Hey everybody, it's Robin with Creativity RV, and I'm out here camping in the desert at a long-term visitor area on the California, Arizona border. It's normally really quiet here, nothing really happens, but the other night we had some major drama, and we got the footage. If you're not familiar with LTVAs, they're part of the Bureau of Land Management, so it's public land that's used for recreation. And in this campground, you pay $180, and you can stay for six months. So this land is owned by the government, and sometimes we would hear some big booms, like ammunition booms. And we saw a lot of military planes going over, and they were really crazy. They would fly really low, and sometimes they would have lights on the bottom of the wings, as if they were signaling. And then sometimes at night, we would see them, and then they would just disappear. Here's another one. Oh, it disappeared. That's weird. No big deal. They never got very close to us. But the other night, there was one that was flying so low over and over and over. It seemed to be circling our area, and it was late, like 10.30 at night, and it was literally shaking the walls a little bit. So I was up in the bedroom reading a book and Doug went outside to see if he could see what was going on. He comes back in the house and he says, um, I think you're going to want to come outside. I think there's something going on out here. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, I think there's a dude.  What do you mean a dude? And I went outside and in the distance about the height of a man, we saw this flashing beacon. Our neighbors were rushing outside and congregating and motion sensor lights were going off and voices were raised.  We don't know what this is. Red Dawn. And then we remembered that we actually got a night vision camera. Look, we were out here for a long time. There was a little kit box that was getting into people's stuff. It pooped on our solar lights and ate through our mat. And we thought it would be kind of fun to see the animals at night using this camera. We ran inside and got it and tried to figure out how to record on this thing. This is the first image that we got when we looked at the dude through the night vision. We were even more alarmed in night vision. It looks like a dude in a big space suit was standing right over there. We can see that he's got a beacon on his helmet that goes from white to green to red. And we could hear him and see him pulling up a parachute and then to nondescript pickup trucks fly in to the campground just on that ridge over there. And the dude pulls his parachute up the ridge. You can see all of them here.   These are not roads that you go down that fast at night, but they did it. Now this isn't the first time some crazy military stuff has happened in this very spot because during World War II there was a lot of desert military training that was done in this area. Then in May of 1964, there was a massive military training exercise that happened right here where we're camping called Desert Strike. There's a plaque in the entryway to our LTVA that talks about it, but I did some more research online. There were 100,000 troops right here. In 64, 900 planes, 500 tanks, but sadly 32 soldiers died during those military exercises. Research that I did showed that those exercises actually helped lead to the end of the Cold War and changed our tactics on the nuclear battlefield. Well, we read that plaque when we first came in and we knew that was the history of this area, but that was 60 years ago. So we didn't know what was going on that night in our campground. We had seen some people parachuting a few miles away, but never right here. And come to find out a bunch of military training is still done right between here and Palm Springs along I-10, which is why military aircraft is always dotting the sky. They've got live fire training and they're one of the best places in the world for tactical parachuting training. The locals told us that there are soldiers from all over the world that come here from our allied countries to train in desert parachuting. And all I could think about the poor dude that landed over here was that he was probably a visiting soldier from like Sweden or something who accidentally landed in this campground maybe because of all the wind.  I found an article from a local paper that actually said, Hey, everybody, new training is happening in this area. So if you see paratroopers dropping down on the north side of the freeway, it's all good. But I don't think they were supposed to be dropping right here in our campground. I've been on the road full time for four years. I've never seen anything remotely like this happen. Clearly it was a mistake. But at least we were able to see it and then explain to our neighbors what all the noise and the speeding cars were about. I know a lot of us camp on public land in these types of areas.  I'm dying to know. If you do, please put it in the comments below. I hope you're all doing well out there and staying healthy. And I'll see you next Sunday. Until then, have happy travels and be free.


Wait, is that dick?  Okay, I can't see your uniform. Welcome back to Life, Lessons, and Film. Welcome back to Life, Lessons, and Film. Today, we're gonna be making sense of life through Ry Lane. Starring? We have no clue. I just realized. Dom, played by David Johnson. Yas, played by Vivian O'Para. And it follows Yas and Dom. Dom just got dumped by his ex. Yas is also in the bathroom. They start chatting. The movie follows them too as they go through their day, and start to learn about each other, and go on adventures. Yeah, they both have their relationships end with each other. Yeah, so they talk about breakups, and how they're getting over it. And how the breakups happen. How the breakups happen, they get to know each other, and then they fall in love. And it's sweet. Yeah, why we liked it? What a gem. You can tell from very early on that this one's gotta be fresh. Flashing the different colors and everything, Ry Lane.  It's something special, something a lot more creative and fun. One of those really unique stories that kind of capture a day in the life. The whole movie predominantly covers just like that one day when they're getting to know each other. Because it's all tied into one day, you do feel like you get to know them more, which is kind of required to actually feel for the characters when they finally get together at the end. I find they're on those teeter-totters and they're chatting and getting to know each other and teasing, but also learning about each other's passions and their goals and their dreams for the future. And their fears, their failures. Yeah, you get to just know them in the condensed time that a movie allows. But I find I got to feel for and know these characters more because it's like, next conversation, next conversation, next conversation. Instead of like, it breaks and then they talk to other people and other friends and then you only get a couple scenes with the main characters and then you're kind of like at the end, you're like, I don't really feel because I don't really know them. I don't know these two characters. Whereas with this movie, there isn't that forced closeness. Yeah, there isn't that forced closeness. You get to feel them getting to know each other and you get to know those characters as well. When they do end up together, you actually feel like, oh man, they deserve to find this love. I like their use of the fisheye lens because it just adds like, and then with the groovy beautiful music that they have over top of it, it creates a very, it's just very heartwarming. Heartwarming, just easy to watch and it makes you feel good. It's quick, it's witty, it's fun. The characters. The Sorthias? The Sorthias. You like Yes. I love Yes. She's so cute. What's her name again? Oprah. Vivian O'Hara? Yeah, she is so cute. My gosh, whenever she smiles, she has a very infectious kind of smile. She's the kind of friend that I would like to have. She's very playful, little things that she does. She's walking back. Yeah. Okay, but you don't touch anything. Yeah? Fingerprints. And she's just very quick-witted. I love that. But at the same time, she's very sensitive. I sat around in the same pair of joggers for weeks, crying, integrating sausage rolls, leaving cringy, begging, voicemails. And as if that wasn't enough, I accidentally liked a photo of Tabby from five years ago on her mom's Facebook. That's also why I find Yes. Relateables, because basically all the feelings that the main characters have, I'm like, yeah, that seems like reasonable thinking to me. Like, I get what they do with Pete, but I think some responsibility, you know? Like, not at all. You're going to let them off the hook after how they treat you. So if you're getting it, this is part of the process.  Sorry, too far. It's fine. Yes, like, what? That's insane. Why would you go about that? That's such a crazy thing to request. Yeah. Instead of being okay with that, and then I'd feel like, what? This feels contrived or forced, but it's like, no, I completely agree. That would be a weird thing to do. I'm an accountant. Boring. Okay. No free popcorn chicken, but still, that's like a proper job. Yes, not particularly glamorous. No. I actually kind of love it.  For example, the accounting, right? Yeah, I know that's not for everybody, but that's just something that I like. And he's not like, oh, he's not taking shots at himself. He's just like, this is where I am. It's a lot of very specific details that they give in that movie that paint a very clear picture of the characters, make them feel very real and relatable. When he's moved back home, living with his parents, he's like, I think I'm regressing. Honestly, it's like they never want me to leave. They bought me a PlayStation. My dad forces me on bike rides all the time. My mom literally won't stop making me bought eggs and soldiers.  