back, this is Dave Vellante and we're here at the EBC of EMC SAP Week and we're here with Dominic Ulyano who's with SAP to bring that angle. This is SiliconAngle.tv's The Cube, our continuous coverage. We go to events, we extract the signal from the noise. Dominic, welcome to the Cube. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Appreciate you coming on. So talk first about this event. What's SAP's role here? What's your role here? Well, SAP in general sees ourselves in a support role with EMC and VMware, NVCE. My role is to help work with the customers, meet one-on-one, help deliver some keynote presentations. It's been a great experience. So talk about what's going on at SAP. You guys are obviously doing great. The dual CEO thing is working beautifully. Your stock's up, customers are happy. Things are going really great for SAP. Talk about that a little bit. It's really all about innovation with us. Innovating with some new products, innovating with our partners, helping our customers innovate, and it's all coming down to really great results at the end of the day. So SAP, there's no secret, right? SAP's big. It's complex. From an installation standpoint, a lot of people have spent a lot of time and effort getting it to work. And now you see virtualization come into the fold and things are getting simpler. Talk about how your customers are transforming why they're driving you to simplify from an infrastructure standpoint that component of their business. Yeah. So simplification is a great aspect of it. Our customers are asking us point-blank. Make SAP cheaper to run, are on-premise, and make us more agile and more flexible so we can be more responsive to the business. A very good aspect of this is the simplification of the landscape as well. So the customers, the ones that are driving it. And of course SAP can't do this on their own, which is why we've partnered with VMware and EMC and VCE to help get our customers adopted into the new virtual landscapes on X86 using VMware. And really our customers are experiencing great benefits, great TCO, great simplification, and great agility. Can you give some color, add some color to great, can you quantify that in any way or provide any other proof points? Yeah. So typically 75 to 80% of the overall cost of running SAP year to year is operational expenses. So we've seen anywhere between a 14 to 25% reduction in operating costs in just the first year alone by going to a virtualized, converged infrastructure type environment. And how about in terms of, again, I've talked about a lot today, but early on, I mean, we mentioned off camera, this would be our fourth year being at Sapphire with theCUBE. And the first year we were talking about virtualization, we had some CIOs on, and they were like my head of application development doesn't really want to do it. But now the stories are more, we've done it, we bit the bullet, we went, actually it's performing better than our old environment or at least comparably to our own environment. But the big thing is speed to deployment. Can you talk about that a little bit and maybe even help quantify that? Sure.  From the time you got the hardware to got it set up to installing SAP took a matter of weeks. The virtualization environment is the enablement layer now that with some automation and orchestration type capabilities from say vCloud director or LVM, we're talking about deploying SAP systems in a matter of hours now. So that the project team can actually do more rapid testing, more agile testing. They can follow an agile project methodology, which is much different than the ASAP methodology. So that's really what's helping customers deploy much faster and really satisfy their team's business requirements. How about the cloud dynamic? Let's talk about that a little bit. A lot of people want to use the public cloud to do test and dev, maybe spin up virtual machines, run an SAP instance, or maybe run a HANA instance on that. What role is the cloud playing in the SAP customer base? So cloud is one of our strategies. We've got four pillars at SAP, IAS, SAS, PAS, and of course the Ariba network. So when you look at a cloud, our cloud strategy has a multifaceted approach. From an infrastructure side, we see customers doing that. So it is driving, but most of the North American customers are still not quite comfortable with the cloud for their production systems and even some of their critical QA and test systems. So they're still right now moving very aggressively to a virtualized private cloud environment and probably cloud down the road will be something they consider. So what's their concern? Well, concern is a lot of it could be FUD, but there's also some things where they want to have better control of their resources. They don't trust the security. There have been some outages that have been publicized with some of the cloud vendors. So it's those types of things. It's just overall comfort level. The second thing is, organizationally, our customers are not quite ready. With converged infrastructure, you'll see that their roles