Hello, everyone. In this video, we're going to talk about Chapter 15 of Think Java. The topic is arrays of arrays or multidimensional arrays, and as a running example, we're going to play Conway's Game of Life. Now, this is a mathematical game, a simulation, if you will. If you set up a 2D grid of cells, the white ones are considered dead and the black ones are considered alive, and there's three simple rules that each cell in the grid abides by for each round of the simulation. Any live cell with fewer than two neighbors dies, as if it were underpopulated, and any live cell with more than three neighbors also dies, as if it were overpopulated. The dead cells, the white ones that have exactly three neighbors, like this one down here that I'm pointing at, that becomes alive, as if by reproduction. Mathematicians have studied this game extensively because it has very interesting emergent properties. So let me actually click this Wikipedia article that is linked in the chapter and scroll down to this table down here. Depending on various starting configurations of the game, they have either stable configurations that are still, or ones that oscillate, and they have this sort of repetitive nature given their initial state. They even have a variety of what are called spaceships that tend to move or fly across the game. And it's very interesting that you get these patterns that go on seemingly forever. This is called a glider gun, because based on the starting configuration, the cells come alive and die in just the right way to shoot out these gliders infinitely. There's also some starting configurations that are very surprising, like the R pentamino. So let me actually open this up in a new window. And this is the website comwaylife.com. If they actually have an interactive game player, so I can launch the player for the R pentamino, let me actually move my window temporarily. And I'm just going to hit the play button and watch this has five cells that are starting alive. But after, I think over 1000 iterations, it finally stops, right? So just with that very simple starting configuration and those three short rules of the game, you get these emergent properties that are kind of exciting to study and look at. Anyway, let me close these other tabs. And the point of this video today is to show you the source code for how to implement this game in Java. So I'm going to switch over to Eclipse and show you the three source files that are described in the chapter. The first one is cell.java, which represents a single cell of the 2d grid. The second file is grid canvas, which represents not only the grid itself, but also a canvas for drawing the graphics in Java. And finally, we have Conway.java, which implements the logic of the game. This is the class that actually has the main method. A good way to understand how code works in Eclipse, when you get it for the first time, is to step through the code with the debugger because then you can see the code executing one line at a time. So I'm going to double click this line 138 here to set a breakpoint and then click the bug button to run the debugger.  If you don't always want to see this window, I'm going to leave it for now and click the switch button. And a perspective in Eclipse is the window layout. So you'll see now I've switched to the debugging window layout and I can click this button in the upper right corner here to switch back to the Java development layout. So typically you're going to alternate between these two window layouts depending on whether you're writing a program or debugging a program. In the debugger perspective, you can see now my program is paused on line 138 here, which is this line that declares a string. And I'm just going to step over each of these lines, you'll see the shortcut key is f six for that. So I create the string Conway's game of life, I construct a new Conway object, I created j frame, and then I set some properties of that frame. And as soon as I say frame dot set visible true, you'll see this window pops up here. But let me make this one always on top so I can go back and forth between it and the code. And this is the initial state of my game. I want to actually rewind to where it ran the constructor code right here, and show you what that code looks like in the file. So here is the constructor for the, the default Conway game in the book, you're welcome to change this code if you'd like to have a different starting configuration. But you see it creates a grid canvas of five by 10. So that's five rows by 10 columns. And it turns on certain cells of that grid. So row two would be 012 down. And column one, which is one over, that's the first black cell here. This one is 22, this one is 23. And likewise, if I go down one row and over seven to index one comma seven, I get that cell, there's 27, here's 37. So again, all the constructor does is sets the initial state of the game. And then finally, there's a game.main loop. Instead of stepping over this line, I'm going to step into it. And that will then go to that method. And let me see all of its code. You'll see that the basic idea of the game is an infinite loop. So it's going to run this simulation forever. There are two steps. I update the state of the game, and then I repaint the canvas to show how it had changed in that particular round. And then it's going to do a short delay after each phase. So you can actually see the animation as a human being. Right now, the delay is set to 500 milliseconds, which is half a second. So before I go any further, I think it might help to stop this particular running program and take a look at some of the supporting classes. We'll come back and step through the rest of this code in just a minute. Cell.java is the simplest class. And this represents the state of a single cell on that 2d grid. So you can see the attributes of this cell are its x and y location on the screen or rather within the window on the screen. And then the size of that cell, which is how many pixels wide and tall, so cells or squares, you only need to store size, you don't need to store like width and height. Finally, the state of the cell, which is an index into the static array of colors. And the reason why there's a static array is if you go farther in the book, think Java, there's ways to extend this game to have more than just two states. So you might have like a white and a gray and a blue and a green state in addition to white and black. So but right now it's just an array of two options, white or black. The constructor of a cell basically just tells you where to place it on the screen. So it's just copying those parameters and attributes and setting the initial state to zero or white. And then there's a draw method for each cell that does the actual 2d graphics commands. So given the graphics context of where you would like to draw this cell, it gets, it sets the color to whatever state you're in. It fills a rectangle of that size at that x and y location. And then it draws a light gray border around the cell at well at the x and y location. So this one goes x plus one, y plus one. So you're inside by one pixel. And ultimately, if you have a 10 by 10 grid, sorry, a 10 by 10 cell, then it's going to be 10 pixels wide and 10 pixels tall. The rest of the methods are just helper methods for maintaining the state of the cell. You can see if it's offer on and you can turn it offer on, given those convenience methods. Let's take a look now at grid canvas, which is what actually is the 2d array example in this chapter. So you can see I have a two dimensional ray of cells, and I'll just call this array. This is the variable that maintains the state of the entire grid. And when I go to construct the grid canvas, you can see it creates a new cell given the number of rows and columns. So we call this row major order, it's an array of rows of columns as opposed to an array of columns of rows. And ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you store your data by rows and then by columns or by columns and by rows, as long as you're consistent everywhere in the code. And so you can't call the x dimension y and vice versa. You have if you're going to do rows as the first index of the 2d array, then that always refers to a row number. And that tends to trip up beginners if they flip their indexes on accident. Anyway, what this constructor does in grid canvas is it given the number of rows and columns, it figures out the y and x location of each cell, which is based on the row and column number times the size of the actual cell, right? So the first cell is going to be a zero zero, the next one's going to be 10 over, right, but also at y zero and so forth. And then it creates a cell at that particular x and y location and stores it in the array. Finally, it calls the set size method, which is part of the canvas class. And that sets the size of the drawing canvas on the screen. There's a bunch of other methods in this class for convenience. So if you want to get the number of rows, that's the length of the outer array. If you want to get the number of columns, that's the length of any one of the inner arrays. So I just say a race of zero to get the first row. And the length of that first row is the number of columns in the 2d array. There's also a get cell method, which will just get the cell at row R and column C. And there's a turn on method that will go to row R and column C and then call the turn on method, which is in this other cell class to toggle its state to black. And then there's some other methods like test and draw. So the test method is going to tell you if the cell at RNC is on, or it returns a zero if it's not. So this actually returns an integer, because as you see, as you'll see in a minute, we're going to add up these integers to count the number of neighbors. So rather than return true or false, we return one or zero. One means there is a cell at RNC and it's on zero means either the cell doesn't exist or it's turned off. The last arrays are just for doing graphics. So the draw command, sorry, the draw method will take a graphics context. And for every cell in the 2d array, it calls the draw method on that cell, which does the actual graphics command to draw it on the screen. One thing I want to point out about this example is it uses an enhanced for loop. So if you're looking for examples of 2d arrays, both with the standard for loop that just says int something is less than something plus plus, there's also the enhanced for loop that says for each row in my outer array, and for each cell in my row array, draw that cell. So go ahead and study those two methods to get a feel for what nested for loops look like on 2d arrays, both the standard for loop and the enhanced for loop. And finally, the paint method, which is called by the operating system to actually draw the thing on the screen that simply just hands it over to the draw method to do all the work. And there's an update method as well that's there just for convenience. So now that we've seen cell dot Java and grid canvas dot Java, we can actually take a look at this running application. You'll recall we ended here in the main loop that calls update and then repaint. Well, grid repaint is just oops, it's just this method over here that eventually called paint. What I want to show you is the update method. So I'm going to set a breakpoint right here in the update method to run the application up to that point. Let me go ahead and clear my breakpoint at the start of the program. So I only have this one that's currently active. I'll push the little bug icon on the toolbar. You'll see it's going to ask me again to switch to debug perspective. Let me remember my decision this time. I don't always want to have to click this button. So switch. Okay, now I'm in debug mode.  