Good evening aspirants, welcome to the Hindu newspaper analysis brought to you by Shankar IS Academy. These are the list of articles chosen for today's discussion and let us start our first discussion by discussing about an editorial article. In this editorial article we will be seeing about asset monetization followed by that we will be seeing an important news article about eco-sensitive zone notification and followed by that we will be seeing three important news articles. The first one will be based on the black holes and the second one will be on the make it or to damp issue and the third one will be based on the Jalyan Valaba massacre. So with this let us move on to the first discussion. Now take a look at this editorial. This editorial is regarding asset monetization. See our government has announced an ambitious program of asset monetization. Through asset monetization our government hopes to earn 6 trillion in revenues over a four year period. So in this context let us learn about asset monetization. The syllabus relevant to this topic is highlighted here for your reference. First let us understand what is asset monetization in order to understand the article better. See in asset monetization in exchange for a lump sum payment the government loses its assets for a specific period of time. At the end of this period the asset gets returned to the government itself. See the asset monetization is different from privatization because in privatization the government gives out the asset for sale. Once the sale is done the ownership gets transferred to another person and the government do not have any say on that asset. But in asset monetization the government just exchanges the asset for the lump sum amount for a specific period of time. Please note this difference. So by asset monetization the assets which has been already built by government is used to earn extra revenue so that government can use this extra revenue to invest in other infrastructure development projects. So this is the purpose of asset monetization and our government is planning to monetize assets in various sectors like roads, railways, power, airport, ports, telecom stadiums and power transmissions. Among these roads railways and powers will be the main sector of asset monetization. I hope you can follow. See two important statement has been raised about this asset monetization program. The first focus will be on underutilized assets and the second is monetization will happen through public private partnership and investment trust. First let us see about the underutilized assets. See for example imagine a hypothetical airport. This airport has not been properly developed and it is not marketed well also and it is not been put into proper use as well. So it becomes an underutilized asset. So if we monetize this asset a private party can make use of it better. The private party will pay the government a price equal to the present value of cash flows at the current level of utilization of the airport. So here the private party will pay the government equal to the value of the asset. Then by making necessary investments the private players can reap the benefit of high level of cash flows. See this is a win-win situation for government and the private players. How the government gets a fair price for its asset and the private players gets its return on investment. The efficiency of the airport also increases. So now we have a question. Why can't we monetize well utilized assets? See in case of well utilized assets the private players have little incentive to invest and improve its efficiency. Since the asset is already well established the private players simply need to operate the asset as they are. The private players don't have to make any changes and they can earn profit by operating the asset as it is. So there is no improvement in the efficiency of the asset. Also in many cases the government can earn more revenue if it operates the well established asset all by itself. So this is why we have opted for monetization of underutilized assets. As we have seen so far the benefits to the economy are likely to be greater when underutilized assets are monetized. Now moving on to the second statement. Monetization through public private partnership and investment trust. See according to the author asset monetization through public private partnership will exercise some problems. This is because in public private partnership we are fully transferring the asset to a private player for a fixed period. See private players will prefer well utilized assets to assets that are underutilized. That is because in well utilized assets cash flow and returns are more certain. That is you have a fixed amount of cash flow and returns. So they may not show interest in underutilized assets. Also there are other complications also. See it is very difficult to calculate and predict the value of an asset in a long time period. It includes many variables and we really cannot predict these variables for example like economic growth development etc. So it is tough to get the exact valuation right for an asset. This can affect both the private players as well as the government. Also remember one thing private players will not have an incentive to invest in the asset towards the end of the tenure of monetization. Because anyway they are going to hand it over to the government. So why should they invest at the end of the tenure? It is not going to be profitable at all. So the private players will not invest in the asset towards the end of the tenure of monetization. This is also a problem. The life of the asset when it returns to the government may also be low. So these are the problems. Now how can we solve these problems? Monetization through investment trust is a good idea. See investment trust or mutual fund like setup in which investors are subscribed to units that give dividends. The government will transfer the monetizable assets to the investment trust and the companies can subscribe to these units and get dividends. Here the sponsor of the trust is required to hold a minimum prescribed proportion of the total units issued. See the investment trust also offers a portfolio of assets so investors get the benefit of diversification also. If we monetize our assets through investment trust route the public authorities continue to own the right to a significant portion of the cash flows and they will also have a right to operate the asset as well. So the issue that arises with transfer of assets to a private party are solved. So finally the author concludes by saying that the economy is best served when the public authorities develop infrastructure and monetize them. The author also suggests monetizing underutilized assets through investment trust will help us in a long go. This method will increase efficiency and solve many problems and he also wanted the government to set up an asset monetization monitoring authority. This authority should be staffed by competing professionals and they must have the independence to monitor the asset monetization process as well. So these are the points highlighted in this article with this we came to the end of this article. Now let us move on to the next article. Now let us take up this news article for our next discussion. The news article talks about the recently notified eco-sensitive zone of Deepur Bheel. So today let us understand in brief about this site the threats and what are the benefits brought by the eco-sensitive zone notification. First let us see about Deepur Bheel. See the term Bheel in Assamese means a wetland or a large aquatic body specifically in Assamese it means flat plain wetlands. This Deepur Bheel is located in the Kamrap district of Assam. It is located to the south west of Guwahati city. Now that river Brahmabutra is situated to its northwest and to its south the Rani reserve forest, Chakradoli hill, Garbanga reserve forest are present. So let us first understand about the important importance of this Bheel. See this Bheel is a permanent freshwater lake. It has an open lake basin which is connected with a set of in-flow and out-flow channels. The main sources of water to the Bheel are the Kalmani and Basista rivers. The Bheel is spread over an area of 40.14 square kilometers during the monsoon season. It is considered as one of the largest and important river in wetland in the Brahmabutra valley of lower Assam. See it is said that originally the Bheel had its natural linkage with Brahmabutra through another Bheel called the Sola Bheel. But this linkage was disrupted due to several anthropogenic activities. This includes construction of residential buildings, construction of a national highways, particularly NH 37 and construction of a railway line. Therefore as of now the Bheel remains as a small secondary channel only. Another important factors the Bheel is the only major stormwater storage basin for Kohati city. Also know that the main inhabitants around the Bheel are the Kar Bheel community. So these Bheels provide means of livelihood for these local communities. Apart from fishing these communities also harvest the nymphia nuts, flowers and sell it in local markets. Especially the seeds of gained water lily from the Bheel are annually leased by the government. So it is also a major source of revenue for them. So what about its biodiversity? See it supports a range of fauna, it supports 50 fish species, 12 reptile species, 6 amphibian species along with 155 species of aquatic macro biota etc. Elephant herds from adjacent protected area passes through these Bheels. Apart from this it also supports threatened species of birds like spot-billed pelican, lesser adjutant stork, greater adjutant stork, black-necked stork and large whistling teal. Additionally know that it is considered as one of the staging sites for migratory birds in India. So what is this staging sites? Staging sites are those which are used by migratory birds to refuel themselves in their ongoing journey. That is they stop to eat here before continuing their journey. It is also a site of large congregation of aquatic birds in Assam during winter. Because of all these the Bheel is rich in avian fauna. Therefore the poor Bheel has been selected as one of the important bird area site by Bird Life International. Please make note of it. It might be very important for your preliminary examination. The poor Bheel has been selected as one of the important bird area site by Bird Life International and it is declared as bird wildlife sanctuary. Further in 2002 due to its biological and environmental importance, the poor Bheel has been designated as a Ramsar site. That is as a wetlite of international importance. From the discussion itself you can recognize how important this Bheel ecosystem is. But these Bheel faces many threats also. We saw the anthropogenic activities before. These constructions are a major threat because around 30 square kilometer area is encroached or reclaimed or a developed area.  