together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kaley Akina, your host and president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. My guest today is Randall Roth, a professor of law emeritus from the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law. Randy, who's been a good friend of mine through the years, is probably most famous for helping to write the blockbuster book, Broken Trust, which began as an essay in the Honolulu Star Bulletin back in 1997. It exposed mismanagement and corruption at the state's largest trust bishopate state and shook Hawaii's political and economic establishment to the core. It also resulted in many changes at that organization, including its name, though the book in the end left it open as to whether any of the reforms would really make any long lasting difference. It's used today as a textbook in many courses on trust law. Back in the early 1990s, Randy helped to edit two volumes of the popular Price of Paradise series, which contained essays by leading thinkers about many of the state's most pressing problems, including its high cost of living. Randy joins me today to talk about an issue that unfortunately has been in the news a lot here in Hawaii, and that's corruption amongst our public officials. So I would like to invite you all to welcome to the program now Professor Randall Roth, emeritus from the University of Hawaii Richardson School of Law. Randy, welcome to the program. I'm so glad to have you here today. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Well, it's always great talking with you. You have such wonderful insights both into the institutional and cultural history here in the state of Hawaii. Let's right now, at the very beginning, talk about the word corruption in itself. For a lot of people, it conjures up a very nefarious scene of the evil people carrying out some type of conspiracy in a very concerted criminal effort. But it may not be so obvious, and I think you have a broader understanding in terms of the way you use the term corruption. What is your understanding of it? Well, it certainly includes criminal corruption. And we have a former police chief in prison right now, and his spouse, who was a senior member of the prosecutor's office in prison right now. High-level people who were in the police department, the criminal intelligence unit in prison right now. We have a number of other high officials that have been indicted that could end up in prison. So that and two legislators earlier this year caught red-handed taking cash and envelopes to influence their vote. So corruption certainly includes criminal corruption like those instances. But I had suggested that we talk about a non-criminal version of corruption. Corruption in the sense that a person is using or not using the powers given them by virtue of an elected or appointed position in government. They're using it not primarily for the benefit of the people, the public, but primarily for the benefit of themselves or special interests of one kind or another. I think it's a particularly insidious form of corruption that is terrible anywhere. But here in Hawaii where we've been long dominated by a single political party, and I don't think it matters which political party it is, when you've got an area that's been dominated by one political party and then you add that we're a remote island thousands of miles away from the next metropolitan area and you add our economy as such. It's so non-diversified that there aren't a lot of real promising positions, if you will, in Hawaii for ambitious, well-educated people who aspire to have well-paying, prestigious positions in their community. When you combine all of that, I think it's understandable why this non-criminal corruption, as I've defined it, is particularly bad in Hawaii. And I think we see that in the state controversy that I wrote about with Judge King and the Broken Trust book, but also the mailbox conspiracy. I think this is an especially wonderful book written by Alexander Silvert about the now ex-police chief and his spouse and members of the criminal intelligence unit, etc. But those are stories that are just filled with not just the criminal corruption but non-criminal corruption, which I think is again particularly bad here in Hawaii. Well, Randi, I'm really glad that you pointed out the difference between criminal corruption and non-criminal corruption and the fact that a broader definition of corruption would include both. But going back to some of the examples you used, and I think of others as well, for example, there are four officials in the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting charged in March with accepting bribes. Or as you mentioned, two state legislators in February, including a former Senate majority leader, were also charged with taking bribes, and both have since then been convicted. And of course, as you mentioned, and this has been in the news so much, the major scandal at the HPD Honolulu Police Department and City Prosecutor's Office involving the so-called mailbox conspiracy. So my question about all of this is, is this business as usual? In other words, is this the way politics operates here in Hawaii and political organizations? Or has there been an increase, an uptick in the corruption of late? What do you think? There certainly was a lot of criminal corruption in the stories told in the mailbox conspiracy book, starting of course with the police chief and the people in the police department that he recruited, his spouse in the prosecutor's office, and a number of people who were associated with the city administration. But take a look, for example, at the police commission. These are appointed positions, prestigious positions. These are very smart, very well educated, people very well thought of in the community who are appointed to the police commission. And at this time that they had a police chief who was recruiting others to assist him in framing an innocent man for a very serious crime. They were engaged in what the book refers to as willful blindness. They were looking the other way rather than use the power that they had and the responsibility that came with it by virtue of being appointed to the police commission. Frankly, they were just going along to get along. They didn't want to upset these powerful people and the powerful people that were being recruited by those powerful people to put pressure on them. And so they simply looked the other way. When the police chief intentionally caused the mistrial in a key case involved in this whole mailbox conspiracy, clearly, clearly wrongdoing, intentionally caused a mistrial. He didn't want evidence of his corruption to come out. The chairman of the police commission at the time said, you know, that wasn't right, but I think he feels bad about that. I think he's learned his lesson. I think we need to forget about the past and just look forward. That's even worse than willful blindness. That's becoming apologetic for what in hindsight we know was egregious criminal behavior. One other aspect of this whole thing, the police department prosecutors offices are filled with very exceptionally intelligent, well educated people who have been trained to spot criminal activity, trained to spot wrongdoing. And there were no whistleblowers in the police department. There were no whistleblowers in the prosecutor's office. Again, these are people deciding to look the other way. And it's not criminal. And I understand they had a lot individually to lose.  And so it was them risking something about their own future in order to do their job properly. And again, especially in a one-party state where we're long ways from anywhere else to where if you tick off the wrong people in Hawaii, you can end up having to move to a place where your roots are ripped out. It's just real different than any place else. So I think it's a particular problem here in Hawaii. And then you add, for whatever reason, we really haven't had accountability for wrongdoing in government. We really haven't had transparency in a meaningful way in government. And so our problem is particularly bad. Corruption in Hawaii is particularly bad. And unless we make some meaningful changes, I don't think it's going to get better. You speak about Hawaii and our environmental factors, such as our location in the middle of the Pacific, the smallness of our community, and so forth. And what you've described really is a culture that if it doesn't breed, it at least tolerates corruption. But as you suggest, this has something to do with being in Hawaii. Are you really saying that corruption is worse here than in other states and territories? I am. And that's a strong statement, Randy. I know that. And I arrived at that conclusion reluctantly over time. And I don't think it's because our people are any worse than people anywhere else. If there is such a thing as large groups of people that are better or worse than others, I think the people in Hawaii are wonderful people. And I love what I would describe as the culture of Hawaii. But the reality of living in Hawaii, if you've been appointed to one of these prestigious bodies, the County Ethics Commission, which behaved, I think, maybe there's some explanation, they've never been asked to explain. But I think they behaved very poorly in the whole Kealoha series of cases. The Judicial Conduct Commission, the Judicial Selection Commission, there are a number of these official watchdogs, that whether you go into the Bishop of State controversy, described in the Broken Trust book, or you talk about these Kealoha series of cases described in the mailbox conspiracy, it's just a pattern to where individuals, I think, say to themselves, I could maybe point out that the justices of the Supreme Court of Hawaii, all five members of the Supreme Court of Hawaii going back now to Bishop of State, shouldn't have been selecting trustees in the first place. There was the will had talked about the justices of the monarchy, but that was over 100 years ago. For many, many, many years, the law in Hawaii has been such that the Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction over selecting trustees of any trust, and so they were wrongfully selecting trustees. It created conflicts of interest. The choices they were making made it look like it was a patronage process. And in fact, there was, I think, strong evidence of a payback element that somehow the way the justices had been gotten appointed to the Supreme Court was related to who they were picking as Bishop of State trustees. And then the kicker with hindsight went 60 minutes. The CBS News Show, when it did a report on this in the year 2000, they said that these trustees selected by the five members of our Supreme Court, that these trustees had turned this huge charitable trust that Princess Floyd set up into, and this is a quote, a candy store for the state's political establishment. These were trustees selected by our Supreme Court justices. The Supreme Court justices should not have been making those selections in any event. Under the best set of assumptions, it demanded accountability, and yet the Judicial Conduct Commission looked the other way, didn't even look into it. Judicial Selection Commission, which reviews