I swear I'm devolving. I can see if you're devolving back to like a kid state and then you get broken up with, you kind of put up with more stuff than you should. You're not as confident in your ability to be like, how do I stand up for myself? So maybe he's going along with this reconcile meeting with his ex because he's still with his parents. And so he kind of doesn't have that level of independence and confidence that you get when you're living on your own. So maybe that's what's going on. It feels believable to me. See that post next to you, people on green and they keep bringing food over. It's kind of not. I've been there before. Yeah, man. I'm never talking to a man where you have to carry me out of this place. Oh, try croaking my knees. Make you... I'm good. Gia and Eric, I think where it's just they went for like a very light tone so it stays a fun movie is they just make Eric so goofy and oblivious that you can't really not like him. Yeah. Even though he did a super like, did dumb dirty. Yeah, like really bad thing. He's his best friend forever. He knows who he's dating. So the fact that he was okay with sleeping with his best friend's girlfriend.  He's not present.  That's kind of just like the fun unrealistic part, which I'm fine with. But, you know, at the same time, like he's a better fit for Gia. And Gia's even kind of calls Gia out basically to describe her old character where it's like, Oh, sorry. Sorry. I'm struggling with something here. You cheated on Tom with him. Excuse you. No, no. I need to figure this out because it's baffling.  Oh, that hurts a little bit. I mean, I get it. The arms are nice, but what did you even talk about?  Well, she said my arms are nice. And at the end, like you kind of find out, yeah, they are just better for each other. The people that maybe don't think so deeply, but that's fine because then they wear each other, or one of them, if one of them was and one wasn't, they get tired. What happened? You and Yas were annoyingly perfect for one mother. What, you were too perfect for each other. So she also kind of recognizes that that girl was the right fit for you, not me. There's value that Dom has that Yas recognizes and loves and appreciates. That Gia cannot appreciate. Your idea of what is inspiring is different or what is fulfilling to you. Babe, they're bringing out the new canapses. Let's go. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Eric and Gia are just people that don't think too hard on things and they like to have a good time and go to art galleries and have snacks and just chill and probably just relax. Relax there. Yeah, that's fine. And that's fine. Sometimes they're good to themselves and others. Exactly. Whereas Dom and Yas think a lot on stuff. Like they're sitting there analyzing people in the park. That'll be me one day, man. Bye. Couple of rich ex-husbands, menstruation of distant memory, sat out in the park with both my legs behind my head. It's just beautiful.  The story is basically Dom and Yas who are introspective, reflective, deep-feeling people that were with people that were more shallow or surface level and then they get broken up with and then the breaker-uppers find other people that are kind of more on their wavelengths. So it actually is pretty realistic too.  So I think with Eric and Gina, it was really messed up what they did. I don't ever condone you getting with your friend's girlfriend. Probably in- At least wait for them to break up and then have a conversation and say, look, you guys broke up. I don't think you were ever compatible. I think we're compatible. Would you be okay with me pursuing your girlfriend? Yeah. And then same thing with Jules and Tabby. It's the same kind of situation. Jules and Tabby are better suited for each other. They're both kind of more about outward appearances and giving off a certain kind of air. Whereas Yas, she even says at one point, she's like, And that's when it hit me. I had come basic. I kind of was just living a phony persona trying to fit into what Jules's life was like. Even though Jules broke up, it was a gift for Yas to find someone who's also her level of authentic. Tabby herself is not really a bad person. She doesn't seem like a bad person. I think she's just the next victim. If you were basing toxicity off of something, Jules would be that bad. He's a blueprint. Yeah. He's the guy that in public will denounce all these problematic things and claim self-righteousness. But then privately, it's very selfish, it's very insulting, rude. Yeah. Ruchi signaling. He's those people. It's such a destructive way to interact with people and also a destructive way to have relationships with people. People that you actually love. I'm gonna forge an article about how hip-hop's promotional violence continues to perpetuate problematic black stereotypes. What? Like Jules himself. It's kind of a stereotype. It's like a stereotype, like an entire stereotype. Yeah. Yeah. Stereotype of a struggling artist. Yeah. Potentious struggling artist that looks down on anyone who isn't doing exactly what they're doing. You know, she thought she was gonna be a big-time costume designer.  He's such a disgusting, venomous person, honestly, and if I were the girlfriend witnessing that, I would never want to be with someone like that.  No, no, no, no. Listen. But it's like, you're in a relationship with a super toxic person, but then accusing them of being toxic, that's a whole other kind of issue. So I think they're also good for each other. There's a lot of them not seeing their own shortcomings. I want the friends, though. Like the art show guy. See how bad again, don't? I could be out and about. Everything's wicked. Yeah, I've started polities. Is it? Yeah, working on my core, working on me, you know, getting positive. All right. Do you, innit? Cheers, man. The fact that they maintain friendships with these people, I think it was just a friend group. I think probably Eric was friends with everyone that Don was friends with. So they're all showing up and it's all weird. And it happens. It's just those dynamics sometimes when your friends are dating and then they break up and it's just like, what do we do? Eric and Gia throw a party. Look. Don't prong out. They had this paint party brunch team. They only say for 45 minutes playing a tiny bit of a door, a half-atom across an unbounded. He went to brunch at our flat. But it was only for just a second. So he's recognizing that, look, I know that it would hurt for you if I went to this party after they screwed you over this way. But they're also my friends and I'm between a rock and a hard place. But that's just the reality. I think that that was honestly portrayed. You do find yourself in that situation. When your friends break up, what do you do? I don't think it's fair to ask for the people to take sides because they are both your friends and maybe you guys, all of them, maybe grew up with each other. That's true. I guess the theme could be that. What happens when your friends break up with each other?  I would have thought you were cool anyway. She's like, yeah, but you called me iconic. You can feel like, oh, will the person not respect me as much or think I'm as cool if I actually tell them who I really am and what I actually have gone through. And then the right people will be like, it doesn't matter.  In fact, I like you more now that I know more truth about you. Yeah. More of the truth about you. Jules is someone that you need to stay cool all the time for him to want to still spend time with you, whereas Don is not like that. No, you're right.   Oof. What kind of person are you? You're the kind of person who he has broken up with? You're not cool. I don't think I want to hang out with you. That's the person you know. That's not your friend.  Oh man, what do you need? Are you okay? How are you feeling, you know?  What is this? Is this your hair? God, it's your hair. Hair, baby. Put it backward below me. It's always on me.  That's exhausting. Can't ever be yourself. You don't know who you are then. Yeah. Anyway, that's some stuff that we had to say about Rylane. What did you guys think? Let us know. If you've seen it, down in the comments below, share your thoughts on our thoughts. Burning questions. Burning questions. What happens when your friends break up in this exact way? Yeah, how do you navigate that? How would you navigate when you're with each other? Yeah, like, how would you navigate a situation like this? Yeah. You know, would you take sides or? You just leave the friend group all together. Yeah.  What's your deal breaker? Is that a deal breaker? Is that a deal breaker? What's your deal breaker?  Yeah. Maybe it's not a deal breaker. Maybe it's because they don't like donuts. Maybe it's because they don't wave at people on boats. They walk too fast. Yeah, they don't wave to people on boats. Yeah.  What is your deal breaker when you're like, okay, this isn't going to work? Yeah. I like the waving at boats thing. I think it's kind of a better idea if you wave at boats, you know, or like nodding at other people in a canoe, if you're in a canoe or, you know, that kind of thing. And that shows that you also recognize other people around you. So it's good. Yeah. Anyway, that's it. Thanks for watching. Until next time. That's it. Peace. Mouth, mouth. Oh.