So the liquid and solid waste leaches into the Bheel during the rainy season. Due to these the Bheel suffer from pollution. Pollution is also majorly caused by the sewage from Guwahati which enters the Bheel. It is also caused by other inorganic or industrial effluent and agriculture waste as well. So this resulted in eutrophication of the Bheel. So the Bheel gets heavily infested with water hyacinth and some emergent weeds such as Hyderilla, Neofia and etc. Analysis in 2004 itself revealed the toxic condition of the Bheel. It was found that Bheel's pH was between 4.7 and 6.9. That means it is acidic in nature. Remember that pH less than 7 means acidic in nature. Apart from these the railway lines are a threat to elephants because the trains often hit the approaching herds of elephants and this causes loss of life among the herds of elephants as well. So an action to safeguard this protected area was long-pending. And now the news mentions that Ecosensitive Zone has been notified in the Deepar Bheel Wildlife Sanctuary. See the Ecosensitive Zone or declared under section 3 of Environment Protection Act and as per the section the Union Ministry of Environment is empowered to take measures for protecting and improving the quality of the environment. They can take measures to prevent and control environmental pollution and for this purpose they can even restrict areas. This restricted area are called Ecosensitive zones. In these areas any industries or class of industries their operation or processes is prohibitor. Sometimes exceptions are given to carry out these activities with certain safeguards. So therefore to conclude many times the activities in Ecosensitive Zones are of regulatory nature rather than prohibitive in nature. So what does this mean? They do not prohibit the function of the industries but they regulate the nature in which the industries work. Note that these Ecosensitive Zones are declared around national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. So Ecosensitive Zones create some kind of shock observer for these protected areas. They also serve as a transition zone between high protected area and low protected areas. And now since news reports that Ecosensitive Zones of Deepur Beale has been notified certain activities are restricted and prohibitor. According to the article new commercial hotels and resorts of prohibitor only around certain range of the Beale or around the Ecosensitive Zone. And then hydroelectric projects, brick lanes, commercial use of fireworks and discharge of untreated effluent in natural water bodies or land areas all these are prohibited. So this notification comes as a relief to this protected area which was in the way of becoming a quagmire of pollution. So these are some of the important points that you can grasp from this article. With these information let us move on to the next article. Now our next news discussion is going to be based on this news article. See the news article mentions about the spotting of a rare merging of three supermassive black holes. It has happened three times already. So this is not the first time happening and this event has been spotted by a team of astrophysicists from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics from the Paris Observatory. So this is basically the crux of this news article. Now based on this context we are going to have a basic understanding about what is black hole. The syllabus covered by this article is given here for your reference.  And the reason for gravity being this strong here is because the matter here has been squeezed into a tiny space. When matter is squeezed into a tiny space the strength of the gravitational pull will increase.  As I said earlier due to gravity even light cannot escape from this black hole. And since no light can get out it appears black. Due to this people cannot see black holes and they appear invisible to people's eye. And this is the reason for them to be termed as the black holes. Now talking about the size. See black holes can be both big or small. According to the scientist the smallest black holes are small as just one atom and another kind of black hole is called stellar. The mass of this stellar black holes can be up to 20 times more than the mass of the sun.  And the largest black holes are called supermassive. These black holes have masses that are more than one million suns together.  Just remember one thing the largest black holes are called the supermassive and such black holes have masses that are more than one million stars together. On talking about their formation according to scientists the smallest black holes formed when the universe begun. When you take stellar black holes which we saw earlier they are made when the center of a very big star falls in upon itself or collapses. And when this happens it causes a supernova. And for your information a supernova is an exploding star that blasts parts of the stars into space. Also note that supermassive black holes are believed to be formed at the same time as the galaxy that surround them formed but astronomers are still not sure about it.   It is very important to know about these two basic parts. One is the singularity and the another one is the event horizon. To say about event horizon event horizon is also called as the point of no escape or the point of no return. It is around the black hole and know that it is not a physical surface but it is a sphere surrounding the black hole that marks where the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light. So if you have to escape from this region you have to move with the velocity of speed of light. So imagine how much speed you need to escape from this region. Now on talking about singularity see one thing about event horizon is that once the matter is into it then the matter will fall to the center of the black hole and with such strong gravity the matter squeezes to just a point like a tiny tiny volume with a crazy big density and that point is called the singularity. With this let us wind up this news discussion. So in this discussion we saw what is black holes, how they are formed and very important parts of the black hole. With these details in mind now let us move on to the next part of our news discussion. Now look at this article see recently Karnataka has proposed a construction of reservoir at Mekedato across the interstate Kaveri river. So this raised a serious concern for the Tamil Nadu government and the Tamil Nadu government has urgently moved the supreme court to seek judicial order to retain the proceedings. So this article is written in this context and in this context let us see a brief about the Mekedato issue. See the Mekedato issue is a continuation of the long existing Kaveri river water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. As we know Kaveri is an interstate river with its upper hilly catchment lying in the Karnataka and Kerala states and the lower part is lying in the plains of Tamil Nadu. Know that the Kaveri rises in the Brahmagiri ranges of the western Ghats in the Kourg district of Karnataka. This may be very important for your preliminary examination. So the major tributaries of Kaveri in the Karnataka territory includes Harangi, Harangi, Hemavadi, Shimsa, Arkavadi, Lakshmana Tirtha and Swarnavadi. Apart from this, Kaveri which drains the north Malabar of Kerala state flows through Karnataka and joins Kaveri. Bhavani, Amaravadi and Noyal are the tributaries to the river in the Tamil Nadu state. Know that there are two interstate agreements signed in 1892 and 1924 on Kaveri river. The first agreement was signed in 1892 and it is a general agreement related to a number of interstate rivers. The second agreement was signed in 1924 and this is related to the irrigation development in the basin of Kaveri alone. Both the agreements were signed in 1892 and 1924 agreements are permanent. Later the Karnataka government constructed four new dams across the tributaries of Kaveri. So in which tributaries these four dams are built, the tributaries include Harangi, Kaabini, Hemavadi and Swarnavadi. For none of these, they have obtained the prior consent of Tamil Nadu. So in 1969, Tamil Nadu appealed to the then Prime Minister of India to adjudicate on this unilateral action. Later the centre used its power under the Interstate River Water Dispute Act 1956 to constitute the Kaveri Water Dispute Tribunal in 1990. This tribunal submitted the report in 2007 which was challenged in the Supreme Court. Based on the Supreme Court judgement in 2018, the centre notified the Kaveri Water Management Scheme. Based on the Supreme Court judgement in 2018, the centre notified the Kaveri Water Management Scheme and it constituted the Kaveri Water Management Authority and the Kaveri Water Regulation Committee.  Know that it is a multi-purpose project with several objectives and some of the objectives include utilizing additional 4.75 TMC of water from the proposed project to provide drinking water facility to Bangalore metropolitan region. Some of other objectives is to store the flood water that may escape into sea and to harness 400 meha watts of renewable energy in a year etc. This project is to be built by Kaveri Neerawari Nigham Ltd and this Kaveri Neerawari Nigham Ltd is completely owned by the government of Karnataka. See according to Tamil Nadu, this project violates the final award of the Kaveri River Water Tribunal. See construction of the two reservoirs would result in seizing of the flow in the intermittent catchment below the Krishna Raja Sahar and Karbini Reservoir. So this will result in less water inflow into the Tamil Nadu. So this is the present contention between the Tamil Nadu and Karnataka government and the Tamil Nadu government has urgently moved to the Supreme Court to retain the proceedings of Karnataka. These are some of the points that you should remember and with this let us move on to the next discussion. Now look at this article about the Jalian Valaba Memorial. According to the news article the renovated Jalian Valaba Memorial along with four museum galleries are restored well and new amenities for visitors was dedicated to the nation by our Prime Minister. Now in this context let us learn a few facts about the Jalian Valaba Massacre which is also called as the Massacre of Amritsar. First let us see about the background or the root cause of this massacre. See during the first world war the British government of India enacted a series of repressive emergency powers and these powers were designed in a way to counter rebellious actions. By the end of the war people expected relaxation from these measures and they also expected to gain more political autonomy. But that did not happen at all. Just remember a fact even the Montague Clumpsford report that was presented to the British parliament in 1918 also recommended limited local self-government to Indians. Now coming back instead of relaxing the wartime measures in early 1919 the government passed a rigorous act called Rowlett Act. The issue here is that the act initially extended the repressive wartime measures. This aggravated the people and the act met widespread anger and discontent among Indians notably in the region of Punjab. Now coming to the issue it was a baisahi that day and this festival is very important for Punjab and parts of North India because it is a popular harvest festival. See apart from extending the repressive wartime measures the Rowlett Act also empowered British government to detain any person without trial. So on that day the local residents in Amritsar decided to hold a meeting to discuss and protest against the imprisonment of two important leaders. Who are these leaders? They include Satya Baal and Sai Fuddin Kichlow and the protesting crowd had a mixture of men, women and children. Apart from this they all gathered in a park called Jalyan Valaba and very importantly note that the protest was a peaceful one and the gathering not only had protestors but it also included pilgrims visiting the golden temple and some who had not come to protest also were in the gathering. And while the meeting was on Brigadier General Reynolds Edward Harry Dyer with an intention to teach the public assembled there a lesson, he brought 90 soldiers with him to the venue and he ordered them to open fire on the crowd and though many people tried to escape they could not escape from the park. Since the park was walled on all sides except for a few small gates so many people could not escape and in fact many jumped into the will located inside the park to save themselves and not only that people also died due to stampede. It is said that in the incident more than 1000 people had lost their lives while 1200 people were wounded. On talking about the