So I can just keep an eye on that as we're actually running the code itself. You'll see right now the program is paused because it's waiting for me to step through the debugger. And the very first step is to count the number of neighbors. So you'll recall from the rules of the game of life whether a cell becomes alive or becomes dead or stays the same depends on how many neighboring cells it has. And by the way, there's an illustration of this concept in the book when you get to section, it looks like where did it go here section 15.9 that explains the counting of neighbors and it sort of visually draws how many neighbors a cell might have depending on whether it's in the middle and the corner or on the edge of the grid. Okay. Anyway, I'm going to call this I'm going to step into this method, which is F five is the shortcut key. And let me show you what this particular method does. First, it gets the number of rows and columns just for convenience. So I don't have to keep calling grid dot num rows and grid dot num calls, right? So it's five rows and 10 columns. And then I create a 2d array of integers, which represents the number of neighbors for each cell at position r, c, right at row r and column C. And so for each row and for each column, I'm going to call this count alive method. Well, let me step into that particular method. And this is what count alive looks like. Again, it's going to call this test method, which I was showing you earlier in the grid canvas class, and looking at the previous row, the previous column, the previous row in the same column, and the previous row in the next column. So again, going back to this picture of the book, it's looking at all eight neighbors around a cell. And in fact, some of those neighbors might not exist. And so if they don't exist, the test method simply returns zero saying nope, that one's not alive, right? And if as I go through, I'm just going to step over these lines. But if you want, when you're running the code, you can step into them to see more detail. You can see that after calling grid dot test eight times, the count for this very first cell is zero. And we would expect that because you can see visually, none of its neighbors has any black cells. And so the total count is zero for that particular item. So let me go ahead and step back. And in fact, if I run the code to line 85, there's a really nifty way to do this. I have to remember what the shortcut key is. Well, maybe it's under the run menu. Yes, run to line is control R and Eclipse. So you can get out of a 2d loop that's going to take you forever to step through all the code if you just put your cursor on where you want to go and then run to line. And and in the debugger, you can click on the word counts and examine what that 2d array looks like even before it returns if you're just curious, if the code is working or what what the actual values are. So anything you click on in this particular variables window pane will show you the value of that contents, especially if it's something like an array or a 2d array, it's nice to examine the code in that window. Maybe I should pull this up just a little bit so you can still see it. Okay, so I'm going to return counts. Let me go ahead and step over this. And that was the very first step of the update method. The next step is to update the grid based on the neighbor counts. So if I step into that code, you'll see it also has a 2d, or sorry, a nested for loop structure to operate on this 2d array of counts. And the logic here is for each cell in the grid, I'm going to get this cell at that RC, and then call the update cell method. Well, the update cell method if I step into it is what encodes the logic of Conway's game of life. So in other words, if the cell is turned on, and if the count is less than two or greater than three, then I need to turn it off. And this is just repeating the rules from the textbook in comments, you can see how that corresponds to the code. Otherwise, if the cell is not turned on, and it has exactly three neighbors, then I turn it on, right? And, and so it's just one simple nested if statement in this method, and that basically encodes the entire logic of the game, which I find fascinating that such simple code can create very elaborate animations and simulations like the ones that were on Wikipedia or the, the arpintomino one that we saw in the Conway life wiki as well. So I'm going to go ahead and step return that basically runs all the code in this method returns to where it was called. And in fact, I think that's all the code in this file. The only thing left was count alive, which we already saw in the constructor. So I'm just going to let the program run. I'll hit the play button. Oh, let me remove this breakpoint so it can play for real. And you can see the simulation that was provided with the book includes two blinkers. These shapes are called blinkers. And the reason why is this piece in the middle always has exactly two neighbors.  So it oscillates like up and down like that. So I'd encourage you to play around with the code step through with a debugger on your own computer, perhaps change the constructor and try different starting configurations to see that how that affects the code. But most importantly, make sure you understand how to manipulate 2d arrays, both through indexing them like r sub c, but also dealing with them in for loops, whether that's a standard set of nested for loops that just uses integers, or whether that is the enhanced for loop that uses the array and sell objects directly. That's it for today. Happy reading and good luck.


Good morning. There's so much springtime energy in the room, so much sunshine inside and outside. Welcome. Welcome to Design to Thrive, the futures of behavior design for well-being. So even when we aren't using our eyes, they're active. Phosphines are the little light show of stars and geometric patterns that seeing folks have when we close our eyes, as our brain digests and processes the things that we've seen throughout the day. Even people who've lost their sense of vision but have had it at one time can see these patterns. And physical manipulation can generate them. You can try it with me, are you ready? So close your eyes, very gently, gently. Touch them with your fingertips, and then move your little fingers around.  Do you see the little lights? You can see the bits of lights move around where you touch them. Those are phosphines. So they can appear as geometric patterns. They can also appear as random spots of color. There have actually been researchers who've tried to design the patterns and give you something like 15 different shapes. And even without applying pressure manually and without some visual information to process, our inactive eyes and our processing brain will also see patterns when we close our eyes. And that's because our body also produces its own light.   It's sort of a visual noise. And research suggests that retinal noise occurs not in response to zero light, but rather in response to a very specific type of light. Your own light, the light you generate with your body. So, phosphine patterns are generated by external stimuli, and also by our own internal machinery. Little cells emitting light and our brain keeping the camera rolling long after bedtime. Sort of the cameraman and the audience at the same time. So too with the patterns of human behavior. Whether we're prompted by the external architectural designs that house and surround us as we go about our daily routines or the little red badges and the blinky buttons that are nudging us to act now in our digital lives, we humans remain inside of what we make. We're the progenitors of our own persuasion. But the breadth and the depth and the scale and the speed of the influence that the digital and analog tools we're creating is shifting dramatically. As is who or what, which as you'll hear later will inevitably bring us back to who, gets trained to prompt and persuade and change our behaviors on and offline. So enormous language models are rapidly advancing and they make it possible for machines to influence both our online behaviors and our offline behaviors across a range of interactions that impact our wellbeing. But what happens when we haven't opted in when we don't know what behaviors are being influenced and we can't actually track back to why we're doing the thing we're doing in the first place. So OpenAI's GPT-4 apparently actively deceived a human in a test to complete a task. And a recent Stanford study from the Institute for the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in 2023 noted that persuasive AI could be used for mass scale campaigns based on suspect information used to lobby, generate online comments, write peer-to-peer text messages, or even produce letters to editors of influential print media. Now, since there's no Hippocratic oath or ethical mandate for behavior designers yet, how can we stay aware of who and how and what new designs and actors are persuading us to behave well? And what design choices enable us to stay willing, aware, and active participants in our designed lives? Welcome. My name is Hildreth Englund. Welcome to Media Evolution. I'm the head of research and curation here. And today, we are going to be talking about exploring the futures of designing tools and contexts to influence the patterns of human behavior for our own and for the planet, for our non-human kin, for our well-being. We have four amazing speakers today that are gonna help us unpack some of the challenges but and the opportunities in designing for thriving in our urban spaces, at work, in our institutions, and in our online lives. And we'll dig into the ethics of persuasion, which are not as dark or as light as some critics might suggest. So we have Eva Westermark joining us, a partner at Gale in Copenhagen, an urban planner, an architect who's gonna help us understand how place-based well-being can be equitable and sustainable for everyone, dig into the middle spaces of behavior, the literal spaces. We have Katarina Schell, who's a chief psychologist at AbleMind, who's gonna discuss designing technology tools to help employees be well in their workplace. We have Michael Rosenberg here joining us as senior product lead, us two, who's gonna discuss how designing persuasive products and services, including those that use AI, can be done safely and ethically. We also have Salah Westerstra and joining us, the founder and AI ethicist at Harmless. We'll discuss building more ethical, values-driven AI solutions for business and society. So much has happened with AI and large language models and the ethics of how and whether we design tools to influence human behavior since we started this collaborative foresight cycle in November. So much so that we've been a little bit deliberate today in pivoting the conversation slightly towards AI as a tool, one of the many, many, many that can influence how we behave across a range of interactions. And whether prompted by intrinsic or extrinsic motivations, what we'll find today is human agency remains at the center of this conversation. Especially as we imagine the possible, potential, and preferable futures of behavior design for wellbeing. So we're right there at the top, tippy tippy top, of these circles. This is the final seminar in our process called Collaborative Foresight, and we've dedicated a cycle to the futures of behavior design for wellbeing. Thanks to the generous support from our partner at Sway Life. Through four immersive workshops with a core contributor group of folks, including some folks in this room, we've imagined and developed and revised a series of possible alternative and preferable futures for Southern Sweden in 2050. The broader community participated and contributed trends and signals and helped our core contributors explore the assumptions and the ethical implications of each future scenario. And it became clear very early on that it would be impossible to explore the futures of designing behaviors and the health and mobility and sustainability spaces, everything around our wellbeing without also contemplating the wellbeing for the planet and its non-human inhabitants. So today we're also releasing a book. I hope you got your copy. Did you get a copy? Can you show me? Yes. Hi. It's called The Patterns of Light and Dark. It features future scenarios envisioned by this core contributor group of designers and doctors and architects and UX researchers and city planners and academics and artists. And we have three commentaries included in the book from authors near and far, some of whom were also part of the collaborative foresight cycle. So here's some housekeeping. This is what we're gonna do today. We'll have a couple of speakers, then we'll have a Q and A. You can pepper them with your questions. Be sure to wait for a microphone before you get there so that everybody can hear you. There'll be mics running around. I'll do my best to moderate your curiosity. And then we'll stop and pause for a break. You can get more coffee or more water to hydrate yourself because today is a conversation about wellbeing. And then we'll come back and we'll have some more conversation. And then we'll finish up with some connections and more coffee or water, your choice.