So, application in musicology. So, the idea here is, okay, we have another graph. We can explain it, not using the embeddings or all this stuff, more much in relating to MIT. Here, just the graph. I'll see if we can get something useful for musicology. It's probably a graph. So, musicology embraces study of history, theory, and practical music from many ways. And musicology is part of the humanities. So, musicologists have to read a lot. Musicologists have to read a lot of documents, be in the library. So, what is the computer? It's able to read all for a musicologist. It gives a summary, analytics, whatever. Solve the Western dialect. So, this is the idea. Naturally, this understanding can help musicologists. So, we build, like, three different applications. It's not limited to this, just what we have done. Entity relevance, analytics, and information solidization using the graphs. So, we have the graph, and we can get them to be relevant with analytics or visual analytics. So, entity relevance. So, if we did a graph of entities, as the one I explained before, so we apply entity link into every document, and we create this graph, connecting all the entities. So, for example, remember the biography of Wilco. We read the graph, Wilco to alternative broad, and the platform, and so on. So, you can see, you can imagine that this is a, these are hyper links.  Go to the application to library. So, if you click here, you go to the restriction of alternative broad. If you click here, you go to the data library. So, it's like we're hyper links. So, we can use algorithms for, that are used for search engines to rank these using the network of hyper links like Google does with the page track. So, we build first the graph of entities, and then apply page track. That's the idea. And get the relevance of them, we have a support, not in the graph, and then we classify to rank them. Okay, this is the most relevant thing. So, in a paper, it means, in 2015, we build a knowledge base of flammable music. We gather information from different sources. But then we have like, about 1,000 biographies of flammable artists. And we apply it to these biographies. And we read the graph of entities from these. Set those biographies and apply to the page track. And it's unbelievable to see what are the most relevant singers, guitar players, and dancers in flammable. And we ask a flammable expert to give us a list of the top ten artists in each of these categories, in his opinion. He told us, oh, it's very difficult to have a unique list of artists. But okay, I will elaborate a list of ten artists that might be in a list of top ten. So, he did this list, and we ran the algorithm also, and we compared them. And in the top five, we get very high precision page rank. So, this is the list that the page rank give us as the most relevant singers, guitarists, and biographies dancers. And it has a lot of sense, really, that the mythical singers, guitarists, papaluchia, and eternal dancers also. So, it means that what the idea of applying page rank over these works. You can get these elements. You can get artists or other entities, we did also in the dictionary, and get elements of schools of music and conservatories in the world. You can get the elements of any entity. So, another thing we can do analytics. So, we can extract whatever we want information extraction on a guitar library. For example, we can get artists, edidimensions, sediments, relations, sediments, whatever, and we can do different kind of analytics. So, I just give an illustration of some of the things that you can do. So, we did a research with Rob Nicianard, that is one of the largest record works in musicology. And we get about 16,000 biographies and we did the process of extract information. We did the editing, but we also extract some specific information like the role of the artist, the birth and death plays, and they we also did relation structures and biographies. We did some analytics. So, here are the birth dates and it's the number of the birth dates, the number of artists every year. So, there are some tendencies that perhaps can illustrate the musicology and gives some ideas to the musicologist. We also run the number of the role of the different artists in the digital age, most of them are composers, teachers, conductors, we also try to analyze the migratory tendencies of artists. So, we have the number of artists that was born were born in a country and they were born there in that country and also in cities. What was interesting in single file was that in Paris, it seems to be a very nice city to go in the last days of your life. So, this was extracted from text so the digital age really has brought it and if you do some analysis, you can see inside that. So, the idea in the field is that the musicologist can even ask a question and the system understand everything and get the answers. Okay. We did another study of analytics study. It's a chronic study of effective albums. So, the same dataset that I told before we use for classification from Amazon Previews. So, we have this dataset that has like, 66,000 albums and we have more than 250,000 biographies. No biographies, no reviews, so, these reviews come with a start rating even by the user who did the review and we have for every album we have again a map tag, we have metadata, what is the artist, what is the label so we have this information with music rates and we get also the gear of publication of the albums. So, at the end we have some information and what we did is we applied sentiment analysis to the customer religion. We applied the sentiment that is in every review and then did some average in terms of gear of publication and gear of where the review was written. So, this is aspect-based sentiment analysis, that is a kind of sentiment analysis where in sentiment analysis you typically do like justification. You have a text and you give a label in positive, negative or negative but this aspect-based sentiment analysis what does is to okay, we have a document but perhaps there are different things inside the document with different sentiment so, this is what it does. So, the idea here, in a sentence we can have entities, we can have aspects that are like features that are described in the text that he can produce some vocals in this example, we can have opinion words, great surely, so great little piece so, this is an opinion word that is referring to this aspect and all this is referring to this entity with contract and it's a song so, this is the opinion. So, what we did is to do that on other reviews and get all the aspects and the opinion words and give us score. So, at the end what we have here, we have a review with a set of aspects like guitar, vocals, sound we have a score between minus one for every one of them like saying how much the review is positive inside this aspect or layer. So, using that well, this aspect based on different analysis is based on so, based on a sentiment lexicon so, this is score is based on a sentiment lexicon so, a sentiment lexicon is a dictionary where you have a lot of words for each word associated so, you have great for great you have one you have good and you have 0.7 you have bad and you have minus 0.5 or whatever so, you have other words and every word has a score so, using this dictionary of scores the idea is we did it by first search nouns in the review, like noun phrases and also, I gave this which adjectives are noun phrases and what is the score of this adjective there is a negation between what is the distance from the adjective to the aspect so, using all these stuff with some rules we made these scores for a review for the aspects in a review so, then what we did is like we arranged all these scores for a review and then we get like a score of the review between minus 1 and 1 and then we arranged all the reviews in two different ways we take arranged them by the review obligation here in where this review was written by the customer when, when was written and by the publication here of the add-on so, when was the add-on published this review so, this review is about when was the add-on and when was the add-on published so, classifying averaging the reviews in terms of this so, this gives us an idea from a customer perspective and this from a musical perspective so, here is the study by review obligation here so, when the review was written so, we have the data set of Amazon is from 2014 so, here we have the