outcomes after the massacre General Dyer was removed from command and exiled to Britain and on that line Rabindranath Thahur and Mahatma Gandhi renounced their British knighthood and Kesar A. Hinde medal as a sign of condemnation. Importantly in 1922 the infamous Rowlett Act was repealed by the British. So with this information we came to the end of this discussion. Now let us move on to the next segment. Now let us take up the preliminary practice questions. The first question is about the poor Bill. The question is that consider the following statements with reference to the poor Bill often seen in news. The first statement states that it is situated in Odisha. The second statement states that it has been declared as a Ramsar site and the only Ramsar site of the state and the third statement states that it is one of the staging sites for migratory birds in India. Which of the following statements given above is or are correct? See from our discussion we know that statement one is incorrect because the poor Bill is situated in Assam and it is not situated in Odisha and the statement two and three are correct. The poor Bill is a Ramsar site and it is the only Ramsar site of the Assam state and it is one of the staging sites for migratory birds in India. So the statement two and three are correct and the correct answer for the question is option C two and three one day. Now moving on to the next question. The next question is a two statement question and the first statement states that Harangi, Kaabini and Amaravadi are tributaries of Kaveri river and the second statement states that the Kaveri river rises in the state of Karnataka. Which of the above statements is or are correct? See both the statements are correct. We already saw this in our discussion and Kaveri river rises in the state of Karnataka. So the second statement is correct. Now coming to the first statement Harangi, Kaabini and Amaravadi are tributaries of Kaveri river. So both the statements are correct and the correct option for this question is option C that is both one and two. Now let us take up this question. The question is the terms singularity event horizon often seen in news is related to option A sans corona, option B black hole, option C dark matter and option D blue nets. See you can attend this question even if you don't have idea about what is singularity and what is event horizon.  So the sans corona is nothing but it is the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere and it is usually hidden by the bright light of the sun's surface. So that is no direct or indirect relation with singularity or event horizon so you can eliminate the first option. Now coming to the third option, you know what is a dark matter. See dark matter is a name given to all the masses in the universe that are invisible to our eyes. Many research suggests that about 70 percentage of the universe is composed of dark energy while the remaining 25 percentage is composed of mysterious substance called dark matter. So this also don't have direct relation with singularity or event horizon so you can eliminate this option also. Now coming to the fourth option, it is the blue nets. Know that blue nets are a name given by astronomers to the moons which got detached from their parent planets. Note that it is a combination of two word planet plus moon is blue net. So the moons which get escaped from the bondage of their parent planet is called as blue nets. So if you can remember these words, you can easily eliminate these options and the correct answer for this question is option B black holes. See we already saw about black holes in our discussion but if you are even more interested in space science, you can watch a movie called interstellar. In this movie the director explains about singularity and even horizon and even more concepts like warm hole and time travel are also discussed in this movie. If you get time just watch this movie so that you can understand the concept even more better. Now we came to the end of the discussion. The main question are displayed here. Please practice at home and do write answers and post it on the comment section. With this we came to the end of the discussion. If you like the video please like, comment and share and do subscribe to the Shankar IS Academy's YouTube channel. Thank you.


So here is the E-proctor team which have attempted a very complicated thing as we believe and we are mentored by Avinash avathe sir Thank you IIT Bombay and a special thanks to Nithinayur sir Saurabh Verma sir and Rajnikanj Jaingir sir for their extensive support to host the site and Helping us in all the technological aspects These are our team members. There are nine people He's already he's Deepanshu She's Kalyani His Anmol, Anish, Hardik and Shubham One of our friend due to health problems cannot attend the presentation and he is shravan due to health problems So introduction to the E-proctor. We are attempting at the online examination in which there won't be any manual proctor So they here arises the question who does the authentication whether the student is genuine or not So we have the solution that is face recognition, which does the Authentication of the student also we have a fallback mechanism Which doesn't allow the student to switch between the tabs that will be Demonstrated in the demo after a few point of time The need and purpose basically the trusted assessments is the present You can say the challenge in online courses and the trusted assessment is what which gives a reliable certificate And our aim is to reduce the human intervention to reduce the time to reduce the cost everything and to make it as user-friendly as possible Security features as you can see Authentication is done by face recognition beyond a limit the face recognition becomes suspicious And it increases the frequency at which it takes the images and it will send to the server for manual verification Next optimum control of the device in the sense as I've said earlier if you're giving a exam You can open the chrome you can search for answers and you can mark them that mechanism is completely prevented if you go out of that tab you if you go out of the tab there will be a Display that your test will be entered so you cannot Switch between the tabs while you're giving the exam and our software is non-intrusive It doesn't interrupt the user at any point of time It will just give the color change option Which is also a part of instructions which he has to carefully read at the start of the exam Next the metrics and the technologies key technologies used in our face recognition The total size of the project is 11.3 MB and the lines of code are 30,852 The languages used are these languages HTML CSS etc Database we have used simple database mysql and the libraries used for face recognition are open CV digital image processing and for as the device data is stored on students device We have used AES encryption technique and we are sending simple JSON objects to the server Test plan and our application is unit tested Separately for all the features which have stated earlier next an end-to-end demo was conducted with the respected dignitaries who have sat here and also most of the student of most of our intern friends and they have given the feedback forms Through the Google record. We really appreciate that Making this unachievable task possible. We have faced a lot of challenges So human incognito tendency the user can do like this like this So there should be a mechanism in which we should tell the user to keep your face, right? You have been observed so there was a color change when color change when you're giving the exam our Software should be reliable for the Institute and also scary for the users It should fulfill both the tasks at the same time by passing the other applications when our application runs on your machine As I've stated earlier, you cannot open any of the applications to prevent cheating What we have learned we have learned a lot in the journey of this eight weeks Different face recognition algorithms and the face recognition algorithm We have used is a combination of PCA plus LPP principal component analysis plus locality preservation projection an AS encryption technique and We have been completely exposed to the software development life cycle, which is evolutionary prototype comparison between traditional e proctor and Normal e proctor the main difference is that there is no human intervention in our e proctor and the traditional e proctor has a human intervention


The disagreements over the offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea are building up between Lebanon and Israel. On July 25th, Hisbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave an interview in which he warned Israel about the extraction of gas from the fields. Lebanon and Israel are locked in a disagreement over how much of the natural gas fields they can clean. The long-standing issue escalated in June when Israel sent a production ship to the gas fields. What are the implications of Nasrallah's speech? How does the conflict over the offshore gas fields tie in with the larger processes taking place in the region? Ghania Khalik of breakthrough news explains. Over the last month, there's been increasing escalation, at least rhetorically, between Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hisbullah, and the Israelis over these gas fields that have yet to be demarcated between the Israelis and the Lebanese. And the Israelis basically want a huge portion of the gas fields for themselves, part of which belong to Lebanon. And the Lebanese government has been too weak to really fight for what it has a right to. And the Americans are mediating, and of course the Americans mediating just means, you know, the Americans pushing for what Israel wants. And so Hisbullah has sort of stepped in to try to pressure everybody, the Lebanese government, the Americans, and the Israelis to give Lebanon, you know, even part of what it's owed. And so in recent speeches that Nasrallah has given over the past several weeks, he's made comments about the gas fields saying no gas for Israel if there's no gas for Lebanon, essentially threatening to even disrupt Israel's ability to continue to exploit its own gas reserves and what is actually considered Israeli territory if Lebanon isn't given what it's owed. And this, of course, is taking place in a regional context, which I would like to explain as well. You know, there are dual trends taking place in the Middle East right now. On the one hand, you've got regional players who've been pursuing a kind of rapprochement, as we've seen with the Iranians and the Saudis, in a kind of advanced process of improving relations as well as with the Emiratis and the Turks and the Qataris and Egyptians. And of course, there's the ceasefire of sorts in Yemen. And Arab countries are even improving ties with Syria, right reopening embassies and calling for Syria to rejoin the Arab League, you know, which the Americans are very upset about, you know, while the Emiratis are also improving ties with the so-called pro-Iran Shia groups in Iraq. And all of this bodes well for the region. It means countries have wiseened up and they don't want to be dragged into America's wars. And of course, this started under Trump when the Gulf countries realized that Trump might lead the region to war, which he almost did on several occasions. But if that were to take place, of course, America would not suffer the consequences because it's protected by its distance and by oceans, much in the same way it's protected from the consequences of its wars in Europe at the moment. However, the UAE or Saudi Arabia would surely be targeted, right? If the U.S. provoked a war with Iran, that would be the target because they're considered by Iran to be extensions of America. They host American