the performance of justices every 10 years, looks the other way. A number of groups that should have looked and sought accountability just didn't. And they didn't because these were particularly powerful members of our community that engaged in a level of wrongdoing. And so I come back to, is it worse here than elsewhere when I described to people outside Hawaii law professors outside Hawaii, what I just summarized for your audience, they can hardly believe that the justices would do that and that the justices would create a candy store for the state's political establishment and that these various official watchdogs would engage in willful blindness and not even look at that. Now, you use the word culture, that's a very kind of explosive term in the sense that some people will look at that one way and some look at another. I don't think it has anything to do with ethnicity. By culture, I think we've got to go along to get along culture that I think is directly traceable to a one-party state where there is no, and again, it'd be just as bad if the Republicans had total control, it'd be just as bad if the Libertarians had total control. It's not based on the ideology of the policy preferences of the Democratic Party. But when you've got one party that's had total control for this long, and when you've got a place with limited opportunities, it's kind of like Pacific nations that oftentimes end up with one party control and various forms of corruption. And because it is so predictable, because the conditions are what I'm describing, we, you and I, everybody watching this needs to say, wait a minute, we've got to take an honest look at this rather than engage in willful blindness ourselves. This is a problem. We're never going to fix it unless we look at squarely in the eye and we identify just what is our problem. And then we've got to engage in robust dialogue, discussion, debate as to what this means and what can be done about it. And then whatever we do, we have to do with the interests of future generations, first and foremost in our mind. And I'm not sure we have done that as well as we as community are capable of doing that. Well, Randy, I'm going to mention for our viewers right now that Broken Trust, which you co-authored with Judge Samuel King, is a fascinating read. And if anyone wants to get into any more of the tale that Randall is telling now, that's worth reading. Not only for an insight into an institution such as Bishop of State, but an insight into what we've called the culture here in Hawaii that breeds a certain kind of corruption. And you've described well how the watchdogs are not keeping watch. But let's switch gears for a moment now.  I just want to add one, we didn't write it to make money. Judge King and I dedicated all royalties from the book to local charities and so that we didn't do it to make any money. Secondly, it's now open access. People can get the electronic copy going through Amazon or any Google or Apple. It is available free because the current trustees of Kamehameha Schools paid the University of Hawaii Press to make it open access, which I think says a lot about them, some integrity of that particular organization right now. So I hope people do look at that book because of what it can help us think through as a community. And then that mailbox conspiracy case is just the whole story, the same story I think only an updated version. Very good. Thanks for sharing that. Now let's go and talk about the other side, whistleblower. Government employees have oftentimes played a very key role in calling out corruption. Randall, what are some of the legal protections here in Hawaii for whistleblowers? And are they effective? And what is the status of our whistleblower practice here? It varies depending on the circumstances. There are some protections but a lot of times they're there in theory and not really I think as a practical matter, all that useful. Being a whistleblower is dangerous to a person's future. I don't know what to tell you except to say I understand completely. If somebody who's got a lot at stake chooses to look the other way, go along, get along, I get it. And I can't say I would have behaved differently if I were in their shoes. I like to think I would. Part of the human condition I think is that we each tend to think of ourselves as being very moral, courageous people. But we all have a significant element of self-interest. We try to do the right thing. We try to put the interest of other people in front of our own, especially when we've been empowered by being appointed or elected to a government position. But I'm not saying it's ever easy for somebody to be a whistleblower when they really see a powerful person like a legislator for example or a police chief for example or a prosecutor for example. And I know you are very well educated in socrates and the various philosophers. But I think at the end of the day each of us needs to really focus on inner discipline, inner integrity, our inner sense of responsibility. And I think if we live lives that reflect that kind of virtue, I think it influences others. I think we'll have more whistleblowers in the future than we've had in the past if each of us individually, I think it starts with the individual. If we each double down and determine we're going to do a better job than we've done in the past of achieving that kind of virtue. I really don't know that there's a political solution to this. I like to think there is, but in a one-party state the people that are in power have such an incentive to hang on to that power and such an incentive to limit accountability and limit transparency. So I'm optimistic when we look at the individual and what you and I individuals who are watching this can do. I'm not real optimistic about our elected officials in this remote island country or state of ours. I wish I were more optimistic. Well you know it is an interesting thing that even though they don't seem to be very successful, we have no end of the creation of commission or organization sponsored by the government to look into and deal with corruption. And as you say you don't have necessarily very high hopes for the government itself being able to make a difference unless individuals rise up to the highest level of values. This year in particular the state legislature created the commission to improve standards of conduct and the purpose ostensibly is to curb ethics violation. That was back in June and it made several suggestions random and I'm wondering what your thoughts are. A few of the suggestions included streamlining or making it easier for lobbyists and others to follow the law or tightening the policies on presenting gifts to government officials. Mandatory lobbyist training prohibiting legislators from working as the lobbyists and several other similar proposals. What is your thought on the potential effectiveness of this kind of legislation? I happen to know most of the members of that commission well and think highly of them. I know most of the people in the legislature and think highly of them. I mean we've got really, really good solid people involved in this and the members of that commission I'm sure will come up with some of the ideas you've mentioned and maybe some other ideas and some of those I think are quite good. But I got to tell you unless part of that, part of what they recommend and the legislature puts into place, if part of it isn't to go back and look at the police commission during the, I'll call it the KL Ohio crimes and try to figure out why didn't this body do its job. Why did it engage in willful blindness and the same thing with the county ethics commission. Why did it engage in willful blindness? At best willful blindness. In the office of disciplinary counsel and going back to the whole Bishop estate facts why didn't the judicial conduct commission take some sort of step to hold accountable those justices and not go in and try to name names and impose sanctions. What we need to do is just try to understand from the community standpoint why didn't these official watchdog organizations work better because part of the recommendations I think from this new commission will be you know inspector Jen or some sort of new watchdog but we've got to go back and figure out why are these official watchdogs failed so spectacularly in two of the biggest corrupt public corruption criminal corruption scandals in the history of of this place we all love called Hawaii unless they go back and pick that apart and it will be painful because among other things not just showing shortcomings of the individuals involved but I think putting a spotlight on on the human condition in in in a way that all of us have that same instinct to think well of ourselves but then maybe let our self-interest dictate even even in circumstances where we have a governmental power and we're supposed to use that in the interests of the public and and again we've seen case after case after case where that wasn't done here in Hawaii. Well Randall that's a very philosophical note on which to end today's conversation I know there's so much more that we could say but you mentioned the human condition and it was the framers of the US constitution that believed that the human condition was such that we required a government of checks and balances and so it is a good insight that you've given us that on the one hand we need to delve into the causes that have led to various corruption scandals here in the state of Hawaii but legislation alone won't be able to deal with the human condition. I want to thank you so much for being with us today I appreciate all of your expertise and insight into the matter and hope that we'll be having you on the show again in the future. Kay Lee it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Well thank you to the viewers my guest today has been Randall Roth emeritus professor of law from the University of Hawaii and I do encourage you to take a look at the book that has been made available online broken trust fascinating storytelling well as a count of how things work in Hawaii. I'm Kay Lee Akina on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together until next time. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Estrogens during menopause are associated with increased risk of anxiety, depression, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Depleting estrogens in rodents by overrectomy, combined with a high-fat diet, HFD, increases anxiety and adiposity. Estrogen and dietary interventions can both affect anxiety and metabolism. Increasing estrogen levels reduces anxiety-like behaviors in female mice, while reducing estrogen levels increases these behaviors. Additionally, estrogen can reduce neuronal activation in brain regions related to anxiety and metabolism. Gut microbiota may play a role in these effects as well, certain bacteria found in the gut have been linked to anxiety-like behaviors, while others have been shown to be associated with improved metabolic health. Finally, estrogen supplementation has been shown to alter gut microbial communities, suggesting that gut microbiota-based therapies could be used to treat anxiety and metabolic disorders associated with declining estrogens in menopausal women.