average score of the of the same different analysis for, here for example, all the reviews published in 2010 this is the average score of all the reviews so, we have this and this is the average rating that the user is because we have every review has a rating between 0 and 5 stars given by the user that so, this is the average of all the scores given by the user for all the reviews given this year, for example so, more or less, we don't see any correlation between the sentiment and the rating so, perhaps we think, ok, perhaps the sentiment is related with another thing with the economy, perhaps so, this is the GDP of the United States so, this is the economy, not in the United States for example, this is an hypothesis or, what happened in the United States because, we see that in 2008 we have a high peak, what happened in 2008 well, there was the election of Obama perhaps this was like, people have a lot of hope and use more positive adjectives in general in the United States, perhaps this is really good, I know we should see what happened here by the way, this is just an hypothesis and we don't provide any support but, we did also as we have also the general labels for the albums they are spread by general so, all the albums all the country albums all the jazz album, all the music now, we see that most all of the genres has been in 2008 but country doesn't have it that's also when the economy crisis yeah, yeah, that's what we mean which I said before, not this economy crisis 2008? 2009 so, and if we have an H5 aspect, so as we have in every review, as whole for different aspects like song, beat, whatever almost all the aspects has this pipe in 2008 so the reviews has slightly more positive adjectives talking about them that means so, well, for the studies necessary to evaluate any of these suggestions correlations as an incapsacea but they are necessary for physical needs to study these so, we also did a study from the point of view of the year of publication of the album so, here for example, we have the average sentiment of all the reviews from albums published in 1990, even the review have been published in 2014, for example this review was about an album that was published in 1998, so what are the reviews and here, the rating so, here we see really a strong correlation between the sentiment and the ratings from this point of view we compute personal relation and then 0.75, it's pretty high so, there is a clear correlation between the sentiment and the ratings it means that perhaps we may use the sentiment to predict the rating and also that the sentiment has kind of sense, because it is correlated with the rating so, we also did this study of the the average of the sentiment by geograph, because we have information on geograph, so this is the reviews of pop and the reviews of pre-albums, and this is the sentiment scores, and we see that there is a peak in the 60s for pop, in the 70s and the 80s for rating, so there are more positive attitudes in the reviews of album published in this year and the same as this, so perhaps the interest is influencing this positiveness, or the and on the golden age of frame is here, so we can start the evolution of geograph using that ok, finally you can visualize it if you have a geograph you can visualize it and that can be very useful for the rating documents, so you may have a digital library, you have a version extraction, and then you are able to navigate to the library using the geograph, you have this geograph, and we need some proletary work with that


So, another country, obviously in the news right now is Ukraine. Secretary Rice, when she was here last week, said that Ukraine is at risk of becoming known as a scandal rather than a country. How do we refocus attention and energy, not just on the role of Ukraine and the U.S.-Russian relationship, but the broader set of relationships we have in the region that are going to be needed to move towards a post-Putin Russia at some point in the future? From your lips to God's ears. You know, I think Ukraine is a centrally located, important, strategic country in Europe that straddles east and west. And it has been yearning to be part of Europe. That's what its revolution was about, the Maiden Square Revolution. They've had a lot of mishaps and a lot of setbacks because their leadership was not up to the job. There were several people who tried and were overcome by circumstances, and one Ukrainian president overcome by radiation poisoning, and another accused of corruption and thrown in jail. And so there is a lot of growing pains in Ukraine, and it is a place that I think both Europe and the United States have a real stake in trying to help stabilize, trying to help modernize their economy and support their efforts to move toward a more secure democracy. And of course, we've seen two very aggressive moves just in the last, you know, 10, 11 years from Putin. We've seen his invasion of Georgia and the seizing of two provinces in Georgia, one strategically located on the Black Sea, down the road from where he has his dacha, near Sochi where the Olympics were held. He just basically seized this part of Georgia and another part further north. And then, of course, he invaded Ukraine and he seized Crimea, and he kept troops in eastern Ukraine. Because Ukraine, in his view, belongs to Russia, doesn't belong to Ukrainian people. It doesn't in any way belong to their aspirations and hopes for being part of Europe, and maybe even someday part of the European Union. And what he has done is to set up a very difficult problem for whoever is in leadership positions in Ukraine. Because with his domination of eastern Ukraine and the presence of Russian troops and the constant arming of Ukrainian civilians who are sympathetic to Russia, if Ukraine doesn't have friends who can try to help deter further Russian aggression, they are in a quandary. Do they place their hopes in Europe, in the United States, or do they surrender to the inevitability that Russia could seize them anytime they wanted to and nobody would come to their rescue? So the whole Ukrainian scandal in the midst of the impeachment inquiry in and of itself is troubling because of what it shows about abuse of power and the use of threats and extortion by the President of the United States withholding military aid that they so desperately need to defend themselves. So it's a scandal, it's an absolute appropriate scandal and it should have triggered the impeachment inquiry, but let's not lose sight of the larger issue that you raised, Mike. The current President of Ukraine, who has no political experience, he was a TV star, sound familiar, so he's in a bind. He's got the American president threatening him. He's got the Russian president threatening him. He's just trying to figure out how to be a president, and from everything we know about him, he wanted to bring energy and modernism to his presidency. And what's happening now is he's accepted an agreement that there will be elections in Ukraine, in eastern Ukraine, which remember the Russians dominate, the Russian media dominates. There'll be elections for the people of that part of Ukraine to decide whether they want to break away and join Russia like Crimea or stay in Ukraine. He probably felt like he had no choice. The Russians are breathing down his necks, and there is evidence that Russian troops are moving to the border again in pretty large numbers. And then one thing that hasn't gotten a lot of attention that I just want to mention is that there is a treaty that we've been a member of. In fact, we were the architect of that goes back many decades called Open Skies. And it permits satellites and other surveillance mechanisms to see what's happening on the ground around the world. And just out of the blue, the Trump administration announced they were going to pull us out of the Open Skies Treaty. And if I were guessing, one of the consequences of that is we will not necessarily be able to discover all the troop movements that Russia is engaged in on the brink of forcing their will on Ukraine. So Ukraine deserves a lot more help and a lot more attention than we are currently giving it except in the kind of scandal mode. It's a real country with real people who thought they were going to get a real chance to have a better future. And now they are caught between our political games here in the United States and Russian aggression. And it's really a very unfortunate situation.