Mining. What would we do without it? Dedicated miners work in every state and territory day and night to produce fuel and materials to keep the lights on, to construct roads, bridges and buildings, to grow our food and to manufacture the countless items we need and use. Mining has always been a hazardous occupation. From the beginning, our nation's miners have faced dangers from roof falls, machinery, explosions of gas and dust, blasting, fires and floods. You are right if you think that mining is a tough, dangerous job. This is why the Mine Safety and Health Administration, MSHA, is here. We are part of the U.S. Department of Labor. Our job is to help improve workplace safety and health conditions for everyone who works in our nation's mines. Big and small, surface and underground, coal and metal non-metal. This sounds like a big assignment. And it is. Federal Mine Safety and Health Law has grown along with the American mining industry. Farmington, West Virginia. November 20, 1968. An explosion, spread by coal, dust and gas, rips through nine working sections of the mine's west side. 78 miners die in the blast. And 21 survivors make their way to the surface. Congress moved quickly to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969. Legislation based on the belief that the first priority and concern of all in the coal mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource, the miner. The Sunshine Mine, a metal operation near Kellogg, Idaho, caught fire on May 2, 1972. Gas and smoke killed 91 miners who were working inside. 81 others were evacuated from the mine. And two more were rescued a week later. The Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 combined coal and metal non-metal mine health and safety law into one piece of legislation. The law that is on the books today. The Act requires our inspectors to inspect underground mines in their entirety four times per year and surface mines twice per year. To make sure they meet MSHA standards for safety and health, there are many standards. Let's find out about a few of them. At a surface mine, the inspector looks at things such as structures, machinery, impoundments, ground conditions, truck haulage, and explosives and blasting. At underground mines, our inspector examines roof and ground conditions, ventilation, electricity, haulage, and blasting. Inspectors take health samples at mines to check for potential hazards from conditions such as dust and noise. If an MSHA inspector finds an unsafe or unhealthy condition, the law requires that it be corrected. Sometimes we find a problem that's an immediate threat to safety and health. If this occurs, the affected area in the mine is closed or the equipment involved is removed from service and the miners leave the area until the condition is fixed. There's a lot more to safety and health than enforcement. We help people address safety and health concerns where they happen at the mine site. Engineers, scientists, and industrial hygienists from our technical support staff work with miners and mining companies to look at different problems and suggest ways to solve them. Some of these concerns include safe design and maintenance of mining equipment and machinery, roof support or ventilation systems in underground mines, and ground control at surface operations. We also look at mine waste disposal facilities and measurement and control of miners' exposure to health hazards such as dust, noise, and radiation. We investigate instruments, equipment, materials, and explosives to make sure that they are safe to use in mines. MSHA strongly encourages the American mining community to join in a number of cooperative programs to work together to solve safety and health problems. Agreements with other government agencies and colleges and universities as well as mining groups from other countries are in place to help make sure that we are part of an active and effective safety team. Up-to-date and useful training is vital since mining occurs in a hazardous, ever-changing environment where there is little room for error. MSHA requires each U.S. mine operator to have an improved plan for minor training. New underground miners with no underground mining experience get 40 hours of basic safety and health training before they start to work underground. New surface miners who have no surface mining experience receive 24 hours of basic safety and health training before they start work at a surface operation. All miners get 8 hours of refresher safety and health training every year. Miners assigned to new jobs get safety-related task training. The National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beaver West Virginia is the world's largest institution devoted to safety and health in mining. It is a central training facility for federal mine inspectors and mine safety professionals from MSHA, government agencies, the mining industry, and labor. The Academy, in addition to presenting classes, produces and distributes a wide variety of mine safety training programs. So, what's ahead? America's mines produce more material than ever before. Sophisticated machinery and equipment lets miners work in areas that are often very difficult and dangerous. Mining technology changes constantly and every mine is unique. This is why inspection, technical and engineering assistance, and training are all important parts of our safety work. We will continue to address safety problems. Technology and safety will continue to go hand-in-hand in the mining industry. All of our programs and activities have one common goal, to prevent injuries, illnesses, and fatalities at our nation's mines. With the cooperation of miners and mine managers, we are working to make America's mines safer and healthier places in which to work. We are MSHA.


I think there was a difference of opinion among the archaeologists. Well, you know, it's a real love of knowledge. I know it sounds corny, but I just love what I do for a living. I love the possibility of being able to look at material and try to find something that hasn't been thought of before, that hasn't been spoken of before, and really pull back these kind of curtains that are sometimes drawn on the past and understand the past at some levels. When I first met Steve, I was at a conference here at Orhus University. Some of my colleagues and myself organized a series of conferences about this specific topic. And since Steve is one of the absolutely central figures within the field of Orhus mythology, he was one of the guests that we wanted to invite. I think that the most important impact of Steve's studies is his focus on performance in the medieval texts. That has made it possible to conceptualize the texts and their contexts in new ways. I've been particularly interested in trying to discover new sources of information, new ways to understand the information. I've been particularly attracted to areas like magic and witchcraft and the history of women, to some extent the narrative culture and popular traditions of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. We gained a good partner at an internationally well-known university. We gained the possibility of international research exchange between one of the important research millers outside of Europe. We have had Old Norse summer schools where we have international colleagues teaching and these summers have been a meeting point, again not only dealing with teaching but which have made it possible for researchers to meet. Between our summer school and the ones that Orhus itself runs, many people have started calling Orhus the mecca of Old Norse studies in the summer because it's so perfect. There's so many scholars here, both resident on your faculty and then visitors. I think one of the really great developments of the last few decades has been a more genuinely multi-disciplinary approach, a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of culture and history. So we're no longer working just within our own little boxes that I only do this kind of field or that kind of field, but they're really taking into consideration the methodologies, the aims, the interpretations of people in ancillary disciplines, in neighboring disciplines, and so this is part of my attempt to do that, I guess, and understand what archaeologists are interested in. Right here in the exploration area, he's a very important person because he's sort of, well you can say he contextualize things for the students. He draws the big lines. So the next big project is one that I'm doing together with Penilla Herrmann from Orhus University and Jörg Glauser and Zurich. We're working on a one-or-two volume handbook of memory studies and pre-modern Scandinavian. Definitely I ask questions that historians don't ask. Their concerns and my concerns don't match up well, but certainly the historical material is what I'm completely drawn to and trying to understand it. Maybe in new, new, I hope, interesting ways. Dear Professor Mitchell, dear Stephen, your leading world authority in the field of medieval Scandinavian studies. You have published extensively in the field since 1987. You became a professor of Scandinavian and folklore at Harvard University. You have received numerous prizes and you're the editor of the Plastidious book series, The Milman-Perry Collection. You have developed new methods in the study of sagas, eddas, traditions, oral traditions, historiographies, and law in the past, and you have developed methods that make it possible for us to reach back into a past long gone. You have indeed drawn back the curtains on history and on Scandinavian studies.  You're always available for discussions, for gap-togethers, for exchanges of ideas and thoughts. You are generous and wonderful host for visitors to your university. Your travels include frequent stays, long stays, occasionally here in all of the university. You come here to give lectures, to supervise, to work with colleagues, to publish papers, to prepare applications, indeed to exchange ideas. We are delighted that Ouse has won a place in your heart and mind and we treasure what you've done for this university. It is my pleasure and privilege to bestow upon you the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Honoris Causa at Ouse University. Congratulations, Professor Mitchell.