change with the resources. So their technical teams are no longer siloed. With the cloud, it changes even more. So they're just not ready. Let's talk about virtual private cloud. It's more than just virtualization, but let's dig into it a little bit. What makes the private cloud cloud? So really, it comes down to the ability to provision. It comes down to the ability to manage capacity and the ability to be elastic. SAP normally, when we size it, we size it for peak loads. That really, unfortunately, is a paradigm that doesn't allow you to use your hardware most effectively in a traditional environment. In a cloud environment, we now can release those resources when we don't need them and use them somewhere else in the infrastructure. So we get this elastic. The second thing is cloud architectures or private cloud architectures are really meant with provisioning in mind, rapid provisioning. So to provision a server, it's a matter of minutes. To provision storage, it's a matter of seconds. To provision an SAP system on top of that, as you would serve up any application, it could be a matter of hours. That's where you see the advantage of moving to a private cloud infrastructure. So what's SAP's point of view? You guys are generally hardware agnostic.  You're obviously here at EMC, and you've talked about VCE as partners in VMware, infrastructure players. But generally, SAP, if anybody wants to run on anybody's hardware, you're going to applaud that clearly. But talk specifically about things like, you've got a big install base of Unix. You're seeing x86, HANA runs on x86. Is that a major initiative within SAP? Are you guys more hands-off on that? Are you really trying to get that migration going? So really, it's around what our customers are asking us to help them with. So a lot of our customers are in the middle of a technology refresh or a data center consolidation. They're starting to ask the question, can I run this more cheaply and be more agile? SAP is there to help. So SAP is not driving customers to any particular platform, but we are reacting to our customer base. In addition, we know we can't do it on our own, which is why we've partnered with the market leader and virtualization on x86, which is VMware. So it's really not SAP driving. It's us reacting to the market. So let's talk about HANA a little bit. I mean, it's the hot topic. You can't go to an SAP conference. You hear Hasso and Vishal up talking about it. It's a fascinating topic in memory. Of course, in memory, databases have been around since there's been memory. But now, the costs are coming down where it's getting much more interesting. Talk a little bit about HANA. Talk about the uptake. Talk about what it means in this whole ecosystem. So HANA was designed to run on x86, commodity hardware, essentially. It was designed to be a more scale out. And really, it takes advantage of the new capabilities at the x86 level. So what it's doing is it's transforming businesses. We have customers that run MRP runs. They take 8 to 10 to 12 hours to run. They're seeing HANA being able to run this in a matter of minutes or perhaps seconds. That changes entire business processes. No longer are they waiting for a batch job to finish. They can do more dynamic planning, more dynamic analytics. That's changing their business model. They're becoming much more proactive and being able to react much quickly to their changing environment. We're talking big, fast data here. Absolutely. So what's the role of the ecosystem here? What's EMC doing there with regard to HANA, other partners? What role do they play? Well, they're key because obviously, we're an applications company. We're a software company. And without key participation from EMC, they're in our co-innovation labs, VCEs in our co-innovation lab, VMware's in our co-innovation lab. Without those folks helping us innovate around HANA, we probably wouldn't be near where we are today. All right. So flip side of that is what could they do better? What could EMC, VCE, VMware do better to make your customers' lives easier? Oh, that's a good question. You know, I think helping with a unified set of solutions as we're starting to do now, unified consulting. I think those are the things that really help our customers. Our customers don't want to see separation between infrastructure providers and SAP. They want to see one face to the customer, one approach, one set of best practices. So we're cogent, sort of go-to-market and service model. Sure. Dominic, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Thanks for being here. Really a pleasure meeting you. All right. Keep it right there, everybody. We're here at EMC, EBC. We'll be right back. This is Dave Vellante. This is theCUBE.