military bases. And of course, then the Houthis had hit Saudi Aramco and the Americans did nothing, really. So this is all happening at a time when the Americans have made it very clear that they want to reduce their so-called engagement in the Middle East to focus on other imperial priorities like China and Russia. Therefore, this reduced American role has been leading to improved relations between the Middle Eastern countries they mentioned. And of course, Biden tried to take advantage of this with his visit to Saudi Arabia, but that was just a public relations event showing he can visit and that we're still here, America's still here. However, on the other side of this, you have Israel, which still provokes Iran with assassinations and sabotage, as well as constant strikes in Syria against presumed Iranian or Hezbollah targets. And the nuclear talks seem stalled and unlikely to succeed, and the Israelis are lobbying hard against the success of those talks. Meanwhile, like I mentioned, Lebanese Hezbollah has been making threats that Israel, of course, can't ignore. The Israelis want to start exploring for gas in the so-called Karish field off the coast of Palestine. But this is disputed by Lebanese legal claims, which assert that this might belong to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Lebanon can't begin exploring in its kind of field off the coast because the maritime border hasn't been delineated next, which is what these negotiations were all about. Now, like I mentioned, the Americans are the mediators. But again, America cannot be an honest broker since it backs Israel with almost $400 billion a year in military aid and beyond. And of course, to make matters worse, the American appointed mediator, Amos Hodgstein, was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military before joining the U.S. government, which is kind of shocking that this is the person they appointed. And the Americans, they've seemed disinterested, right? They've seemed busy with other places, but they've also rejected Lebanese legal claims. And the Lebanese government, like I mentioned, is weak. It's corrupt. And at one point in time, not too long ago, it was willing to sell out the Lebanese people on their rights, and many in the Lebanese government still are, while the Lebanese army is way too weak to defend Lebanese sovereignty. I mean, it always has been. It's even weaker now with the collapse of the economy and people actually leaving the army as a result of that because they're getting paid like peanuts, if any, peanuts actually are probably worth more than what they're getting paid at this point, since the currency has devalued so badly. And so this is what finally provoked his Bullah to make the threats that I mentioned in recent months that Israel would not get gas if Lebanon does not get gas. And his Bullah has established red lines for an acceptable compromise, as Nisrullah has noted in his speeches, what's an acceptable compromise with the Israeli enemy to basically make it clear to cowardly Lebanese government officials that they can't let the Americans bully them. And his Bullah, also earlier this month in July, sent three drones to fly over the Israeli gas field to make it clear that they could sabotage it if Israel didn't agree to a deal, which actually really rattled the Israelis. Now the Israeli government, as we know, is in disarray right now after the government collapsed again. And as it prepares for elections, nobody wants to seem to be weak by making a compromise or opening themselves up to accusations by Netanyahu or the right that they're offering concessions to so-called terrorists. So this might actually, the situation internally in Israel might make it more difficult for a deal to be reached because of internal political decisions on how to maintain power. But time is running out. And while neither side wants a war, it actually might be forced on them by the political circumstances I mentioned.  And he is due to come back any day now to Lebanon with an Israeli response to the Lebanese demand. And then based on the response we see, we'll know whether the region is moving towards the sort of continued calm that I mentioned taking place among certain countries or a new escalation. And I just want to also note, you know, this is also about profits. The Israelis, you know, in addition to these sort of internal dynamics that are making it less likely for the Israelis to negotiate, the Israelis also want to exploit these gas fields to sell to the Europeans to attempt to replace at least some of the sanctioned Russian gas. So they see an opportunity for profit. Meanwhile, and also one of the consequences of Israel gaining more territory as far as gas fields are concerned is they can then take that to push for a legal claim to more territory on the land border that exists right now, which is still sort of under, you know, contestation. Meanwhile, Lebanon's state electricity as is non-existent, right? Like if everyone's living off of generators, if they can afford them. But most people in Lebanon are living in the dark for a large portion of the day. And so this gas is actually one way Lebanon could help alleviate its electricity crisis, because it's dealing with this inability to purchase fuel because of low foreign reserves and actually a refusal by the central bank governor to purchase fuel for the state electricity company, which is like completely collapsed. So everyone here in Lebanon is anticipating some kind of war in the coming months over this. There are kind of always anticipating a war but this is kind of like an escalation kind of situation and any war, as we know, like wouldn't be contained or isolated at this point to one place because there are many fronts between the Israelis, the sort of pro-American elements in the region and the so-called resistance access across the Levant, you know, whether we're talking about Syria or Lebanon or Palestine or any rock. So should a war break out, which I, you know, I don't think is likely, but anything could happen. I think it could lead to something bigger across the region.


Now that you're taking Devi home, how powerful, how mighty and how wonderful she becomes in your house simply depends on how much you feed of your heart to her. If you hold her as the highest entity in your home, not yourself, not your family, but if you hold Devi as the highest entity in your home, one who receives the grace of Devi, need not ever fear failure or disease, death, all this will become a play. Respectable Sadhguruji, your global contribution for rivers, rally of rivers is such a successful movement which is going to inspire not only India, but in the whole world. Particularly, I am responsible for water resources, river connectivity, Ganga Rejuvenation and particularly the water is a subject related with my ministry. As with your blessings, we are trying to develop clean Ganga mission and which is really a basic big challenge for the country. You are absolutely correct, without plantation we cannot save our rivers and that is the main theme behind the rally for rivers. You educate the masses, you inspire the people and you give them a very specific target as far as the ecology and environment is concerned. As a one of your admirers, it is a great pleasure and pride for me today to have this Jeevan Gaurav Puraskar for you from Maharashtra, Jamarati, Patrakara Sangha. It's a great pleasure and pride for me that I got opportunity to give it to you. I'm not a so big man, but it is the blessings from your side to me, this is only my feeling about it. The most embarrassing moments of my life are moments of accolades and awards, but I must thank you for organizing this. The river is a live thing. This great amount of work being done with the Ganga, cleaning up the Ganga.  If human beings go to sleep just for one year, in one flood season Ganga will clean herself. So what Ganga needs is some responsible action from us. Soil is the most important thing. If we have rich soil, there will always be enough water. We as a generation of people, are we committed to take it in the direction of solution rather than driving it towards the problem? What is our gift to future generations? At least do we have the responsibility to give this nation to the next generation as our parents gave it to us. Maharashtra has been a very proactive state for Rally for Rivers. It is the most proactive state. We must congratulate you all for this. As Gadkariji was mentioning Sudhir Mugantibar's name, this man is fire. Without his enthusiasm these things wouldn't have happened and of course the chief minister is backing him hundred percent. Unfortunately in Maharashtra, the forest minister and the finance minister are same. This is done wonders. We will be unfolding a project in Evath Mal, the Vagari river. We have chosen the most difficult place in the country. This is considered the epicenter of former suicide. There are a variety of reasons for this, but I'm hundred percent sure if the necessary cooperation is there in five to eight years time, we can make a complete turnaround of this region.  What look like a hopeless piece of land, we can convert it into a very rich piece of land where people will live well. We have created a detailed project about our volunteers have been working for last eight months on the ground literally meeting every farmer in the region. Farmers are very eager and the government is very enthusiastic. If all of you are with us, I'm sure we will make this happen. Thank you very much.


The whole field of peace building is focused on structural prevention, but there's very little emphasis comparatively to the lack of mechanisms that are typically in a society to deal with acute tension that can result in violence. This organization, Foundation for Coexistence, started a conflict early warning and early response program. The work that they were doing involved the use of events data. In other words, categorizing events into different areas of cooperation and conflict, keeping track of that over time and looking for trends. In 2008, there were elections in Kenya that were very troubling to certain groups. There were a group of journalists who identified their desire to keep track of what was going on in the post-election violence there. They created a digital mapping platform called Ushahidi in which events could be placed onto the digital map and you could keep track of what was happening in different locations. And over time, you can look at trends and you can identify hot spots of where there are concentrations of tension or even violence. We're still at the very beginning of understanding how to use this kind of technology for violence prevention, but the idea of being able to visually view kind of the lay of the land using social media like Twitter, Facebook, sending in SMS text messages, all of those are ways to collect events. They call it crowdsourcing, getting information from the crowd and posting those onto a digital map, tracking trends, identifying hot spots, focusing efforts where there are hot spots so that you can optimize your resources, training civil society organizations in those locations, building connections horizontally and vertically and being ready if things start to deteriorate. I don't think there's any denying that the communication capacity is vastly improved, that the detection of incipient violence can be improved upon so that we know about it earlier rather than having to wait to hear rumors that it's about ready to occur. People are using something called data mining to identify certain signals in what's called big data out on the internet. You can see spikes in certain kinds of communication by using data mining and as a result, you can start seeing indications what are called signals of possible violence before you normally would have been able to detect it.


