualize and a lot of other information would be feeding into it from other forms and schedules. This basically representing the first page of the Form 1040, where we have an income statement type format starting with the income section. Then we have the adjustments to income, which you could call above the line deductions, similar to expenses, if it was an income statement terminology, it gets us to the subtotal of adjusted gross income, AGI, and important subtotal, because when we look at phase outs, for example, as income levels rise of credits and of deductions, they're usually based on this subtotal, adjusted gross income, AGI, rather than the income line. Then we have the greater of the standard deduction or itemized deductions. You could think of these as similar to expenses. Again, we're gonna take the greater of these two. You could call these the below the line deductions. Is tax deductible. Gets us to the taxable income, which is in essence equivalent to net income in a normal type of income statement. Everything's flipped on its head where we want the taxable income to be as low as possible, as opposed to normal income statements and normal situations where we want the net income to be as high as possible. That means we would like to be able to exclude income if possible, if legally possible, up top, and we would like to have our deductions which are kind of similar to expenses as high as possible. Now note we're back up here on the income line when we're thinking about the formula with regards to what's being reflected on page one of the form 1040. However, we're gonna feed into that now the business income and the business income is gonna come from another schedule, the typical schedule and the one we're focused on here is for small businesses, that being the schedule C. Now the schedule C is gonna be a whole nother income statement and an income statement that is much more what we're used to seeing in terms of an income statement. In other words, we're gonna have a schedule C which will have income from the business, expenses from the business, the expenses are still in essence deductions, but they're kind of normal and natural deductions that we would expect from an income tax system. In other words, if you have an income tax system, you would expect that the deductions would be those things that you needed to consume in order to generate revenue so that you tax people on the net income not on their gross income. If you tax people on their gross income, then you're gonna be favoring some industries versus other industries and the one industries that need more investment, more expenditures in order to generate the revenue are gonna be disincentivized, right? So that's the general idea and that actually makes good sense when we think about the schedule C. So it's the net income from the schedule C that flows into the income line on the form 1040. So that's a little bit confusing because this income line then already is including a bunch of expenses when pulling in something from a schedule C type of business because you're pulling in the bottom line of an income statement, which was the income minus the expenses, the expenses being the business deductions. Now, when you don't have business income, the other income on this top line usually comes from like W2 income. And the idea with the W2 income is we don't have those other kinds of expenses because the employer is thought to be the one that's going to be laying out those types of expenditures. Therefore, most of these deductions on the actual form 1040, the adjustments to income and the itemized deductions aren't really like natural expenses that we would think of for an income tax type of system. There are expenses that are trying to change our behavior or incentivize certain things, stimulate the economy, whatever they're trying to do. But actually the schedule C is more straightforward in that the expenses that are there makes sense to us from a normal kind of income statement or tax income tax type of system. But the net income is going to flow into this formula. It's the bottom line. So when we're looking at then the first page of the form 1040, we're focused here on other income from schedule one. This is where the schedule C is flowing into the first page of the 1040, which we can kind of visualize in this formula format. And this number then that's flowing in from the schedule C is the net income, which has already been decreased by the business deductions. Now that came from the schedule C where we had income of 120 minus expenses, which you can't see here was 20,000. The net income is what pulled into the first page of the form 1040 on the income section of the form 1040. Okay, are you self-employed? Answer, you are a self-employed person if you carry on a trade or business as a sole proprietor or an independent contractor. Usually this is a fairly straightforward situation, but there are areas where it can be less straightforward and people often have questions as to whether they're self-employed or not and what the tax consequences would then be. Let's first take a step back and think about the IRS's perspective with regards to your revenue. From the IRS's perspective, anything that we receive should be basically classified as revenue unless the IRS code has exempted it from income. And remember that reporting it as income is bad for taxes because that means in an income tax system we're gonna be paying tax on it. Now the IRS has a perspective to kind of look over everybody's shoulder to try to determine if people are reporting their income or not. And if you think about most transactions you have a payer of the transaction and then you have the recipient in the transaction. So someone has income and the other one has a deduction. From the tax perspective, the deduction is good and the income is bad. Everything's flipped on its head, right? So in, for example, an employee-employer situation which most of us have been in at some point or another, we might have W2 income that we're receiving from the employee-er. The IRS actually has leverage on the employee-er in that situation to give the IRS information about the person that they're paying. Why? Because the employee-er wants to get a deduction for the wages that they're paying to the employee. The employee-e has an incentive not to report their income, they should report their income, but that's where the IRS is gonna be skeptical that the employee-e is not gonna report their income. So they basically force the pay-er in that situation, the employee-er, to give the W2 not only to the employee-e but also to the government so that the government knows how much the employee-e paid earned and they force the employee-er to be the government's tax collector taking the money out of the paycheck before the employee-e even receives it. So you can see how the situation is gonna work there. Now, if you are self-employed type of situation, the government doesn't have the same kind of leverage in an employee-e employee-er situation, although they still could have some leverage because if you're a sole proprietor that's working for another business instead of individuals, then that business still wants to take a business deduction. Although you're not an employee-e, you still are getting paid. And so the IRS can say, hey, look, if you want that expense to the person that's paying you as a sole proprietor, we want you to tell us the money that you're paying, not with a W2, we won't force you to take the withholdings, but with a form 1099. So if you're a sole proprietor, then you might get these 1099 forms, which would indicate that you would have to report as income. But remember, the fact that we got a W2 form or a 1099 form does not necessarily mean that we would have to record income or not record income. Those are just gonna be informational forms. The IRS is kind of trying to look over our shoulders. And oftentimes because of those informational forms, because of the intrusive nature of the IRS trying to get more and more information about people's revenue, we start to think that we don't have to record income unless we get a form like a 1099 or a W2. And that's the kind of what I'm trying to drive at here. That shouldn't be the thing that tells us whether or not we have to report income or not. That's the thing that the IRS is using to double check that we report income. So for example, if you're in a type of business where you're not working for another business, you're working for the end consumer, an individual, like someone that is a hair salon or a massage parlor or a restaurant. Now you're dealing with people that don't have business expenses.  The IRS has no leverage over someone getting their haircut.