So we're here at the CES 2019 in the high, so who are you? I am Sigur from Remarkable. And it's a Norwegian company? Yes, it's a Norwegian company. So we make this Remarkable. It's a paper tablet. It is a tablet that is as paper-like to write on as possible digitally. So we have this special screen combined with this tip. And when you write on it, it is as writing on paper. Is it Wacom? No, it's Wacom technology. It is Wacom, yeah? So how's it possible that a company in Norway? I mean, how much take is there in Norway? There's not a lot of hardware companies from Norway, but I mean, we are some. And we try to help each other. And so far, so good. And also these guys? Yeah, Henry. He's with Remarkable. So we are between 50 and 60 employees. Wow, but how old is the company? The company started out in 2013. With this idea? Yeah, with this idea. And we started the pre-order in late 2016. And when did you ship the first ones? So we shipped the first one in October 2017. So that was... That's a fast work. Is it one year and a half to finish a very complicated product, right? Yes, we launched the pre-order when we were sure we were going to deliver. When we were like, okay, now we have technology. It works. We launched the pre-order. And then we sent the supply chain, et cetera. And yeah. But one thing, E-Ink is an awesome company. And the screen is very specific, I'm talking about. It's difficult to make a firmware that has very nice writing, right? How did you do that? How is it going now? Of course, again. So that's part of the secret sauce in Remarkable. We have made it really fast. So let me show you here. So when you write, there's almost no delay at all. So did you improve that a lot? Yeah, a lot. So the first one was not that good, right? The first firmware? Yeah. So we have launched five really big firmware updates since we launched with both features and improvements. And the customers have been taking it very well. And we still keep launching new features. No need to update the hardware? No. It was the same as a generation one? Yeah. It's still just new firmware? Yeah. So you had a good chip set? Yeah. Since the beginning. Yeah. So electronics is really good? Yeah, of course. It's a processor. It's a Cortex A7 maybe? Yeah, I can't remember. But it's got everything you need to do this kind of stuff? Yeah. So it's got great writing. What are the other new features added in the last five firmware updates? Yeah. Let me show you. So what we can do? Yeah, good. So what we can do is we can try to... We can change this to type text. So it's OCR? Yeah, it's a handwriting conversion. So now all your work you do, you can change it to type text. You can edit it. You can send it to yourself or a colleague by email. The dream of this device, I think, is for students and lawyers and all these people to collaborate and do work together. Does it work? Or is it just a dream still? No, I mean, you could work on something and you can send it to your colleagues. But there's at the moment no collaborative tool in there. So you work on your own documents for now, right? You work on all documents, but of course you can go to the documents. You can make a meditation, a mission. And you can send this directly to a colleague. Of course everything you do is synced in real-time between your mobile and the desktop application, both Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac. Everything you do is synced in real-time? Yeah. So... What application? So our own application. So we have an application that we show you. So here. Everything I do on the smartphone is also available on my mobile phone and desktop. So can you then write something on your desktop and it comes back here? So I cannot do that. But what you can do, you can import documents into your desktop application and it will show up on the smartphone. It synchronizes over the cloud? Yeah. Your cloud? Yeah. So you have lots of stuff going on in the background, right? Yeah. Not on your device? Definitely. There's a lot of stuff going on. So I mean, that's why we have expanded the team to get all the tech working and to creating new upgrades, new firmware updates. Yeah. Have you been on Norwegian TV? We have been on Norwegian TV. What did they say? They like it. And I don't know, it's just a question. What about... It's been successful, right? Yeah, so... How successful? Yeah, I mean, we're sold over 50,000 remarkables. That's very remarkable. Thank you. Yeah, sorry, I had to say it. Yeah, that's pretty good. 50,000. You're the leader. Are you the market leader? Are you selling more than Sony? I mean, we're selling a lot. We are happy about that. And our customers like the product, and that is important to us. We do a lot of work listening to the customer and try to improve by what they say to us. What did they say? So they come with all what new features they want, what they do not like, what they like, potential bugs if there's some that comes up. And we try to learn about their work flow to optimize the remarkable for our customers. So, can you show a bug? I'm joking. Can you show... What do you think is the top feature request that you may be considering right now? So, I can't go into the specific, but we have some really cool things coming up. But again, I can't go into specific. But the handwriting conversion was something that our customers really wanted. And we invested a lot of time to get it out. And