Hi guys, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to practice the piano or pretty much any musical instrument with the metronome focusing specifically on subdivisions. So you are not going to use the metronome just for its beats. You are going to yes, use it for the hit points but then practice music inside of it. We have done another lesson on using the metronome. It's a rather detailed lesson more on how to practice various things on the metronome. We leave that in the description so you could perhaps watch that lesson. It will be nice to watch that after this lesson actually. So check out the description later after watching this one. I am going to divide the lesson into a few topics. First of all, I am going to show you how to set up a metronome for practice. A lot of students have asked me this question. I will show you that. I will use an app. I will show you how you can do it in a way which works for your comfort zone. And then we look at how to actually practice it using a very simple set of music. Probably just a major chord, a minor chord, maybe a simple chord progression or two. And let's look at different subdivisions. Subdivisions is where you divide the beat into units. So you divide by two, divide by three or divide by four. And then we'll explore the challenges of practicing with this particular ecosystem. When you practice with subdivisions or otherwise, when you practice with the metronome, you kind of get a reality check. How good are you actually with respect to time? So we look at all the challenges involved using the metronome. Having said all that, the metronome is a very fun and inspiring tool. So I would urge you to use the metronome generally while practicing or composing or even improvising because it can motivate you or inspire you to create music. That's another interesting feature. So let's get cracking. Before we do, it'll be awesome if you could hit that bell icon and hit the subscribe button on our Nathaniel School YouTube channel. And you could also consider getting the notes of this lesson and other previous lessons with notation, my handwritten notes, MIDI files, backing tracks, wherever applicable, waiting for you on our Patreon page. Let's get cracking. First of all, how to set up this thing called the metronome. So first off, you could install this metronome app called ProMetronome which works perfectly fine on Android and iOS devices. It's also completely free and I think it's the best sounding one of the lot and it's useful on stage as well because it has a lot of pro features which you can purchase later. But for the most part, it's free. So the first thing I like to do is learn how to adjust the tempo. So you can do that with the slider and you have right now I'm adjusting it and I've set it up to 60 beats per minute. This is how it sounds at 60 beats per minute. So one, two, three, four, one. Now you could assume this to be four by four or the way I set it up, I can set it up without any accents. So what I mean by that is the metronome normally will come sounding like this with that higher pitch sound, right? The higher bell-like sound or the tick sound. So what you could do or what I like to do is first of all disable it and keep all the sounds of the metronome to be the same. So then you don't need to look at it, you're forced to or you don't need to look at this.  I don't think you need to know what the one is with a different sound unless you're recording or doing something more specific. So those are the basics of the metronome. Install the app, figure out the settings, learn how to adjust your tempo, time signature maybe but for the most part you can just set the tempo at whatever you feel and then try and play along. The next thing when you're setting up the metronome, before you start playing I would urge you to first move your body to feel the pulse. One, let's say it's a four by four song, so one, two, three, four, one, two. Before you even play the piano or guitar or whatever instrument, first try and count with it, one, two, three, four, one, two, three. You could also count it in a more animated way. What I mean by that, maybe the last four could be two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, sort of three staccatos and one legato, two, three, four, one. It brings you back into the cycle, three, four or maybe say the one, the first beat of the bar a little louder. So one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, there we go, four, one, three, four. So these are ways to make sure that you're moving to the pulse and you're feeling the time signature. The next thing you need to do before you start playing is the divisions of the beat. Try to figure out a way to say the beat divisions while the metronome is playing. So when we divide the beat, we can divide by two, we can divide by three and we can divide by four. When we say two, for the most part you can say one and two and three and four. So that and which you say will be a one and two, will be inside the metronome hit. So if this is what the beats are, two, three, four, the ands will go one and two and three and so the and is inside the hit point, right? One, two and three and four and one and and now if you divide by four, you can have four units within this one hit which you can vocalize as one e and two e and three e and four e and one e, one e and a. So and will be at the 50% mark, e would be at the 25% mark, a would be at the 75% mark. Let's see how that sounds. One e and two e and three e and four e and one. You could also move your head while you're counting to the pulse one e and two e and three e and four e. So we've gone from one and two and three and four and one and two and three all the way now to one e and two e and three e and four e and one e and two. Keep moving your body or at least your head one e and two e and three and then we can even divide by three. So to divide by three, you want to say something like one and two and three and four and one and two. And what helps me with three or triplets is to move my head sideways. That tends to help sway your head if that makes sense. So three, two, one, start one and two and three and four and one and two. And again, I'm saying the one with the on beats with a bit more intensity. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and right. So before you even start playing with the metronome or the click track, just keep in mind that our body needs to move and we need to be able to count the subdivisions before playing. If you play a piano or any instrument in the real world, you're not going to align every note with every hit point of the metronome. It's not going to be that easy. For example, you may not want to play like this. It's not going to sound very interesting. So what we tend to do is we'll go inside it and this is at the beat level. This is at the subdivision, dividing by two, three, dividing by four and so on.  This is something which people get wrong. Just to make sure that we are on the right track and not losing time, a lot of people will then tend to double up the speed. You will start playing at 120 or 240, which is ridiculous because the point of the metronome is to make you be an independent musician, to play better on time, so that everyone relies on you rather than the other way around. And before we get started with the piano part of the lesson, I just wanted to mention that when the metronome goes faster, it becomes more of a physical activity to get your hands aligned with or your muscles to be able to play at that particular speed. But it's a bit easier on the mind because you're less dependent on the metronome or you're less dependent on time. You're going more with your finger capability. However, if the metronome is slower, it becomes a lot more mentally grueling, so to speak. So learn the metronome at both fast speeds as well as slow speeds. Let's now get started on the piano with some music. So I have for you the G major chord. Very simple. G major is G, B, D. Now you could play this either B, D, G, D, G, B, those are its inversions. G, B, D, B, D, D, G, B, could also consider the G minor chord if you like the minor vibe. G, B, D, B, D, G, D, G, B, D, G, B, D, G, B, D, D, G, B, D, G, B, D, G, B, D, G, B, D, D. Okay. Now, practicing this with the metronome, what will be interesting is if we consider some arpeggio playing. So I'm going to take the metronome and demonstrate a very simple arpeggio phrasing for you to... So let's start by dividing by four. Then we'll go into dividing by three. So this would be one E and a two E and as we counted earlier, one E and a two E and so the drill would be take the G major chord and roll it. So what we call as an arpeggio pattern or an arpeggio roll. Now here's the thing. Your fingers are not able to play that speed. No problem at all. Let's do eighth notes instead, which will be, let's first count it one and two and three and starting one and so maybe start with eighth notes. And then go to sixteenths. Now at this particular point, you may want to pause the video and try it out for yourself with the metronome and just see if you're able to get it. Just see if you're able to align yourself with respect to the metronome. That's the point of this video. to just figure out what are the challenges of practicing with it and to ensure that you're actually using it well because sometimes we just do it for the sake of it. We don't learn or gain anything from the process. So when you practice with the metronome, what you need to do is get the consistency and the longevity. What I mean by that is don't just do the exercise and stop and say, oh, I'm fine with it. You need to do it for a period of time. My suggestion is if you're doing an exercise or a pattern, at least for 30 seconds. So look at the number of repetitions. I've already done it eight times. Now, if you pause the video somewhere during the lesson and if you've tried it out and if you found some problems along the way, let's figure out those problems. Address those problems. First of all, the two basic issues are you're running away from the metronome or you're running behind or you're lagging behind the metronome. Why are you lagging behind? Maybe the speed is too fast. So you'd need to then dial it down a notch. Maybe 60 is too fast. Maybe you'd want to go to 50 or 55. If you're speeding up, that doesn't mean you're playing faster or you're able to play faster or you need to dial it faster. No, that means that you're not in control over your vehicle. You're going to crash your car very soon. So you may be able to drive it about a few meters, few hundred meters, but you don't want to crash the car. You want to be consistent at the same speed or in this case, the whole song. So what you need to ensure is longevity, consistency, and so on. And this is an example. If you're lagging behind or racing, so this would be an example of racing. See, it's not. And now to get back, you have to. The best way is if you feel internally that you're not following it, you should just stop. You should not even try to recover. So that's my advice. So let's say you start fairly well. Now you rush or you make a mistake or two, just stop, maybe stop the metronome or keep the metronome running, take a breather, have a sip of water and then continue the mission. You want it to be consistent. Another challenge is you run, but you need to come back. Now you need to look at a few cues for that. The first thing is the one beat or the downbeat of the bar, which I told you earlier, which was so important. So as you play this, figure out which note is on the downbeat. If you look at this pattern, it's low, middle, high, middle, low, middle, high, middle. So my low note appears to be always at the downbeats. Let's just figure that out for one, two, three, four. At least I've designed the pattern that way. Three, four. So this thumb needs to. So even if you're rushing or lagging, just focus on the thumb. This sounds bad, but