You know all the various crises that are happening right now. We won't mention it, but the past three months We've seen a tremendous number of various crises economic societal Medical, etc. We just won't mention mention them. But one thing that is more Troublesome than all of them combined is the parental crisis This is the nj. We're 22.com here a little Little opinion piece about the the crisis and we think there's a big deal crisis going on and that's For parents in this country, especially people with children under, you know, eight years old or even less and There's a lot of the crazy stuff happening in the world And I think in general a lot of people I talk to the same people know what's going on They kind of just don't get involved and can manage quite fine But I'm not necessarily saying there's too many sane people in the world, but What what is forgotten is the unintended victims of what's happening in the world today, and that's the kids Kids when they're, you know, under 10 years old or even younger have are very impressionable like a lot of their future Personality and mindset comes from when they're when they're really young and they they can see what parents do They can see what the rest of the world does and they can see what the parents show them in this world and This is you know, they're very impressionable and it really comes it becomes very difficult for a parent I personally don't want the kids to have to go through these societal motions that everybody's kind of doing for the sake of Participating if you know what I mean like if you want to go to the supermarket You have to wear a certain costume to get in and I see kids going in with these costumes on and I'm not too happy I don't think that a child should be put through that type of thing Luckily, we don't have TV in our house and our children don't see any of this. Thank God But I guess I had a big dilemma the other day and it was regarding some sort of summer camp for our kids and Whether I am I was adamant that I don't want to send my children to a weird summer camp where they have to you know stand a certain number of feet apart and wear costumes to Enjoy that's just not the way children interact and it shouldn't be forced on them and I Thought it might be best that with that with the hope that That this whole thing just goes away and we can go back to the real normal not the stupid new normal that everybody talks about And I was thinking maybe I should deprive The kids in that respect and and in my heart I didn't feel it was deprivation at all I felt it was protection from from seeing this nonsense going on but on the other hand should parent let the kids experience these things and You know all these rules based on unsound and Conflicting science and it's fear basically and I don't like it. I mean it's Maybe the kids can get over it if it goes back to a new I mean the old normal But I just I don't know how many other people feel that I think Letting a child experience something that you know all kids do at the certain age whether it's a camp or or whatever sporting event Maybe it's worth it not to to let them do and just delay it and a delay of a couple years is better than permanent mental damage On a child to have to witness this type of stuff I just want you know, I do my best to tell my children to think critically and And I tell them that I don't I don't believe in any of this stuff. It's necessary and to challenge authority, especially if it's a if it's some sort of a political body And and to think you know critically critically don't just assume say well, how do you know it's right? Can I see the proof? Well, how do you know this is right? Why are there three different opinions about her? How come they keep changing their their answer every week or two or day or two, you know You know phases go from three phases to ten phases to from two to eight weeks to 12 to 13 I mean, I don't know. This is all political and I don't like it. I don't want to involve my kids. So that's it Be blunt with your kids. Be honest. Don't don't Tell them that's just the way it is to have them challenge it and You got to be blunt to the kids But in general there has to be a better way and I'm working really hard on figuring it out You like this video and I hit the bell and the subscribe and I'll talk to you soon


Hi, I'm Christopher Cork. I am a lead systems designer in charge of three C's at Quantic Dream Montreal So three C's stands for camera character and controls It's really the moment you pick up the gamepad and you've got that character and they're responding to all of your little inputs and directions And it feels like the barrier between yourself and the game fades away, and you just You are in the space. That's what three C's does It's almost the entirety of our job is erasing that barrier between you and the video game Lead systems designer is in charge of a group of people who really take one part of the game and make it the best that they possibly can So a lead systems designer is really a senior designer mixed with a bit of management We are product owners who are largely in charge of multi disciplinary strike teams devoted to Pushing forward and polishing one key aspect of a game. I started as a programmer One of the other guys started as a level designer You have the one who started as a game designer on what we call ARGs augmented reality games So that's what's interesting about being a lead systems designer. There is no one path In fact, most lead systems designers come from a multi disciplinary background The initial spark for me to join the gaming industry was actually the Halo 3 blog I can't downplay how meaningful it was to me. I didn't even realize before stumbling across that on the internet that you know I thought it was just a bunch of people in cubicles and then when you're reading it You're hearing about not only the stuff they do at work But also they were having guitar hero competitions and they were talking about you know Having prompt people coming in and seeing the actual weapons from their own game and it was just like This could be a job Working with Paris just the fact that for example the game director and associate game director over there But then the lead systems designers are here. There's that time gap and the culture gap So I would say that it's actually one of the biggest challenges It's actually one of the main reasons I joined is because the job requires a lot of and I'm going to invent a word adaptability because it really stresses the point that being very adaptable and Very able to just change Processes even ones that you've become used to over the last 10 years But just to break out of those and try something new is one of the key Indicators of success on our job by far the easiest part of my job is the people I get to work with the amount of Expertise in Paris is just mind-boggling and then the people we have here There's a bunch of old veterans that I've worked with for ages now and really you feel like you're getting to Play with the A-listers here trying to be as Pollividly as possible while maintaining an eye out for what your speciality is because honestly in triple a everyone Develops a speciality a niche something that's unique to them But you don't want to be a one-hit wonder either so you want to be able to adapt and learn constantly and Most importantly, you know have fun with it because we're here to make games And if you're not having fun neither with the people playing them awesome video games are something my mom said I could never make a living at


Hey there friends thanks for checking in today we're looking at a 22 long rifle 22 magnum nine shot revolver called the diamond back side kick back with the budget series the MSRP on this is 320 dollars and it was selling for right around 320 hard to find right now I imagine it will be in stock fairly shortly I hope but definitely a budget revolver does include two cylinders one 22 long rifle one 22 magnum and here it is cowboy action looking but this is actually a swing open cylinder you take this lever here push it forward and out comes the cylinder nine shots 4.5 inch barrel the grip and the frame is made of zinc steel barrel and a four pound single action trigger pull not bad and this is also double action so it's a double action single action revolver which steps away from the cowboy guns but here we have a glass filled nylon grip 4.5 inch barrel tunneled rear sight ramped up front sight there a long spur easy to reach for that single action pull and overall a very popular right out of the gate it became very popular a lot of people were interested in the side kick because it offers quite a bit for 320 bucks and you think about the the cylinders now speaking of the cylinders people were wondering how hard is it to change them out well I'm going to roll through that right now into the frame there there is a hole with a spring loaded pin so I have a punch here you'll see that that is spring loaded I'm going to first swing out the cylinder and then take this punch and push it in then I'm going to release as I pull the cylinder toward me or toward the camera I'm going to slowly release as that cylinder comes out just like that this is the 22 magnum I will install the 22 long rifle the same way I'm going to push that down insert this arm right here I can get it in there properly I'm going to slowly bring the punch forward and just like that the 22 long rifle cylinder is installed that's a nice you'll notice that this is all black and it kind of resembles a blued revolver but actually it's black serico so it's got a cool look to it the nine shot cylinder certainly gets the job done and at the range you know that four and a half inch barrel with no recoil at all is really nice to shoot it's a simple shoot I consider this a good training tool for for somebody who wants to get into shooting they're a little recoil sensitive maybe a little skittish we always say you know start them out with 22 long rifle and then move up to 22 magnum which is a bit louder by the way it's it's quite a bit louder more power more energy with the 22 magnum you could take this small game hunting you know squirrels or whatever but it's a heavy gun 32 and a half ounces dyna back is definitely getting it done with some innovative firearms like this gives the cowboy action look which is typically single action and they created a swing open cylinder that's double action single action and it it's a shooter I have to say you know I really did enjoy it at the range I continue to enjoy it at the range it's inexpensive it's nice to shoot it's a heavy-duty gun and it's constructed very well and I'm very happy with it so far I think Diamondback really priced this well 320 dollars MSRP it offers a lot of flexibility which is what a lot of shooters want they say they want innovation they want something different and they want options certain cylinders in this case to shoot different rounds really makes it nice for those who want something different or like I mentioned a trading tool and Diamondback is offering that with this seracoded black seracoded sidekick for a very fair price definitely fits into the budget series and I am certainly happy to feature it and I look forward to doing a lot more shooting with this Diamondback sidekick if you like videos like this please subscribe and share I always appreciate thumbs up button thanks for watching and you guys be safe