The Cavalcade of America, presented by DuPont. The speed of airplanes and the speed of ocean liner, the speed of express trains and the speed of automobiles, the speed of the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, all the flashing dynamic force in modern communication and transportation is part of the American heritage of foresight and enterprise. One of the most thrilling manifestations of this heritage occurred about the middle of the last century when, captained by young men, the American clipperships carried the American flag, American commerce and ideas, to every port in the seven seas. At our overdure, Don Boyes and the DuPont Cavalcade Orchestra play a special setting of the hit tune, Deep Purple. Our story begins one evening about 1855, in an old house on the main coast. Whale oil lamp shed a middle light over the room, throwing it a sharp relief, the carved walrus tusks and coconut shells on the wasp knot. Catching the color of a Spanish shawl on the back of a chair, revealing a faded Indian print, slung over a sea chest in the corner. Nine o'clock, Peter. Where are you supposed your sigh is? Probably down at the dock. We should have sailed with the tide this evening, Martha. I can't see any reason for delaying any longer. I must have had good reasons. Maybe. He's so young, Peter. He's 22. I took my first ship out when I was 20. Here you are, Mother. Good evening, Father. Father, we're now cutting over the stores. That ship says trim as a mackerel. Why didn't you sail with the evening tide, son? Emily wasn't ready. A few hours wouldn't matter anyway. Time always matters in the China save. Time is money. This is your first voyage as a master, son. Time you learned. I know, but Emily had a few things to do before we sailed. We're ready now. We'll get on the way, biting early tomorrow. All right. But remember, Josiah, you've got to beat the flying scuds. Yes. The Williams boat. Good ship. Maybe. But you've got to make a better passage. You can't afford to let her beat you to Hong Kong. She'll have the first choice of market there. And if she makes a faster passage home, she'll do the same here. We can't afford to let that happen. Is there any special reason why? I mean, aside from our investment. Well, yes, there is. Sort of. I thought so. I bragged about you, son. Oh, I guess you bragged to Williams. Well, how much did you bet I'd make a faster passage out in home than his flying scud? Come by. How much? Ten thousand dollars. Ten thousand. Pinto, father. No way, mother. Father, my share in the stars and stripes is worth more than ten thousand. Yes, I know it is. But what about it? I'll just take half that bet. Next morning as the sun rose out of the sea and the harbor of the little main town sparkled in a lazy couple of whitecaps, on the quarter deck of a safety ship stands the uncaptain. Hi, Franklin, sir. How are you, Mr. Jones? I'll thank you and get on the way. Hi, sir. Now then, boys, keep away from the windless brakes and strike a light. I'll earn an old graveyard. Wait a second. Hey, good, Mr. Jones. Loose tail is four and a half. Hi, sir. Hello, there's somebody in Loose tail. On the fourth top of the yard there.  Pass to the drift, you'll have air. Get your watch stackers along to the top of the sheet. Hi, sir. Here are some of your gentlemen's sons in disguise. Get that fish dab it out. Hook on the pendant. Overhaul the tackle down ready for hooking on. Main till you are there. Don't make those gaskets up. Pitch them in along the aisle and make past the time. Here you shat them on all of your boots. Shuffle that main deck captain and strike a light. And best in your locker. Slowly cutting its ways through the fretting waters of the harbor. The stars and stripes with billowing sails. Bides out to sea and down the Atlantic coast. Its sleek black hulls, its pine decks, wholly stoned to dazzling white. Its five rails, stanchions and cabins of mahogany brass and rosewood gleamed in the morning sunlight. And as the days pass... I wonder where the plan's gut is now. I hope she's leagues behind us, Emily. Remember when we sat at her a week ago? We were ahead of her then. Now that we've lost her, you can't tell. Look, Josh. I can't hear you, Mr. Devil. I'm going to make a team and out of you, I have to take a road stand to do it. Have a long, yeah? It's the boatman with the ship's boy. He's got him by the neck. What's he doing, Josh? Well, just teaching him the ropes, I guess. He won't hurt him. Ah, Mr. Boatsman! They go my neck! You're breaking it! That's why I get for having such a scrawny neck. Now, name the sails beginning at the top. Ah! Sky-toe, royal, top-toe and top-toe. And on the formus, it's a foretoe. And on the main, it's a mainsail. But on the missing, it's a spanker. Why is that, sir? What do you carry after yourself, your landlock reasons? Ah! Name the sails and the boats, please. Ah! Flying gibs, out-of-gib and in-of-gibs, sir. Aye. What comes between the bow and the formus? Ah! Ah! Ah! The foretoe is fatal. Seek me, I was going to have your boys for supper if you miss that one.  Wait a minute. Say your cataclysm before you go. Lively now. Six states out thou labor and do all thou art able. And on the seventh, holy cell in the decks and scrape the cable. Call me a portigee, but I'll make a steeman out of you yet. Aye, aye, sir. He'll make you a good handbow some pair of smart boy captains. Shout for the pipe of notes. Well, sir, how do you make that boy remember all that? Er, well, ma'am, you might say that's where the spanker comes in. Days of white sails and flying clouds with gusts of salt spray, panning in sheets of sunlit mist off the great prowl of the clipper ship. Night in tropic waters. When its towering mass seemed to rake through the low torch-like stars. And the wind sang over the sea as the jib-boom creaked with the roll of the waves. Then gray days and wild nights. Ice and snow and fog. As the clipper careened to the west as it swept around the bottom of the western hemisphere as it rounded the horns. One day in the captain's cabin. That's your daily concert, Captain Blake. Wives on board are so very dreadful of it. No. Not when they're you. Josh, what a very pretty seat. I thank you, sir. We'll ship for a little more steady-eyed kids. I'm proud of you, Emily. Rounding the horns is not easy. I wonder if we're here before the flying scud. Don't wonder about it, Josh. We can't know anyway until we get to Hong Kong. Darling. Yes? You're sure you're making it all right? Of course I am, Josh. And then it'll be warmer soon, won't it? You bet it will. Too warm. When we start to beat up north through the Pacific you'd wish you had some of this ice aboard. It's easy enough for me, but sometimes I think of the men. They can sail when the sheets are still with ice.  