at least you're not, you're not leaving the click. There we go. So focus on the downbeat, focus on the one. And you should be good, actually. Four, one, two, three, four. If there are still some challenges involved, I would encourage you to alter the style or the vibe of each note which you're playing. Look at all the properties of musical notes in general. One is volume. So you can make one note louder with respect to the other. The other thing would be duration. One note could be shorter or longer with respect to the other or others. You could also look at altering your pitch. Maybe you need more pitch variations. So we look at all the three now and trust me, the inherent properties of sound itself will help you be more on time. Maybe you're not analyzing the changes of sound. It's almost like reading anything on a piece of paper. A, the paper will be of some kind of a color, usually white or black. And then the ink or the color or the writing pen which you use will always be a contrasting color. If it's a black background, you're probably going to write with a white or a lighter color and vice versa. So it's the same with music. You need to have a contrast within your brain. For all you know, the reason why you're not keeping time is because you don't have that the basics of what you need for your year, which is contrast. You need to have a strong beat and a weak beat, a loud beat, a soft beat, a long beat, a short beat, stuff like that or a high pitched beat and a low pitched beat. So let's look at that maybe again, this lesson is primarily focused on the challenge of playing on time with the metronome. And the rewards are plenty once you get this. So this is one of my probably very few lessons on YouTube, which is musically rather boring because I'm just going to take one chord throughout the lecture. But stick around, stick with me. This is more to improve your playing. You can do this with any of the other glamorous set of notes and melodies out there. So the first thing we look at is working with volume. And I'd encourage you to maybe play the one beat, one, two, louder or the down beats, one, two, three, play those loudly and all the other beats play those a bit softer. So one, two, remember we counted this at the beginning of the class. One, two, three, let's see how that can work. So I'm slamming my thumb. This is creating a smaller package or a smaller cycle in your brain. And human beings love cycles. Earlier, if the volume was more consistent, there's no cycle being created for the mind, right? So loud, soft, soft, soft, loud, loud at the ones. There we go. You could also say things like one, two, three. Say that loudly while you play.  And hopefully your timing improves. Play along with me. If you wish, let's do eighth notes. Keep it simple. Down, down, down, loud. Now what is the other property of sound which you can adjust in your playing of the arpeggio? You can then make it legato and staccato. Legato would mean long note. Staccato would be shorter note. So let's try and play around with that with the click. So you may find it a bit of a tricky challenge at the beginning. But over time, again, you're setting up a cycle. Long, short, short, short, long, short, short, short. Legato, staccato, three times. So let's look at that. Why not do one staccato and then three legatos? Let's see how that works. You're just giving yourself a kind of a jolt to recycle the brain to eventually play better and group these things in smaller chunks rather than an endless stream of information. You can also adjust your pitch. So if you feel you're lacking timing, if you're running or lagging, you could then go and focus on that G note which you're starting with and change it. Believe it or not, you may think, oh, you're changing notes. Won't this make it more tricky? I think it'll make it easier from the point of view of timing because you're creating that distinction of notes which forces you to feel the subdivisions and play with the metronome. There we go. So variations of volume, variations of note duration and variations of pitch will further improve your metronome capability. And remember to start slow. 60 beats per minute is what I'm using for this lesson and let it be 60 itself. If you need it to be a bit faster or slower, well and good. And when you're practicing, it's always a healthy practice. If your goal is, let's say 60, try to start with 50, go a bit slower and then end up a little faster. Maybe 60 could end up with 80. So then you have that confidence to play your music in different speeds. So we also learned triplets at the beginning of the lesson when we were counting. Why don't we also try and play this arpeggio pattern as a triplet? So triplets again would be 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and... There we go. 1 and 2 and... So I'm just doing GBDG. Enough of this G major. Let's make it G minor now. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and... To make this interesting, maybe you could play GBD with your thumb, index finger and middle finger. And for some nice contrast, pitch contrast, you could add the top G with your pinky. Create a swaying feel with your body. There we go. These are triplets. You could say 1 and 2 and 3. So there are three divisions within the pulse, which is running at the rate of 60 beats per minute. There we go. So this is what I want you to practice. I'd like you to practice semi-quavers as well as triplets. And just to add to the party, I'll give you a few more patterns for the semi-quavers on the G minor chord just to make it a bit more interesting. Maybe if you're not so much of a beginner, if you've been playing the piano for a while, this could help. So next pattern would be something like this. Now you could do GBDB, GBDB or a pitch contrast with your pinky finger. GBDB, GBDB, GBDB, just the high note. Stuff like this. So you can modify by choosing your thumb for the root and then adding the octave at the top. So in conclusion, I'm going to talk about the importance of the metronome and how you need to use it alongside you for all of your practice routines or work on the piano and as a musician in general.  It's a great reality check because you don't need to rely on other people telling you whether you're playing well or not. Unless of course the other person telling you is a teacher or something. So a great way for you only to know if you are a good player is are you able to play with the metronome not just for a bar or two for the whole song or for the whole section. It will be tough initially but if you can play with the metronome then the control of the song is in your hands. If you've practiced hard enough you're going to execute it. If you've not practiced hard enough if you're like 90% there you're not going to execute it that much because we have to also keep in mind stage fear, pressure of performing in front of other people recording studios. These are not easy environments.  So in all these other rather hostile environments the pressure grows. So keep the basics right. Can you play on metronome? It's a very important skill. The other importance of the metronome is if you are a studio recording musician or if you want to get into recording or music production this is a very important skill because every track which you layer in a software in a DAW recording software is one after the other. You're probably going to start with the piano. The piano needs to be in time so you have to record that with a metronome. If there's some problem there then you're doomed because the guitar or all the other ingredients will not sit with the piano.  So these are some of the problems you're going to face. Also as a recording artist you need to understand even if you play a simple chord progression just four chords you may have played this on stage before you may have played it at home you may have played it a bunch of times if you've not played it with a metronome and recorded it you're never going to know how good you sound and you'll realize that even the simplest chord progression is not going to be that easy. Anyway, the practicing with the metronome also allows you and gives you the confidence to focus on the music the irony here is yes we practice with it but eventually it just becomes a part of us so we are the metronome we kind of subconsciously become the metronome and yeah it's very important to get confident with your song that way not relying on the metronome or another musician or the drummer and then I think the metronome itself is an inspiring tool I would love to talk more about it but there's a video in the description on all the techniques of how you can use the metronome to actually set it up well using the app and use it to benefit improvisation and composition so check out the video in the description so it's an inspiring tool and last but not least I would like to add that when you play music with the metronome especially when you do random stuff like fast pentatonic licks you know you don't actually know what you're playing but if you have to play that on a metronome you know exactly where every beat is aligned and you know if you're actually playing right or wrong so you really understand what you're playing so these are the reasons I would recommend you to practice with the metronome and the importance of the metronome and just to conclude what we've done so far is we started by setting up the metronome on an app I'm using this app called pro metronome then we looked at taking a simple beat structure and counting it and getting the body to vibe organically with the pulse and then we took a simple G major and G minor chord looked at different beat subdivisions and tried to play an arpeggio pattern and then we looked at the challenges if any and the challenges can be overcome by looking at all the contrasting properties of sound and music in general which are volume the duration of the notes and the pitch so by adjusting that you create a nice looping cycle within the brain and the body loves cycles so that's what you're trying to do and you stay on time and you help yourself stay better on time and follow the click better so hope you found this lesson useful hope you can apply it in your music do let us know what you thought about the lesson in the comments also if you'd like to learn something else do feel free to write and don't forget to subscribe to our channel and turn on the bell icon for notifications if you haven't already cheers, catch you in the next one


Hello? Mr. Ray. Yeah. Hey, this is Cody, sir. Hey, I'm getting back to you about your request online for the new final expense information. I'm assuming you're a member just doing that? No. Okay, perfect. Well, I'm the local field underwriter. I've been assigned to your case and I'll be out in your area. I'll be out there tomorrow. Would it be better to drop some information off in the morning or in the afternoon? Okay. I've got a one o'clock or a four o'clock. Which is better for you? Okay, okay, perfect. And are you still at four? Perfect, perfect. And you said you said you said tomorrow at four? Yeah. I'm actually putting you in my calendar now. Are you where you could grab a pen and paper real quick?  Okay, perfect. If you'll write down, I'm actually putting you in my calendar now. If you'll actually write down, my name is Cody, C-O-D-Y, and then if you also write down tomorrow, which is Monday at four, just so we don't miss each other and I'll make sure that I drop the information off then. Hey, also real quick, would there be anything that you can think of or any reason why you wouldn't be able to be there tomorrow at four? Okay, okay, perfect. Well, I hope you have a great rest of your weekend, an awesome Sunday and we will see it tomorrow. Again, my name's Cody and we'll see you tomorrow at four o'clock, okay, Ray? Sure, yeah, absolutely. Tell me when you're ready. All righty, thank you, Ray. Have a great night, sir. You too. All righty, bye-bye.


