and now for something completely different. Hello everybody, Hooded Corcor Commander 788 here. It is time for another vintage GI Joe toy review and this week we are going very vintage indeed. Now normally on this channel we look at GI Joe from the 1980s and a little bit from the 1990s but this week we are going back to the very roots of GI Joe. If you've watched this channel for very long then you've noticed that history is very important to this channel. By better understanding where you've been then you can better understand where you are and that helps you better understand where you're going. It's important to look back and to look forward and we're gonna do both with this review. We're gonna go back to 1964 and look at the first GI Joe. To paraphrase Roadblock, he's the reason we call ourselves Joe. HCC 788 presents from 1964, GI Joe. This is GI Joe. This is among the first GI Joe's introduced in 1964 and he was advertised as an action figure rather than a doll and he was billed as America's Moveable Fighting Man. Action figure was a term coined by Hasbro for GI Joe so this is the first GI Joe and the first real action figure. There are four basic GI Joe figures available in 1964. This is the action soldier. There was also the action marine, action sailor and action pilot. They represented the four major branches of the US armed forces. GI Joe's of this era did not have individual names but as they were being developed they did have prototype names. There was Rocky for the soldier and marine, Skip for the sailor and Ace for the pilot. That name Ace was later used in 1983 for GI Joe's fighter pilot. GI Joe in this form was available from 1964 to 1968 and he went through a lot of variations in the mold and the uniform. When you opened the box for a GI Joe figure back in 1964, he came with a few things. He came with a dog tag which is missing on mine unfortunately. He had his fatigue hat. He had his fatigue shirt and pants and he had his boots. You'd also get this army manual. Actually, there was a manual for each branch of service and this is sort of like a combination catalog and instruction sheet. It lists all the great equipment that you could buy for GI Joe separately. It also has instructions like here it shows how to fold a tent to put it in his backpack and here it has some instructions on how to remove the boots and we will have to try that out later. But you may notice something. The basic GI Joe figure did not come with any weapons. His combat equipment had to be purchased separately. That's because when GI Joe was introduced in the 60s it followed the so-called razor and razors marketing model and the basic idea is you sell the basic razor but you make your real money by selling replacement razors and the GI Joe context they would sell the basic figure but they made their real money selling all the equipment you needed to fully play with the figure. In 1965 an African-American action soldier was issued and that was pretty forward-thinking and progressive for the 60s but it was just the same basic figure mold in different colored plastic. In addition to the basic figure I also have a foot locker sold separately so we will look at the foot locker and some of his combat equipment. To look at the articulation on this figure we have to take his uniform off so let's get started with that and we'll start with the hat, his fatigue cap. This hat is an olive drab and it features some sculpted-on stitching on the brim and around the band and that is not too bad but it's not too detailed either. To take his shirt off you've got to undo the snaps so they're going to do that very carefully so the snaps don't tear away from the fabric. Then we kind of move the arms back and we carefully slide the shirt off of the arms. This is a pretty good authentic looking shirt with some faux pockets and some buttons and there's a tag on the inside that actually says GI Joe by Hasbro. Before we remove the boots I think we should consult the instructions. It says here boots off, grasp, heal and gently pull boot from foot. Steady with other hand as you work boot off foot. Okay let's give that a try. Okay we're going to steady with one hand and then it says to gently pull the heel of the boot from the foot gently.  And that's how you remove the boots. These boots are blow molded with a seam down the middle here and we have sculpted laces and some sculpted stitching. Now the earliest boots were brown. These are the more common black boots. Next we remove the trousers with another snap being very careful. We just slide those off. I'm not going to take a close look at the combat fatigue pants because they're pretty plain. There are some variants of this. Some of them have some nice pockets on them faux pockets but these are pretty plain just in all of drab. And now the figure is naked. That's right that just happened. Let's take a look at GI Joe's articulation and he was advertised as having 20 points of articulation but I only count 18 points of articulation. Maybe you can count along and see if I'm missing something. He is articulated at the head here at the neck and with a great range of motion on the head. He's articulated here at the shoulder. Universal joint at the shoulder. He can move that all around. He has a swivel at the bicep really right at the bicep and perhaps this was a precursor to swivel arm battle grip introduced in the real American hero line in 1983. He has a hinge at the elbow so he can move at the elbow. He's articulated at the wrist so he can move at the wrist. He can also twist at the wrist. Twist the hand at the wrist not bad. He's articulated here at the torso. Pretty good range of motion there. Then he has balls at the hip so he can move his legs around like that but he also has kind of a thigh cut here so his thighs can twist as well. So I'm counting that as two points of articulation there. Then he has joints at the knee and then again at the ankle he can move his ankle and he can also twist his ankle and so really excellent articulation. Not really just good articulation for the time. I think this is good articulation for any era. To look at the main sculpted parts of this figure we can cover his nakedness. Let's look at the sculpt design and color really starting with his head which is the main sculpted detail on the whole figure. This is one of the painted heads available in the 60s. Starting in 1970 they introduced flocked lifelike hair. In 1964 the hair colors for GI Joe included blonde, brown, auburn and black and of course this is the blonde haired version. The blonde haired GI Joe had brown eyes and all of them had a scar on the right cheek. This was a distinctive mark for trademark purposes and to distinguish GI Joe from the inevitable knockoffs. Other sculpted parts include the hands and the left hand is in this open C shape which may be familiar to fans of 1980s GI Joe. The right hand is the so-called nose picker hand with the thumb and forefinger in this pinching pose. Another oddity on this figure the thumbnail on the right thumb is sculpted on the underside of the thumb and it was done this way to identify knockoff figures that might be using the same mold. There is also a little bit of sculpted detail on the feet if you're into that kind of thing. The advertising said this face was sculpted from a composite of 20 different medal of honor winners. Well that is probably not true but it is a nice marketing gimmick. The army manual says you can move your GI Joe into positions that a real life soldier can assume and it has some examples here. Well let's test that out. Check, check, check but I don't know why you'd ever want to do this and check. As we've seen the basic GI Joe figure did not come with a lot of stuff but you could purchase separately a ton of authentic looking combat equipment and you could also purchase the foot locker to store it all in. I do have the foot locker and some of his combat equipment so let's take a look at it. This is the foot locker. Early foot lockers were made of wood and they're pretty sturdy. They feature a metal latch and metal hinges and we have rope handles on the side. The lid featured a sticker with the GI Joe logo that was the logo that used at the time and then we have a space for name, rank and serial number which you could personalize but the real fun begins when you open it up. Under the latch and open the lid and you have a tray with some storage spaces for the equipment and on the inside of the lid we have a sticker that shows how you can put the equipment in the tray. Here's a closer look at the sticker. The equipment was purchased separately and you could put it in the tray in this configuration. I do have the equipment in the tray just the way it shows here so let's take a look at it. In this corner we have an extra set of boots. Here we have binoculars with a black string for a strap. Here we have the first aid kit which is very small red plastic with a white cross on it. Next we have what I consider GI Joe's primary weapon. This is his M1 rifle and that is a very nice replica of the real world weapon. This one is missing the strap that should go along there and it's got some scuffs on the butt here but still a really nice replica of the real world M1. Next we have what the sticker calls a carbine which looks to me like an M1. Carbine with a strap here and again this is a pretty good replica of the real world weapon. Next we have the bayonet. Some decent detail on the bayonet there and we have a ring there and we have a little notch there on the handle and that can attach to the carbine. Just put the barrel through the ring and put the notch on that tab right there and now you are equipped with a bayonet. Next we have the pistol and holster and the sticker just calls this a 45 pistol. It looks like it's a replica of the M1911A1 auto pistol. The holster is black and rubbery and it has this little knob here that attaches to the flap so you can open that up and it has a little red plastic wire here and the pistol does fit the holster pretty well so GI Joe can carry his sidearm. Next we have the belts and I have a couple of different kinds here. I have one with kind of a lighter green and a darker green. Now both of these are later belts. Earlier belts had cloth pouches. These both have kind of plastic sort of rubbery ammo pouches on them. Over here we have a helmet and this helmet unfortunately is missing the strap. Next is the field telephone which has a camouflage vinyl cover and what's cool about this is it opens up and it actually has a telephone receiver on a string. Here we have the fatigue hat which we've already seen. Here we have the canteen with the canteen cover and this is pretty cool. You can remove the cover and take the canteen out and the canteen has kind of a metal look to it with a black lid. This is the entrenching tool and unfortunately I do not have the entrenching tool cover that's supposed to go with it. Now this entrenching tool has three positions. This is the closed position. If you move it one click there this is the pick position and then you move it one more click to where it's fully open and this is the shovel position. Finally we have the mess kit and this mess kit is actually pretty cool. It has this handle that swings over the lid and latches. It's on a hinge but it comes off really easily. It can be popped on pretty easily too.  