Today we had a chance for the fire shop come out and conduct a vehicle training with us and conduct comms training. This is very important for us because it gives us time to interface with our Army counterparts and it gives them an opportunity to learn a vehicle, our MAPV, and to learn the compallet that's in our MAPV. We work closely with the JTACS in order to coordinate fires in a combined arms event in order to have the most effective fires at neutralizing, suppressing, or destroying the enemy through ground, air, and sea cannon fire. Our relationships develop with the JTACS in order to essentially build cohesion, to de-conflict on the battlefield, making sure that we're not running into issues out there while fires are actually being sent down range and to make sure that we're safe while we do it. It's great to have kind of joint exercises like this, it's not something that we get the opportunity to do stateside. So when we have the opportunity like we do now to work with the JTACS and the Air Force, it's a big deal for us. We're looking forward to continue doing it.


This video is sponsored by DistroKid. Follow the VIP link in the description down below to get 7% off an already amazing price to distribute your music to the world. If you're in the habit of simply grabbing your reverb plug and dragging it across and dropping it into the insert section of your track, then you may be falling into a trap that many of us do when we first start mixing. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. I think the problem which occurs here is up until the point where we insert that reverb plug in, we've been listening to a really dry source, perhaps something like a vocal that was recorded in a vocal booth and when we drop that reverb on suddenly the whole thing comes to life and it seems like some magic occurs and perhaps we'll adjust things like the size of the reverb and blend the dry and wet mix but pretty much we'll feel like the magic is done and we move on with the rest of our mix. Not realising that every time we do this we're reducing the clarity and adding to the overall muddiness of our mix. So most of the five essential reverb tricks I'm going to show you in this video relate to creating a space for that reverb and creating more clarity in our mix. Now I want to start up front, it doesn't matter which door you're using, the principles are the same across the board in this video. So let's get started with the basics. So the first thing I'd like you to do is to commit to no longer inserting your reverb plug-ins directly onto the channel where you want to apply them. Instead we're going to be using busses. Now in your door they may be called auxes or effects channels or something like that but the principles are always the same. It's a channel where the reverb is going to live and we're going to send the signal from the original source in this case a vocal to that channel. So here in studio one I'm going to do it in the manual way so you can more easily follow along in your door. I'm going to right click here and just select add bus channel okay that creates my bus channel. I'm going to rename it right away. I'll call it a vox rev. The reason I do that is because you end up usually with many busses for different effects and things and you want to be able to easily identify each one. So the next thing I'm going to do is grab my reverb plug-in this time I'm going to drag it and drop it into the insert section of that bus that I just created. So there it is I'm just going to pin it there. Now it doesn't matter which plug-in you're using I happen to be using one of the stock plug-ins which comes with studio one here but the principles are going to be the same with any plug-in. Now the next thing I need to do is to send my original signal my vocal in this case to that bus so I'll go to the send section of that vocal and I'll just go to my destinations here and select that bus I just created their vox rev. So now that I've done that I'm going to have a quick listen to what I've got so far. Okay there's definitely some reverb on those vocals quite a bit too much I would say that's okay we're going to fix that but before we do there's another important thing I want you to do whenever you use a reverb plug-in in a bus like this usually on these plugins there's going to be a mix control it's going to blend the dry and the wet mix together in this case on this plug-in it's locked at the moment so I'll unlock it and show you what I mean so this blends the dry and the wet signals I want to want you to make sure that it's always completely wet we're not hearing the dry signal with this plug-in or on this channel at all that's because we've already got the dry signal on the original track okay we don't want to add to it at this point so the next thing I'm going to do is grab the fader for that channel that I just created that bus and drag it all the way down to the bottom play my track and then gradually just blend the reverb in okay that's much better but in all honesty we haven't really gained any advantage yet over using the insert method that we looked at earlier but that's all going to change now so this trick is often called the abbey road reverb trick and essentially what it does is EQs the reverb part of our signal not the original source so I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to grab an EQ plug-in in this case again just the stock plug-in which comes with studio one and I'm going to drop it in as an insert again but this time just before the reverb plug-in that we just inserted there now some people use this after the reverb and you can try that if you like but generally I find I get better results if it's before the reverb because I'm adjusting or refining the signal before it gets processed by the reverb now it doesn't matter which plug-in you use but you do want to make sure that you've got a low pass and a high pass filter or sometimes called a low cut and high cut on this particular plug-in it's called low cut so I'll just switch that on and then I'll also switch on my high cut okay now in terms of settings with my low cut or the part which is dealing with the low frequencies I'm going to set this to let's set it to 600 Hertz okay this is a really common setting for this technique the other thing I want to make sure of is that my slope is set to around about 12 dB it could be 18 but in this case I'll just leave it as 12 okay the same for the high cut we can set that to 12 or 18 something like those settings but this time I'm going to set the frequency to 10k okay now this one is much more flexible and you're going to adjust that for your particular track but usually that low cut is going to be set to 600 Hertz okay so what this is doing in the low end it's cutting out all of the mud which can occur and which can build up with each reverb plug-in that you add and then in terms of the high frequencies we're getting rid of some of those especially things like sibilants sibilants etc which can really become a bit sort of harsh and distracting in that high end now as a final part to this tip you can also do a little bit of a cut at around about 2k okay so maybe something like around about here this can be really useful with things like vocals you may want to adjust the cue of course but things like vocals which can become a little bit harsh in those areas and they can get sort of accentuated by the reverb okay so that's a very basic setup and you may want to adjust it for your particular song so let's just have a listen to the vocals before and after we have this EQ applied so all I'm going to do is just solo the vocals and solo the channel which has the reverb on it and have a quick listen without the EQ first of all and now with the EQ so we're still getting that nice spacious effect here but we haven't added to the mud just to demonstrate this a little bit further what I'm going to do is turn down the actual original vocal okay so we're just listening to the reverb channel the reverb bus have a listen that's what we're now getting but before we had the EQ what we were getting was this so especially with that low end there you can hear how that may become problematic because if we're adding that with every single channel that we're using with reverb you know backing vocals all kinds of other instruments then we're really going to get a low end build up likewise with some of those more harsh sounds in the mid and high frequencies we're going to get a kind of a build up with those as well so there's quite a few variations on this next trick I'm going to show you I'll show you my simple version first form we'll talk about those variations later before we get into it though I've done a little bit of preset up here I've already created another bus just as we did earlier and I've named it vox del that's a little bit of a clue as to what we're going to be doing and then also I've created the send for that bus already and I've switched off the send for the reverb that we just created a moment ago so