Welcome to the Hindu News Analysis by Shankar Iyer's Academy. The list of topics chosen for today's discussion along with the page numbers is given here for your reference. Let us take up this news article which provides a detailed information on Houthi rebels. The news article talks about their history, how they gained power in MN and their current position. So in this context let us discuss who are Houthi rebels and how they have captured power in MN and what is the current state of MN. This is going to be very exhaustive discussion wherein we are going to discuss the entire history of MN of last 200 years. See, since the 19th century the area that comprises MN today has been divided into two, North and Pottas, North MN and Southern Pottas, South MN. So the North MN was a part of former Ottoman Empire during 19th century and early 20th century. That was before World War I and South MN fell under British influence from 1839. But after the collapse of Ottoman Empire in World War I, North MN became an independent republic and was ruled by Imam Yahya who was the leader of Zaydi community. After Imam Yahya, his sons and grandsons succeeded the rule. But army officers seized power and set up MN Arab Republic in the later years. So simply a military coup happened. So this sparked a civil war between Zaydi royalists and Zaydi republicans, those who are supporting imams and those who are supporting army. So the royalists were supported by Saudi Arabia and republicans were supported by Egypt. So in 1970 the republican forces won this North MN war and as a result Ali Abdullah Saleh, a Zaydi republican became president of North MN in 1978. But if you see so far we have discussed only North MN. If you come to South MN we have said that it was under British influence. So this happened till 1967. So after a very long pro-independence insurgency in South MN, British has left the South MN in 1967. So immediately a communist coup renamed the South MN as People's Democratic Republic of MN and re-oriented towards Soviet bloc. So the Northern bloc was under control of President Ali Abdullah Saleh while Southern bloc was oriented towards Soviet bloc. But here what happened? In the later periods border clashes happened between two MNs. That is since 1970s. So then in 1980s work towards unification of these two states began. And in 1990 because of these unification efforts North and South MN were merged and a republic of MN was established. And the president of Northern bloc who was Ali Abdullah Saleh was made the president of combined MN. And Ali Saleh al-Bid who was from South bloc was made vice president. Though everyone thought that with merger of both blocs the peace will prevail but the contrast tensions between both the North and South blocs prevailed. In 1991 in 1992 there were deteriorating economic conditions which led to significant domestic unrest including several riots. So in 1993 vice president al-Bid exiled himself voluntarily to Aden. Aden is in South bloc so the vice president exiled himself to South bloc. So President Saleh declared a state of emergency and dismissed vice president and other southern officials. So by 1994 the country was in civil war and the international efforts to broker a ceasefire were unsuccessful. So because of all these issues the tensions were prevailing currency got devalued not even basic amenities and people were under severe stress because of all these military operations lack of food etc. So this is the basic information regarding the MN. But at the start we have talked about someone called Houthis. So who are they? See the Houthis come from Zeidi sect of Shia Islam. So broadly there are two sects in muslim they are Sunnis and Shiites. So this Shiite Muslims are minority community in the Islamic world and Zeidis are a minority among Shiites itself. So Zeidis are a sub classification under Shiites. But coming to MN the Zeidis population is significant they comprise around 30 to 40 percent of MN's population. So the issue started in 1970s when the North MN mistreated the Zeidis and it marginalised Zeidis both politically and economically. For example MNA government started to subsidise the building of Saudi style Sunni religious schools in Zeidi populated areas. See if you know the issues in West Asia Shiites and Sunnis are arc enemies. But the MNA government started supporting Sunni religious buildings in Shiite areas. So this created a strong sense of discrimination among the Houthis they are Zeidis. So they started getting frustrated with government policies which increased during the next three decades. In addition to all these issues the President Saleh was alleged of massive corruption obviously it is happening everywhere. This is even more common in Arab dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria etc. So after the unification of both MN's the tension in MN continued leading to civil war. All this together led to an emergence of Zeidi resistance to President Saleh. So this resistance movement was led by a leader named Hussein al-Houthi. The Zeidi group under him came to be known as Houthis but the group officially calls itself Ansar Allah which means the supporters of God. So simply Houthis are from Zeidi community who are an armed rebel group fighting against the government of MN. And during that time Houthis also criticised Saudi Arabia and America for backing Saleh and the pivotal moment is when America invaded Iraq in 2003. This deeply radicalised the Houthi movement like it did many other Arabs. So many Arab countries were not happy with America attacking Iraq in 2003.  So you can understand that there was very high Islamic radicalisation. So after 2003 Saleh launched a series of military campaigns to destroy the Houthis. In 2004 even the group leader Houthi was killed by Saleh forces. The killing of their leader frustrated the Houthis and there was a very massive armed rebellion against the state and president. At this point the President Saleh was supported by Saudis but to the surprise of everyone both Saleh and Saudis were defeated by Houthis. So this was the case until the first decade of current century and then came the Arab Spring of 2011. So this Arab Spring is also important in MN's politics. So this Arab Spring represents a wave of popular protests which started in Tunisia in 2010. So in general the demands of the protesters were democratic reforms in the Arab world. So within a short span of time the protests also spread to Algeria, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain, Yemen etc. So the entire Arab world witnessed the rise of Arab Spring. So the reforms included political freedom, social freedom, press freedom, improved human rights conditions, economic environment etc. So these kind of demands were made by the protesters in their countries. So when Arab Spring came to Yemen the Houthi movement became one part of national wide uprising against the President Saleh. So this eventually led to the overthrowing of Saleh but even then Houthis did not stop rebelling because based on Saudi Arabia's instructions Saleh was replaced by his Vice President Abdrabu Mansur Hadi who is a Sunni from South Yemen. So again the new leader is a Sunni person that too with support of Sunni based Saudi Arabia. So this enraged Houthis even more. So at this time a national dialogue was set up to address the future of MN with regional and international assistance. So the dialogue proposed a federal solution with six provinces with some autonomy. In this the Zaidi dominated North got a divided two landlocked entities for which the Houthis argued that division was against them to shorten their power. But surprisingly in 2014 Houthis who were initially against Saleh colluded with him. So this is quite surprising the movement was started against Saleh but after the death of groups leader the group colluded with Saleh and captured Sana the capital city of Yemen. So then in beginning of 2015 Houthis surrounded the President palace and placed President Hadi under house arrest. And then the President Hadi fled to Aden and then to Saudi Arabia. So President Hadi requested intervention from Saudi for which Saudi Arabia formed a military coalition. As a result of this Houthis are in direct military conflict with the MN government forces as well as Saudi led military coalition. But even today Houthis continue to capture large areas of territories in Yemen. So it is said that Houthis are supported by Iran which provides them with weapons and funding. So over the years MN has become a theater ongoing proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. If you see the entire vegetation conflict can be seen as Sunnis versus Shiites where Saudi Arabia is majorly Sunni where Iran, Iraq are majorly Shiites. So Houthis who are basically Shiites are supported by Iran. In addition to this the continuing instability in Yemen has provided a conducive atmosphere to al-Qaeda and Islamic state of Iraq and Syria that is ISIS to operate and further expand their activities. So this has been a key concern for the whole region. So on a whole the Saudi military intervention the Houthi resistance and threat of terrorist groups have collectively turned MN into a humanitarian catastrophe. Unfortunately one more country which is very close to MN that is Syria is also witnessing a similar catastrophe. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Let us take up this news article which talks about flash droughts. In this news article the author explains what is a flash drought, what are the reasons behind it and what will be the consequences of a flash drought. So let us have a brief discussion on these issues. The relevant syllabus is given here for your reference. See we all know that monsoon is India's life giver, its rebirth and its lifeblood. We are not exaggerating. See nearly 60% of Indian agriculture depends on the rains but historically India has been facing drought conditions owing to erratic climate. Erratic means not regular or inconsistent climate and particularly since 2015 India has been experiencing widespread drought conditions. In fact some 60 crore people of India are presently facing high to extreme water stress and according to government's own report India is facing its worst ever water crisis. The report was given by Niti Ayuk which says that by 2030 the country's water demand is projected to be twice the available supply. So in this regard first let us understand what is drought. See generally drought is a period of time when an area or regionic experiences below normal precipitation. So the lack of adequate precipitation either rain or snow can cause reduced soil moisture or groundwater or diminished stream flow etc. So this may even lead to crop damage and a general water shortage. So in general sense when the availability of water and precipitation is low we call it as a drought like condition. So the problem with drought is they are very hard to define and identify. See drought is a creeping phenomenon so it slowly sneaks up and impacts many sectors of economy and operates on many different time scales. If you see a cyclone we can exactly know when it is coming how many days it is going to stay and who will be affected by the occurrence of cyclone. But drought on the other hand will be having a very long impact. See if rain is not there agriculture will not be there. When agriculture is not there the food shortage, the rise of food prices, so entire market will be affected. So drought is very hard or very complex phenomenon to explain. So as a result of this the climatological community has defined drought into four types. First one meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, socio-economic drought. If you see first one it happens when dry weather pattern dominates an area dry weather is the key word here. Coming to second one as the word says hydrological it means when low water supply becomes evident especially in streams reservoirs and groundwater levels. And coming to third one that is agricultural drought it is said to be occurred when crops become affected or failed. Coming to fourth one that is socio-economic drought it relates the supply and demand of various commodities to drought. So basically drought can be classified into these four types and as we said before in this news article the author concentrates on flashed droughts. So what is a flashed drought? As the name suggests flashed drought occurs in a flash. It is simply the rapid onset or intensification of drought. See unlike slow evolving drought