That's just amazing detail. The tray itself came in a lot of variant colors. There are a lot of colors for this tray but you take the tray out and there you have a ton of storage space for all of G.I. Joe's equipment. You can keep a ton of equipment in here and G.I. Joe had a lot of equipment. He had uniforms in different colors. He had a snow cap here. We've got some more boots. This looks like one of the early release brown rubbery boots but it has a split down the seam unfortunately. We've got MP helmets. These are pretty cool. We've got more uniforms. The Green Beret set for G.I. Joe actually had a replica M16 rifle and that looks very nice. We have scuba tanks. We have air vests. We've got hats. Just a ton of stuff. Ski poles and if you don't overload the foot locker with equipment the figure will fit inside. Here's G.I. Joe decked out in some of his combat equipment. He has his helmet. He has his M1 rifle. He's got his pineapple grenades on his backpack strap. He's got his ammo belt. He's got his canteen. He's really ready for battle. The G.I. Joe figures from 1982 the first wave of 1980s G.I. Joe figures had this sort of generic soldier look to them and I can't help but think that maybe the designers at Hasbro were thinking more of the new G.I. Joe figures being specialized sort of generic soldiers like this rather than individual characters as they later became. In fact, if you give G.I. Joe the M16 he is very reminiscent of the 1982 infantry trooper Grunt. Looking at the 1982 G.I. Joe's you can see there's a little more science fiction than there was in the 1964 G.I. Joe. The 1960s G.I. Joe really emphasized authenticity but there was some military authenticity in 1982 G.I. Joe's and that's what I really liked about G.I. Joe. Apparently that's also what collectors of G.I. Joe in the 1960s liked about it. In fact, I'll go out on a limb and say I could probably relate more to collectors of G.I. Joe in the 60s than I can to collectors of G.I. Joe in the 90s. The concept and basic design of G.I. Joe was by Stan Weston and it was approved by Hasbro executive Don Levine. Weston's original idea could have gone in a different direction it could have been a licensed product for the TV show The Lieutenant but it's a good thing that it wasn't. The toy would have gone away when the show was cancelled. Instead, Levine took the name of the figure from the story of G.I. Joe the 1945 movie starring Robert Mitchum and Burgess Meredith. Burgess Meredith did voice acting for the 1987 G.I. Joe animated movie. Now that could have been a nice way to bring G.I. Joe full circle back to its origin but unfortunately the movie was just not very good. This really is the origin of the action figure. Without G.I. Joe maybe there still would have been a Star Wars toyline and a Ninja Turtles and all the other toylines that we know today but they may have looked very different. Somebody first had to prove that boys would play with dolls and let's be honest whatever you want to call them whether they're 12 inches or three and three-quarter inches they're still dolls. The earliest G.I. Joe stressed authenticity. In the late 60s though the Vietnam conflict became less popular and military based toys lost favor so the focus changed to adventure. In the 1970s we got the adventure team and G.I. Joe was decidedly less military but the adventure team featured some innovations such as the lifelike hair the flocked hair and beard and that was imported from the UK's version of G.I. Joe called Action Man. In 1974 they added Kung Fu grip which was rubbery hands that could grip rather than these plastic hands that were frozen in one position. Those were also imported from the UK. In 1976 they got the eagle eye which was a mechanism that could move the eyes left and right which was honestly just really creepy. In the 70s G.I. Joe spun away from reality they introduced a superhero bullet man who frankly looked ridiculous he had a bullet shaped helmet and a unitard and G.I. Joe had a rip off of the 6 million dollar man called Mike Power Atomic Man Hasbro even made a knock off of its own toy line it made some non G.I. Joe action figures called Defenders they were G.I. Joe size figures with less articulation and really they were just cheap crap. Later Hasbro introduced Super Joe it was a last ditch effort to keep G.I. Joe relevant it ran from 1977 to 1978 and they were 8 inch figures instead of 12 inch figures they were basically meego sized figures instead of innovating Super Joe was trying to ride the coattails of more popular toys it didn't work and it killed the line and G.I. Joe was dead until 1982 while G.I. Joe was dying something else was happening Fisher Price introduced Adventure People in the 3 and 3 quarter inch scale the energy crisis had made petroleum products more expensive so smaller action figures were more affordable in 1977 Star Wars was a huge hit movie and Tanner got the license to produce Star Wars action figures and they did them in the Adventure People scale and of course they were a huge hit and so 3 and 3 quarter inches became a standard for action figures through the rest of the 70s and the 1980s in the post Vietnam era the US was ready to look at military toys again and G.I. Joe was relaunched in 1982 now the figures in 1982 were kind of generic looking figures but they had individual backstories and the universe for G.I. Joe was created by Marvel Comics and comic book writer Larry Hamma the file cards written for the figures by Larry Hamma really excited the imagination of kids in the 80s back in those days they were not allowed to use animation in toy commercials so Hasbro used animation to advertise the comic books and that in turn helped to sell the toys in 1983 President Ronald Reagan's chairman of the FCC Mark Fowler deregulated rules for children's programming that allowed toy inspired cartoons to hit TV including G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe from there the marketing was really ramped up and G.I. Joe was a huge success and that was the G.I. Joe that I grew up with so how do I assess this figure I do like this guy I like owning this figure this is part of G.I. Joe history since it is part of history it's almost irrelevant to criticize the aesthetics of it I mean really who cares it would be like saying you don't like the Duke of Wellington because he wore his hat for to aft so what he defeated Napoleon that's what matters what matters for G.I. Joe is he became a legend and the success of this toy line allowed Hasbro years later to revive him into the G.I. Joe that we grew to love looking closely at this toy there were a couple things that could have been done better I think the plastic hands that are frozen in that position are a little bit difficult to work with the kung fu grip probably was an improvement also you have to have a lot of patience with these guys you have to be very patient and careful when you're changing out the uniforms and getting the weapons in his hand and getting him in the right position that you want him it's actually kind of zen you have to slow down and experience the G.I. Joe handling the action figure and all his gears I can really see why kids in the 60s were blown away by this guy I mean all that authentic looking equipment just has the look and the feel of quality you can feel the workmanship in it but that was the G.I. Joe of a previous generation the G.I. Joe that I grew up with was very different I think if Hasbro had just reissued the old G.I. Joe made some new 12 inch figures with updated equipment I don't think the kids of my generation would have bought it instead Hasbro created a new G.I. Joe that was laser focused on my generation but now my G.I. Joe is three decades old and when I look at the future of G.I. Joe and what the next generation of G.I. Joe is going to be I don't see it and that worries me what I have seen is G.I. Joe trying to ride a wave of 80s nostalgia reissuing characters from my generation updated, new sculpts, new articulation but with few exceptions I don't see kids playing with this stuff I don't think it looks like it's meant for kids to play with it looks like it's meant for guys my age to buy and put on a shelf they are reissuing new versions of Cold War era toys and that is not the future that will never be the future if there is to be a new generation of G.I. Joe and that is by no means guaranteed it will likely look very different from the G.I. Joe that I grew up with there will probably be no Snake Eyes no Cobra, no Duke maybe it's not even a team it will probably be something totally different it may be as different from our G.I. Joe as our G.I. Joe was from the 1964 G.I. Joe maybe I won't even like the next generation of G.I. Joe and you know what, that's fine don't make a G.I. Joe for me make a G.I. Joe for the kids make a G.I. Joe that will capture the imagination of today's kids, not kids from the 80s so G.I. Joe needs new ideas but a new idea isn't necessarily a good idea I mean Sigma Six was kind of a new idea but this is why I don't give bonus points just for coming up with a new idea I would think that if you looked at Sigma Six before it was released I think common sense should have told you that was not a very good idea I don't have any special respect for just throwing things on the wall to see what sticks I mean that's not innovating, that's guessing to figure out which new ideas are good ideas you have to think about them it takes time and work and study and development by smart people and I don't think that's happening right now and without that, no cartoon series no movie, no anything is gonna bring us our next generation of G.I. Joe that's why I don't lament Hasbro not having any new G.I. Joe this year I think for G.I. Joe to be reborn it probably needs to go away for a little while and a lot of people probably don't want to hear that and probably vehemently disagree but that's how I see it I don't know what the next G.I. Joe is gonna be like but for those future developers who are going to create the new G.I. Joe I have a couple suggestions I think it is possible to have a successful American-centric product I think the evidence of this is the recent Captain America movies they are successful in the United States but they're successful elsewhere too the reason they're successful I think is first of all because they are top quality there's no substitute for that but also because they play on more universal values and I think that is the key if you make a product that is focused on American jingoism I don't think the world's gonna buy that and I don't think Americans are gonna buy that either you can't just make a war toy the world has just changed too much in the last 30 years my next suggestion is don't be afraid to be relevant going back to the examples of the Captain America movies those movies had some relevant