I've seen them. It's their life. They chose it. And it's their duty. You've been hearing things, Emily? A little. Don't pay attention to it. Yes? Come in, Mr. Jones. What are you doing here? Let's check out behind you. Well, come speak up, sir. Go to the boy. Tommy, speak your piece. Please, sir. I was in one of the upper bunks in the poxel and I heard the men... Talk, cat-pole. Talk. Well, sir, it's the grub. Save vittles to Captain Blake. Let him in, Mr. Jones. What about the grub, Tommy? They say it's bad. Oh, bad is it, sir. If you give them angel cake they'd expect wings. Please, sir. They're sending a deputation. A deputation? Some sea lion put them up to that, all right? You've done your duty, Tommy. You stay here with Mrs. Blake. Mr. Jones, you come with me. Aye, sir. Well, Josh, you may need this. Here, take it. No, Emily. I don't need a pistol. When I can't handle a crew with my bare hands, I'll quit. And take to go on cabbages. Come, Mr. Jones. We'll go on deck. Get a Marlon Spike, be quiet. Now, men, watch this I hear about a deputation. Come on. Speak up, Joe Braun. I've had an eye on you, my lad. Well, sir, as long as I'm the one that's going to be picked on, I will speak up. Sir, the grub's rotten. The meat smells so I can hardly eat it. And the biscuits full of worms. That kind of food ain't fit for no Christian. The rest of you men feel this way. Like brown here? The grub's rotten. The cabin gets what decent food's aboard. Mule, mealy, mouse, sea lion. It's a lie. I pay for the cabin food out of my own pocket. And that's my business. I got a right to say what I please. Right? Right? You're a pretty seamen to talk about, right?  Say that again. Struck me. I'll have the law on you in the first part. Good. I'll make it with you while. But as long as I'm in command of this ship, I'm the law. And you all know it. Onward and up through the blue Pacific spread the great ship. Full sail before the wind. Under clear skies and the brilliance of warm sunlight, week after week, flipped by. But one afternoon, we're almost at the China coast, Emily. Why don't you answer? What's the matter, girl? I don't know, Josh. It's just these last few days. Maybe it's the heat. The sun's so hot here by the rail, yet it's pale, not bright. I know. It's bad. You don't much like it. It's all you see. It's like a strip of silk waving in chimeras. And there's many air I can't breathe. I don't like those cloud banks to the north. You seem almost alive. They look like some great mountains. Go below, Emily. I'll join you when I can. But it's so hot below. I'll bury you, Skipper girl. There's reason for it. I know there is. I'll go. Mr. John. Aye, sir. Take in sail. Keep an upper law for steerageway. Aye, sir. Come on, wipe all hands on deck to take in sail. Come to it lively. Think it's a hurricane, sir. Looks like it. Night time. Right place. Just a luck to run into a hurricane when we're trying to beat the flying scud. Keep it sharp, aye, Mr. John. I'm going below for a moment. Aye, sir. Here you, gentlemen. Strike a light. Hands for the hangers. Top gallon cells. Stand by to reach top cells. Come, come. Still in y'all. Very soon. Don't be afraid, John. Don't know all I can. Can't go any faster.  Don't leave me, John. All right. We're in for it. I've got to go on deck. Sorry. Help me, sir. John, I've got to go. Now leave me on deck. I need to tell you. Oh, John, and couldn't you bear a pair with people? Emily, the ship, you, everybody, is in my hand. And I'm in God's hand. You'll pay. Pray for all of us. I've been shivered in the driving gale. The clipper ship plowed its way through the slashing sea toward the China coast. Overhead, the dark sky's roar, ignited by speaking lightning, and the wind howled through the shrouds of its swaying mass. Late that night, the hurricane subsided. And some days later, feeling a little better, Emily? It's a warm and calm I thought the air on deck might do you good. Where is he? Fast asleep in that little crib you made in the cabin. Oh, Josh, he's so cute.  We should be seeing China off port most any time now. Well, that's for a while. I'm tired of the sea, the wind, the waves. It's so relentless. I'm a person. It almost looks like Pogway off to port. That's land. That's China, darling. The clipper ship blew toward the south China coast with its granite rocks and broken shorelines and into the tropical harbor of Hong Kong. Here at glass, the stars and stripes zipped quietly and dropped down. Josiah Blake and his wife carrying their baby go ashore immediately to the noisy hubbub of the dock, jammed with an excited, clamorous throng. This way, Emily. Come on. Don't let go of my hand. I won't, Josh. Hi, Mr. Hall. Hi, Mr. Hall. Over here. There you are. I'm glad to see you, Captain. Have a good one. Good one, Harrikin, that's all. Hey, but tell me, has the flying skud come in yet? Haven't seen that of her. She's not due yet. Then we've won the first lap, Emily. Oh, Josh. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Hall. This is my wife. I'll do, Mom. And our baby, too. She was born at sea, Mr. Hall. Well, I hope he'll make as good a skipper as his father. Certainly had a good start. I hope he can find a mission somewhere. We've got to have the baby back side. Well, that'll come, Lady Emily. First, I've got to get over to the market. I'm going at once. You are not.  I want you to be my guest while you're in Hong Kong. Well, we can't stay long. We've got to be heading back to the States. Emily, you can go ahead with Mr. Hall. I'll come right over from the market. Now, Mr. Hall, would you please have the office? Within a few days, her hold filled with cargo exchanged in the market of Hong Kong, the American slipper again weighed anchor for the homeward voyage. At first, the soft, wondrous, traffic nights and the long listless days. Until the gale and ice of Cape Horn last the day and the stars and strikes pointed its boughs with north. Then again up through the blue rolling waters of the southern Atlantic. And when the red sun tipped the western horizon, then were trawled tales told by the seamen who gathered to watch Emily rock our baby in a tiny hammock. I'm sure it is a fine lad, that baby man. Well, he crossed the line once already. Now, wait until he sees the sea serpent. Did you ever see him broken? Oh, ma'am. And did I not? Just 20 years ago, a week on this Thursday, when I was able seamen on the conquest running at which New York and Liverpool. Well, ma'am, just off the Azores. Oh, it was a starry night. When I was on the watch, I smelt as a curious smell. Oh, what was it like? Well, one might say, ma'am, that it was a sort