which is caused by a decline in precipitation the flashed drought is set in motion by lower than normal rates of precipitation and this is accompanied by abnormally high temperatures winds radiation. One side rain is slow on the other side abnormally high temperatures winds etc. So together all these changes in weather can rapidly alter the local climate. So here we should know that these sometime rapid changes can quickly raise evapotranspiration and removes available water from the landscape. See we know what is evaporation we know what is transpiration. Evaporation occurs with water bodies transpiration generally occurs with plants. But what is this evapotranspiration? So these two phenomenon combined that is the process by which water is transferred from land to atmosphere by evaporation and by transpiration from plants. So both things simultaneously happening resulting in transferring of water from land to atmosphere that is called evaporation plus transpiration which is equal to evapotranspiration and this evapotranspiration further lowers soil moisture which decreases rapidly as drought conditions continue. So simply put flashed drought is a type of drought which comes or intensifies in a very short span of time with a long lasting impact. So what are the reasons for flashed droughts? As the author mentions several factors including atmospheric anomalies, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions etc. Same to same the reasons for global warming are also causing flashed droughts. The author also quotes on experts view that ongoing climate change can lead to more and more flashed droughts in coming years. On talking about India a new study has now found out that India could experience many flashed droughts by end of this century. So in this regard we will analyze the occurrence of flashed droughts in India in the last 60 years. See this image shows six homogeneous precipitation regions in India. Top we have Himalayan region, northwest, central northeast, and here it is western central and in the south it is peninsula region, the south states. And if you see this graph shows the fraction of flashed droughts which occurred during monsoon and non-monsoon seasons in India during 1951 to 2018 period. If you observe in most of the graphs except south region in all other regions the droughts are high in monsoon region. The blue bar is monsoon and the other one is non-monsoon region. So we can say that in contrast with conventional drought which may occur throughout the year at any location flashed drought typically occurs during warm seasons. So far we have discussed what is a drought, classification of drought, what is a flashed drought and where does this flashed drought is occurring. We have discussed all these things. Now the final discussion will be what are the consequences of flashed droughts. So the article says that the increased frequency of flashed droughts can cause huge destruction to crops, reduced crop production, increased irrigation demands and groundwater usage in India. So in this regard how can we mitigate it? Same answer that is controlling climate change. So according to experts if we can meet the Paris agreement goals and limit global warming to well below 2 degrees centigrade the number and frequency of projected flashed droughts can be drastically reduced. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. Just have a brief idea on what is a drought, classification of drought, the definition of flashed drought etc. Let us move on to the next news article discussion. Let us take up this news article which says that the new president of USC that is Joe Biden has signed an order to restore America's participation in Paris agreement. See it has been almost three months since US formally left the Paris climate deal. So this order of President Joe Biden is a very welcome move to the climate mitigation measures. So in this context let us look at the path that US took in the last two decades with regard to climate change. Since 2009 UNFCCC that is UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has been negotiating with the member countries to finalize a climate deal to reduce the harmful impact on the climate due to anthropogenic measures. So even in this the American administration headed by President Obama was very active in finalizing a global level climate deal. It is even said that Obama was one of the key factors for finalizing of Paris agreement. But once the Trump became president in 2016 the US path on climate mitigation measures completely went in the opposite direction. It should be noted that the US taking a complete contrast view in climate change deals is not new. For example in 2001 then President George Bush pulled out of Kyoto Protocol. If you remember Kyoto Protocol is something about reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. So similarly even Trump after becoming president has diluted many environmental provisions. One such dilution is US coming out of Paris deal. See initially US pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below the 2005 level by 2025. So after coming out of Paris deal this commitment of US will not be honored. And to the worst of everyone America also stopped its contribution to UN's green climate fund. Initially US pledged around three billion dollars to GCF but American administration under Trump went back on this commitment. So what is GCF? See GCF is a financial mechanism under UNFCCC to channel funding from developed countries to developing countries to help them in mitigating climate change and also to adapt disruptions arising out of climate change. So this fund was set up in 2010 and as we said before US promised three billion dollars to this fund. But Trump administration have stopped contributions to this fund. Apart from stopping funding to green projects the Trump administration also relaxed controls on emissions from fossil fuel based industries. Also diluted standards on air quality vehicle emissions loosened the way the government calculated the social cost of carbon revoked protection for natural habitats including the Arctic region. So close to 100 environmental rules and regulations were diluted by Trump administration. So with respect to climate Trump administration took backseat and promoted pro-industrial policies and not just that during Obama as president the administration came up with clean power plan. So this plan sought to cut down power sector emissions by 32% of 2005 levels by 2030. Even this was replaced by affordable clean energy rule with a reduction effect of only 0.7%. So while Obama administration promised 32% the Trump rule effectively achieves only 0.7%. But if you see the entire campaign of Joe Biden was surrounded on climate change. So immediately after becoming the president of US Joe Biden signed an order to rejoin Paris agreement. So Joe Biden in his election manifesto unveiled a plan for climate change and environmental justice. He even promised an enforcement mechanism to achieve net zero emissions no later than 2050. So this entire news article talks about how America used to participate in climate deals and how America went back on its words during Trump administration and what can be expected in Joe Biden's new presidency. So the author concludes saying that since Biden has promised to engage multilaterally again so all other top emitters such as China should come back to negotiating table in the next COP of E&FCCC and work out a sustainable climate change model for the future. So this is all about the discussion of this news article wherein we had a very brief discussion on US rule as a climate change mitigator and what can be expected from the new president Joe Biden. Let us move on to next news article discussion. Let us take up this news article which is in reference to a recently held meeting between telecom operators and government officials in national security council secretariat. So in that meeting two important issues were discussed. First the firms have asked the government to ensure price competitiveness because there are talks that Chinese equipments could be prohibited to be used by Indian telecom firms. For example, US as well as England have enforced restrictions on Huawei's telecom equipment. So it is even said that India may impose similar restrictions in rolling out 5G network in our country. So if the ban comes into play the telecom operators have to source their equipments from other countries which are costlier than the ones available in China. See generally Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei are known for best telecom equipment but Ericsson and Nokia which are based in Europe have higher prices compared to China's Huawei. So to ensure price competitiveness of European firms the Indian telecom firms have asked the government to reduce the import duties. So it was suggested that the price competitiveness can be maintained by reducing import duties and even the Nokia and Ericsson have told that the prices of their equipment would come down as they manufacture in India and save on import duty. And the second issue of the meeting was who would be held responsible if there is any security breach in the network once the national security directive comes into play. So what is this national security directive? See government in December last year announced the national security directive for the telecom sector to tighten the security of communications network. So this NSD will mandate service providers to purchase equipment from trusted sources. So NSD classifies telecom products and their sources into trusted and non-trusted categories. So this classification will be based on the approval of national security committee on telecom. See this committee is headed by deputy national security advisor and the committee will have the members from other departments ministries independent experts etc. To get this trusted source designation a company has to undergo two processes. First one it should get trusted certificate from national cybersecurity coordinator. Next it should meet the criteria to get preferential market access set by department of telecom. Once these two are done it will be certified as Indian trusted sources. See this national security directive for telecom sector has become inevitable because recently Chinese company Huawei was alleged of espionage by the governments of U.S, Canada etc. So with the setting up of new body that is NSD the telecom operators of India are asking who will be held liable if there is any security breach in the network because under the current rules telecom operators are held for any security breach in their network. So with NSD coming in who will be held liable? Because once the NSD is enforced the telecom operators can use only equipments allowed by the government. In such a case can the operators still be held responsible for any security breach? So this question needs to be answered by the government. Anyway the telecom operators cannot be completely absorbed from the responsibility. So both government and the telecom operators have the responsibility of protecting the data and privacy of Indians. So this is all about the discussion of this news article. Let us move on to next news article discussion. See these two questions they are framed based on this news article which says that the boundaries between tropical forests and savannas play an important role in controlling natural fires. So the experts analyzed forest savanna boundaries in Africa and found that they can act as natural buffers for fires. This is because boundary trees shaded the grasses thereby shielding the interior from fire. If you see the first question which of the following is correct with reference to tropical forests? So four options are given here and we have to identify which statement is correct. First one they grow within 28 degrees north or south of equator. See this statement is correct. Tropical forests are closed canopy forests which grow within 28 degrees north or south of the equator. See these are the very wet places receiving more than 200 centimeters of rainfall every year. So because of abundance of rainfall the areas between 28 degrees north and 28 degrees south latitudes are generally filled with tropical forests. And if you see tropical forests include many forest types depending upon temperature, rainfall, relief for example tropical rainforest, drier tropical forest, montane tropical forest, mangroves etc. Coming to statement two they absorb very less of insulation