issues in them now if all you wanted to see was the action that's fine it didn't beat you over the head with them but security versus privacy preemption those were issues that were raised in those movies and those are issues that are relevant to modern times they weren't afraid to take a position and have a message so don't be afraid to say something the message shouldn't be overbearing but you don't have to produce a line that is so watered down that it doesn't have any substance say something and that will attract the more intelligent fans and I think GI Joe has always attracted the more intelligent kids because of course you could just play war with it but if you look closer it has more to it it has substance finally bear in mind the changes in the market nowadays the kids that play with plastic toys tend to be the younger kids and the kids that would enjoy the new GI Joe are probably a little bit older and those kids tend to play more with video games than with toys so the main focus may need to be on media rather than plastic now I do believe at least I hope there will someday be a new GI Joe toy line but the main focus may not be on the toys and you know what? that's okay because you're making it for the next generation you're not making it for me I may be totally wrong about everything but that's how I see the future and today looking at the past has kind of given us a launching point to look at the future I want to thank everyone who made GI Joe such a success back in the 60s without you guys none of us would be doing this we would have no future to talk about so thank you for buying GI Joe and loving GI Joe and spending all those hours playing with the toy and changing his uniform and taking his clothes off and playing with your little naked man sinners but next week we are going to get back to the 80s and it's been a long time since we have looked at Cobra so we are going to look at the bad guys it is Cobra's time to shine until then like this video on YouTube subscribe on YouTube like me on Facebook follow me on Twitter share this video that's what keeps this channel going and always remember only GI Joe is GI Joe a navy frogman with complete scuba suit and inflatable light ramp an air force pilot with high altitude helmet and air vest get GI Joe and get GI Joe equipment so you can set up exciting battle action whenever you want remember only GI Joe is GI Joe


Coming at you now from the iGoogle box where I found a really cool application to bring IP and internet content to your television set So the one of the big challenges about bringing digital content and IP content to your television set is How do you actually navigate the power of the internet with the remote control? That's one of the big challenges or the other thing is you can bring a pretty keyboard to your living room Which is usually a very challenging propagation. I know in my case proposition in my case I don't really want to have a full PC sitting in my living room And so I use a Roku some people use Xbox 360. We talked about the pop box a little bit earlier There's boxy There's a whole lot of different solutions and the big challenge with anything other than a PC is that every application right now Only supports a subset of what is actually available on the internet So if you use Xbox 360 you've got zoom media You can't get Amazon video on demand and you have a limited access to the Netflix service But if you have a actual media center PC, you can have access to all of those services Amazon, Zune, iTunes You have access to anything that the internet has to offer through your PC So the iGoogle application has an innovative way of bringing your PC into your living room Without actually having to have a PC in your living room and without having to bring a full-size QWERTY keyboard into your living room So the iGoogle application works by provides a small box Which I'm going to go over here and show it to you So it's hiding back there Now the box is available both in wired and it's also available in wireless It's good wired model starts at seventy nine dollars the wireless model includes at a 211n and it It costs a hundred ninety nine dollars MSRP. These are coming. They're not available yet They will be available first quarter and so what it actually does is it streams directly from your PC To your television so over wireless technology or over wired either way And the cool thing is that they have a very cool remote with a full QWERTY keyboard So the difference between this and say a Roku or the or the pop box. This is obviously something that's a little bit more techy It does make it possible to navigate the full internet from your television Which you could take advantage of the Netflix and all the other IPTV type of services or internet TV type of services And you don't have to worry about whether Roku is going to support that service or whether pop box or boxy supports that service Your PC is going to support virtually everything that comes out So that provides you a lot of investment protection that being said if you're not as techy the navigation Even with the very robust nice little remote that they offer here It's still going to be a lot more complicated of a navigation and a setup then you'll find in a more simple and Non-technical consumer-oriented setup that you'd find in the pop box and the Roku so a little more complicated But what I love about it is it brings the investment protection and that knowing that regardless of what type of internet content is going to Be available over the next two years It doesn't matter if Roku or pop box decides to choose it or not if it's available on your PC You can have it streamed to your television and either the remote is capable of being able to access Pretty much anything that you can access on your TV so you can have all the full quality content So I think it's a great product is definitely one that I'm putting you know towards the top of my list is still early in CES I've got to see what else is out there, but to me. I don't want to put a big noisy PC in my living room I think it's I really like the capability of being able to have their nice fairly sleek remote control that I can use For my couch and still be able to access any of the internet content and the internet television type of services that are available And not have to worry about whether Roku is going to support them in the future Our pop box is going to support them or whoever the specific content Xbox PlayStation you name it This will be able to support a large number of content And so great investment protection very sleek very cool product definitely


On behalf of the Israeli delegation, I would like to thank the ITU under the outstanding leadership of Secretary-General Zau and the Government of Romania for its enormous efforts and wonderful hospitality. Mulsume Spentro Spitalitata, Mabukkas, Maaflu, and Sara Vastre Minunata. The decisions we will take in this conference will shape the work of the Union and will set the direction of digital transformation for years to come. Our actions today will make tremendous impact on our societies and economies. We are experiencing a period of rapid technological changes with a significant impact of every aspect of our lives. In the past 32 years, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of connectivity and access to secure the reliable networks for everyone, everywhere. The State of Israel shares the ITU vision for an information society where telecommunications technologies support social economic and sustainable growth and contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Global Agenda. In support of this vision, we have created key priorities for bringing the digital divide and promote economic growth and sustainable digital transformation. Since the last B.P., Israel went through tremendous development in the telecommunications and ICT sector. An active 5G network was launched in 2021 with a rapidly growing number of new subscribers. We are also investing in creating an environment for 5G innovation by implementing a program for supporting the development of applications and services in 5G, which is becoming a significant growth engine for frontier technologies for the entire Israeli economy. In addition, the telecommunications law and the regulatory framework in Israel were recently amended in order to adapt to emerging technologies. These amendments allow us to strengthen competition with use regulatory barriers and open the market to new stakeholders. One of our top priorities is ensuring reliable and affordable broadband access in rural areas, including small villages and the minority communities. I am proud to say that Israel is on track to deliver ice speed fiber optic networks to every home and business by 2027 by using an incentives outline and a universal fund to encouraging the deployment of these networks in rural areas as a result, the rate of access to fiber optics network has increased rapidly, reaching roughly 60% of households. Digital skills and tools are another priority for us. These are essential in today's and tomorrow's world. It is becoming increasingly difficult to participate effectively in the economy, society, and the labor force without digital skills. To this end, the Ministry of Communications, together with the civil society, are investing and developing a variety of training programs designed especially for vulnerable groups in society including older persons and persons with disabilities, among others, especially in the periphery areas. The State of Israel is also investing resources in sharing its expertise with the international community through Mashav, Israel Development Agency. It has operated various programs to promote digital developments and empower individuals and communities through digital platforms. Mashav has continued this important work even during the global pandemic using existing digital connectivity. In recent months, Mashav had utilized digital platforms to provide support and knowledge, especially in health practices, including mental health to medical professionals in Ukraine. Don't know, Chairman, we see great importance in improving the Palestinian economic situation, including the development of the communications sector. It is our mutual interest and we all want to see progress made. In the past few months, we held several joint technical committee meetings and we continue to hold bilateral talks with the Ministry of Communications of the Palestinian Authority. In order to implement a 4G and 5G network in the Palestinian territories. Finally, I wish all of us productive discussions on the important issues on our agenda that will contribute to the future architecture of the ICT world. Now more than ever, we need a strong and efficient union. Israel stands ready to work with all of you for the success of this plenipotentiary. We were celebrating in the last few days, as the Secretary General mentioned in the opening plenary, the Jewish New Year. Let me share with you our good wishes and wish you all a very happy, healthy and fruitful year. Thank you, Mr Chairman.