we won't be hearing that for a moment but we'll switch it back on later now what I'm going to do is grab a delay plugin and drop it into the insert section of that new channel doesn't matter which delay plugin you use I'm using replica xt but most of them are capable of doing what I'm about to show you now the first thing that I'm going to do is grab that mix control as we did with the reverb and switch it all the way up to a hundred so that we're only hearing the delay in that channel okay now let's have a listen to see or hear what it's doing so far was it so you're hearing many repeats there we don't want that we just want one repeat at the moment and normally with the delay plugin you'll control that with the feedback control so I'll pull feedback all the way down to zero and that's just going to give us one repeat have a listen okay so we've got one repeat but it's kind of a long delay yeah we want it to be really short so I'm going to change this from sort of a musical control to our control which is in milliseconds we can see that here do that on your plugin if you have that capability and I'm going to make it pretty short let's start off at around about sort of around about 50 milliseconds but we're likely to go lower than that but just have a quick listen okay so we're hearing a really short delay there I'll just pull it down just a little bit more we'll go to about 30 have a listen okay so we're getting a kind of a very short delay there and it's all in the middle so an important thing I reckon to do at this point is to make a little bit of difference between the delay for the left and the right channels now on this particular plugin the way you do that is go to the panning controls and you've got this offset control here for the left and right channels let's just push that up so I don't know about five or six let's have a listen now what we've done here is taken that very very dry vocal and we've kind of put it into a bit of space but it doesn't sound very natural at the moment the actual effect is way too evident and personally I like to be a bit more subtle with it so what we're going to do is the same as we did with the reverb we'll drag the failure down on the channel and we'll gradually blend it in and I'm sort of looking for that point where you become ever so slightly aware of the effect and then we're just going to back off from that now the idea here as I say is to put our vocals in a little bit of space so they're not completely dry but the way I think of this is it takes away some of the heavy lifting from the actual reverb plugin which is following it if that makes sense so if we're not careful if we just use a single reverb plugin it can actually push the vocal away and make it less present so with this we can keep the vocal nice and present and in some space and just have the the main reverb plugin take care of those nice long tails so I'm going to switch that back on again and let's have a listen to what we've got so far now when it's soloed like this you're really aware of those tails but in the context of the mix let's have a listen we've got this vocal which although it's got a sort of massive reverb for this particular song but it's still nice and present it's still nice and upfront now finally what I would often do in this case is go back to my original reverb plugin and I just have a little bit of pre-delay in fact I already did it on here I've just created about 40 seconds or so so the the bigger reverb is not happening until after that initial delay that's just the way I like to do it you can play around with some different settings on that now some of the variations would be that quite a lot of people don't actually use a delay plugin for this stage they would just use a reverb plugin but we're just looking for that initial effect of some initial reflections okay early reflections other variations would be that some people will also use a medium reverb perhaps even another one as well three or four plugins and then sort of blend all of them together okay so I don't tend to go that far but I know lots of people do and definitely experiment with that yourself now if you find that particularly large reverbs are still getting in the way of your original source making it less distinct then what you can try is some compression on the actual reverb or ducking as they call it essentially what we're going to do is use a compressor to lower the volume of the reverb while this vocal is actually happening while she's actually singing and then only release it when she stops singing so I'll take my original reverb channel here I'm just going to grab a compressor and drop it on there after the actual reverb plugin okay and importantly I'm going to sidechain this so in other words I'm going to use the original vocal as my source for the compressor to suppress the volume of the reverb so here in studio one the way I do that is to go up to sidechain here and then I will select the main vocal as my source for the sidechain okay the other thing I'm going to do is make this a pre-fader send so in other words it's not going to be affected by the fader I'm only doing that so that I can turn the original vocal down and we can just hear what's happening with the compressed signal that's exactly what I'm going to do now is just turn that fader down let's have a listen to what's happening so far nothing's happening so far because we haven't set the threshold correctly so let's just push this threshold down until we start to get some actual compression I'm just going to push the ratio up a little bit so we're getting more compression so you can hear the actual reverb sound is lowering in volume every time the vocalist sings now I think you need to play around a little bit with the attack and release on this so it doesn't sound too harsh we don't want to hear that sort of coming in and out so I find it just smooths off a bit if I just push the attack and the release up somewhat we'll have a listen to this so it is just compressing that vocal a little bit I could do it a little bit more sorry the reverb have a listen and most importantly of course we now need to hear it with the original vocal have a listen so the original vocal is still remaining present but as soon as she stops singing singing you hear that lovely tail happening there let's just switch that off and have a listen to this in context so all in all we have this vocal with the lovely space around it but it's still remaining present before we move on to our final trick I'd like to remind you that I highly recommend our sponsor DistroKid if you want to release your music to major platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Google Play etc they make it super easy for you to do that at a really great price and you'll get it even cheaper if you follow that VIP link in the description down below a little later on in this song I've got a guitar which comes in on the left channel and it sounds like this and I've got another guitar a separate performance which comes in on the right hand channel sounds like this and both together they sound like this doubled guitars and they're sitting on top of the main guitar which sounds like this all together and they just slightly enhance that guitar but what I want to do with those two higher guitars that come in a little bit later is add some nice spacious reverb on them but I'm going to do it in a particular way I've already created two extra buses over the end here and they've already both got reverbs set up on them I'll turn the mute off on them and they're both panned or one of them is panned hard left and the other one is panned hard right and they're called high rev l and high rev r respectively and the way this trick works is I take my guitar which is panned hard left and I send it to the reverb which is panned hard right okay so the dry signal from this guitar is completely coming from the left channel and the wet reverb signal is coming from the right and I do the same with the other guitar so the guitar that was panned right I send it to the reverb which is panned left let's have a listen to what that does to them and it creates a really nice pretty sophisticated gentle amount of width okay and when I add that in with my original guitar I'm getting this lovely effect so this is a great technique to keep in your back pocket when you want to deal with some doubled instruments or things that are panned hard left and hard right make sure that you send them to reverbs in the opposite channel and also just as a little additional thing to this try some different settings if you're using the same reverb plugin just use some slightly different settings in terms of size and maybe pre-delay that kind of thing that can help by in terms of adding some more width I wouldn't mind betting that some of you have got some variations on these tips and tricks please let me know about them in the comments down below I'd love to hear about the different ways that you guys get great results in your mixes now if you're just starting out with mixing or you've been doing it for a while but need some reminders about the basics I highly recommend that you watch this video right here


Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, accompanied by Mr. Manassee. Please remain standing and join with our student leaders in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Thank you. To the flag of the United States Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The President of the United States. Please be seated. Thank you, Gil Manassee. And thanks for that great music to the Upper Darby Marching Royals and the Upper Darby Concert Choir. And someplace in here are two of your congressmen, Kurt Weldon and Don Ritter, and your former state senator who was a candidate for the Congress, Ed Howard. Now in case you're wondering why I've dropped in, I like great teams. And I've heard that for great teams you can't do better than the Royals, the Friars, and of course the Pandas. Now before I start, I have a request from my roommate. He says that please, for your family, for your friends, for your country, but most of all for yourselves, just say no to drugs and alcohol. By the way, if you don't know already, maybe I could tell you where that whole idea came from in those three words. Several years ago, Nancy was in Oakland speaking to a school class about drugs. And a little girl asked, what do we do when someone offers us drugs? And Nancy said, just say no. And since then, there are more than 12,000 just say no clubs that have sprung up around the country. And is it true what I've heard that you have one here, one of those 12,000 just say no clubs? Now you may not know it, but I've heard a lot about your schools and I like what I've heard. I've heard, for example, about your code of values, as well as that you care about the community. I've heard, well, many of you volunteer in the Delaware County Hospital next door and do other community work. I can't help thinking that when a certain friend of mine talks about a thousand points of light in America's sky, when he speaks to the thousands of American communities where neighbors reach out to help neighbors in need. Well, one of the brightest of these points of light is a place called Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. I've also heard that you young people here in Upper Darby care about the future, about your future, about America's future, and that you're preparing for it. I've heard that you've set high standards for yourselves in both your college preparatory and vocational programs, and that when it comes to looking to the future, you can't beat the students at Upper Darby High or Monsignor Bonner High or Archbishop Pentegrast High. Well, I'm here today because I believe you're right to care about the future. I believe that if we have faith in him who created us, and if we're true to the values of family, work, and community that he has taught us, and that have always been America's guiding stars on the seas of history, then America's future and your future hold promises bigger than the sky and more vast than the galaxies. Now, I know that many of you are not yet old enough to vote, and yet you have a stake in this year's election, and you can have a role in it too. As you know, eight years ago, I visited this school and stood in this place as a candidate for the high office that I now hold. The students in this school then now have jobs and they're starting families and they're establishing themselves in community and career. All we've accomplished in the last eight years is making their lives easier, better, and more hopeful. In one year or two years or eight years, you too will have a job and a family and big plans for the future. By making sure that your parents and friends who can vote cast their ballots, you can help make sure that America remains a land fertile with opportunity for all your dreams to blossom. That's what America is like today and for good reason. In the last eight years, we have set our sights once again on the enduring values of family, faith, neighborhood, opportunity, and freedom. The results have been 18 million new jobs since our expansion began. More new jobs than Europe and Japan combined have created in these same period. An unemployment rate the lowest it's been in 14 years, the greatest flowering of new businesses and new technologies in the history of the world, the longest peacetime economic expansion ever recorded, and more people at work today than ever before in the history of the United States of America. Think of what 255,000 new jobs in America last month alone means to you. When you leave school, there will be work, paychecks, and a chance to make your hopes come true. Last month was no fluke. America has created, on average, a quarter of a million jobs a month in the 71 months since our expansion began. And today, not only are more Americans at work, but a higher proportion of our labor forces employed than ever before in the history of the country. And job for job, the jobs we've created in our expansion pay better than the jobs that existed before our expansion began. What Senator Quayles said the other night, I've heard echoed in my talks with leaders of many other nations. Today, the United States of America is the envy of the world. I believe prosperity and economic growth are the products of strong values. In the last eight years, we've worked to return America's values to all areas of American government. We've said it's time to return to basics in education. And one of those basics is that you should be permitted to open your school day with a simple, silent, voluntary prayer. If Congress can open each day with a prayer, why can't you? And you know, Congress probably needs it more than you do. We've said it's time to return to basics in reading the Constitution. And to acknowledge that the Constitution does not prevent parents from receiving a tuition tax credit when they send their children to parochial schools. And in no way is it meant to deny the right to life. We've said it's time to return to basics in protecting America's neighborhoods. And that means, among other things, appointing judges who don't only respect the rights of criminals, but also those of the victims of crime. And we've said it's time to return to the basics in protecting America itself. We've returned to the fundamental wisdom that the way to peace is not through American weakness, but through American strength. Yes, we've had eight great years. But some ask, have we done as much as we can do? Have we gone as far as we can go? You might as well ask Eagle's quarterback Randall Cunningham, if after his spectacular game Monday night, ask him if he's going as far as he can go. My answer is the same as I know Randall Cunningham's would be. We've only just begun. From here on in, it's touched down city. Yes, I believe that the growth that our expansion has brought America can be just the beginning. America's entering a new age that will open opportunities for you and all young Americans. Opportunities that we in the older generation could not even have dreamed of when we were your age. Let me tell you about something I heard the other day. It has to do with the technological revolution that is going on all around us, and that many say has already surpassed the industrial revolution in changing the way humanity lives in the years ahead. The heart of this revolution is a tiny silicon chip that you can hold on the tip of your finger and still see most of the finger. Today, that silicon chip has the incredible computing power of a million transistors. That is of the biggest computers of the 1960s. Yet according to one of our nation's most prominent research directors, in less than 15 years, he says the power of a billion transistors will be packed on a chip. That's the power of 20 of today's most advanced computers all in a laptop computer. Think of what that can mean in the ability of your generation to cure disease, to make the world more productive, and opportunity for all peoples more plentiful, to build a strategic defense against ballistic missiles, to end forever mankind's nightmare of nuclear terror, and to pursue your dreams wherever they'll take you. That's the future that awaits you. The only limits will be those of your imagination and your courage. And are there any limits to them? So yes, the last eight years have been great, but I've got a hunch that when you get in the saddle, as someone said in an old movie, well, we ain't seen nothing yet. I hope as you study and work to build America's future and your own, you never forget that prosperity has a purpose, a purpose that is part of his larger plan. It gives each of us the opportunity to raise a healthy family in the right way, to reach out to those who need help in our community, to dream great dreams, and to make our dreams come true. Among life's deepest truths is that all that is done for you is but an opportunity and invitation to do something for others. Bill Bennett, who recently