thus have a very high albedo. Albedo means the reflectivity of solar radiation. This statement is wrong. Know that tropical forests absorb the vast majority of incoming solar radiation that is insulation so they have very less albedo. Coming to statement three due to poor quality of timber they have the potential to produce only about 25 percent of world future wood products. This statement is also incorrect because tropical forests encompass over half of the world's standing timber and could potentially produce as much as 75 percent of world's future wood products. So statement C is also incorrect. Statement D they are the least vulnerable habitat on earth compared to any other habitat. This statement is also incorrect. See tropical forests have the largest living biomass and boast some of the highest rates of terrestrial biodiversity but these forests are the most endangered habitat on earth and most vulnerable to deforestation. If you see the brazil forests it is said that every second every minute we are losing lot of trees in the brazil because of deforestation. So the correct answer is option A that is they grow within 28 degrees north or south of the equator. And next let us see this second question which is about savanna forests. Statement one they are characterized by closed tree canopy. This statement is incorrect because not savanna it is tropical forests which is having closed tree canopy. Closed tree canopy means a dense growth of trees in which the top branches and leaves form a ceiling so that light can barely penetrate to reach the forest flow. So it is not savanna it is for tropical forests where we generally see closed canopy. Generally savanna forest has dispersed trees with grass so they grow under hot seasonally dry climatic conditions and is characterized by open tree canopy that is scattered trees and a continuous tall grass as you can see in this picture. The largest areas of savanna are found in Africa, South America, Australia, India, Myanmar, Thailand, region, Asia, Madagascar etc. So coming to statement two they mainly grow in the tropical regions of 8 degrees to 20 degrees from the equator. Yes this statement is correct. In general savannas grow in tropical regions that is 8 degrees to 20 degrees from equator. Savannas can be subdivided into three categories wet, dry and thorn bush depending on the length of dry season. So we are supposed to identify incorrect statements so the correct answer is option A that is one only. And today's news article says that the boundary between tropical forest and savannas can play an important role in controlling natural fires that is they act as a natural barrier. Let us move on to practice questions discussion session. See this question. Recently the government has set up the National Security Directive. What is this directive about? Four options are given here. Option A it was set up to review the Indian armies preparedness against any unexpected Chinese aggression. Option B it was formed to look into defense manufacturing and purchases of armed forces. Option C it was set up to classify telecom products and their sources into trusted and non-trusted categories. Option D it is a new set of rules and regulations for central armed police force personnel. As we all know the correct answer is option C. See this question. It is an Arab country having the world-est centers of civilization in Near East. It is the only state in the Arabian Peninsula having a purely republican form of government. It occupies southwestern to southern end of Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. Its largest island is Sokotra which lies to its south. So which of the following countries is described in the above passage? As we all know the answer is option B MN. As you can see in this picture Sokotra the island of MN is its largest island. MN is bordered by Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea. And if you see in the north MN is bordered by Saudi Arabia and in the east it is bordered by Oman. See this previous year question. Recently a series of uprisings of people referred to as Arab Spring originally started from option A Egypt, option B Lebanon, option C Syria, option D Tunisia. The correct answer is option D Tunisia. See this question with reference to flash droughts. Consider the following statements. Statement 1. Flash drought occurs when soil moisture falls below 20th percentile from above 40th percentile in less than 4 pentards. Statement 2. Flash droughts occur mainly during monsoon season in most of the precipitation zones in India. If you see both statements are correct. Coming to statement 1. See this graph. You can see that the soil moisture decreased from 40th percentile to below 20th percentile in not more than 4 pentards. Pentard means 5 consecutive days. So, the sharp fall in soil moisture can be attributed to flash drought. So, statement 1 is correct. Statement 2. Flash droughts occur mainly during monsoon season in most of the precipitation zones in India. This statement is also correct. If you see this figure flash droughts occurred mainly during monsoon season. So, correct answer is option C both 1 and 2. See this question. Consider the following statements with reference to Paris climate deal. Two statements are given here. Statement 1. It is the first binding environmental treaty with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. This statement is incorrect because we are having binding treaties like Kyoto Protocol even before Paris Agreement. Statement 2. Green climate fund that is GCF was set up in accordance with Paris Climate Agreement. This statement is also incorrect because GCF was set up by UNFCCC as back as in 2010 while Paris Agreement was finalized in 2015. So, statement 2 is also incorrect. But be careful, we are supposed to identify incorrect statements. So, the correct answer is option C both 1 and 2. With this, we conclude today's news analysis. If you find this session resourceful, click on the like button, show your appreciation in the comment section, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel.


Now, regardless of whether you're opting in the paid way of setting up your business or a completely free way of doing so, you still need the four components listed here. The business operations, ordering process, collecting payment, and fulfillment of your orders. Right now we're in process number two, ordering process. So for you to actually have the view shop button, this is the lesson that you're going through. Lesson 2.2. And if you want to opt into the free, go back to lesson 2.1. In this specific lesson, we're going to cover how we're going to set up this view shop button. Now, to start off, what is an e-commerce website? It is basically a website, a platform that allows you to sell goods online and on the internet. These platforms allows you to accept payment online payment options such as credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.  Some of the most popular e-commerce platforms includes WordPress, BigCommerce, Magneto, Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace. For our liking, we are going to focus on Shopify. Now, why is it important for us to actually have this? Because the e-commerce platform allows your website to become a one-stop shop. Instead of having a storefront, like typically as a restaurant, you would have the storefront, this becomes your storefront. It allows you to actually show your customers what you're selling, your menu offering. It allows you to start taking in orders, allows you to collect payment, and allows you to actually manage your inventory payment as well. Also allows your customers with a branded online experience. So when people are coming in through the doors, they feel like, wow, this is a professional environment, is a professional Instagram food business versus just sending people to a Google form. That's the reason why having this e-commerce website is super important. Now, do not worry, you don't need to be a programmer in order for you to do this. We, once again, we're focusing on Shopify and for the rest of the modules and the rest of the lessons moving forward, we're focusing on this specific platform because we just find it to work the best for our needs. It is super easy to create. Typically speaking, if you have some experience, it would take you three hours to set it up, five hours if you have just super average experience, and eight hours if you're a complete newbie. And once again, we're going to be providing you the tips and videos in setting up your Shopify website in lesson number five. For the sake of this specific lesson, we're showing you the overall gist. There's no outcome that comes out of this lesson, aside from you getting an idea of what you need in order for you to set up that shop button. So just go through this, sip on your water, and actually pay attention. No need to take too much notes. What do you need to set up your Instagram, sorry, your e-commerce website? First up, it is for you to set up your homepage. This is super basic to begin with. You don't need to spend too much time and effort into this because honestly, people don't really care for this specific purpose. Add your logo, add some images for your product, add in your story, and your business details. Because we want to be able to connect this website into your Instagram shop. And what we really care about is your product page. This is the page that is going to be connected to your Instagram, and we're directing people that are browsing on Instagram to this specific page. They can now see the menu offering that you have in selected product to buy, provide high quality photos of your food, and a brief description of each of your items. This becomes what people click into and what they see and how they can order. Now, what else do you need? After creating your website, you can actually put that URL into your Instagram profile and to your Instagram bio as well. So people can actually click into them and visit your website if they want to. But for the sake of what we're doing, we are actually going to be linking it to the view shop. And once again, I'm going to be showing you more as we go on to the different lessons moving forward, specifically lesson number five. But nonetheless, just know for a fact that when you create that website, you're going to be able to link it for your shop right here and also put it in your bio. We're not going to be doing the creation right now. If we're looking into, Hey, you know what? I really want to be able to set up my Instagram food business, the paid way, then jump into the lesson number five. That's where we're going to be focusing on how are you going to be able to set it up accordingly and how you can link everything up properly. Now the pros and cons of setting up an e-commerce website allows you to be able to track your inventory. So then that way, you know when you're going to run out of different inventories such as your chicken wings or like cookie batter or whatever the case that you're creating, it allows you to receive notification every time someone orders. So then that way you can stay motivated.  I need to prepare more for the upcoming week allows to manage all your payment in one place as well. So then that way you don't need to go out and collect cash and allows you to look much, much more professional on the con side of this versus a free Instagram food business is that there is a monthly subscription fee for you to sign up with Shopify additional transaction fee per order at the monthly transaction subscription fee ranges from $20 to $30 per month. The additional transaction fee anywhere from like 50 cents to 3% if it's a if it's a credit card that you're accepting. And it also takes a little bit longer initially to set up a website. Now a pro tip of this is that having an e-commerce platform actually allows you to efficiently manage your orders as you get higher and higher volume. Let's say if you're getting 50 orders a day, then for sure you need to utilize Shopify as your platform to help you with managing your orders. Now it is your turn. Read the link below because this allows you to see which platform is the best to use in 2021. On top of that, select the e-commerce platform that you use you want to use to create your website at that website into your Instagram bio. Our recommendation once again is Shopify because it's super easy to do. Jump into lesson five to see how we can actually create your Shopify page for your Instagram food business.