The latest weapons, coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier, stands ready on the alert all over the world to defend this country, you, the American people, against aggression. This is the Big Picture, an official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now, to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Sergeant Stewart Queen. We tend to think of a modern army, mostly in terms of its latest equipment. It is true that our fighting forces have developed an enormous number of new weapons and tactics to go with them. But the army also concerns itself with the services a soldier requires to remain the best equipped fighting man in the world. As the combat infantryman took to the air, so did all the elements of supply he needed on the ground, the quarter masters, the artillery, the medics. Airborne medics play an important part in any modern operation. Their skill and service take to the sky and are immediately available to the fighting man if needed. Airborne operation, platoons marching out into the cold snap of morning after a night of furious activity. Final preparations, scores of details, none too small to be an important part of this vital operation. Combat or training, there's that same tension and excitement. An airborne division is on the move. And when it takes off, everybody goes, including all of us in the medics and our equipment. We'll jump with the first wave and be on the spot when needed. Hundreds of aircraft have been assembled. And as battalion surgeon, it's part of my job to deliver the manifest to the pilot. Another check on the men and equipment. Nothing up to this point has been left to chance. And from now on, it's even more important that nothing goes wrong. It's at a time like that, a time of increased emotional stress that men are more open to human error. It's only a short time before takeoff. When we next touch the ground, we will have floated down in a parachute, perhaps under enemy fire. During the flight to the drop zone, there's little to do but think and plan. The engines are droning away, beating up the distance. And even while talking over last minute details, there are thoughts that break through into consciousness. In the midst of all this precision planning and complicated equipment, which when finally assembled becomes a fierce, relentless, mobile force, well, you wonder for a moment, how did all these pieces get put together? This jigsaw puzzle, which wouldn't be complete without me or the man next to me. This mission, which started way back, seemed so long ago, back in Georgia, running to and from calisthenics. Double time, push-ups, and all the rest of the things you do to toughen a body. Then the training began to move skyward. 34 feet high at first, the mock tower. In the beginning, it seemed plenty high. Double timing up all those wooden steps, but airborne medical personnel have to be confident to do anything and everything that other airborne infantrymen can do. Professional medical training? Oh, there'd been years of that. Now is the time to develop skills that would enable a doctor to be where he would be needed most. There'd been weeks of classroom lectures. As in the Infantry Division, there's a medical company in each of the three regents with a medical battalion supporting them from the rear. The regimental medical company consists of a company headquarters, three battalion medical platoons, one for each infantryman. Subjects covered were just about everything in the book that could make an airborne officer. Has approximately 900 medical service officers and enlisted personnel to give medical care for about 18,000 men of the division. All those training jumps. Of course, it was scary at first, but then those jumps were made over and over and it wasn't long before it all seemed like a most conventional means of transportation. The instructor's voice boomed over a loud speaker as the jumpers came floating down for land and plowed fields. It all seemed so effortless. Yet these training methods and techniques were the fruits of years of experiments. The equipment had been carefully devised after much testing in battle and in training. The old proverb about necessity being the mother of invention had been made to work for the allies in World War II, a war which had its battlefield thousands of miles away. And every man and every piece of fighting equipment had to be transported across oceans to the scene of the conflict. There were many problems still unsolved in those early days of World War II. While we were building up our strength, the Axis Powers was strutting in their brief day of glory. Hitler imagined his fortress impregnable and that it was just a matter of time before he ruled the world. But he was due for a surprise. The date was early 1944. Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspected arms destined to play a dramatic part in bringing the war in Europe to an end. These field pieces would be dropped from the air along with forward elements of the invading Allied Army. In the early dawn light of June 6th, troop carrying C-47s roared down runways in many parts of England as airborne infantry led the Allied forces back across the European continent. These were the beginnings of America's airborne striking force. It was from the early operations of World War II that the lessons were learned. Procedures and tactics devised for this new dimension which had been added to warfare. Vertical envelopment. Airborne troops participated in other operations in increasing numbers. America's fighting infantrymen had been given wings. It was an airborne outfit that marched in the Victory Parade up New York's Fifth Avenue. General Jim Gavin leading the 82nd Airborne Division. I didn't march that day but was in the crowd that watched them represent the 12 million fighting men who had been responsible for our victory. Yes, airborne infantrymen were a stirring sight that day, something I remembered all the way through medical school, through my present tour of duty and even right up through the beginnings of this operation when we were checked through the gate of the marshaling area. Security measures strictly enforced. This was a sealed off encampment. Planning commenced immediately and continued day and night. No furloughs, no passes. Our only entertainment being the solution of the problems at hand. To take an entire division into the air and set it down with exactitude requires a carefully worked out plan. It dropped approximately 1500 yards across. The three regiments of the division will be dropped at three separate DZs at 0520 hours. What would each regiment do? Staff officers were formulating their specific plans and so was everyone else all along the line. Briefing was integrated with the troop carrier units of the Air Force.  All equipment inspected, checked and rechecked. Sick call was no longer the responsibility of airborne medical personnel. We had all we could do to keep pace with preparing for what was to come. At nearby airfields, aircraft were being assembled. Heavy skids of supplies were made ready. They'd be air-dropped by means of big cargo shoots. Skids were packed and loaded in a special way, according to carefully worked out procedure. There'd be little time to spare when the big bundles would be unpacked and some items were almost sure to be needed immediately. Planning had been continuous with each section working out its own part. After repeated conferences, their medical plan took shape. Regimental surgeons went over their plan with the division surgeon. Planning at our level, the battalion would be an expansion of details. Another team will jump on drop zone three to select a site for the division clearing station. The division clearing station goes up here and deflate near this road. Finally, after all other equipment had been double checked, loaded and lashed. Parachutes had been drawn and fitted. When the time for takeoff approached, every medic knew where he was going and what was expected of him. Rendezvous points and the locations of installations would be understood all along the line. Just a few thoughts to while away the time, but there's little time left. We'll soon know just how well the planning will pay off most over the drop zone now. When the jump light flashes, we go. Wave after wave, planes come on, disgorging men and supplies over the drop zone. When you first hit the ground, it's a bit confusing. The only reference marks are those disgusted briefings, points on a map as generally seen from above. But now the problem is to orient yourself from a new angle. A battalion surgeon like myself has one basic job at this time. Get an aid station set up and get it functioning immediately. As with any infantry division, wherever there's action and injury, members of the medical service are on hand to supply aid. At least one company aid man jumped with every plane load of soldiers. Banner of Gauze is most effective in marking the location of a casualty for a pickup by the litter bearers. Area delivery containers of medical supplies were dropped with the first wave. These will serve the basic needs of aid stations until a heavy drop can augment supplies. A perimeter defense is set up immediately on the fringes of the drop zone. It's protection for the succession of drops which follow throughout the assault. In spite of what might seem to be confusion, platoons regroup, companies form up again, battalions emerge all according to plan. And whenever contact has been made with the enemy, units push into action immediately. There are few injuries in the jump phase of the operation. Few are expected. To a modern soldier, a parachute is just another means of getting to the battle line. But when our men have moved into combat and the bullets fly, we can expect casualties. We use helicopters wherever their range permits. Aircrafts such as the H-13 move right into the drop zone carrying supplies. Plasma is one of the most important lifesavers an army doctor can have. Where the situation is favorable, wounded are speedily evacuated by means of the worldly birds. Army has developed this method to a higher degree than any other armed forces in the world. The helicopter was too late for World War II, but it came of age in Korea. One of the handiest helicopters is the H-5. Wounded are carried in covered pods slung underneath and do not have to be passed in and out of the small fuselage. Helicopter evacuation is used wherever possible. But sometimes the lines of communications stretch too far for the rotor wing and all medical assistance must be brought in by parachute. Successive waves of men and material come into the drop zone. Without a constant stream of supplies and ammunition, combat elements on the ground are ineffectual. Hundreds of tons are necessary to keep a division operating in high gear. Our share of the medical supplies will be coming down with this batch. As soon as enemy opposition is mopped up and the drop zone is safely held, the heavy stuff comes in. More ammunition and coming right down with the ammunition, more medical supplies. Artillery to support the main attack, tons of heavy stuff, the kind of equipment an army needs to help secure a drop in hostile territory. Jeeps for a thousand jobs. They come floating down. We'll make them ambulances for evacuating casualties that the litter bearers bring to the battalion aid stations. A skid of medical supplies and equipment for the division clearing station. 