July 20th, 1969. Neil Armstrong has just become the first human to step foot on another celestial body marking the USA's first win of the space race and the start of a new era of space exploration. However, NASA and President Kennedy weren't the first to dream up a serious mission to the moon, and no, I'm not talking about the Soviets. The first thing that comes to your mind when you say the word Britain is most likely not related to the aerospace industry. It's probably one of our delicious delicacies, fish and chips, bang is a mash or a classic Sunday roast, maybe it's our Union flag or even the man that runs the country. That's risk. But there's more to us stereotypical cereal tea drinkers than all of that, and it does actually include a rather rich and interesting space program, which I'm often told in the comments section, I have no idea about. So join me for this three part series as we take a trip through the unknown history and exciting tomorrow that these islands have, starting with the first ever lunar space suit to be designed for a serious lunar mission. 1939. What a time to be alive. The world famous Golden Gate Bridge was concluding its second year of operation, and Auto Avio Construzioni, the preceding company of the worst strategists to evergrace Formula One, was founded by certain Enzo Ferrari. But over here in the UK we weren't focusing on big bridges that aren't the colours they're called, or creating the world's most famous car brand. A man by the name of Harry Ross was instead dreaming up the first viable mission to the moon. He also happened to be a member of the British Interplanetary Society, a society formed in 1933 with notable members such as Arthur C. Clarke, so a committee was formed and this society members got to work. Those of you who've attended at least one history class in your life will know however that 1939 was not actually the best of times to be alive, with Germany starting and eventually losing a second world war. Even though the BIS was disbanded whilst we were working on the war effort, Ross kept dreaming, eventually starting a scientific study on what kind of suit would be required for a human to survive on the unforgiving lunar surface. Twenty years before President Kennedy announced the United States' intention to go to the moon. Once the war had been won and we'd finished celebrating Ross and the other BIS members reconvened where Ralph Smith was hired by Ross to further his lunar spacesuit dream. Spoiler alert, by 1949 that was about as far as they got with the spacesuit. It was never iterated and it was never built. But drawings of the suit were published in a paper for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society which were uncovered by the National Space Centre when researching for their Britain's space race exhibit. Let's head to Leicester. The BIS may have never gone further with their lunar spacesuit but a replica of the drawings has been made and he's quite a big fella. It was made by historical costume and model maker Steven Wisdom for the National Space Centre using the materials which were available at the time. It may not look like an Apollo suit but the way that the oxygen flows around the astronaut is very similar. It's just that back in the 40s they didn't have access to the materials that the Apollo team used to make those suits which then they actually used to go to the moon. The similarities with the Apollo suits end there as the rest of the design is pretty radical with every tiny detail being thought of. The big chest area? That's an airlock. The thinking was that an astronaut could bend over, pick up a moonrock, place it inside the airlock and then close the door. They'd then be able to retract their arms inside of the suit to inspect the moonrock. It'll be a bit tight especially trying to bend over with rigid joints and lunar regolith might have posed a problem but remember they were thinking this up in the 40s. We didn't know how bad the regolith was until we actually went to the moon 20 years later. The airlock also served a second purpose as it'd be able to hook up to a lunar base and then a sandwich could be passed through for the astronaut to eat. Name something more British than that. These mushroom looking things poking out of the body section of the suit that's part of the thermal system. Getting cold? Pull over this silver cape and the mushrooms will create a seal reflecting the heat back onto the astronaut. Getting hot? Just take it off. The rest of the suit is also incredibly shiny. This was the effort to try and reflect the sunlight. The Apollo engineers decided to go with white rather than silver as it would still reflect a large amount of light and I'd imagine that silver is not very friendly with the limited master orbit metric with a density of 10.49 grams per centimetre cubed. If your legs ever needed a rest this handy portable seat was available as well. Ross and Smith literally thought about everything an astronaut might need on the lunar surface. There was no stone unturned and from the knowledge of the moon and materials available at the time this design actually seems pretty reasonable but of course what's the point of having a lunar spacesuit without a lunar spaceship? A moonship if you will. No I wasn't thinking about this one the affectionate name for SpaceX's human landing system Starship Variant. I was actually thinking about this as I believe the BIS coined the term with a vehicle that could send three humans to the surface of the moon for two whole weeks. The current record was set by the final Apollo mission Apollo 17 which saw its lunar module on the lunar surface for a measly three days two hours 59 minutes and 39 seconds. The official name was the BIS lunar spaceship but just like with the HLS moonship just sounds better. This vehicle would have been capable of returning over half a metric ton of moonrock to Earth as well. In the 1939 journal 10 years before the space suit was officially unveiled the plans for the moon rocket were laid out as well. It'd be comprised of six stages all with the same cross section. Remember though that this is the 1940s we're talking about modern day lingo wasn't about yet so they called them tiers or steps instead of stages. The first five tiers would have housed up to 168 motors and those would have been responsible for getting the top tier housing the astronauts to near the moon. Think of them like the first three stages of the Saturn V. Those got the CSM command and service modules and the lunar module into Earth orbit through the trans lunar injection and on their way to the moon. The final stage which was the lunar lander had 45 motors and its job was to land on the moon launch off the moon and slow the vehicle down before the crew re-entered the Earth's atmosphere. If you haven't figured it out yet these would have been a direct ascent mission which has never been done before. For those of you unfamiliar with the term this means that the lander and the Earth return vehicle are the same. It was proposed for the Apollo program and for the Soviet lunar program but a separate lunar lander which rendezvoused with a mothership in lunar orbit was the preferred method for both nations. You may also have noticed I was quite vague with the term rocket motor and that's because I can't figure out if the BIS just started or never completed or completed and I can't find the findings of their propellant investigation. Smith designed a basic test stand for this purpose but that's about all I've been able to find out sadly. During that time where the BIS weren't up to much, Germany was thinking up new ways to try and win World War II. The V2 missile was being developed for military purposes becoming the world's first long range guided ballistic missile. Once the Allies had won the war however V2 technology was no longer stuck in Germany. You may know that the Americans took the legendary engineer Werner von Braun and his team to work on their space program but Ross was thinking a little differently. He observed that the V2 was and I quote nearly big enough to carry a man. With some modifications he wanted to put someone on top of that missile. Heard of that one before perhaps? Behold Megarock an enlarged and strengthened V2 rocket. The same motor was retained powered by a watered down ethanol and liquid oxygen mix but the field tanks were expanded and the walls were strengthened which would have been enough to allow the motor to burn for 110 seconds at full thrust and then extra 38 seconds at a constant acceleration. The warhead was removed for obvious reasons and in its place a pressurized cabin would have filled the gap. The nose cone also would have become jettisonable leaving the cabin free falling by itself. There would have been two large hatches for access into the cabin as well as observation during the suborbital flight of up to 304 kilometers. A periscope would have also been included allowing the pilot of the vehicle to look backwards towards the spent V2 stage. It was essentially the start of the design for the US Mercury capsule two decades before the Mercury capsule was designed. 