So in this session, we are going to discuss collective behavior, how we can define collective behavior, how it is different from individual behavior, and what are the major types and categories of collective behavior. So when we want to highlight that what is collective behavior, that is basically the kinds of activities engaged in by sizable but loosely organized groups of people. That is, collective behavior is not necessary, that for a specific purpose, people will be together, so we will call it collective behavior, where the groups of people are together, they are involved in some activities, which are matching in one way, so we can call it collective behavior. So the episodes of collective behavior tend to be quite spontaneous, that is, people are together, there has been an incident, there has been an accident, of course, now everyone will react in the same way, resulting from an experience shared by the members. If the members are there, their behavior is in one way, they react in the same way, so that is collective behavior. And there are mainly three forms of collective behavior, number one, the crowd, number two the mass, number three the public, but the crowd, that is basically the type of behavior which can be further categorized into some categories, like the casual crowd. The casual crowd, that is a collection of people who happen to be in the same place at the same time. The people in this type of crowd have no real common bond, long term purpose or identity. But the casual crowd, it is the same as when people gather in a city, in a city, but they do not have any special purpose to gather, there is no theme, there is no organized form of gathering, they do not have any specific purpose, they have no identity. Conventional crowds, a conventional crowd is a collection of people who gather for a specific purpose. But now these people, when they have a special purpose, then we will call them conventional crowd. Then there is a category of expressive crowd, expressive crowd and expressive crowd is a collection of people who gather primarily to be excited and to express one or more emotions. Now people are gathered to watch cricket match, to watch football match, to listen to speech match. This is what is called protest crowd. Now protest crowds are the people, who are gather together in a specific purpose, or by something to protest, that is to say their planning or purpose. Another thing that we have to understand is, what is called a mass in the collective behaviour. The gathering of people having no particular aim or objective. The gathering of people having no particular aim or objective. For example, when we see a group of people in the market, who have no purpose or aim, but when we see a group of people, we can see the movement of the group. Then another category is the public. Who is the public? The public who has a specific theme will be concerned about a specific issue. And to express that, to show their feelings, they are called public. Another common form of collective behaviour is the social movement. The study of social movements exploded in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically in US, when people initiated and started social movements with a specific purpose or objective. So, we have discussed the nature of collective behaviour and the theme and types of collective behaviour.


Live on a given Thursday morning, I'm Jay Fiedel. The handsome young man is Ethan Allen. He's a scientist with APCSS, joins us from time to time. He's in the Think Tech family for many years and we talk about likable science. That's what we're here for. Good morning, Ethan. Good morning, Jay, how are you doing? We're good. So the question, maybe this is a really short show. Are there flying cars in our future question mark? No. Go ahead. It's a technology that's been developed already. It's not going to be undeveloped. It's just going to go on. The question really is how fast are they going to be and become common? That may be decades down the road. Well, from the technology point of view, I think what I hear you saying is we could do this today, but it has to be socialized in the marketplace. And it has to be socialized in the regulatory community. And if we could get past those two things, we could have flying cars today. Is that right? That's pretty much right. I mean, the technology, the basic technology is there, but we're really sort of, I think, not even a model T level. Yes, they built some nice prototypes. They can do two things. They can fly 25 miles on a single charge. They can carry a person. That's nice. They're previously expensive at this point. Yes. Building a social acceptance, having people understand that these are very neat to have. It's very cool to be able to do this. And then, as you say, the regulatory business, is this going to be a real headache to deal with? Yeah, well, you know, it's a struck me that this is sort of like Kitty Hawk. As a matter of fact, Kitty Hawk is one of the companies involved. You know, it's nice to do this on a remote beach in South Carolina, which is where Kitty Hawk is. And, you know, or on a field somewhere in the middle of nowhere. But, you know, the dream come true would be that you'd have. This kind of automated technology that would allow. The flying car to fly right over your city street. And I think that, you know, even assuming that we can get more than 25 miles of range, even assuming that we can, you know, get the best technology and improve the best technology to make, make it fly. I think there's a long way to go on the software where you could have multiple flying cars in the city, not crashing into each other. Where are they on that? Yeah, absolutely. No, that's a huge issue. I mean, right now they are classified as ultra-light flying machines, basically. And they don't really need to be regulated, but they cannot fly over urban areas. They cannot fly over airports. And yes, at some point they'll have to be dealt with. Because even if you have good self-driving or self-flying automation in them, still once you put them over in adjusted areas, they're bad things are bound to happen sooner or later, right? And you don't really want one of these things falling out of the sky onto a busy city street. Yeah, so how are they going to regulate these? What kind of safety precautions are going to have to be put in place? What kind of insurance are they going to have to have on them? Yeah, huge numbers of different questions. And yes, I mean, as long as they were constrained with relatively small range, relatively tiny payloads, they're not terribly practical for a wide-spread use. So they'll never be much more than that. You and I, we have a half an hour to design a pathway for that. But first, believe it or not, we have a viewer who's way ahead of us here. And the viewer has asked a question I want to put to you. Thank you to the viewer for doing that. Unless we require everyone to get pilot's licenses, it seems that flying cars will need to be smarter than on-road cars, probably having true general, true general artificial intelligence. Level five autonomy is much farther away than we had hoped and may be unreachable even for road cars. How can we safely have skies full of flying cars? Well, you touched on that a minute ago, but is it possible? Yeah, I mean, again, I think that's unreasonable to suggest that everyone who's flying is going to have to have a pilot space and then they're going to become common. It's not that many people have either capability or the time or the energy or the money to get pilot's license, right? It's a fairly complex process. And so it's going to depend, I think, on the automation getting better to where they become essentially self-lying. Besides, for any utility, if you demand there's a pilot and then you've immediately increased your payload, a great deal, right? A pilot is in there and that just cuts down on what more you can carry. So a simple logistics point of view, you really want these to be flying themselves so that the pilot isn't part of the payload, right? Well, don't you think there'll come a time? I mean, let's assuming this catches and becomes a reality. What do you think there'll come a time when you won't need a pilot's license? Will you get in the machine? Like GPS, you punch in your destination and it takes you there. What expertise do you need for that? No, absolutely. I think that's the only way. That's a prerequisite, basically, for them to become popular. And so the question is, yes, can we get that level of reliable auto-piloting technology? And yeah, it's tricky. You're probably going to get in a car because you've got third dimension to deal with. But that technology is developing very rapidly all the time. I mean, right now, the technology for self-driving cars, which is still admittedly, really, in its infancy, has a far lower per passenger mile fatality fatal accident rate. That rate is about a quarter of human-driven vehicles. And yet we're still sort of prototyping that. So this automation technology can and will develop better and, yes, until that happens, I don't think that the flying cars can really take off as it were. I heard that. Well, yeah, I totally agree. It's a sequential thing. The first thing we do is we reach a certain level of perfection of the flying of the terrestrial cars. And when we see that that works, and we have a very, very, very low rate of accident and, God forbid, fatality, where people, say, can clearly come to the conclusion that it's safer to be in an automated car than a human-driven car, once we get to that point, then I think the automated technology will be worthy of flying cars. But until then, it's really not going to be a reality, not in the practical sense. Yes. And you're quite right. There's a real socialization aspect. Yeah. Because already it is, you know, arguable, yes, that you're much safer off in an automated driven car. So just saying that the fatal accident rate is clearly not a human-driven vehicle. So, you know, anyone with any sense would do that, but you don't see a lot of them yet. There's a whole social acceptance. Now, part of it with flying cars may not be, there may not be a hurdle because we are all, everyone's used to driving their own car, right? They've seen their grandparents did it, their parents did it, they do it. You know, everyone does that. None of us have really flown, not many of us have flown our own planes, right? So we're not, we don't have that sort of social hurdle to get passed about giving up control of your piloting, because you get in a commercial jet and you're giving up that control, right? Somebody's up there piloting it. So, yeah, so we may, that hurdle may not be as big as one, but there's still going to be a, some significant barrier there.  