6,100 pounds, including the weight of the skid. One of many skids of medical equipment which are dropped in the assault phase and an air-dropped quarter ton and trailer will pick it up for delivery. What came down in this particular bundle? 46 litters, 28 blanket sets and a dozen mattresses used for padding. Two chests of medicines, a field sterilizer and a section of a hospital tent. Quite a pile of eggs for just one basket. A casualty with only minor injuries walks in for aid. By this time, after an airborne battalion aid station like mine has been set up and functioning for an hour or two, it begins to look pretty much like any other infantry medical aid set up. I helped carry in this soldier who had been hidden aside. We were pretty busy at the time and I don't remember too much about him except that he got a tension and a hurry. The patient was pretty groggy when our CO cut the bandage and inspected the wound but he was in good hands. Our battalion surgeon is one of the best and he inspires a lot of confidence. Other soldiers who had only slight injuries were being patched up so they could continue to help secure our position. At a time like this, a division fighting deep in enemy territory, every man is doubly important. A stalemate could lead to a serious setback and every man who can make it is needed. The captain marked this soldier for clearance to regiment and marked the tag accordingly. He was getting priority, top priority. And when the regiment Jeep rolled into our aid station he was set to go. We traded him for a batch of stretchers. There's a continuous exchange of property going on all the time between medical units. Litters going out with patients must be replaced with empty litters brought in from up the line where soldiers have been sent back to duty or evacuated out of the area. Bet he doesn't remember much about the trip back to regiment. He was pretty drowsy by the time the Jeep took off. The first time I ever held a bottle of plasma over a patient I was scared I might do something wrong. That stuff is so important. Keeps a wounded man from going into a state of shock. His life depended on that thin strand of precious liquid. And we passed the bottle from hand to hand as naturally as if it was a permanent part of the patient. Took it with him right into the receiving tent. The examining doctor took a look at the wound and decided that this man needed more attention than could be given him at the busy regimental level. This time, destination was division clearing station. All this taking place just a short distance from a battle line. It's out division clearing that the most extensive on the spot medical care can be provided for those who jump. The most serious casualties come here from regimental collecting stations. They are cared for and treated here until some means can be worked out for them to be transported to an evacuation hospital. Every man and every piece of equipment here at division, as well as all the way down the line of Italian aid stations, has come in by parachute. The importance of preparation and planning are evident here. The entire setup is directed toward giving the best possible care to every injured man. These units are on a par with those of any other service. They're able to handle any combat medical situation. Examination shows that this soldier is in need of surgical attention. His records are speedily collected and a detail assigned to take him to surgery. Army medics are proud of the techniques which they've developed over the years, especially in the field of surgery. Critically injured casualties who need life-saving surgery but who cannot be evacuated at this time may be cared for and treated by a surgical team that's attached from Army command. For men fight for the right to be free, there will inevitably be some who are injured. Airborne medics fly in with the infantrymen, stay with the fighting men no matter the direction of battle, and make all the arrangements for forging the final link and serving their fellow soldiers. Further evacuation depends upon quick capture of an airfield, an important part of any airborne operation. Structure cases of the board aircraft are converted to flying ambulances. Ambulatory cases go aboard under their own power. Away from the pilot before the plane darts down the runway, next stop will be the general hospital far from the battle zone. Screaming sirens lead the way as the ambulance convoy speeds across the city with its important cargo. At the general hospital only hours from the battle line, the structure cases get immediate attention. All the latest medical techniques are utilized in assisting the soldiers back on the road to health. Rest and quiet are the last steps in the process of convalescence and rehabilitation. Almost 90% of all battle casualties return to duty quickly. The tactics of warfare change, but the importance of skilled medical care remains constant. From the moment an airborne soldier becomes a casualty, he is in the care of the best military medical service in the world. Right down to the moment, papers are marked back to duty. And medical corpsmen are bringing new honors to a service that has traditionally been the best in the world. Keeping the fighting men of our army at the peak of combat efficiency, airborne medics, sharing in the honors that belong to the winning team. This is Sergeant Stuart Queen. Inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at your army in action on The Big Picture. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the army at home and overseas, produced by the Signal Corps Pictorial Center, presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station. You too can be an important part of The Big Picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped, the best trained, the best fighting team in the world today, the United States Army.


As a classical example of an enterprise that programs the service provider infrastructure, we'd see how WAN connectivity could be programmed in service provider by an enterprise or for certain data center requirement. We'd look at it as a classical bin packing problem and we'll see how it goes. Bin packing is essentially a knapsack problem. It's a classical optimization problem where the items of different sizes are packed into the finite number of containers, a.k.a. bins. Each of these bins has a fixed or finite capacity and our goal is to optimize the use of these bins in such a way that we are able to minimize the number of bins used. In cloud computing data centers, we've got a very large number of users, each user needs a virtual machine. Now, how many of these virtual machines for a certain number of users could be accommodated at a certain data center where we have distributed data centers all part of a single cloud? So this results into, on the face of it, an unbalanced network resource requirement. So the virtual machine placement is done on certain data centers to reduce the utilization of the physical machines. We'll see how we can go into the details of it through an example. Then we can also look at the WAN connectivity or the communications requirement in terms of the resources as a bin packing problem. Think about an enterprise that has an insight into the workload of a certain application that runs on data center. So it has an orchestrator that measures, aggregates, and then expenses the demands for different data center applications. So it has access to the demand profiles for each user of a certain data center application. The expense of the service provider WAN infrastructure is usually dimensioned on the peak load for the service provider. Here, the responsibility of the orchestrator is going to be to schedule the data center applications by pre-pawning, post-pawning, some of the users to reduce the peak communication load on the service provider WAN infrastructure. So we can formalize this problem as bin packing data center connectivity issue. The actors are understood. The programmable part is the data center infrastructure. It would be programmed by the workload orchestrator. The workload orchestrator has good understanding of the communication demands, so it can be easily managed if the infrastructure is programmable. In more traditional approach, if we compare these two, the enterprise data centers are scheduled manually. So there's no consideration to the overall aggregate demand coming from various users. Since such scheduling is not optimized with communication aggregate demand profile in view, the overall traffic would result into peaks that would tax or burden the service provider infrastructure and would result into possibly some packet drops and some latency. The programmability approach actually is nothing but enabling the enterprise application to reconfigure the data center infrastructure so that the workload could be rebalanced or reassigned to different parts of the data center at different times or at the same time at different locations. The programmability part actually would involve the dynamic reconfiguration of the data centers through the software defined networking and function virtualization. The possible challenges could be that we need to incorporate the support in the service provider infrastructure so that the enterprise can program it. Likewise, the enterprise infrastructure should be able to have programming capability. This results into an increase in a demand for the IT staff required at the enterprise level because the service provider staff wouldn't have much to do in it. And this is going to result into the obvious advantage of having reduced peak demands and the users are going to have a more steady and expected behavior. The resources are the same. We are deriving this particular use case from the operational opportunities and challenges for software defined networking, network function virtualization, programmable infrastructure, the report from the Alliance for Telecommunication Industry Solutions.