Within a 24-hour span, I managed to watch one of my favorite movies of 2023 and this, one of the worst films I saw all year, Rebel Moon. I'm sorry, Rebel Moon, part one, A Child of Fire. Let's burn this to the ground with a review. This is gonna be a spoiler-free review, but if you've ever seen a Star Wars movie, you already know the entire plot, so there's really not much else to spoil. That said, let's just give the surface-level thoughts on Zack Snyder, A Child of Fire. Part one, I don't know when part two comes out, I think in a few months, actually.  Or you might wanna wait another year because Snyder said there's a better version of this movie that's rated R, that's even longer, that has a bunch of cool stuff that wasn't in it. It's like a totally different movie, he said. Why would a director say that? Unless he already knows that his movie sucks, that's on Netflix, and he's trying to rile up his super hardcore fans to get them to release the Snyder cut all over again. Can't wait for that. What an amazing experience it's gonna be. You know what wasn't an amazing experience? Trying to sit through this schlock with my wife, it was miserable. She passed out, of course, halfway through, at which point I just suffered to try to finish the movie so I could do a review. About an hour and a half in, I thought, you know what, I hate this, why do I need to finish it? If you know a meal's bad, you don't have to eat the whole thing. But I sat through it, I slogged it out, and yeah, what a terrible time. Let's get into it. So, Cora is the main character played by Sophia Boutella. She's a sad sack, stick in the mud. Cruddy character that really has nothing exciting going for her. I don't like this character. Sophia looks fine, she's pleasant on camera, but outside of that, what do we have? Nothing, really. We will follow her as she, you know what? Let me back up. Because I had this complaint about a different movie and people said to me, well, you know what, Adam? During war and other terrible times, people aren't happy. They're not pleasant, they're miserable, they're sad, they cry, da, da, da, da, yeah, of course. That's not the criticism I have. You can absolutely have a person that's broken and sad, but is still interesting to watch and rally behind. That is not what's happening here. This person is sad and broken, but not interesting or captivating or giving me anything to really go on outside of, okay, she's just now standing in front of another green screen, awkwardly having dialogue with someone. This is miserable. The movie is large scale, yet somehow at the same time, incredibly small. It feels so quaint because Snyder, unlike almost every other director I know, has not grown past 300. He's still on a sound stage, doing the same shtick over and over. 300 is badass, I love that movie. I will always love and defend that movie. It was, I mean, it was ahead of the game. But Snyder, since then, has gone, he's gone backwards, he's devolved. It's insane. And I think a lot of it is because he's now writing these movies or has a big hand in that department and he should stay away from that. Of course, this is all subjective, this is my opinion. He's got his audience that loves his films. They don't need to listen to me. If you're a huge Snyder fan, you don't need to listen to me. Why are you watching me? I clearly, I've fallen out of favor with him. Ever since 300 and Dawn of the Dead, he's really let me down over and over. But I keep coming back, hoping. Man of steel I liked, that was fine. But man, what is going on? This doesn't feel like a movie. It feels like a weird school project where he took a bunch of scenes and different things that he thought were cool in other films and tried his hand at them and then just loosely tied them together. Let's get a little bit into the plot. So Korra, main character of course, she has been saved by an older gentleman and brought to a planet for a couple years. It's basically Tatooine. She was saved from the evil empire who's going around looking for rebels and taking them out and showing dominance throughout space. They're not called the empire, but that's what they are because this is Star Wars done stupid. She actually shares room and board with this old man too. And there's a funny scene early on where she's gonna get dressed. And so she shuts the curtain, which is just the see-through separator. And all I'm thinking is what, you can see everything. It's basically like closing a glass window. Nothing has changed at all. It was just comical. I thought that was funny thinking, what are we doing here? He can see everything going on. Anyway, this is a small quaint little village. They grow crops. They have enough to feed their family and sell some off to the different traders and maybe some to the empire. That's the idea because these guys come down and they demand everything from this farm. They want all their crops, everything that they produce, they're gonna give to the empire. They're not good people. They're actually garbage. They also brought with them a C3PO robot who's going to kind of understand the world on his own and learn to love. And that's just a side story that goes nowhere right now because this is a two-part thing. So really, really looking forward to seeing where that story goes, said no one. There is another hilarious scene in this town.  We'll call her Water Girl because that's all I've seen her do. Her only job is to walk around with pictures of water and deliver it to people. So Water Girl is out in the middle of the night for some reason, I'm not even sure. And she's walking around with water and the bad guys that they kept there, the evil empire guys, there's probably a dozen of them or so. They're all just super handsy and super rapy and they're like, hey little girl, come on over here. And they're all gonna have their way with her except for one younger guy who's like, ah, I don't know about this. I don't like this idea, but everybody else is on board. It's quite amazing. Anyway, the Korachik, she sees what's going on and she comes over and she's not having it.  We're gonna get some horrible slow motion in this section and then every action scene going forward. Typically, I'm a fan of the slow-mo speedup, but I feel like Snyder's going out of his way to slow things down that aren't interesting at all. He's not slowing down stuff where people are throwing axes and goes.  Not the cool stuff. What are you doing, dude? Moving past that. In this scene, she takes these guys out and then the entire town congregates by the front door of this barn. She turns around, they're all just there. What were you people doing? That you all came single-filed together. It was crazy. Was there a party going on? And just nobody knew Watergirl was in trouble and then you all heard at the same time.  I didn't understand. And the fact that no one heard her screaming and stuff earlier is even more impressive. But regardless, that's just one of many issues I have with this film. Nothing really moves well together. There's a lot of just head-scratching ideas and camera shots and it's just a mess. What's gonna happen next is Cora is going to decide, all right, we have to build up an army to fight the capital, to fight the empire, to fight these bad guys. From this point forward, so about 25, 30 minutes in, this is a single-note film where all we're gonna be doing for the next two hours is jumping from planet to planet recruiting dudes for this ragtag rebel mission. Going back against the empire, against the capital, against the bad guys. It's so boring. It's so tedious. And every time she goes to one of these places and gets a new character, it's always something we've seen. One person has freaking budget lightsabers. Another dude is trying to train a hippogriff. He's trying to get to ride Buck Beak so he can make the slave owner proud so he can get out of his debt. It's terrible. It's just terrible. I felt zero emotion throughout this entire film. No laughing, no smiling, no sad, no happy, no joy, no sorrow, no nothing. It's just there. Everything is there. And the final moments of this movie, the cliffhanger they leave us on is so anticlimactic, so dumb. I can't imagine a single person watching this and going, oh, wow, I can't wait for part two. What? That was wild. It was awful. It was embarrassing. Why is Snyder still getting all of these deals with studios? I don't understand. I don't get it. I don't get it. And that's Rebel Moon, a child of fire part one, or Rebel Moon part one, a child of fire, who cares? This is a dumpster of a film. It's one of the worst movies I saw all year. And that's actually saying a lot because I saw some real garbage this year. Let me know though, am I way off and this is just top of the line Snyder? This is the Snyder that Warner Brothers was keeping from us for all those years. He's back in full force. Or is this just, just like I said, a miserable waste of time with no heart, no emotion in the slightest, with people that seem so stuck going from scene to scene without any real direction. Let me know, leave a comment, like the video, subscribe. If you haven't, if you like brutal honesty, I'm here for it. I appreciate it in return. Let me know in the comments. Become a Patreon at patreon.com slash Adam does movies or a YouTube join member by just hitting that join button.  Here's a few bucks and I would appreciate it. Not so much the name calling, but the few bucks that I would appreciate that. It's one man operation. It's a passion project. I'm basically the Zack Snyder of YouTube. That's probably not a compliment I wanna give myself. Okay, thank you for watching. Hopefully I see you next time. Take care.


Here today are Khuf Zikim. So this is a Zikim beach just right on the board the Gaza Strip. And as you can see, it's been a couple of years since I last went surfing. Actually used to be a big hobby of mine. But the seas are pretty rough here. Gaza is over in that direction. You can actually see the border fence with Gaza there in the distance. It's that big thing jutting out to the sea. And those buildings just past the fence are actually in the Gaza Strip This beach, it's only such a big beach with beachgoers besides the surfing stuff. And that is the Ashkelon power plant I believe. So just facing northwards here, those are the towers of the Ashkelon power plant. And then there's this huge thing going out into the sea there. I'm not sure how far south you can actually go before you get to some kind of like obstacle to stop people from going into Gaza. This is actually where Aviram and Goustu crossed into Gaza voluntarily was actually on this beach the you know further south here. But and then there's a huge army base as you can see there from that watch tower. That's an army base up there. Israel recently constructed this big kind of like fortified wall that you can see that's what's jutting out to sea. I'm just gonna put my fingers so you can see what I'm looking at there because it's probably a little bit hard to make out. It's again kind of in the region of sundown here. Very hard it feels like the days in the winter in Israel are just really really short. So yeah this is the this is what there is to see in this part of the country.