of a mixture. A mixture of elephant and whale. And then what happened? It was off the starboard bow. And when it looks like she's a great head, rise again to move. Two horns it had, and a neck as long as our main mist. Well, I rubbed me ice, and then I see the rest of him. A rippling and a floating out behind for half a mile or more. Oh, ma'am, it was handsome. But weren't you frightened? Ma'am, I'd be truthful. I was uneasy. On it comes nearer and nearer with his great mouth wide open. I was the only one of the crew on deck, except him at the wheel. And I knew that one of us was lost. The starboard was hungry. And why would he come up from his home in the great deep except to look for food? Oh, there, ma'am. Go back to sleep, darling. The person, what did you do? Well, just swing the little hammock gently, ma'am. That's it. Ah, he's doing nicely now. What did I do? Oh, yes, yes. I chased the wheel myself. And I chased the man with hazard. Tell me since I go into the moonlight by the starboard rails and tell me what you see. Why did you do that, person? Ma'am, this gemmy was a fearful, ugly man.  He sighed, one look at gemmy and that their serpent will lose his appetite. And did he? Ma'am, I'll be frank and truthful. He did. One look at gemmy did that serpent give and then he let out a dreadful moan put his head under the water and seeked himself down. And he never saw the gem again. No, ma'am. He wouldn't try to deceive you. I did not. Oh, here comes the skipper. I'll be going along, ma'am. Borson's been spinning yarns. Are you on the baby Emily? Yes, all about the ski, sir.  Oh, I know that one. Borson's full of yarns. Whoa, the maker! The flyin' skud! High pound all sale, Mr. Jones. Pass the word around there'll be an extra bonus for every man on board. Have we leave the flyin' skud so far, sir? He doesn't sight us before we make course. It was nip and tuck between the two great American clipperships as they raced across the rolling seas back to Maine. And it was a thrilling spectacle of expert seamen ships and beautiful vessels that characterized this romantic era in our maritime history. Finally late one afternoon as the steeple bells peeled over the little Maine harbor, the two stately greyhounds of the ocean with their white sails arched in the wind, dove into sight. But it was captain-braked on the stars and stripes that came first into force. Good work, Josiah! Fine, I'm proud of you, boys. Proud of the steeple two tails. Ninety days out since 88 days with us. Gotta find cargo, too, Father. And you, Emily. You and Josiah have to go beyond that. Made a couple of grandparents out of us. Look, Martha, I think you look like me. Well, I can hope not. And maybe again, let me hold it. All right, Emma. You wanna collect your bet from Williams, Father? Five thousand of it's yours, any house. And with the other five, I'm makin' over shares of a thousand stripes from my grandson here. Oh, you're here, that's masterbly. He can't talk to us, so I'll thank you for him, Father. Come on, let's go up to the house. You can tell us all about the vibe. Well, Father, gorgeous door. It's pretty quiet. Nothing much happened. South Maine to Hong Kong and from Boston to California. New York to Sydney and Baltimore to Cape Town. So, during that colorful era, sailed the safety clippers with wet salt on their sails, their holes full of grain and gold, spices, tilts and teeth. And so it was that the greatest fleet of sailing vessels the world has ever seen carried the American flag in American commerce in the way of every port of the oceans of the world. The American Clipper Ship. And now, here's Basil Riesdale, speaking to the DuPont Company, with a story from the Wonder World of Chemistry. Have you ever had a longing to see the queer sites in distant corners of the world to sail your own snug little craft into the harbors of Singapore, Sydney, Cape Town and Constantinople, with a favoring breeze to coast past towering sugarloaf as you make for Rio de Janeiro? To fascinating ports like those, our story of chemistry takes us tonight aboard the trim white two-masted schooner Yankee, famous for two round-the-world trips with amateur crews of adventurers and due for another such trip this year. In many an out-of-the-way harbor, queer craft have swarmed about the Yankee and natives have touched her sleek, glistening hull, jabbering strange words of admiration. For part of the beauty of this smart schooner is the new Marine Dulux finish, a finish that keeps it sparkling white in spite of the hardware given by ocean waves, salt spray and harbor gases. And Dulux, born in DuPont Research Laboratories, is one of chemistry's recent contributions to better living, not merely a finish for ships that sail the Seven Seas, whether they be huge ocean liners or tiny pleasure craft, but also for homes like yours and mine. In fact, the whole story of modern paints and finishes is one that does credit to the chemist skill in patient research. You've heard of wheat farms and potato farms. Have you ever heard of DuPont paint farms? Let me describe one to you. Maybe you'll recognize it when you're out motoring. In a large field stand rows and rows of panels fixed on frames in a sliding position. One of these paint farms contains about 30,000 panels, each of them coated with a paint or finish. White, red, black, green, yellow, such a variety of hues that Joseph's coat of many colors would look drab beside them. Probably 15,000 different variations of formula and color are tested there at one time. Exposed to burning sun, driving rain, snow and ice and wind-driven dust. Careful records are kept, and each finish has to be good enough to beat Mother Nature's her worst before it's considered good enough for your house, your refrigerator, your furniture, your automobile, and scores of other things you use daily. And since paint has to meet climatic conditions in all parts of the United States, one paint farm isn't enough. DuPont has nine of them scattered in widely separated parts of the country, California to Michigan.  Yes, paint. Such a common material you seldom give it a thought, but without paint, wood would rot, iron would rust, and man's handiwork wouldn't last very long. It helps make the world a cleaner place to live in and adds the joy of color. What the research chemist has done to improve paint is well expressed by the DuPont pledge, better things for better living through chemistry. Next week, the Cavalcade of America presents a colorful story about the great Indian Empire of the Yerichwa Longhouse. So until next week, and at the same time, this is Thomas Chalmers saying good night and best wishes from DuPont. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.