The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on adolescent empathy and pro-social attributes. Students' empathy levels decreased significantly from pre-pandemic levels, while their pro-social attributes also declined. These findings suggest that special attention should be paid to these two interrelated factors when dealing with any social crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, as they are important for adolescents' physical, mental, and social development. This article was offered by Shuichi Anya, Iren He, Bayeru Lua, and others.


Day three and I woke up with the tiniest of symptoms. So I took some Nyquil, went back to bed and didn't wake up until 4.30 and that's my day. It's also the reason I'm rocking some Mad Bedhead. To borrow a phrase is a rapidly evolving situation So I'll update you should anything change. Today. I'm enjoying Druid Heights for modern times This is a special release I've been sitting on for a while It is an Imperial stout with pistachio and coconut added and at 11% is thick rich and comforting and The perfect way to enjoy what's left of the day. I didn't make much of I Haven't checked the CDC or World Health Organization numbers today, but let's talk some real news Tom Brady is leaving the Patriots I'm kidding.  I haven't been a football fan since the Raiders moved to Oakland and other news Audrey did some grocery shopping while I was asleep and though she had to wait in line for 25 minutes found our local Trader Joe's to be completely stocked which is great because it means that people are able to get the groceries They need it also means that this might not end up as bad as it could Keeping it brief today. Stay safe follow the advice professionals. I'll see you tomorrow. Cheers


Welcome to the search testing phase of how to conduct a systematic search. This is useful for doing any kind of search that would be involved in a systematic review, a meta-analysis, a scoping review, a rapid review, an umbrella review, or any other type of literature review that you might want to use a systematic search for like an integrative review or a narrative review. So I've assembled quite a body of keywords here, and this is for a systematic review that would be looking at the Pico question. What is the impact of early childhood exposure to highway pollution and the link to developing ADHD or presentation of ADHD later in life? And this is based on some systematic reviews that I've seen before. There's a lot available for this. So what I've done is I've assembled a pretty big broad body of keywords here. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to move into a testing phase. So what that involves is taking some of our terms here, and then I'm going to use them in PubMed to start doing some testing here. So we have these big long strings conceptual keywords here. So we have one for our different types of pollution or impact factors that might impact pollution. We have the ways the exposure happens. So looking at exposure, early life, et cetera. And then we have the disorder that we want to look at, which is ADHD and some different terminology for that. So I want to move into testing this ADHD string, which I gathered from a bunch of things using my match terms and stuff. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to do some testing in PubMed because PubMed has some tools that can help us test our search. And this works really well if you're using a biomedical search. But if you're not doing a biomedical search, choose a database that works well for the subject that you're using. So if you're doing something in education, use Eric, for example. So we'll need to go back to PubMed. And then what I'm going to do here is instead of just copying and pasting there, I'm going to go to an advanced search because what we want to do is specify what fields we want to search. We're not going to do an all field search because that does some things that we don't necessarily want it to do. It does what's called automatic term mapping, which maps our terms to things we don't necessarily have control over. But if we search the titles and abstracts for our concepts, for our terms, that might actually lead us to something more productive, more useful because they tend to be more descriptive in titles and abstracts when we're searching for biomedical literature in particular. So I'm going to add each of these and it adds that field tag right here, that title, abstract field tag. That's going to add that to that and then start to shape our search for us. So I'm going to run that and we can see that we get a lot of results for this. Now, if I go back to my advanced search, we can see that it got all these search results and we can see that it found all of my terms. If it didn't find my terms under the details here, it would show me which terms it didn't find. So that helps me know that these are all good terms that I want to use. And also this title, abstract, is something that I can copy and paste and use in my search. The other thing that I want to do to start testing the search is I also want to add a mesh term to the title and abstract. So we need to go back and grab that ADHD mesh term as well. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start back up PubMed, go into the mesh database, type in ADHD and add this to my search builder and search PubMed. And that gives us 32,000 results. Now, if I go back into my advanced search, then I can combine the mesh term with or the title, abstract search. And what this does is it's going to try to find any instance of these situations coming up. You can see I've also included some signature ADHD symptoms to see if those might be showing up as presentations too. And then with that search, we get a much wider pool of ADHD types of resources. So this is how we're starting to do our search test. I can then go back into advanced search and start to test some of my other groups of searching. So right here, I have this list of exposure criteria. So these are the ways that we want to look at the exposure or the influence. And so we can copy and paste that in there and then look for title, abstracts and then add that in and then run that search too. So again, we get a lot there. Go to advanced, make sure it's finding all of those terms and it sure is. Go back to our plain text sheet and then do the same for our air pollution our air pollution concept or roadway proximity. There's a lot of ways to refer to that. And again, I'm gonna do a title abstract search because that's where the most relevant information is going to be. And then I'm gonna run those searches. Oh, so it actually didn't find something here. So this is why we run the search test is you can go in and see what it didn't find. And so it flagged us here.  I put a star before benzene and then I put an O at the beginning or at the end. So that star before benzene, I was trying to look for things that end in benzene and that is not something that it's going to do here. So what I'm gonna end up doing is I'm just gonna look for benzene or benzines. So I'll probably end up changing the search a little bit. So what I can do is just grab this part, copy it, paste it in here. And then I can go through trying to find benzene and I'm gonna look for benzines instead and then make sure I don't have that act, that or at the end. And then that's a much better result. And then that's our basic search there. And then what we can start to do is start to combine our searches. So we've got this one right here. We can get rid of it because it's no good. And then we can start to do some other things. So we can grab some, so now that we have these title abstract phrases ready to go in PubMed, we can start to copy those and add those to our spreadsheet here. So we have that one and then we have that one. And then we'll grab this last one here. And so we have basically our PubMed search coming together right now in the proper search syntax. So what this is doing is it's telling the search engine exactly where to search for these terms. Now, instead of going through and trying to find the best terms for all of these different searches instead, I've actually gone ahead and made them before from another search. So for this one I have, so we have all of our different airhouse pollution. So we just wanna group all those things together, our mesh terms and our title abstract searches of the same concepts need to be grouped together. So we also know that or we know what's there too. Similarly, I have another batch from a similar search right here. I can copy that, I will paste that into this one here or that. So this way we have all of our searches ready to go and then we can start to make the search work and run a test. So I have my ADHD search here and I can add that and that's ready to go. And what that does is it put parentheses on it because that groups everything together and says like an order of operations in math, this is our search and we're ready to go. Then the next thing I can do is up here, I can start to copy and paste my other search strings. So we can take this roadway proxima, copy this, just that there and then add that with and because we're gonna try to find the overlap between each of these three things. And find where these three concept groups overlap together. And then we'll do that here with the title abstracts of epigenetic factors and then run the search. And this is where we can see that we get 218 results which is pretty good. Now I have these over in my Zotero library, I'm gonna drag and drop that here. I have a list of six articles that I have decided to use as what I'm calling my development set and what these are are these are articles that I wanna start looking for in my results. So these are different articles that I wanna start looking for within my search results. If we have specific titles that we can bring in, we can take this particular search and then we can add in, say for authors, we wanna try to find Pereira, for example. This is someone who we know does research on this area. So we can draw in her name and run that search and see, okay, we've got Pereira writing on this. So we know we're doing a pretty good type of search here. We can see early life exposure. I think that's exactly this one right here. So we managed to find exactly one of our articles that we had in the development set, which is even better. So this is how you can run your test search for doing a systematic review. And so that's just how you format it for one database. For each database, you need to do something different. So we go into, for example, Web of Science or something. Science doesn't do the same things that our other databases do. We have to kinda translate this search for there. So that's why we keep each of these phrases right here. So we can just grab ADHD. Instead of searching all fields, if you do topic that searches the title, the abstract, and then any author added keywords. So again, searching topic here can be really useful to our systematic review. And then if we add in our next thing. So you might even find keywords as you're doing this process that you end up adding to your search. So this is why this process is really important is because you might encounter things as you're searching that could be added to your search. So we get 812 here because this is a much larger database. So I'm getting a lot of not super relevant stuff here, which makes me wonder, I wonder if I need to change the Benzines again because sometimes that Benzines gets really weird. See, we get rats. So we wanna kinda try to keep on focusing this a little bit. Oh, I bet it's add is throwing us off because that could be, they're giving us results for like adding and stuff. Let's try, oh, see, there we go, changed everything. So that's why you wanna go through and start testing your searches because ADAT might not mean something in every database. Might not mean the same thing in each database you use. You can even see right up here what they're suggesting with this ads. What that's doing is they're trying to add in terminology to our search that is not useful or relevant to us. So that's part of what's creating this problem. And so that's kinda how you can go about doing some problem solving during your test searching phase.