It's the old story. The states retain a lot of jurisdiction, if you will, over cars and automated cars and the federal government has been tentative about getting involved, I think. The federal government, in my view, should just control the whole thing. So you have uniformity among the states. That would have to happen with the flying cars. You can't have different rules for different areas. You have to be able to cross the state line without worrying about whether you, you know, comply in the new state. It has to be a federal system, don't you think? Yes, it's going to be very awkward. You know, a road, you can say it, road crosses the state line here at this point and you can change the rules if you want and change your speed limit, whatever you want. But yes, if you're flying across open woods, how do you really know where that state line is when you've gone from one state to another? I mean, yes, the GPS, it can tell you, yes, you're now approaching the border and yes, now you're on the border and you've crossed it. And so in theory, the states can do it, but I agree, I think it makes much more sense to try to do it federally. Think about the rules that you have around airports and around cities, which are going to have to really be very tightly regulated for these things, right? You cannot have these in flying over airports, right? You know, that's just crazy because, you know, the potential for accidents with incoming or outgoing commercial flights is horrendous. And so yeah, if every state is controlling it, there's just going to be a mishmash of different kinds of rules, how far, how high, you know, it makes much more sense, but I agree with you to have feds write the regs on it. Yeah, but you know, it's easy to program the thing. This will all be a question of software, right? So we don't want it to go near an airport. Well, put the airport in its GPS system and say this thing cannot go, cannot go anywhere near that airport. You know, you can huff and puff and stamp your feet. It cannot go anywhere near that airport. So you don't have to worry about steering it away. It will not go there. So I mean, it's a robotic kind of thing, I think, that would be built into its GPS navigational system.  Then they go up and down, straight up and down. They're in a runway. I don't think most of them, there are a number of them. Just looking at the New York Times article, there were, you know, three, four, five of them out there now and they're raising capital and they're developing technology. They're even developing technology that can build the technology. I thought that's interesting. They're not buying the components. They're making the components. Anyway, so if you have rotors, okay, you talked about this a minute ago. If it falls out of the sky, you run out of gas, electrical charge, your rotors break, your navigational system breaks, could happen. Something breaks. And now it's not a question of finding a soft landing. It's coming down right now on whoever is down there. I don't know how you fix that. Any ideas? Yeah, no, they have, at least these early designs have no glideslope at all. They drop like rocks, if things go wrong up in the air. And one presumes you would try to build in, again, in your software, all kinds of alerts. So if it sees the least kind of thing potentially going along, just immediately says find the nearest good spot land and get down. As quickly as you can, basically. Because, yeah, you can't afford to have stuff go wrong.  But these really, you can't do that. Yeah. Well, okay, no, but you can set, as you suggest, you can set up a malfunction system that gets a handle on it, using AI, you know, anything, you know, sensors about everything that's happening in the aircraft, the car craft. And when anything sounds like it might go wrong, the thing looks for a place, maybe it starts to siren or something, let people know it's coming down. And then it tries to come down as gracefully as possible as soon as possible. So that, you know, it's no crash. Right. And it seems to me this is a whole new technology we have to work on to achieve that.  But yeah, you're flying cars. You've got to know that it's getting low on charge and it's going to land before it runs out of charge. Yeah, right. Let's assume for a moment, Ethan, let's make some wild assumptions here. Let's assume that they solved that problem. Let's assume they can get a range of way more than 25 miles. Let's assume they have a navigational and a software system that will, you know, be able to handle it without a license pilot, without a pilot. Really, it's automated. The whole thing is automated. It's really bulletproof that it's not going to fail. It's all kinds of failsafe systems built into it. I mean, I think this is something that engineers and software engineers could really figure out and maybe one or more of those various competing entrepreneurs that are building or trying to build these things will come up with various systems and they'll be, you know, they'll collaborate and there's some big company we'll put some big money into before you know it. All the problems we've identified here would be resolved. Okay. So let's assume it really works. Let's assume it will fly over a city. What's the benefit? Well, there are several benefits. One, if you start becoming popular, you're going to take a certain amount of traffic off the road as people would rather fly in a straight line from point A to point B than drive in some weird convoluted way through heavy traffic. They should be faster, you know. You know, there's a lot of, for obvious appeal to it, to anyone too. I mean, the idea of just being able to go walk out your door, pop in this little thing, punch a button and you know, fly through the air to someplace 50 miles away presumably in 20 minutes or something is very appealing, right? It's going to be a real selling point. Yeah. How do we get from here to there? Is it a question of how fast can that happen? How fast will it happen? Well, it's the old B-line thing, you know. If I fly a B-line, instead of taking twists and turns on the road and stopping for traffic lights and traffic and what have you, I would get there in a small fraction of the time that it takes me to drive even if I drive well, even if the roads in that area are good. The bottom line is if it works perfectly for this discussion, let's assume that I can get where I need to go really quickly. And so if I have say a range of 100 or 200 or 500 miles on the thing I'm not going to use nearly as much range as I would where I driving an electric car or a gas car. It would be relatively speaking immediate. Right. In that sense, there's sort of more efficient, although, you know, you're using a lot of energy to lift something like that up off the ground. That's going to be, again, one of the big technical challenges is how do they, how do you get batteries that are powerful enough, old enough charge, long-lasting enough, and light enough, you know. You can't use your lead-based batteries in an aircraft, right? What an air-based battery or a hydrogen-based battery or something, you know. Well, are we anywhere close to that? Talking about that digression, seems to me, as you say, electric car batteries are heavy, although, A, they're not as heavy as they were a few years ago, and B, they're not nearly as expensive as they were a few years ago. So we made progress in that regard. Right. And suffice to say, if you make a little, you know, it's that certain law that what every computer, you know, doubles in its capacity every year. There's a mathematical progression here where you can anticipate if a lot of people are doing research on this kind of technology, maybe even developing a sort of trickle charge from solar, who knows what you can do with electric, a rather fine car. Do you think it's doable within our lifetime? Do you think it's doable at all? Yes. I mean, I, you know, if you look at technologies and technologies that were introduced a century ago, you know, book 30 or 40 years sometimes to get widespread and more and more recently at the time from the technology's inception with wide adoption has shrunk cell phones or, you know, were adopted pretty, pretty quickly. Electric cars, I mean, electric cars, they're being adopted pretty quickly. Self-driving cars, that seems like that's a little more of a, you know, a little slower. So yeah, it's a balance there. You say, I mean, there's a lot of factors. If the first few go up, work very well, work flawlessly, that will really encourage more people to invest and push the whole thing. If you have a bad crash or two early on, that'll be very, you know, set the field back. Calls for regulation and all that, you know, slow the tension between regulatory, regulating government and the industry and people. So yeah, it could fall out of the sky. May I say that way? But let me, let me go to another, another point on this. It's the implications. Let's assume the car works. Let's assume it has range. It has the lightness. It has good navigational software that's not going to crash into anything. All of that. And let's assume that the public loves it. There are implications to our society. Because if the public loves it, there'll be a lot of them up there. And the question is when you get to your destination, what do you do with the thing?  No, no, no. Things are changing about offices and things are changing about whether you should go into your office. COVID has taught us that maybe we don't have to go in. Maybe transportation is not as critical for the work of day world as it used to be. But do you do have, nevertheless, a problem about what to do with it when you get there? And then finally, what implication does it have for the existing roadway and transportation system? You give that up? Or do you modify that to allow for this additional option? Yeah. And everyone might look at the current, the who we group here in Hawaii, right? Who they've got lots of little spots around where they park a few vehicles. You get on your phone and you say, I want this kind of vehicle who walked in there, punching a code, get in and drive it wherever you want.  It's used again by somebody else. That's, I think economically, the only way these things will work is you won't own them individually. Some company will own them and make sure that thing's being used virtually 24-7, except when it's information. It's the Uber model, isn't it? It's like, I don't know if you remember that old video about guys fishing and doing ice fishing. And it's really funny. He's doing ice fishing in the middle of a lake and he wants to have a beer.  