Hey, what's going on? I am Greg Sussman joined today by Davis Maddock of dailyrotor.com Who's here to break down the PGA championship? What's going on Davis? Very excited for a major championship, you know, we we've been waiting we have they have had this amazing condensed Golf schedule and you know now we have basically the the best event We're gonna have pretty much all year until we get to Augusta for the first time this year. It's a major championship It's a PGA. We're not used to this leading us off But here we are and we're gonna begin with your favorite bet or at least the bet that well Has the shortest odds and it's Bryson De Shambos 16-1 the heavy hitter has been a favorite in most of the tournaments since the PGA restart. He's been just an animal Why do you think he breaks through and wins the PGA? So we've already started to see some reports trickle out of this golf course, right? We've had guys playing practice rounds out there, you know kind of checking everything out and Everything we've heard is man. This is a tough golf course, you know, super long It's probably gonna be pretty windy, you know pretty much across the United States We've had this gray dreary weather, you know everywhere and a golf course that already plays long a golf course That has super penal rough that's just gonna play into the hands of someone like Bryson who is just gonna bomb it Right and then also Bryson has the advantage of hitting out of the long stuff because you know It's just easier for him to play at 180 out of the long stuff that it is for You know Matthew Fitzpatrick basically so so Bryson 16-1 probably our favorite bet this week Bryson's ability to just hit it from anywhere on the golf course and hit it a mile from anywhere It's gonna help him in the tough weather that of course we're seeing all around the country and at PGA championship 16-1 He's a good number for Bryson De Shambos. Hopefully pick up the major victory Let's move on to somebody that's a little bit longer odds. You just mentioned him. It's Matthew Fitzpatrick 38-1 there are players that are lower that we're gonna get to in a moment Matthew Fitzpatrick is guy obviously that you like but as much as the price and you just mentioned him Why is Fitzpatrick at least still on your list? So the interesting thing about Fitzpatrick is I actually don't think he's like a great course fit You know, he's not someone who smokes it off the tee But he is really good on difficult golf courses because he just does not make a ton of mistakes He has a really good short game, you know, very good at those getting up and down from like 45 yards to you know to save par and he is on a great run right now T6 at the WGC Third at the Memorial T27 at the workday T14 at the RBC heritage So he just is in great form right now And I think he should really probably be closer to like 30 to 1 28 to 1 so we're getting a pretty good price on him It's about the price for Matthew Fitzpatrick player that is playing well You heard the recent standings from Davis not exactly what you expect For a player that we take at this course But Fitzpatrick is playing well enough to at least give him a shot here 38 to 1 of the higher odds Then we expected which makes him worthwhile over at the Fandall sportsbook a Little bit less than that. We get to Patrick Cantley who's 25 to 1 Can't leave the name that you haven't heard really all that much about as of late But still one of the best players in the world and you're getting him at 25 to 1 I mean can't lay is just a guy who's gonna win a major, right? It's like we just all agree Patrick can't lay Xander shyfully these guys are going to win majors It's a matter of when not if and you know once can't lay wins It's gonna it's gonna be like Brooks where you'll never get a good number on him at one of these events ever again And you know if it's Patrick is in good form Cantley is gonna make him blush can't lay has not missed a cut since the player's championship in 2019 He stacked up two top tens in the restart already including the workday charity open and then back at the century tournament of champions Like this is this is just a guy who basically sets up as one of the five or six best players in the world And he's not priced like that so at 25 to 1 we are gonna take we're gonna take the plunge there as David says Patrick Cantley is one of the best players in the world. You're getting him at 25 to 1 It's only matter of time before him and Xander shyfully with majors So let's just keep taking these numbers while we get them. It's not going to be forever As you saw the Brooks as I saw Justin Thomas we watch these guys grow as our can't lays probably next We'll see if you can get it done at the PGA championship 25 25 to 1 is a number. We simply can't let go of Let's move on to a longer shot, but certainly a familiar name. It's Adam Scott He's 75 to 1 this week at the PGA championship and Scott obviously has all the experience in the world Those are next offer, but why is Scott a good fit for this course? Davis a lot of the reasons why we like Bryson are why we like Adam Scott You know smokes it off the tee not gonna have any trouble out of the long rough not gonna you know He can hit the green from 200 yards It's not it's not really a big deal for him and the reason why this number is so great for him is that you know, he just has really not played since the restart he played at the Arnold Palmer and that that's really all that we've got of him and he missed cut there But you know if we if we go back and look at his form before the restart T26 at the WGC Mexico won the Genesis Invitational won the Australian PGA championship Like he was he was basically playing some of the best golf of his career before the restart and 75 to 1 is just a Gift I mean I actually think in terms of like expected value per wager This is the best of our six bets We'll take all the value we could get 75 to 1 for Adam Scott before the restart was playing some Unbelievable golf and although he's getting older doesn't mean the town's going anywhere Adam Scott has been a mainstay Really in our bets and on the PGA tour for such a long time He's at 75 to 1 to win the PGA championship and he can hit it hard Just like Bryson D. Shambhoka and we'll see that the putter is working for Adam Scott this weekend Speaking of putters and speaking a guy can hit it a long way and some of the win one major championships before Let's Sergio Garcia Sergio this week is 85 to 1 over on Fandall Why are you giving a shot to this fan here? So our tools at dailyrota.com that are provided to us by data golf basically say that you know from from the t-box to the Green Sergio is you know basically playing as well as Matthew Fitzpatrick playing as well as Patrick Kayla, you know, he just is one of those guys who Struggles with a short game, you know, the the wedges are not always perfect We've seen Sergio get in tight spots with his mudges and make massive numbers Which is one of the reasons why you're gonna find him at 85 to 1 But you know former major champion has won the has won the master's tournament in Augusta and has you know Has a reasonable form coming in the t5 at the RBC heritage is best result since the restart I think