ورحمة الله وبركاته بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين الحمد لله الذي يجيبني حين أناديه ويستر علي كل عورة وأنا أعصيه ويعظم النعمة علي فلا أجازيه نحمده ونسبحه ونقدسه على آلائه ونعمائه ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له إلها واحدا أحدا فردا صمدا قيوما نؤمن له بالربوبية ونقر له بالعبودية من يهد الله فهو المهتد ومن يضل الفلا تجد له وليا مرشدة ونشهد أن سيدنا محمدا عبد هو رسوله الله وهمه صلى الله عليه وسلم أرسله بالهدى ودين الحق ليظهره على الدين كله اللهم صل وسلم وبارك وترحم على محمد وآل محمد كأفضل ما صليت وسلمت وباركت وترحمت على إبراهيم وآل إبراهيم في العالمين إنك حميد مجيد وصلى الله وسلم على جميع الأنبياء والمرسلين والأوصياء والصديقين والشهداء والصالحين وعطرة نبيك الطيبين الطاهرين وأصحابه الميامين وبنتبعهم بإحسان وإيمان إلى يوم الدين عباد الله أوسيكم وأوسي نفسي بتقوى الله ولزوم أمره أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم وإذ قال ربك للملائكة إني خالق بشر منطين فإذا سويته ونفخت فيه من روحي فقعوا له ساجدين صدق الله العلي والعظيم اللي تقريب ما فعله شباب صفحه معاً صفحه والخرى بالمعلق المعلق هو قصة مجدد إني خالق بشر منطين في قصة مجدد فإذا صاويته أولاً أصبحته وصبحته ونفخته فيه من الروح أولاً هو روحه ونفخته فيه من روحه فقع له ساجدي ومن this intermingling between the dirt and a spirit, a spirit that has a divine trace in it ونفخته فيه من الروحه It is necessary for this journey in this life, for our journey It is necessary to create this internal struggle inside us لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ This life is about Bala It is about test, no one is going to pass this life without experiencing this test لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْصَنُ عَمَلًا We created you to put you into test ومن this test, the result of this test that lasts for many decades, seven years, eight years, nine years then either we deserve going to paradise or we don't deserve it We deserve something else, the result of this test and this life This blend and this mixture and this infusion between an earthly part which is the dirt, a team and a heavenly part which is the divine spirit ونفخته فيه من الروحه This is the reason for the struggle that we experience The internal struggle that we experience day in and day out In every life, in our life Because these are two powers that are trying to polarize us into two different directions The team, the element of material and dirt in us The earthly element inside us always tries to pull us down to the earth And to the products of this earth It tells us that you have to eat And once you eat, make sure that you are full When I have a friend who is overweight And the doctor keeps telling him that you have to take care of your health So he asked the doctor, what shall I do? The doctor said to him, don't eat the last three bites So this friend was telling me, he says to me I don't know where are those three last bites This is the problem Because he keeps eating and there is still room, masha' Allah So he does not know where to stop and say Okay, these three, I will skip them So this earthly element says eat, drink, enjoy Relationship, unrestricted relationship with the opposite gender, opposite sex Seek this, seek that, acquire this, dominate here This is the earthly element But then we have the spiritual element That always tries to lift us up To elevate us to levels of sublimity Levels of highness, spiritual highness, moral highness, moral dignity And this struggle is continuous The struggle does not end Don't think that the struggle ends when we pass the teen years When we become 20 years old or 30 years old Or some people think at 40 years old this struggle would No, the struggle is continuous Until the last day of this life These two powers are fighting with each other It's inside us The teen, the dirt says You have to be attached to this earth To this life, to this dunya While the spiritual element says You have mabadi You have principles, you have values And this struggle showcases itself In three main areas in our life We can see them Visible in three main areas One of them is Between selfishness and selflessness Selfishness and on the other hand selflessness This element shows itself This struggle, it is visible in this area Some people they live for the sake of themselves only Only themselves The most important thing in this dunya In this universe is them and no one else And others they live not for themselves They live for others You can see the difference The other area where we see this struggle Is very visible between the earthly element The teen, the clay, the dirt And the heavenly element The spirit, the soul Is what philosophers say المحدودية on the one hand The narrowness Execlusivity and narrowness Of the person, the confinement When he confines himself or herself Within certain narrow boundaries When it comes to his race He confines himself only within his race Only within his culture Only within his religion Only within his neighborhood His country, his community Versus someone who is universal Someone who knows that he's a member Of a greater society Called Earth The people of Earth Not the people of Iraq Or Afghanistan or Iran I'm a member, I'm a citizen of this Earth Maybe my government gives me a piece of paper Says this is your citizenship Document, passport It has no value I'm a member of this universe Universal view Not regional Not regional view The day the Muslims are going to be successful And productive When they reach out to others They don't keep Islam for them As a private commodity Only they enjoy it They don't allow others to enjoy it When you open up to others A narrowness A narrowness A perspective A life A approach versus openness An open-mindedness You have a free spirit You can transcend these artificial boundaries That we created for ourselves Just a few days ago Two people came to the office They love each other They are young They want to get married But their parents are against them Because someone is from this nationality And the other is from another nationality And both parents Of both those guys The parents of the man and the woman They oppose They say you have to marry from within your own culture Your own culture You can't Where is it in the Quran Allah says marry from your own culture Where is it in the hadith of the Prophet The Prophet married almost 13 wives Each one from different culture And different religion too And different color too Where is it? This is narrowness This is when a person confines himself Imprisons himself Within artificial boundaries Man-made boundaries Versus someone who is universal Who is a global And his thinking He has a free spirit And the third area Where we see this conflict Very visible Profound and visible Between the earthly component of us And the heavenly component Is the struggle between reason and desire And we have this struggle on daily basis On daily basis Hourly basis There is a fierce fighting Fierce clash Between Aql reason on the one hand And passion and desire on the other hand Plato says That man is composed of three powers One is reason Second is spirit And third is desire Or passion He says whenever we allow Desire to overcome reason Then we find unhappiness We're going to find confusion Do you see some people who tell you I'm confused I don't know what to do I need help I'm confused I'm lost Why he's lost? God wanted him to be lost God created us So we are lost And we are confused He does that deliberately To hurt us God does not want you to be lost He wants you to We created vision External, internal Inner vision for you To find your way To chart your way I don't want you to be lost Or confused It is you who choose Being lost in this life When we allow desire To knock down the reason Then he becomes lost and confused And he becomes unhappy in his life The results are not good results Gharais and desires always are demanding Ever demanding Pressing us Go after this Go after that Go after this goal Go after that material goal And this is This would not end These demands would never stop Would never stop And desires tell us Go and don't ask why Or how If you are hungry, eat Don't ask about the source of the food Whether this food is lawful Or unlawful It belongs to me Or it does not belong to you Don't ask about this money You need money Get it From wherever you can Whatever means Drugs, alcohol Theft, robbery Stealing, fraud Get it You need this money These are the desires The Aql says no Aql says you have been guided by You have something called in this life Principles and values Qiyam principles You have to go by the book With these principles Allah says you are hungry Yes, you need food فَالْيَنْضُرَ الْإِنْسَانُ إِلَا طَعامِهِ Look at that food Examine it before you eat it You need money Yes Definitely you need money to survive Look at the source of income Don't go after the unlawful source Don't make your life miserable And the life of those who live with you miserable Just because you need money Because sometimes that money is going to destroy you Because it came from unlawful source And we need you to build yourself With your wealth With your money When we follow desires We use ourselves to the level of animals Sometimes Quran says in Surat Al-An'am Even lower than animals Lower than animals Because animals when they eat They are hungry, they eat When they are full They don't go after the food anymore They leave it for others Some people they are hungry, they eat They are full But still they fight And they don't allow others to eat the food In them Animals do not have reason They don't have عقل We have reason This is the difference This is the difference Allah says you want to get married Fulfill your desire There is a lawful way for it You need to get money There is a lawful way for it You need to eat To have food and drink There is a Halal way for it Don't go through these Don't go after these Through the unlawful means Therefore The عقل أول ما خلق الله سبحانه وتعالى العقل There is no blessing that God has given Man better than عقل and reason The Hadith says لا دين لمن لا عقل له No faith for someone who has no reason He would not have faith ولا مصيبتك عدم العقل No tragedy, no loss أكثر than losing one's mind And one's reason وما قسم الله بين العباد ما قسم الله تعالى بين العباد أفضل من نعمة العقل الله gives many bounties and gifts To someone who gives children To someone who gives money To someone who gives power To someone who gives beauty But then The best gift of Allah That He distributes among His servants