Good evening. Welcome to the Private Property Farming Podcast. My name is Mbali Moukw. And thank you so much for joining us on this cold Tuesday. Today, I'm joined by a woman farmer to discuss all things farming, of course. But most importantly, farming in a cooperative. She's currently the owner and founder of Matubella Farming Enterprises. And it's also great to meet and connect with women in the agri industry, because there's so few of us, and we're all in our individual corners in South Africa, pushing our farming enterprises. So if you've been thinking about farming and wanting to go into farming, but most importantly, go into farming with a group, forming a cooperative, I think this conversation is for you, as we will definitely learn a lot from Impileng's Guadi's journey within her farming career. And like I say, every Tuesdays and Thursdays, please share, like, and comment on the farming podcast, because this podcast is for you. We're here to attend to all your farming needs, all your farming questions, and most importantly, bring it into the farming or agricultural landscape. But most importantly as well, grow your agri business. So please, if you have any comments or questions for our guests tonight, please feel free to write your question in the chat box, and we'll make sure that we answer your question. And yeah, without further ado, I'd like to bring Impileng onto the show. Impileng, how are you doing? And thank you so much for joining the Private Property Farming podcast. Thank you, Mali. How are you? I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking. Awesome. It's such an honor to be part of this show. That's fantastic. Awesome. I'm doing well. Thanks. Impileng, I think I just want to start off with your journey. How did you get into farming, and why the most important question? Look, I grew up in a family where there are farmers, and on weekends, each and every one of us has got the responsibility within the farm. So I grew up with this passion and the love of being in the industry, just observing in the family that there is a business structure we need to learn so that whenever the parents are no longer around, we can be able to go on with the family business. Awesome. And so you grew up in a farming background or in a family that farms. When did you start your cooperative? And what is it that you're farming? From the family cooperative, we are producing quality bonsmara cattle. We raise them, we breed them, and then we sell to the market. So basically, the business, it's all about selling cows. And we've got an agro-tourism site where the farm is surrounded by the dam, and on weekends, people are coming for entertainment, they come fishing. So yeah, basically those are some of the things that are happening within the farm. Right, Ipiling, I know that bonsmara cattle is quite a popular breed in the South African agricultural context, most importantly so, because it is a breed that is found in South Africa. What are some of the pros and cons of raising bonsmara cattle? Look, bonsmara cattle, it's very easy because it adapts to the situation, to the climate.  So you need to come up with a supplement plan so that you can be able to feed the cows and supplement them. So bonsmara cattle, it's very lovely to keep because they've got a very good mother ability to their cows and they produce a good milk. And the most important thing they are for meat, they can produce meat. Wow, fantastic. And I think I missed where you're based. Where is your farm currently based? And you did say that you're farming in a cooperative. How many members are involved in your cooperative at the stage? We are farming in breads, cameo drift. We are five in the cooperative. It's a family cooperative. There are three women and two males. So why did you decide to maybe keep the business as a cooperative instead of a private company owned family business? It becomes easy for the government to fund cooperatives. Remember, it's not easy to fund individually. So at least when people are working in groups, the government is able to identify their needs and try to help. So it's very easy in a cooperative because even when you buy the feed, like we are in a livestock production, when you buy the feed, it becomes very easy because you buy in bulk, unlike when you are individual. So everything is done in a common way. All right. And so I know in a private company, right? You obviously have directors with each of their own shareholding capacity. How is that different in a cooperative? So for example, in a cooperative, does every single member own equal share of the business? Can you enter and exit the cooperative whenever you like? How do you also maybe distribute responsibilities in a cooperative? OK. In a cooperative, you need to be very strict. You need to put everything in paper. And each and every person must have the rules. Like any other business, you must have executive committee where one will be responsible for finance. The other one will be responsible for the meetings and whatever. There is a chairperson that will be needed in a cooperative because in a cooperative, you cannot just do as you please. You need to have the constitution that is going to lead you in the vision and the mission of the business. OK. And how easy or difficult is it to be working with family? I'm sure with siblings, you have those fights, but more so when you're in a business and have priorities and responsibilities to manage over and above just the cattle, but the employees as well and funds. How difficult or easy is it to be in a cooperative, especially one that involves family members? Yeah, I think compared to other cooperatives, family cooperatives, it's much better because my dad is a chairperson in our cooperative. He manages everything. And yes, we do fight. Each and every, where there are two people, there are differences. So we do fight, but at the end of the day, we sit down with our vision and see what we can do.  But remember, at the end of the day, you are running business. So you need to put your responses aside and work together. So you need to discipline. Right. So going back to our topic of this evening, still on speaking on cooperatives, what are the minimum numbers of members that are required to be in a cooperative? And what's the initial investment amount? So for example, for people that are watching and listening tonight and are thinking, I'd like to farm, but I can't go in it alone. And maybe my family's not interested in farming, but I know people that want to farm and let's form a cooperative. What's the minimum amount of members that is involved, that needs to be in a cooperative? And do the members have to give equal share in investment or initial capital when starting the cooperative? How does it just work? Look from a minimum number five above, you can start a cooperative. But remember, in a cooperative, you cannot be all the same. There's one with cash and there's one who's just full of playing. There's this other one who's not serious, he's just there to make money. And remember in farming, you cannot just make a quick cash. It doesn't happen like that. You need to be patient. So in a cooperative, people are different. It depends on how many you brought to the cooperative. Then you can share equally. There are people who just put later. So you'll have to divide and each and every person must get what she or he contributed to the cooperative. So like I said, it's discipline. Right, and how do you manage non-performing members in a cooperative? Because I've heard stories throughout my farming career where people have been in a cooperative. Let's say there's 10 or 15 women in a cooperative and maybe only five or six are really active or actively involved in the business when it comes to physically having to plant or raise the cattle. And then once the funding comes along or the support from a private institution or a government entity, every single member comes in and just acts like they're serious. So how does one manage the members that are non-performing in a cooperative? Look, remember you are in business like I said and each and every person needs to work hard to make the business a success. So there are people who will be not attending the meetings.  You need to put everything in black and white like the constitution. In your constitution, you need to discuss such things that what is it that you're gonna do to people, those who are not attiring to their roles. I mean, you've got the right to remove one who's not working in a cooperative and see what you can do because you cannot function with someone who's not serious. Remember some people will be coming very actively to be part of the cooperative but as time goes on, you realize that these people they've changed. If they thought that that farming just come easy but then they discover along the journey that farming is not easy. Then the next and that person does no longer active. You need to go back to the constitution and look at your rules and regulations and see how you can deal with that person. Just follow each and every step of how you're gonna remove that person from the cooperative. Wow, if you're joining us this evening on the farming podcast, we're joined by Epilem Guaidi who is the founder of Matsubara Farming Enterprises. She's a livestock farmer based in the Northwest particularly farming Bonsmada cattle. And our topic this evening is all about farming in a cooperative. And so far she's just shared some wisdom based on how a cooperative is formed. The minimum numbers of members that need to be part of a cooperative. And she's just shared also her background as to how and why her family came about to starting a cooperative and also highlighted certain roles and responsibilities that is required from certain members in a cooperative to achieve. If you have any questions for Epilem this evening please feel free to comment and we'll answer them to the base of our ability. But sticking on the cooperative topic this evening Epilem, I just wanna find out as well. So in a cooperative, do you share the profits equally? Because it's again, there might be members in the cooperative who say, I'm passionate about farming. I wanna be active. Therefore, I'm active from a production level. I'm active from a marketing level going out and seeking clients. But there might be members in a cooperative that are not so active, that feel that maybe their roles and responsibilities are based from an administrative level. Now what happens when the business is performing well and