that he's gonna be a super popular play in DFS on Fandall and at 85 to 1 I like backing him at that number quite a bit playing decent enough Sergio not so bad from the t-box to the green at the wedges though Who knows a little hit or miss when it comes to Sergio Garcia, but 85 to 1 simply a good number for guys Been able to win a major championship just that one in Augusta. He's been around for a long time He's finished very highly and a lot of these majors hasn't always been able to get the job done But 85 to 1 it's well worth a shot taking here on Fandall at the sports party All right one last player to get to Davis is one of your favorites the Canadian Corey Connors who seemingly is on this List every week and we're just gonna keep going out there until he wins it 200 to 1 though is Corey Connors. Why is he your man here this week? So if you just go look at his stat page on data golfer on the PGA tour and you just cover up the strokes gained around the green and the strokes Gained putting you're like, oh my gosh, this guy is what he's one of the best players in the world He's got to be top-fiving, you know every single bet He is 14th on to her strokes gained off the tee 14th on to her strokes gained approaching the green 17th on to her strokes gained T to green However, basically once he gets within about 40 yards of the pin He turns into a recreational golfer. You don't really know what he's doing with his wedges You don't know what he's doing with his putter, but as we've talked about before, you know It really only takes four days of running hot, you know, if he just makes a couple extra 10-footers, right? You know just gets lucky on a couple chips is hitting the soft spots on the greens You know for basically the the one time all year that he's gonna do it There is no reason that Corey Connors can't hang with Rory DJ Bryson can't hang with those guys off the tee. So it's 200 to 1 I again I think this is just a phenomenal number I would maybe even bet Corey Connors at like 150 to 1 so the fan dual price this week is phenomenal Once again, really good value in the number Corey Connors as Davis mentioned a lot of the guys we've talked about so good off the tee Let's just ignore closer eyes when they get to the green and just hope and if a couple putts go your way Well, you're looking at a player that can at least be Competitive over the weekend with the big names at 200 to 1. It's worth it Davis. We need to take it at 150 to 1 That's that's how far it is with Corey Connors, but hey all takes is four good days It's all you need at 200 to 1 Connors a bet worth making David's mad at dailywarder.com. Thanks so much for joining us man. Beautiful. Thanks for having me Let's let's see some great golf this week. I'm just excited for a major championship You just get going when it comes to the major so I'm excited and it should be fun Let's go Corey Connors. It's 200 to 1 Redamus Maddock I'm Greg Sussman. We'll be back tomorrow with Megan Union is taking a look at the baseball slate around the league Have a great night. Get those bets in with the PGA championship And we'll see you back here tomorrow for another edition of the fan dual hurry up


Hi everyone, welcome. So this session is going to be all about scaling out backstage. And the focus for this session is going to be the backend. My colleague Hemma had an amazing talk about some accessibility on the front end, but now we're going to focus on the backend. And the goal of this talk is to give an answer to the many questions that we have received on Discord during the years regarding this matter. First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Vincenzo. I'm a senior engineer at Spotify. I live in Sweden, where I moved nine years ago from Italy. And I'm part of the core team of Backstage working with the core framework and all things open source. And this is our agenda for today. So we're going to start looking at the structure of a new Backstage app. Then we're going to check how communication or plugins communicate together. And then we will transition into the main part of this talk, which is about finding some ways for scaling out your Backstage instance. And then later we'll look at an application of one of these approaches for scaling out Backstage by looking at our own Spotify internal developer portal deployment.  So in order to start, I would like to start this talk with a story, the story of a person seeing Backstage for the first time, myself three years ago. It took me three months to understand what Backstage was doing, but this is for another time. And I remember the first time I saw a Backstage app, it looked really straightforward to me. It was a JavaScript project. I knew JavaScript, so probably that helped. And the JavaScript project contained a Yarnmon repo with a plugin directory where you could build your own plugins there. So you build your own plugins under this directory, and you could also install an open source plugin directly in your Backstage instance. And once you run this command, Yarn start dash backend, this command basically takes the entire app, take all the plugins, bundle together, and run in a single process. I found this really, really straightforward. Then I started working on Backstage, and I remember I was working on one of our internal plugins. And at a certain point I had to retrieve some data from another plugin. For simplicity, let's imagine that I was working on a to-do plugin implementing a real, a classical to-do app. At a certain point I had to extend the functionality of a to-do app by, for example, showing the author of each to-do. And let's assume that the author of the to-do are ingested into catalog as a user entity. So I basically had to retrieve some data from catalog. I didn't know how to do it, so I basically looked at the source code just to find a code snippet, a cool copy paste.  And within all this method there was the method I needed, get entity by ref. The code looked legit, so I just copy pasted it and boom, I had my entity and I implemented basically the feature. I've retrieved some data at the first shot. I found this really, really, really good. Then I'm a very curious person. I want to know how this catalog works and actually dive into the code of this get entity by ref method and found something really interesting. This is the code. I've simplified a bit. Does anyone recognize what this is doing? So this is a typical rest request. So my plugin was trying to retrieve some data from catalog using a rest request. I honestly thought this was a bug because it was pointless. I knew the two plugins were running in the same app.  So this was really confusing to me. But I'm very fortunate because I work as a spot if any of some colleagues who know about Backstage saw I reached out to the team internally claiming that this was a bug and that we should fix as soon as possible. And Freben answered me. I'm sure he has answered many of your questions on this code. It's awesome. And he told me that the fact that both plugins live in the same process is not always guaranteed. The answer confused me.  