so we launched the first version of Before Christmas. And you're able to annotate PDF or any document or only PDF? Yeah, PDFs. If you annotate PDFs, the annotation sticks with the file. So, when it syncs back to your computer, you'll have it there. You can print it out or share it with your colleagues. And the annotation format is a standard for the industry? Or is it special you created this annotation format? No, so that is a PDF format or a vector format. All right. Cool. And what's next? Selling more, doing more... There's probably new hardware coming. So, I mean, we are focusing on this product at the moment and trying to make that as good as possible. There's still new features we want to launch. So, we are invested heavily in this product. Yeah. I think it's the 10.3 inch, right? Yes. It's the best size. The 13.3 is too big. We think so. I mean, it's maybe too heavy. This is potentially the compromise, right? Yeah. Do you work? Yeah. It's easy to get around. I mean, it doesn't weight much.  But it's large enough to read documents on it and to take real notes. Are there any students using it? Students are using it. But, most of all, what we call knowledge workers are using it like engineers, management consultants, lawyers, people who work with information and people who use a lot of paper in their workflow. But right now they can just switch to a markable and all their notes, their writings, their documents, their applications are in one place. When you have a meeting, right? Yep. Are you using this or are you using paper? I'm using a markable. For real? Yeah, for real. But other people in the office are probably using paper still, right? It's hard to beat. You have to be as good as paper. Can you do that? No, I mean, everyone in a markable, I use in a markable. That's like a company policy, maybe? Yeah, it's a strict policy. That's good. No, it's actually not. Because we think that we made it so good that it replaces the paper. So you're just going to the notes app when you have a meeting? One more time. You just go to the notes app. Yeah. And you just make a new note. Yeah, I can create a new notebook. I can just go into Quicksheet if I'm in a hurry. And I can take notes directly there. And you have pressure sensitivity? Pressure sensitivity, tilt sensitivity. And I can go in here, Settings, and I can have different kind of templates. So here we have creative templates. We have grids. And we have organized templates and lines. So that is great. Nice. What's the price right now? So it retails for $5.99. It's still the same price as the beginning? Yeah. And you're not able to get the price down to $2.99? I mean, the retail price is $5.99. The ink technology is quite expensive. But you can get it on remarkable.com or you can get it on Amazon. There's no chance to convince ink to lower the price of the panel? That is... I'm sure you had discussions. I'm joking. But because if it was $2.99, maybe you'd sell many more, right? Could be. Right. Cool. Awesome. So no secret about the future hardware, right? You cannot say what's happening. I mean, the team is fully focused on this product at the moment to refine it, release new features. And yeah. Nice. I think it's really awesome. Looks really nice. And designed in Norway? Yeah. So the real designer over there? Yeah. I mean, we have a great design team. And it's a sign in Norway based out of Oslo. And some really cool software hackers. A part of the team, I guess. The guys that make the nice software. Yeah. They are really in the... So this is built on a Linux platform. Not Android? Not Android. Because to get it as fast as we wanted, we needed to create our own OS. So you could just use the Android and customize the Android or something. We couldn't get it fast enough. So to get the stroke as close to the pen tip, we had to create it from the bottom up. But that means you can't get all the apps on the Android, right? You cannot get the apps from the Android. But I mean, we created this device to be a focus tool. Because when you write, when you do work on your desktop or your mobile, you often get distracted by notifications or you're so close to what I call the internet. You can just go to a web page and it destroys your workflow. Which is remarkable. You can write and you can read and you can annotate. And it keeps you focused. Nice. Can you introduce this guy? Yeah. Who's this guy? Hey, Rick. Hey. Hi. I'm Henrik here for LRVP of Communications of Remarkable. What? Communications. So marketing and communication. What's the difference? We are in the marketing together. Yeah, we're both working with marketing, but I work with press and more like these events, yeah. So what's the strategy for your marketing for the future? How are you going to get to a million sales? We are already doing millions of sales in sales. How do you do it in terms of the way you work? Yeah, well... Oh, it's really growing. Yeah, but we are actually selling it. In quantities. Yeah, yeah, okay. We're not doing that yet. We will continue to create really amazing experiences for our customers, improve the software constantly, and we'll see what comes out in the future. But we have some pretty cool ideas. Cool. All right. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. You are watching present, past and the future. Day-to-day hearings are underway on 14 appeals against the 2010 Alabad High Court judgment in the Ayodhya case. Yes, it is not yet Prayagraj High Court. That aside, the Ram Janam Bhumi Babri Masjid judgment partitioned 2.77 acres of disputed land in Ayodhya among the 3 parties. First, the Sunni Vakbod, then the Nirmohi Akhara and finally, Ram Lalla Virajman. Now, this may sound extremely odd, but the deity considered an infant form of Lord Ram is a party and making arguments in the case. The deity is represented by topmost lawyers engaged by the petitioner, a senior member of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. From 1989, when the VHP first moved a Faizabad court on behalf of Ram Lalla Virajman, the court has held that the deity is a juristic entity. This intervention came just as the initial phase of the agitation for constructing a Ram temple after demolishing the Babri Masjid was speaking. I often argue that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would not have become the leader with such a stranglehold on Indian politics if it had not been for the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots also would not have occurred if it had not been for Ayodhya. So, in a way, the Ram Janambhoomi agitation is the primary reason for the BJP being in power today. Among other issues, the Ayodhya agitation was founded on the belief that it was imperative for Hindus to undo a historical wrong to seek revenge for humiliation heaped in the past. Modi often refers to medieval India as 12,000 years of slavery. Much of the majoritarian sentiment in contemporary India is justified as being part of the need for retribution for crimes committed by Muslims against Hindus in the past. Previously, only the Ram temple and the other temples allegedly demolished to build mosques with symbols of such subjugation of Hindus. Now, other evidences too are cited. Higher population growth among Muslims when compared to Hindu birth rate is depicted as Islamist conspiracy to reduce Hindus to a minority. Because of such false or half-truthful narratives, it is important to understand how Islam grew in India and if there is any substance in these allegations. We need to know if there was an Islamic design or conspiracy to undermine Hindu society. Or was this just the play out of power politics and the result of intermingling? There is need to know that neither was the medieval period the golden era of Islam in India nor was it the dark age for Hinduism. Rajyuddin Akhil joins me today to discuss several fundamental questions which impinge on the current political discourse. A historian who teaches at Delhi University is also the author of the important book, The Muslim Questions, Understanding Islam and Indian History. And his most latest book is Literary and Religious Practices in Medieval and Early Modern India. Welcome to the program Akhil. Let us begin with what I say when we try to actually talk about that the basic essence of the Hindu right discourse is driven by this argument that there is need to undo this historical wrong that the historical wrong must be righted. Now as a person who is an expert on medieval India about which not much is known except very preconditioned ideas how do you explain that you know how do you respond to this discourse? You are right that there are difficulties regarding understanding medieval India and there is a lot of ignorance and much of this ignorance is often deliberate. Because lots of research has actually been happening that is showing that there is need to actually have our political discourse more informed regarding what actually happened in medieval India, especially from around 13th century onwards when the Delhi Sultanate was emerged or maybe from the early decades of the 11th century when Sultan Mahmudavhazna rated these parts. Certainly the conquerors came with some amount of violence that was involved in the making of those conquerors. That was not a permanent trend across different centuries that you had various Muslim you know rulers in power in different parts of northern India and in other parts of the country also. Yes. So once the conquests were completed once the dynasties were established empires were set up whether the Turkish dynasties from the 13th century onwards or the Mughal empire once it was established on a firm footing by late 16th century we see that even if violence is possible in the wake of the conquests but when actually it comes to governing and governance governing principles were certainly going to be you know broad based, inclusive ensuring that justice is done to all sections of the society and not and the notion of justice is not based on religious considerations in the sense that one set of people are being discriminated against for not being Muslim in this case perhaps but that was not the case.  