The FAA got down on that. They thought that was really a bad ad. You know, the idea is you call for the service. You recall for the Uber. You, as you said, you don't own it. It's silly to have private ownership of the sort of thing.  That's the way it's got to work. They do, they're doing big data search. They know essentially what times where they should have more of their vehicles stationed basically because of likely demand. Yeah. They know when you drop somebody off, that's not a likely pickup spot. You fly the vehicle somewhere else to a better spot where it's more likely to be needed soon. Yeah, that's all, again, I think it's all got to be part of it. Make that, make this thing work. So yeah, it's the roadway. I mean, I don't envision our roadways are going to go away anytime soon. They hopefully would become less congested. And since hopefully most, if not all the cars on them by then will be self driving, automated driving, zoom, a near a flawless system are rates of traffic accidents and penalties will plumb. So the two could be very nicely complimentary in that sense. Yeah, but even, even if, you know, these, these flying cars are really very efficient.  It's short, short hauls. And I, and I think that the, you know, the, the air, air industry, air, air, airline industry will remain vital. Although there's pressure to make them electric too. I don't think there's much progress, but there is pressure. It's a fuel thing. Greenhouse gas thing. You know, ideally we have these new aircraft that fly without using fossil fuels, but then I think they have to stay in business for the long hauls. These are really short term. They're like taxis. Just like taxis. So that, that raises the question of, you know, where, where do you deploy them? Where is the Uber located? And what happens in a case of bad weather? What happens if it's raining or snowing or, you know, windy? I mean, all those things would have a, a significant effect on, on the system. What do you do to compensate for that? Yeah. There's two interesting points you've raised now. One, note that all these prototype, I mean, aerial vehicles that are being developed use electric engines, none of them as far as I understood, use of fuel based standard internal combustion engine. They're just too, it's too heavy to inefficient. They're all used on electric motors. So, um, but yes, so if you envision that, that the automated system, safety and navigation systems are so good. When presumes that same kind of level of, of sophistication will be applied to terrestrial vehicles too. And therefore you should be able to sort of cram a lot more cars on the road without slowing things down. Anything should speed up even more cars on the road. If they're all, all the cars would know where one another is or one another are, they're all paying attention to each other. They're all driving. They're not going to get big blocks where they slow down. They'll space themselves out. They'll keep traffic flowing much better. So in some sense, those industries are going to compete against each other too. Right. Um, I was going to say that first of all, you have to have system control. You know, it's like that thing with the, with you can get in a certain lane, a fast lane, um, but you have to pay and the cost of being in that lane depends on how many other people want to be in that lane. So, you know, it's automated on an AI basis. And it's calculated to make the, the whole system most efficient.  Okay. Good. Now you have flying cars. Well, likewise, you have to have a system for the flying cars. You, you, you know, even the best AI navigational technology requires some control of all the cars. And if the airspace, for example, is too crowded. Um, you know, you want to control all the cars. Um, and if the airspace, for example, is too crowded, um, you know, you want to control the system in one way. If it's, it's, uh, or the price, uh, if it's not so crowded, you want to control it in another way and including the price. Now here's the big one. Okay. If I have an interchangeable system where some people, um, might take the flying Uber. Uh, and other people might take the terrestrial Uber. Because I, you know, I think the same thing is going to happen to automated cars. You won't own it yourself. It'll be somebody that drives up to your door at a certain time. An automated and automated Uber. Um, so if I have it, uh, say a system. That's controlled electronically with AI on the ground. And I have another system. That's controlled in the same way in the air with flying cars. Two systems are really part of one system. Because if the weather is bad or who knows what, then you know that people are going to take the other option. So, so you have to create a, uh, comprehensive system, including the terrestrial automated cars, plus the flying cars all together now. Am I right? And how do you do that? And who's going to do that? Right. I mean, yes, some Uber of the future, right? Basically, uh, I think you're right. Systems would have to be linked together in any, certainly in any sensible arrangement that they'd be linked. Um, because as you say that it's just a question, you know, you're in point A, you want to get point B. Yeah, it may take a little longer on the ground, but, you know, it may be the cost half as much, maybe it's worth it. You know, um, there's going to be all that calculation to be made. Um, now they project, you know, as the guys look at this project, they can make these things. Compendably priced basically on a per mile basis. Again, I'm not going to hold my breath for that. Um, I do think it will happen. I think we'll begin to see them coming out. I wouldn't be surprised in the next decade. If we began to see a trickle of them, you know, but, um, yeah. You think we, you know, I think about the world with hundreds of countries and I think about all the developing countries where people don't have. A lot of money. And I think about whether this would ever work there. And I think about them, you know, the disparity, even in our country, but people who could afford to fund this and who could not afford to fund it. And so it's likely to cost a bit of money going forward, especially in the development phase, um, until it all settles down against, you know, economies of scale. And so the question is, you know, I have on top of all we discussed, what about the disparity? What about servicing, you know, the population, the consuming public, if you will, some of whom can afford it and some of whom can't. Sounds like there's a lot of challenges between where we are now and this utopian world of automated transportation. Do you see how that would work? I mean, can we look into the future now and see how the evolution would take place? That's a very, very, very sort of deep question. Yeah. Would these exacerbate the inequity in our society? And is there a way to make them not do so? Is there a way to make them part of making more equitable society? That's a very tricky one. Because as you say, they're going to have to, particularly in the early stages, they're going to be very expensive to invest in. The investors are going to want to get their return. Fundamentally, they're going to be developed by capitalist system, right? It will be, you know, if you can pay, you can enjoy it. You don't. Do you think they would be developed by a capitalist system? Right now, looking at the article in The Times, it seems to me that's just a lot of, what do you want to call it, private capital, entrepreneurial talent, you know, involved in this field and the government isn't doing anything. But when you have to regulate it, as we discussed on a national basis, and you have to, you know, set the rules, set the guardrails on a national basis, you're also saying, aren't you, that the federal government puts some money in. It can't let this remain as a, what I'm going to call it, a wild west kind of, everybody on his own industry. It has to be big capital. It has to be, probably it has to be government incentives and government encouragement. Otherwise it won't happen. Don't you think? I would agree. I think you're going to have to have some serious role for government and regulation of it. How, how they can be used, where they can fly, how they interact with, you know, commercial planes. And yeah, there's sort of a thousand different questions where essentially some federal input is going to be needed. And yeah, that's going to cost governmental money too. Very exciting stuff. And here's my takeaway. You can think about your takeaway. My takeaway is this. Right now we have a Congress that can't tie its shoelaces. Right now we have government that can't, can't address these problems. At the same time, I mean any problems, much less problems as grand as these problems. At the same time, we can envision this and reading the articles, you know, it does get you excited. It makes you think that maybe in the future, humanity can use the technology in a positive way and create a utopian society where it's, it's like science fiction. It's beautiful. It services all of us without inequity. It services all of us at a price we can afford without disparity. Oh my goodness, this is utopian. It's beautiful. It's heavenly. And it is within our grasp. I suggest to you, Ethan, it can be done. If we focus on it, it can be done. The problem is we don't know how to do it. I mean, we don't know how to, you know, find political will use the technology to better this, the life of everyone on the planet, the species in general. And that's the trouble I see. I mean, we have really got to get back to, you know, national management, national government. And until we can solve the problem of, you know, of all the problems that we're looking in the eye right now, we can't, we can't find a way to get over the horizon into making a better world using this kind of promising, exciting technology. Completely agree. You said that very eloquently, Jay. That's, you know, there's huge potential there. Do we have the sort of the disciple and political will to move it forward in the way it should be developed for good purposes that will serve everyone? I like to think we would, as you say, I'm optimistic though. But we shall see, I guess. We shall see, we shall see on flying cars and many, many other similar things. It's a promising world. We should all live so long. Thank you, Ethan Allen. It's great to talk with you as always. Great talk with you, Jay. Thanks. Love me on. Aloha.