I know the plugins run on the same process of my machine. And he said that that's because I was using the default deployment option. But additionally, there are many other ways you could deploy Backstage and there is a way to deploy the plugin separately. I found this was magic. This was mind blowing. This was the missing piece, something that I missed from Backstage. You can deploy the plugin separately. And Backstage knows exactly how to reach out to the plugin. But still, how does it work? I mean, Backstage is very versatile. You can deploy on Kubernetes, so on a Raspberry or on a virtual machine. How could Backstage know where the plugin is deployed? So I reached out to the team and I think I was knowing then so much that Ben jumped into the discussion and he said, hey buddy, look at your code. It's there. Discovery service. Do you remember the code I showed about the catalog? Discovery service. You pass a plugin to the discovery service and discovery service gives you exactly the address of that plugin. This is where the magic was. So I was so happy. Now I knew where the magic was. So I dug into the source code of the discovery service. Do you want to see it? Here it is. So discovery service knows exactly where a plugin is located. But unfortunately, batteries are not included. Just to clarify this example, the default implementation of the discovery service can resolve the address of the plugins only for those plugins who are deployed in the same Backstage app. So if you want to deploy your plugin separately, you need to provide your own implementation of discovery service. And you can do by providing your own implementation, your own class, overriding this get base URL method. But actually, there is another way of doing that, that we have released, that was released less than a year ago. We haven't advertised so much. Probably this is a point for improvement. And basically, you can configure the discovery service directly in your app config. You can list that in case your plugins have an address that doesn't change, you can register them directly in the app config and then the discovery service will resolve them automatically. So remember, if you want to deploy the plugin separately, you need to provide your own implementation of discovery service. What if you don't? Well, if you don't, you can still scale out Backstage. Let me show you how. So this is the first approach. This is a Backstage app. You can see at the bottom, I have some core services containing like logging, configuration and CLI and other stuff. And you cannot touch plugins to the instance. Right now, I have six of them installed. So if you want to scale this, one approach is just take your instance, replicate it, and put a load balancer on front, routing the request. This approach is absolutely valid. Pro and cons of this approach. It's absolutely the easiest way. You don't have to change code. You could just replicate the instance without changing code and it will work. But the downside is that if you have a plugin that requires more resources, for example, requires more memory or requires receive more requests or maybe steal the event loop, that plugin might cause other plugins to starve. So to the point that other plugins might not serve any request. And the other downside is that if you don't provide your own discovery service implementation, plugin can only communicate only with other plugins within the same instance. So in this case, the Kubernetes plugin is trying to receive some data from catalog and it can only reach out to the catalog plugin that reside in same instance. So this was the first approach. Second one, this is particularly used in case you have a plugin that deserve a different treatment. A plugin that consume more resources. In that case, you can move out the plugin outside of the main instance and deploy on its own. With this approach, you can basically scale it differently. You can give more memory, different machine or more instances. How to do this? You can do this by conditionally enabling plugins. So in this snippet, I have enabled Ska folder searching Kubernetes plugin in the main instance, but I've also enabled catalog in a secondary instance.  And prior cons of this approach, you can have more control in case you have a greedy plugin. Not so many code changes are needed since you can just conditionally enable plugins. But still, plugins can only communicate with other plugins within the same instance. But now the plugin is a bit bigger. If you go back with the previous example, where Kubernetes plugin was trying to receive some data from catalog, now catalog is not always there. It's not anymore there. So it can communicate. So you remember you need to provide your own discovery service configuration. So this was the second approach. Now let's move to the third one, which is a kind of goes to the extreme of the previous approach. And it consists of deploying each plugin separately from each other. You can do this by creating many different apps, backside apps containing just the core functionality and the code of a single plugin. And you can deploy them separately. Prior cons of this approach, now you have absolutely freedom how you want to scale the plugins. You can do whatever you want. But I don't think that's the biggest advantage. For me, the biggest advantage is that you can set clear ownership on a plugin. Since the plugins now have their own repository, you can have a team owning the plugin end to end, from the code to deploying to the real ability of the plugin. And I think this advantage is massive. But on the downside is that this is hard to maintain. Now you don't have a back set up anymore. You have many back set up that you need to upgrade. And the other downside is that, of course, remember to configure, not a downside, but remember to configure your discovery service. So now we went through all these approaches. Now let's move to an application of one of these approaches by looking at our own Spotify internal developer portal. And when we talk about our own Spotify internal developer portal, it's a bit tricky because of historical reason. So we, as many of you know, we created Backstage as Spotify in 2016. And then later we donated to the CNCF. And Backstage was created in 2016, actually there. But the open source version was released in 2020. And these are basically two different products. The internal Backstage used Java for the services, while the open source version is written in Node. And the internal one was actually very bound to the technology that we use as Spotify, while the open source, you can basically swap any pieces. And of course, during this year, we have developed more than 100 plugins developed between the front and the back end plugins. So our internal instance was massive. But in 2020, we also, after a couple of months, we realized that we had to move to Backstage open source as soon as possible because the speed of Backstage open source was insanely faster than our internal developer portal. So we decided to adopt it and try to deprecate the internal one. But the internal one wasn't all bad. There were a few pillars that we want to keep when migrating to Backstage open source. So the internal one, as I said, contained more than 100 plugins. But those plugins were built in a distributed way. So there wasn't a team owning all the plugins. But instead, many teams as Spotify developed all these plugins. And of course, they had their own, each plugin had their own repository. So any team owned that plugin end-to-end from the code to the plugin to the reliability. And we want to keep this when migrating to the new Backstage. That's why we chose the third approach. So we deployed each plugin separately.   