The ruling classes were not just Muslims they were they were a lot of you know Hindus who were their part of the ruling classes was this across various centuries. It is actually and different you know you had the Mongols you had the Turks you have the Afghans you had the Mughals you had various kinds of other kingdoms you know away from the Delhi Sultanate you know either in Bengal or whether in you know in South in Deccan you had different kinds of kingdoms and different rulers. What was the character of the ruling classes in those kingdoms? Certainly there in the wake of the conquests they the Turks and subsequently the Afghans and the Mughals they incorporated local chief tens local you know ruling classes. The case of Rajasthan is very very interesting. A large number of chief tens will be incorporated very peacefully into the Afghan system or the Mughal system and they would be reinstated in their own you know. So these Hindu chief tens continued to Rajputs they continued to rule as some kind of an extensions of the kingdom. Very very autonomous actually very very autonomous. In the sense that in fact the term that was used for their own principalities where was referred to as Watan Jagir you know their own Watan is given into Jagir for them to rule in the manner in which they can continue to do. So what policies were then being controlled by the center if you actually try to look at in modern terms you know as some kind of a federal arrangement between the Jagis and the kingdom you know. So whether any specific powers which was there vested in the hands of the Sultan. I think you know once a particular region has accepted this sovereignty or sovereignty of the ruler based in Delhi or Agra. There is no difficulty in the sense that. They would be of course contributing taxes. They would be contributing taxes. They would be sending soldiers for conquests elsewhere. Oh you mean to say that you know soldiers of these Jagis would be participating in the army of the Sultanates. Yes the Imperial soldiers operating in Bengal will have a large number of Rajput contingent working under Mansi for instance late in the 16th century early 17th century. Similarly for any Deccan campaign south of you know southern India campaign a large contingent of the Mughal soldiers are actually not Muslims. They might be Rajputs even for. How little of this is actually known you know what. That's the thing you know. So there is an entire idea that it was the Mughal Empire which was going and crushing various you know Hindu kings across across the country. Whereas you are saying that you had a huge amount of Hindu soldiers in these. I mean as we began in the in the beginning that there is a lot of ignorance about what happened in the medieval period or early modern period. Even for the Chittor case for instance. So very politically motivated very politically motivated. Even for Chittor campaign you know the army Mughal army was led by Mansi and his Rajput soldiers were fighting against you know Rana Pratap. And in our 21st century discourse it would appear that the Rana was fighting some Dharam youth and the Mughals were fighting some Jihad. Certainly the. You also have an entire you know myth created around the Haldighati battle you know. It was not such a big deal then as it was made out to be in the latter half of the 20th century onwards. Because our history is now necessarily being communalized in the modern sense in the Hindu Muslim sense. And therefore it would appear that it was you know Hindu Muslim quotient was dogging our. You know there is something which you know sensible scholars like you all the time warned you know that just as you know that there is a certain. Majoritarian distortion of medieval Indian history. There is also need to be careful that there is no distortion from a secularist perception. After all not every period can be everything cannot be hunky dory. There would be a lot of negativities also which need to be understood also. So would you say that the truth is actually somewhere between what we can call the dogmatic secular approach to his medieval history and the communalist framework. Yes I think you know the communal history has to be actually discarded and the secular history has to be qualified. You know in the sense that the secular history has actually not being not doing justice in terms of knowing exactly what happened in medieval India. Because our secular historians are concerned about communal harmony in the present and therefore. So we are trying to say that everything was fine and you know because we want everything to be fine. Some bhaichara unity in diversity in today's context. I want to read unity in diversity also historically are you trying to say. Yeah there you know and there are many examples that we can be given about about about communal harmony. What for instance you know why following your Sufis among non-Muslims is one example or the veneration and support respect for for rulers like Akbar. For instance you know much as our you know political discourse is getting vitiated. But all