retired as our Secretary of Education, tells of traveling around the country visiting the 30 schools that he'd identified as exceptional models. He says he was stunned to realize that each school began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance or with the Star-Spangled Banner. But he soon came to understand that this was no coincidence. To use his words, the valuable lesson is that there is something greater than yourself that you owe allegiance to, but that is also part of you. I wish a prayer could have gone with those pledges. But one way or another, this sweet land of liberty is no more precious lesson than love God, love family, love country, and love thy neighbor as thyself. Yes, America's prosperity is both an opportunity and a challenge, and I know that you're up to it. As part of my job, I've visited schools all over the country. And wherever I go, I find myself remembering the words of General George C. Marshall when asked why he was so confident that we would win the Second World War. We have a secret weapon, he said. And when asked about that, he said it's just the best blankety-blank kids in the whole world. Now as I look at you and meet young people like you all over the country, I know we still have a secret weapon, and it's the best blankety-blank kids in the world. I'm dedicating myself this year to making sure that this future of hope, build on opportunity and traditional values, remains open to each one of you. I believe that the decisions we Americans make at the polls this year will determine whether or not that future will be bright. As I said before, even if you can't vote, you still have a stake, and you can have a role by getting family and friends who can vote to vote. An awful lot of our people who are registered and citizens and so forth don't bother to vote.  I do have a favorite. And to give you a hint, I'll tell you what I kind of like that George Bush said about this election. When you have to change horses in midstream, doesn't it make sense to switch to one who's going the same way you are? It's not a matter of personality but of philosophy. For example, it just seems to me that for those who espouse a permissive liberal judicial philosophy, to turn around and pose as tough on crime is the greatest disguise since monsters inhabit human bodies in the movie Aliens. Now, if you're talking to friends about getting out and voting and they aren't sure they want to go to the trouble, would you ask them for me to think of what it means to be able to vote? You hold history in your hands. Earlier this year I had the privilege of doing something I'd never thought an American president would be able to do. I spoke to students in Moscow, at the State University of Moscow, about the glories of freedom. Think of those students. Only if they're very lucky and rise high in the Communist Party will any one of them ever have the influence on the course of this country's history and world history that each American has just by walking into the voting booth and not just by casting a vote for president. Ours is a system of three equal branches of government. Two branches, Congress and the president, are chosen by election and the third branch, the courts, is chosen by the other two branches. When you vote for a candidate for the Senate or the House, you're voting for the direction of the country and the world as much as when you vote for president. We hear a lot about the budget deficit these days, but in fact I've heard my name linked to it. Well, under the Constitution, only the Congress can spend money. Yes, the Congress is the only one in government that can spend a dime. The president can't spend a thing. Congress makes the budget. If you want to see the federal deficit fall, remember a vote cast for a senator or representative is at least as important as a vote for president. It's very disturbing to me that America's young people who, with so many years ahead of them, have a bigger stake in the future than anyone else and yet our young people of voting age so far vote in lower numbers than all the other age groups. Perhaps you've heard of Will Rogers, the great American humorist of the 1920s and 30s. Will Rogers once said that the people who are elected are no better and no worse than the people who elected them, but they're all better than people who don't vote at all. Well, I know you and your friends are better than that. So before I go, let me ask you something. I'm going to ask for a commitment now, and if you shout yes, I'll take it as a promise. Remember, you can talk to family and friends, you know, and make sure they cast their ballots. If you're not old enough to vote, that can be your way of voting by getting someone to vote who wasn't sure that he or she would. And if you're old enough to vote, you can do both. Go to the polls yourself and make sure those close to you. Vote, too. So let me ask you now. On November 8th, would you get your family and friends to go to the polls and vote? You just made my day. And the years ahead, whenever election day rolls around, I hope you won't forget the privilege and honor of being an American and the privilege you have of helping to govern this great nation under God with liberty and justice for all. Yes, America is truly the last best hope of humanity, a city on a hill, a light under the nations. I know that you know this. I know that some of you are your friends no firsthand what life without our liberties and our democracy is like and what it means to sacrifice everything to journey against all odds halfway around the world to come to America. I said at the start I've seen much to like about your schools. I've also seen what some of you who have met oppression face to face have written about freedom. And I like that, too. Here's one example. Freedom reminds me when people left their country they almost died because they wanted a better life. And here's another. American freedom means to me that every country's people are living together like a family for a new life. And another, freedom is the right to be myself, to reach my goals. And finally, freedom means I have the power to speak with President Reagan in the White House. Well now, let me explain that a little bit. I have a new hobby and that hobby is collecting jokes that I can absolutely prove are created by the people in the Soviet Union and told among themselves. And I've collected quite a number of them. I told a couple of them to General Secretary Gorbachev and he laughed. Well, the one I told him about has a little bit to do with what I had just said back there. One of their stories is that an American and a Russian are arguing about their two governments. And the American said, look, in my country I can walk into the Oval Office, I can pound the President's desk and say, Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running our country. And the Russian said, I can do that. The American said, you can? He said, yes, I can go into the Kremlin, into the General Secretary's office, pound his desk and say, Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan's running his country. But now I'll just mention a letter that I received. A letter from a gentleman who said something I'd never thought of before. He said, you can move to France to live. You can't become a Frenchman. You can move to Japan to live. You can't become Japanese. And he went on naming several countries. But he said anyone from any corner of the world can come to America and become an American. There is just one other thing I'd like to say. I mentioned earlier in my remarks the Constitution. Every country, I think, has a Constitution, all about most of it I know of, including the Soviet Union. Then what is the great difference between theirs and ours? Many of them have some of the same lines in them. The difference is so simple and yet so great it tells the whole story, three words. We, the people. Those other constitutions are documents in which the government tells the people what their privileges are and what they can do. Our Constitution is a document in which we, the people, tell the government what it can do and it can't do anything other than what is prescribed for it in that Constitution. And so today, I would just remind you in closing, you not only have the power to speak to the President but to pick the President and the Congress and the state legislature to determine the course of our history and to protect those liberties that have made this good and gentle land yes, the envy of the world. And now thank you and God bless you all. Mr. President, thank you very much for coming up with Darby. We are all immensely honored by your presence. Mr. President, it isn't often that we students have a chance to give someone else a report card, much less the President of the United States. I know it's been a long time since your last report card but I am pleased to announce that over the last eight years you have earned the highest marks a nation can give. Thank you all. That's the first one I've got.