304 kilometers is quite a long way for a first attempt which is why it wouldn't have been the first attempt. Many flights would have been performed gradually raising the Apoapsis every launch until that 304 kilometer goal was reached. Some differences though were still there such as the seat for the person inside. Inside Mercury it was in a fixed position. Inside of Megarock it would have rotated with the Earth's orientation. The Megarock missions also would have been a bit less demanding reaching only 3G instead of 9. This meant that, unlike Mercury, no heat shield or retro rockets would have been required. Instead Megarock used a reefing parachute and compressed air for constant drag through the atmosphere. Megarock also would have been capable of either a land or water landing with a crumple skirt fitted absorbing some of the shock. Aerodynamic fins were also removed for the Megarock saving 320 kilos. And for the most amazing part of this vehicle to me the fuel controls and in turn the throttle would have been manually controlled by the person flying inside. It would have been their job to keep the G meter reading at 3G as they ascended through the atmosphere. But don't worry the BIS had thought this through as well. In the event that their grip on the controls would have weakened the rocket would have automatically switched over to being controlled via radio from the ground. It was human control with computers as a backup. That's just baffling to me considering all the vehicles we've seen go to space are controlled by computers with human overrides. It would have also been the pilot's job to separate the cabin from the V2 hull. That wasn't controlled by a computer either. Something that was automated however would have been the jettison of the nose cone. That would have been controlled by a pressure operated release mechanism so when the air density outside was near zero it would pop off. Just like with the moon mission sadly Megarock never took off. But Harry Ross and Ralph Smith didn't end there. They were dreaming up the space faring future which we'd all love to live. After you've designed a suborbital crew vehicle, a lunar spaceship and a lunar space suit a space station is next of course. The BIS took inspiration from a 1928 design by Sloven Herman Pratocnik who was writing under the pseudonym of Austrian H&L Dung as a bit of a template to start off with. Herman's station featured a rank of living quarters with a diameter of 30 meters. This habitat would feature two galleries each with living spaces, workshops and laboratories. It would have span around with a full rotation every seven seconds which means that even back then artificial gravity was being thought of. The only thing is it would have resulted in a feeling of 2.4G to anyone on board so I feel like maybe 5.5 rotations per minute would have been a bit more comfortable. To power the station and keep it warm a giant 60 meter diameter parabolic dish would have been pointed at the sun being able to make just under 1,000 kilowatts of solar energy useful. This energy would have been used to heat water or mercury which would have then been sent to turbo generators which were on the living quarters providing the crew on board with some wonderful electricity. Hydrogen peroxide would have been stored on board which would have been used to create a pure oxygen atmosphere inside and for drinking water. For comparison, the modern-day International Space Station uses a 79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen mix. Behind the dish on this drawing by Ross and Smith you can see that there is a truss structure. This would have been stationary with a gimbling radio antenna on one end. On the other end, there would have been a two-deck cylinder with an airlock on each end where astronauts could go outside and perform an EVA. Because this was on the non-rotating truss structure there would also be microgravity allowing zero-g experiments to be performed inside of a safe space. Just like with the moonship and the space suit it might not have been the most realistic machine in today's world but for the pre-space exploration times of the 1940s this was a well-thought-out idea. In conclusion, although the Americans were the first to land someone on the moon they weren't the first to seriously think of it just like how we, the British, created their country and invented their language. The BIS also conceptualized not only a suborbital human launch vehicle but also a human moon mission and the space suit they'd wear for an EVA. We've always been taught that the Soviets were the first to put a person into space and the Americans were the first to put a person on the moon but no one ever talks about how they weren't the first to come up with the idea. That's something I don't understand, especially as someone who's just gone through the modern-day UK state school system. We're taught we won World War I, we won World War II and something about King Henry VIII probably but we're never told that we could have won the space race a good decade earlier. Thanks Paul and everyone at the National Space Centre for letting me come here, film, have a fun day out. If you're ever in the area in Leicester I definitely recommend you come and give it a look. You won't be disappointed. Again, thank you to everyone here. This wouldn't have been possible without them. Hopefully you've learned a bit about the start of Britain's space program. I certainly did produce this first episode. Make sure to stick around for part two though as next time the world is going to get a little bit colder and we actually make some rocket hardware. If you're watching in the future then I'll be on your screen in a second but if you're watching this before part two is published then you know how to make sure you don't miss it. Thanks for watching and goodbye.


Hello everybody. E here. Welcome back to 31 Days of Halloween. Today we are talking about a brand new release from one of our own and that is Joe Rustin's Vampire Night. Let's get into the review. Okay, so Vampire Night revolves around a group of women. One of them is going to be getting married and they are going out for a bachelor party at a male strip club called Wings and Dings. You can't make this up. I guess you can because it's fiction. But I found that hilarious the name of the restaurant slash strip club Wings and Dings especially since you get what I'm saying. I had so much fun with this. I am only going to give it three stars so those of you that like to get in, get dirty and get out and just see what I'm going to rank it. That's what I'm going to rate it. I'm giving it three stars. There's a couple reasons for this but the number one reason just going in so you guys know is because I don't like vampire fiction. I don't like vampire movies so much. I really don't care much for vampire literature or whatever you want to call it. But this one was a hell of a lot of fun. So those two stars right off the top is just my own personal preference. I wouldn't give this four or five just because I don't like vampires. Another thing that I would I would warn before going in there is quite a bit of broken formatting in this not so much so that it took me out of the story. But they are random. I'll put some examples up here. There's just random breaks. Sometimes there's random paragraph breaks in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes there's a large space in between two words that kind of thing. It's a kerneling issue kerneling issue with the with the word document being transferred over to Amazon's I guess it would be E pub at this point in time they keep changing once it was Moby then it was like a WZ three or three Z something like that. And now it's just E pub that they're using. But yeah there there is quite a bit of it in there. So stuff like that gets on your nerves. I would probably either wait till it's fixed. If it gets fixed or just try to ignore it because it is a fun story.  One thing that I want to put out there is this is very very reminiscent of old school horror like the leisure press days and the zebra press days though those types of books. This is considerably shorter. It's only 88 pages on Kindle. I'm not sure how I read it on Kindle. I'm not sure how long it is in paperback but it is available at paperback and it is available on audible. I didn't have a credit this month so I just went ahead and got the the ebook instead of the the audio book but everything else that I will have read for this month will have been audio books to anyways. So this one I what I'm saying is I cannot comment on how good the production quality is of the audio books so I don't know. But the book itself is fun other than the broken formatting I didn't really find any issues with the editing it was very well written. Don't expect a deep experience like I said this is more of a leisure press kind of book where you get in get dirty get out kind of thing and it works really well. The ending kind of comes at you quick. There is an absolutely hilarious moment I'm not sure that it's supposed to be hilarious I think it's supposed to be but I'm bad at these things. I get a touch of the Tism ADHD and I find humor in very dark things but it has to do with the cop car. When you get to that section definitely there's also a scene that I thought was absolutely hilarious also and that is a scene I'm just going to say battering ram if you know you know. But I definitely say check this one out especially if you like vampires especially if you don't like the shiny vampires the romantic vampires if you like vampires that are monsters you're going to enjoy this. Another thing this is only a minor criticism but the cover is kind of I don't know not misleading but the creature on the cover is not in the book the the vampires are not monstrous other than the needle like teeth I need to talk about that also the needle like teeth and black eyes all black no sclera whatsoever just all black but they're basically human and one of them smokes that kind of thing so you're not dealing with the type of monster that's on the cover just want to let you know that up front but as far as needle like teeth I think there was quite a bit of repetition of it anytime the teeth were were mentioned it was needle like and that put into my mind very like a mouth full of needle like teeth and I'm not sure that's what Joe was going for I'm not sure if it was just fangs but it was it was descriptive yet not very descriptive so I'm not sure if it was like a mouth full of needle like teeth or if it was just the fangs I'm not quite sure but the brutality and the horror the gore all of that stuff is off the charts the last couple of chapters are super fun if you're a gore hound if you like a splatter fest you're you're going to enjoy yourself but yeah other than that great writing some broken formatting a little bit of repetition of one one phrase and that was the needle like teeth other than that I had a lot of fun good job Joe I also need to let you know that I consider Joe to be a friend of mine I am always harder on my friends than I am on strangers so just keep that in mind but I definitely want to see what Joe does next because there's obvious talent here and especially with the formatting that's such an easy fix that I don't see this you know I didn't really you know factor that into my rating whatsoever but yeah go check it out there's a link down there in the doobly-doo go support a member of the community but that's all the time I have for you today so until next time I have been E you've been you this has been another episode of 31 days of Halloween I'll talk to you guys later bye bye