Is عقل and reason It reminds me of a story of Haroon The Abbasid Caliph Haroon He had an advisor Who kept asking him Every evening to drink To share the drink, alcohol with him, wine And this advisor kept refusing لا يا أمير المؤمنين I'm not for it One night Haroon said Tonight you must drink You have no choice You must drink I'm your leader I'm an Amir المؤمنين Is asking you to drink alcohol So he said to him But before you force me Let me ask you a question Answer my question He said to him Why did you choose me To be your senior advisor Is it because of my family Is it because of my wealth I'm a successful businessman He said no You are a broke You are penniless He said Is it because of my physical attraction He said no Definitely not for that reason He said Then why you chose me To be your senior advisor مستشار He said Because of your brain He said Then if this is the case يا أمير المؤمنين I don't even know your father Or your family He said Is it because of my wealth مؤمنين Don't force me to do something Where I lose my brain And if I lose my brain I lose my position with you I lose my job You want me for my brain And if I drink alcohol I'm going to lose my brain And if I lose my brain Then I have nothing left The only thing I have The only asset I have is my brain Do you want me to lose it Someone was telling me The other day that Do you know why Divorce in America Is on the rise Higher than other countries Compared to Europe The rate of divorce in America Is higher And Europe Compared to the Middle East Is much higher He said Because most of these decisions For marriage Are made in cabarets And night clubs When they are drinking Under the influence They meet each other Under the influence Both of them are drinking Heavy drinking Then they fall in love And they decide to get married And in Arabic we say What the wind brings The wind also takes away Something that comes under the influence Is going to go away Also under the influence This is why They don't make a rational decision They don't make rational decision This is why Islam says Stay away from wine Alcohol Stay away from that You're not going to see Pleasing results in your life When you drink And when you allow your family To drink This is not good for you Stay away from it Use your brain When you make a decision Use your pure brain Do not contaminate this brain This is a God-given gift Keep it strong Keep it healthy Keep it away from these intoxicants When Adam was created First thing جبرايل came to him He said Allah says You have three choices If you take one The other two are going to leave you Allah says Either Giving the choice Between We give you reason Or we give you Shiness Or we give you Faith, religion So which one are you going to choose But remember If you choose one You are going to leave Leave you and go He thought for a second He raises his head And he says I choose عقل I choose the reason So جبرايل Turned to shyness Hayat and Deen And he said to them Leave him Leave him and go They said No We are not going to leave him لقد أمرنا الله سبحانه وتعالى أن نتبع العقل حيث سار أن الله سبحانه وتعالى أن جميع هذا العقل يذهب بعده لا تتبعه منه عندما يوجد عقل يوجد كل شيء في الإسلام و عندما يوجد عقل يوجد عقل ماذا جميل يقول صلى الله عليه وسلم يقول نوم العقل نوم العقل أفضل من سهر الجاهل يوجد عقل even when he sleeps he is more productive than someone who does not have reason he is ignorant and he is awake the productivity of someone who has sanity and reason even when he sleeps is more than the productivity of someone who is insane but he is awake نوم العقل أفضل من سهر الجاهل إسم الله الرحمن الرحيم والعصر إن الإنسان إلا الذين آمنوا وعملوا الصالحات وتواصعوا بالحق وتواصعوا بالصبر صلى الله وسلم على سيدنا محمد وأهل بيتها الطيبين الطاهرين بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم الحمد لله رب العالمين نحمده ونسبحه ونقدسه على آلائه ونعمائه ونشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريك له وأن سيدنا محمدا عبده ورسوله اللهم صلى وسلم وبارك وترحم على محمد وآل محمد كأفضل ما صليت وسلمت وباركت وترحمت على إبراهيم وآل إبراهيم في العالمين إنك حميد المجيد وصلى الله وسلم على خلفاء نبيك وأصيائه وأهل بيته علي أمير المؤمنين وقائد الغر المحجلين وعلى البضعة الطاهرة والله سيدة نساء العالمين وعلى سبطي نبي الرحمة وسيدين شباب أهل الجنة الحسن والحسين عليهم السلام وعلى علي ابن الحسين ومحمد ابن علي وجعفر ابن محمد وموسى ابن جعفر وعلي ابن موسى ومحمد ابن علي وعلي ابن محمد والحسن ابن علي والخلف الهادي المهدي جعلنا من أنصار هواعوان حباد الله أصيكم وأصي نفس المقصرة المذنبة بتقوى الله ولزوم أمره رؤية عن سيدنا ومولان الإمام أمير المؤمنين عليه السلام أنه قال الدنيا كلها جهل إلا مواضع العلم والعلم أعمل به والعمل كله رياء إلا ما كان مخلصا والإخلاص على خطر حتى ينظر العبد بما خطم لح صدقة أمير المؤمنين عليه السلام أحد من أمر أمير أمير أمير أمير أن هم امير أن فت Hae بأمير our أمير أمير أمير أمير ي...! وح may أيضan يحضر أوشع ابي...! حيث هذا الحياة. لقد قمت بها بها. تلك الموضوع الخاصة والدسطينيشن هو الآخرة. ومن أراد الآخرة وسعى لها سعيها وهو مؤمن. فأولئك كان سعيهم مشكورة. إذا كنا نحاول ذلك الدسطينيشن then you're going to be successful. فأولئك كان سعيهم مشكورة. We're going to be grateful to them. We're going to observe what they do أمير المؤمنين يقول الدنيا كلها جهل.  إلا مواضع العلم.  علم. Also علم والعلم كله جهل. علم is going to be darkness. Accept the part that you practice. You put into practice.  What's the benefit? What's the benefit? The Hadith of the Prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم says when sometimes some of the scholars are cast down in hellfire. Scholars. يتأذى أحلو النار الريحهم. Even the people of the hellfire are going to suffer from their odor and their stink and their smell. Because they know that a scholar has been cast into the fire. The Prophet says those scholars are the ones who preach but they don't practice. They know they have علم but they don't put it into practice. It's like a doctor. A doctor who cures the whole community but himself whenever you see him he's sick. He's a mechanistic care of himself. What do you say about him? He tries to heal others while himself is sick. ألمام الصادق صلى الله عليه وسلم says إن العالم إذا لم يعمل بعلمه زالت معظة له من القلوب. العالم the scholar if he does not practice his knowledge he does not put it his admonishment to the community he's worthless does not even go into their hearts they don't listen to him he cannot change because he himself has a problem with that. من تعلم العلم ولم يعمل به هذا حديث الرسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم من تعلم العلم ولم يعمل به he's learning but he does not practice حشاره الله يوم القيامة أعمى he's going to be gathered on the day of judgment so Imam Ali says والعلم كله جهل إلا ما عمي لبه even the knowledge is going to be darkness except the part that you practice you put it into practice والعمل كله رياء the work that we do is not dedicated is not sincere إلا ما كان مخلصة except what you really seek إلا ما كان مخلصة والإخلاصة على خطر your sincerity, your dedication, your earnestness also also in pearls and danger إلا except the end of your journey if the last few days last few weeks if the end of your journey if the last few days if the end of your journey if the last few weeks months years of your journey is safe then the entire journey is safe حتى ينظر العبد بما يختم به wait until see what is the result of your last part of your journey sometimes you begin strong and healthy in their own direction halfway through you make a U-turn don't you see some people they started with good faith pure faith but then dunya changed them they married the wrong person sometimes his wife was good but the son, the daughter they corrupted them sometimes a partner from outside a neighbor a coworker, a friend in his family a family member, a relative they deferred them حتى ينظر العبد بما يختم به the important thing is حسن العقبة that's very important what is the last chapter of your life when you leave your life how is it are you still strong in your faith or you say I was 30 years ago 40 years ago I was good Muslim now I'm not a good Muslim that does not count حتى ينظر العبد اللهم اخفر للمؤمنين والمؤمنات اللهم اجعل عواقبة أمورنا خير اللهم لا تخرجنا من الدنيا حتى ترضى عننا اللهم امونا على مرضانا بالشفاء والعافي اللهم وحد كلمة المسلمين على الخير والبر والصلاح والتقوى يا أرحم الراحمين وعدجل في فرج سيدنا ومولانا صاحب العصر والزمان إن الله يأمر بالعدل والإحسان وإتائذ القربى وينهى عن الفحشاء والمنكل والبغي يعيضكم لعلكم تذكرون صدق الله العلي العظيم وصلى الله وسلم على سيدنا محمد وأهل بيتها الطيبين الطاهرين


We're going to start with Marcus Diamond, and he's going to present to us here. Thank you, Richard. Good morning, everybody. I'm Marcus from Germany, and you forgot to mention the university. Fern, it's Fern University. It's a distance teaching university. It's not an open university because our gates are not so open than in other open universities. And as Richard was already mentioning, this will be very interactive, so I will be most of the time, I'm not speaking. But we had preparation in advance, which I will show you in a minute. So first, unfortunately, Jöran could not make it here. We have four people from Germany. Jöran, Sonja and Gabi are both, all three are working in Hamburg at a small company, and I'm from the Fern University in Hagen in Germany. And the title of the presentation is, Won't Somebody Please Think of the Learners How to Overcome the Helen Lovejoy Syndrome of OER. Basically, then it's up to you to discuss this question. So what we're going to do is... It's an open space. That's what this format is called. And so I did a little research, what does open space mean? So it's now you're lucky and you're invited to focus on a specific important task or purpose, which is to discuss this Helen Lovejoy Syndrome. And this will be done that I will show, present a video which we produced in advance, which explains everything, so for me it's more easy because I can be quiet and see you watching the video. And then we will discuss three questions. They are meant as suggestions, so you don't need to stick to them because we are all adults and we are free to discuss all other questions as well, but we thought that it would be good to focus on three questions. And the method then will be think for yourself, pair with somebody around you. So please make sure that there is somebody available next to you, which you can discuss with him or her. And then we will all be happy to hear what you have come up with. So it's share, so it's think, pair share, the method. And we also will use Twitter, so we have a back channel online with a specific hashtag. And we also have my colleagues in Germany monitoring, moderating the Twitter thing. And we want also to provide a summary, a wrap up of the discussion. So you can also use Twitter and we will try to collect, because it's live recorded, we also try to collect the question, the answers and the suggestions, the ideas. And we will later provide a blog post or even a video.  