And at the bottom, you can see all the open source framework, open source plugins deployed separately. And this was very necessary for us to keep the kind of way of working that we were using as Spotify. And now, before we end, I would like to end with just kind of an advice. Because I know how it is.   We should do the same. And then the problem starts. So in order to avoid this, I basically did some research and came up with a question with a binary answer, yes or no. And answering this question will give you a clear direction whether you need to follow the same approach we are using as Spotify. So deploying the plugin separately. And the question is, are you Spotify? For many of you today, the answer will be no. And with Spotify, of course, I mean a company at the same scale of Spotify. The thing is, all these approaches are absolutely valid. They all have strengths and weaknesses. But if you choose the third approach, then you commit to it's going to be hard to maintain if you don't have the right tool for maintaining different repositories. And as Spotify internal, we have tools like Freedshift, which allow us to push changes to different repositories with just a bunch of clicks. So please choose wisely. Remember to configure your discovery service in case you want to deploy the plugin disability. And unfortunately, we didn't have so much time to cover the last bullet point. But if you have service to service enabled between services, you need to make sure that different instance can understand each other. But we didn't have so much time to cover that. So I would like to invite you to Qtcrash on April 24th. It's an online day where we will go through a lot of talk about how to build your own developer portal from the basics to the most advanced topic we didn't have time to cover today. This is Qtcode. And thanks so much. Any questions while we set up the panel? For the next panel, so any questions for... So with the distributed back end plugin model, one of the things that we've seen, we have lots of internal plugins, some of those plugins from different teams incorporate different secrets as well. So one of the benefit we were thinking of with being able to separate the back end is being able to separate the secrets as well. So they're not all being used by the same back end. Any thoughts on that? Are you talking about, for example, authentication secret, this kind of things? Yeah, for back end downstream systems, things like that. So right now it seems like in our single back end backstage instance that we have tons of secrets and the secret sprawl from different teams enabling their plugins. Yeah. I can bring you a clear use case about like when, for example, when we talk about enabling services, service authentication, you know, for example, you need to provide your own key. And in that case, if you're going to distribute or deploy your plugin, you need to share that key in many, many ways. What we did internally in that case was to kind of use GCP service off for providing that key. So basically you don't kind of share secrets, but instead your instance, our cloud instance kind of inject the secret for you so that you don't have shared secrets in that case. That could be like one way for solving that. But of course, I guess like, I mean, every, every, you can have different cases where you probably need to kind of share the same secrets. And it was less about the plugin authentication, more about the downstream systems. But that gives me more to think about maybe an API gateway or service match traffic permissions or something. Thanks. Any other questions? Thank you. My question is how does this scale, if you do this distributed per plugin deployment and whatnot, how does this scale the configuration file, the appconfig.yaml? Can I maintain different configs because there's like the base URL stuff in it and per plugin configuration? What do I do with the config file? Yeah, in that case, you will need to kind of replicate a config, kind of strip out config which don't belong to the plugin that are installed in an instance. So, and actually I don't, I don't think it's a big problem because if you consider that different team owns different plugins, so it's absolutely fine if they don't, if you don't, if you have to replicate a config or kind of provide a custom config for each, for each plugin. But this is the way we are doing. It's like each plugin has its own config that is different from the config that other plugins are doing, are using it. Okay? Hi. One short question. You talked about splitting up back end plugins. What if you have a large number of front end plugins? How do you suggest we should distribute them? Yeah, I don't think we have kind of changed the way you, we work with front end plugins. We have an instance with, I don't know how many plugins, it's like around a hundred and there, all the front, front end plugins are in the single monolith. And that works for us. The only problem we're seeing is that it takes so much time, at a certain point, when you have a lot of plugins, it takes so much time to build, to build the front end. And the way we are solved is like to provide an experimental wide support, which kind of speed up this process. And it's actually kind of working for us. So the way we decide to solve it is keep the monolith with all the front end plugins, but kind of change, improve the tools that we use for building those plugins. But the, right now for the front end, it kind of, that's the approach. We haven't changed. So everything is in a monolith. All the plugins, yeah. Hey, thanks. There was a discussion about this dynamic loading of plugins. How does it work when you have like, multiple instances running? Yeah, unfortunately I can't, I have, there are more people in the room who can answer this question, but I'm unfortunately, I'm not, I can't answer this. So I can go if you want. I don't want to steal the show. So we can talk back there. But you can load plugins as like, through module federation. So you can load plugins from a remote location, from a remote server as a browser asset. So it's, it doesn't matter. It can be even hosted on an HTTP server anywhere else. It's just a JavaScript asset that is loaded to browser and since backstage or client rendered, you don't care where the assets live, right? So you just load it from somewhere. So you can have it distributed per plugin. Each plugin can be living in, on its separate endpoint, on its separate host or whatever. You just maintain some verification that this is the plugin I want to load, this is the version I want to load, and you can load it from wherever. Alright, is there any questions? Otherwise we'll go to the panel. Okay, thank you. Thank you Vince. Thank you. Thank you Vincenzo.


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