generating all this revenue? How do you then split the revenues? Or is it based on the amount of roles and responsibility that you have? Or is it based on purely how active you are in the cooperative? It depends on your mission and the vision for the business. Remember in our family cooperative, initially we have agreed that we're gonna work hard so that each and every one of us must get the farm. We can be able to buy a farm for each and every one of us. So now that is our vision. So even if we could be working very hard, we know that at the end we need to buy at least five farms so each and every one of us can be able to work on his or her own. But yes, each and every month there is a certain amount that we contribute to each and every one of us just to gain confidence, you see? Yeah, yeah. You mentioned something quite important earlier on in our conversation, you feeling that you as a family, you decided to be in a cooperative because it's better to get assistance, especially from government, where you have to do price negotiations and buying, what kind of assistance are you getting from your local department of agriculture in the Northwest? Look, in farming we learn every day, so we keep on learning our mistakes. Initially on the cooperative, some of us were working for the government, some of us were doing much. So as time goes on then we learn that all people who are working for the government, they don't get funded. Now like I myself, I was a teacher, so I had to resign so that we can at least get to the funding. So we are still working on that as we are learning each and every day. But the government is doing so well, especially the Northwest government, they are assisting when it comes to the break of the diseases or something they do share. Like now we are going through the pandemic of COVID, we did get the COVID relief. So yeah, basically the government is working, especially the ARC, they are so helpful because they are the one who just bought as our market. So the ARC team, it's so precious to our business. So the government is working. Yeah, please maybe dive deeper into that, because we always hear farmers just saying the government is not supporting, we're trying in so many ways and initiatives, but we're not receiving any support from government. But you are highlighting something very positive here that especially where farmers always complain to say we don't have access to market, we can't find market or we can't keep market for long. So let's just highlight on that, that you said that the ARC has assisted you and facilitated that market. So where were you before ARC came in and where are you now that ARC has facilitated or helped you with market? Before the ARC came in assistance, we were struggling, going to the auction, the market, it was so tough. It was so tough, but after the ARC came in assistance, they managed to secure the market because we are supplying wet with our free range cows. So yeah, we are in the program of Willys Farmers. That's fantastic. So is Willys buying your beef directly from the farm and how have you had to transition as a cooperative to meet a retailer's demands? It's quite impressive because we are really happy, we know we've got the market, we are no longer struggling like others. What we have to do is to just to make sure that we meet the deadline. So yeah. So if I understand correctly, you're raising the bones matter cattle and supplying directly to Willys' avatars, is that correct? All right. And what type of, did that as a cooperative supplying into Willys, did it have to involve any form of structural changes within the cooperatives? In the cooperative, maybe each member's responsibilities being increased because I know retail can be quite demanding with very, very high standards. Yeah. It was a wake up call to the cooperative that we really need to stretch in waking up, making sure that we meet our deadlines. So being, we didn't want to disappoint Willys with our products. We have to make sure that we produce quality meat, our cows, they are taken care of well. And yeah, in terms of any other challenges, my father is still the chairperson of the cooperative. He's the one who just sit around and manage everything. Last two questions, I'm feeling, are you currently mentoring any farmers who want to be in a cooperative? Or have you mentored any farmers who wanted to be in a cooperative and now are successfully running their own? Yes, actually from the office of the premier, there is a program that I'm running, I'm one of the mentors and we have adopted about 80 young farmers in the Northwest province, where we are mentoring them, taking them each and every step, showing them the practical work, and we are introducing them to the new facilities of farming, coming with the trainings and everything. So being in a cooperative, the government always encourage people to work together. The only way to complete the full value chain in the agriculture is to work together. So whether in the cooperative we fight, somebody doesn't pay, somebody runs away with their money, but at the end of the day, we meet each other and we must settle our differences, yes. Yeah, and it's so interesting that you're mentioning that you're mentoring young individuals, whereas the general conversation in Agri is that there are not a lot of young individuals who are participating in the sector. What is your viewpoint on that?  And most importantly, now you're giving back to young farmers. I mean, just maybe give us an overview of the participation of young people in the sector, especially those that you're mentoring. You know, I'm so excited to say as you go through the social medias, you'll see that there are a lot of young people who are active in the industry. And those people, sometimes they will be taking just pictures with the gold, but we need to identify those people that these people need trainings. They need to do the right thing. We need to take them in board and show them direction. But look, guys, with a little bit of experience that we have in the industry, this is what we have to do. Like currently, I'm visiting this month as a plowback to the community. I'm visiting the high schools where they are doing agriculture. By doing that, I want to adopt those learners and help them to apply so that they don't have to make the same mistakes that we did. We're gonna help them in applying for agricultural colleges, help them to choose their right careers, where we know if we have a certain group that will be doing the health, other that will be studying the soil, there's a lot of science in agriculture. And we need those young people. We need to share the direction with them. So if we get them fresh from high school, we can help them with the direction and they can go to the colleges with the knowledge that this is what I'll be doing. So I'm so happy that not only in the Northwest province, everywhere in South Africa, there are a lot of young farmers who are flooding into the agriculture sector. It shows that people are vibrant. We are realizing our worth to interact with nature. That is awesome, Ipiling. And I can just see and feel the passion coming from you, especially when you're talking about young individuals and being a young farmer yourself. But just to close off the conversation this evening and thank you so much for availing your time as a busy farmer. What are some of the last or final words of wisdom that you could give to our audience this evening that is maybe contemplating of being in a cooperative but just doesn't know how to go about it? Well, you need to be patient. You need to be humble. In farming, money doesn't come easy. You need to create the network. Networking is very important. In farming, we need one another. Therefore, it's very good that we create the networks and share experiences and then work. Because at the end of the day, we want to create a positive full value chain where we won't be only having people only on the animal. Look, we need people as well in the game industry and there are less people in the game industry. So we are looking forward to growing up to the game level where we'll be having the livestock producers, young vets and so basically what I'm saying is that we need each other. Let's just work together. Wow, thank you so much for your time Ibeleng this afternoon and I'm sure we'll be watching you in our socials from the private property team and thank you so much as well for just sharing some words and wisdoms and also bringing the spotlight into much better farming enterprises in terms of how you guys are structured, how you're working and highlighting the benefits of working with government as well and just sharing your story because not a lot of farmers are able to share the story and sometimes feel hesitant about giving some insights into their farming backgrounds. But thank you so much for this time this evening and I wish you all the success with supplying and meeting your client's demand and just growing the family farm most importantly. Yeah, so thank you. Thank you so much Ibeleng. It's a pleasure. Thank you so much for watching everybody at home. We were joined by Ibeleng Kuwadi who's a CEO and founder of Matabella Farming Enterprise. She is a livestock farmer, farming born smarter cattle in the Northwest province. And I think our conversation tonight was basically looking at farming in a cooperative and in her instance she was farming or she is currently farming in a family run cooperative with her father and her siblings and each and everybody in the cooperative has their own responsibilities. So if you're thinking about joining a cooperative please watch this conversation that we had with Ibeleng this evening. Maybe you could get some gems from what she had to say and I like the fact that you mentioned that a lot of youth are in the sector and also as she is growing in a farming journey she's always giving back and imparting knowledge on others and constantly working with her active department of agriculture in her region and province. As you heard she's currently mentoring 80 young farmers in the sector. So yeah, it's always so fascinating to talk about farming and agriculture and most importantly sharing the spotlight women in farming or young people in farming. And yeah, if you enjoyed this conversation give it a like, give it a share and I will catch you Nick on Thursday with another guest but thank you so much for joining the Private Property Farming Podcast and continuously supporting the podcast. Have a good evening, take care.