And so with our further attieu, be ready for the video. Want somebody please think of the children? This famous outcry by the Simpsons character, Helen Lovejoy has become emblematic for situations in which adults pretend to think not of the children, but for them, meaning patronizing them. There's also a Helen Lovejoy syndrome in open education. We tend to think not only of the learners, but we intend to think for them. What do you mean when you say we? We refers to educators and educational institutions that design and provide or we are. We tend to think of learners as target groups, of learning as usage, scenarios and of motivation and interest as demands. That is okay and probably inevitable. It is quite impossible to not think of concrete instances of learning and types of learners when we create open educational resources. So what's the problem? Well this, even less designers and providers of OER simply cannot think of every possible learning situation in which their OER might be used. This would be a form of ignoring one of the basic ideas of open. It is up to the learners how to use OER and that they might know more and know better than the providers what's good for them. This is somewhat confusing. Not knowing about the learning context of OER is not a bug. It is a core feature of open education. Consequently there is a paradox for us in designing and providing OER. We cannot not think of a concrete usage of our materials. But we should also constantly remind ourselves that this is only a small representation of real world learning situations. There are many unknowns out there that we simply cannot know about. And being aware of these unknowns and taking these into account, this is what we call untargeted openness. What is the meaning of untargeted openness? Untargeted openness means open for people and purposes that we cannot know about. So in the context of open education resources? For OER it means a resource should also be open for people that we could not think of and purposes that we could not imagine. That's untargeted openness in the context of OER. Can you provide any examples? Well, it's easy when you look at Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a resource which is meant to address anyone for any purpose. Maybe this is why it was not invented by a traditional institution in the educational system. Or think of YouTube videos. Many YouTubers provide education videos that do not address a specific group. But more interesting are the examples that are not so clear. And that's the topic of our session on untargeted openness.  You cannot know. I'm just watching your video. Here I am, Gaby. We want to explore the idea of untargeted openness together with you. In our session we want to address questions of untargeted openness with explorative discussions and a collection of concrete examples and activities. We'll bring these two questions. First, can you share a story in which a resource was used by someone or for purposes that the creators of the resource did not imagine? Second, how can we provide openness also to those unknowns, unknowns individuals, unknown situations, unknown institutions, unknown context? We'd like to hear your answers. First, onsite in Galway on April 11th. Second, and on Twitter. Please share your thoughts using the hashtag untargeted openness. See you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you saw I was even wearing the same jacket in order to make it more easy for you to recognize me, but I should. Now I'm wearing the white shoes. Okay. Thanks for your applause. So back to the business and to the discussion. We would like to invite you to discuss three questions with your peers here in the lecture theater, which is not very suitable for a workshop, but we want to try our best. And also online. I know many of you are here very active on Twitter. So please don't be shy and share also your ideas and thoughts, whatever comes to your mind using the hashtag untargeted openness and OER19. So as I was mentioning, the method we will use is think-pair-share. So we watched the video together and you probably and hopefully have some basic ideas or what about this session, what we want to transport the idea. And then we will pair up with colleagues here in the room and then we will share our, because we all like the idea of sharing is caring. So we will try to share our ideas here and on Twitter. So the first question is have you ever produced OER without usage and audience in mind? And I think you have five minutes for that. So first you can think for yourself, but also it would be great if you pair already up with somebody next to you. It doesn't necessarily only mean two people. It can also be three or four, whatever is suitable or comfortable for you. So please, if there are any questions, don't be shy to ask the audience or me. So this is the first question. All right. Sorry to interrupt, but judging from the amount of volume, it seems to be a very good lively discussion. We will have two more questions, but I would like to hear what you came up with, any ideas and thoughts. So, you know, the sharing culture thing and we are the OER conference, so who would be willing to share an answer or an idea or comment or it could also be if you like the idea or the questions or it's totally irrelevant for our field. So who wants to go first? Yes, please. Sorry. Yeah, he's running up the hill. Hi, we felt very strongly that there's kind of no point in producing an OER if you haven't got a usage or an audience in mind. It kind of defeats the point somewhat. Okay. There's immediately some replies or comments. Yes, we agreed with that. We thought of examples of creating our own experience of creating OERs that we always had an audience in mind, but sometimes had the experience of the audience who turned up after the design where it was not exactly the audience we planned for. Right, and yes. Yeah, my immediate answer to that question was also no, but also bearing in mind and you're strongly understanding that there's a difference between that question and has the usage of an OER you've produced always been that, originally in mind and very often the most significant usage of an OER that's been produced is not the one that was originally in mind. All right, thank you very much. And also it's a close question so you can answer yes or no. I thank you for your elaboration on it. Oh, you want to, sorry. No, please go ahead. One of us we also kind of agreed with what everybody's been talking about except we split a little bit in the two of us were kind of puzzled by the question because it was like, we found it difficult. How do you write without at least an implied audience or viewer in mind, but then one of us was actually talking about, well they'd actually done a lot of writing and putting materials out on the web as kind of a diary as a note taking. So in other words, they were just not writing for anybody other than to get it out of their own head. But again, in all three cases, we all found, like you mentioned, unintended audiences finding use for it. Okay, thank you. So let's keep discussing, let's keep thinking, let's move on to the second question. Have you ever encountered examples when OER, that's related to the first, when OER was not used as intended? And what happened and OER were not used for the purpose intended by the producers? And what happened there and what did you think about it? So please, again, discuss with your peers. We have four to five minutes and we'll collect the answers. Okay, in order to stick to the schedule because there are other speakers next to me, unfortunately I have to play the bad guy and interrupt the lively discussion, but please be sure to use Twitter. It's 24-7 available. You can, every time you can share it. So just, again, would be anybody willing to share comments, answers to this? Or should we go to Twitter, Richard, if there's something interesting? Yeah, there's a lot of good discussion on Twitter with the folks already. Okay, but there is also, yes please. Hi, you have to excuse my voice, it's almost gone. When YouTube first started out, I was creating parody music videos based on, if there were history lessons, intended for history students and teachers, setting world history. And we had this massive feedback from different people, people learning English. Oh, we love that you put subtitles on them. That helps me learn English. People hard of hearing, same reason. But the best story was that one of my songs was adopted by a drag queen review, and they did this whole Bastille Day celebration in Philadelphia and saying it, and someone sent it to me. So you never know what would happen if you just put stuff out there for people and who might use it. Thank you. All right. I think we move on to the final, to the third last final question. And once again, I would like to motivate you to discuss this question. Have you ever been surprised by the use of OER because it did not take place in the context you had in mind or because it addresses a different target group? And also just say yes or no, but please specify. So the last question, here we go. Yes. Sorry, folks. My timekeeper Richard just gave me the signal. So I think there's no room for interpretation what this means. So, but I have, so thank you for your lively discussion. And yeah, once again, just to wrap it up, here's the final snide. Please make sure that you use the hashtag Unpacketed Openness and there is also some good discussion on it. So thank you very much. It was a great pleasure for me and also on behalf of my dear colleagues back in Germany, Yoram Gaby and Sonja. It was a great pleasure to discuss with you and also do not hesitate to approach me to discuss other questions related to that or whatever you have in mind. And I hope that you are not out of energy for the next session because it will be also very interactive. I hope there is motivation left to go on to the next session. So thank you very much.