nationalist historians scholars previously had a lot of respect for figures like Akbar figures like Dara Shukko. You know in the in the early you know early early 17th century the way he was looking for common grounds among between Muslims and Hindus. Going back to ancient texts as also Sufi literature would be showing that it is possible for Hindus and Muslims and other sections of the society to live together peacefully. And it is theoretically supported by texts and examples historically. Now our secular history has tended to sanitize you know our past in such a way that some examples examples like Aurangzeb for instance will have to be hushed. Examples of you know cases of temple demolition demolition we do not want to talk about. And because there are ramifications about it in the present as in the Ayodhya case. But I will argue and many historians are now increasingly agreeing that we have to be a mature well informed society in such a way that we can take head on even controversial questions which have come down to us from the past. You know cases cases like the construction of the Babri Masjid at that site and the controversies which have emerged subsequently. We need to educate our people. But there are you know as we were talking about Ayodhya you know having studied the history of Ayodhya at length and also written a book on the entire Ayodhya controversy way back more than 25 years ago. There is actually there are big question marks on the historicity of the story of this Ayodhya being the birthplace of Lord Ram as it is believed. There is also big question marks that if a temple had actually been demolished to build the Babri Masjid why was it not incorporated by Tulsidas. Who was writing his poetry in the same region and operating out of the same milieu why does it not find references. Why is it that stories of the demolition of a temple to build the mosque come in much later more than about 150 200 years later. So despite that you know but yes there are instances of better instances or more visible approves of temples being demolished. If even if they were were they done for religious reasons or was this only to stamp the political authority. I think this is a very important thing. Today's political discourse I do say that it was a religious battle. It was a jihad against Hinduism whereas it was going to the historian. If these temples were demolished whether it is a Varanasi or whether it is Mathura or the entire 300 or temple list which has been compiled by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Why were they being demolished?  You know political violence is being justified in the name of religion. So therefore medieval rulers when they are attacking a place of worship they are doing so to justify the violence which they have perpetrated in the wake of the conquest. And with regard to temple demolitions there is no one attitude in medieval India. There are several historians very good historians Richard Eaton for instance and Philip Wagner. They have actually written about how there are varying degrees of attitude towards places of worship in the wake of the conquest and after. So in some cases a temple can be just destroyed and demolished and finished off altogether. In another cases a very new temple is destroyed. A new building mosque complex has been erected at that place. A third case could be that the temples several temples have been destroyed and the debris have been used. Recycling material was very common you know. That is what possibly appears in Ayodhya to be the case. And a fourth case could be that half the place has been occupied for one set of people and another half have been left over for the other people to continue to practice their religion. So certainly in the middle of a temple complex you will find a mosque has emerged. You will find that in Varanasi you find something very similar. So in later times it is also possible that in the middle of a mosque a temple has emerged. Or an old mosque has been completely transformed into a temple or a idgah has been now taken over. The time when these type of constructions were being made it was not exactly that this is your space and this is my space and that we shall never meet. It was not such head on collision that there was a far greater understanding of each other's religion and religiosity. Not entirely. I mean the notion of very assertive kind of community identities are also emerging. And people are conscious of the fact that they are Muslims of different kinds. Maybe she has only etc. Or Hindus of different kinds, different sects etc. Those notions are emerging in a big way. By 16th century we know that curses and sects and religions and communities and Sampradais etc. The diversity in every religion is becoming more and more clear. What becomes important is what role the political domain is playing in ensuring that this diversity coexist respectfully and not resorting to violence against one another. So as I said that violence is possible in the wake of the conquest but when it comes to actually ruling and governing the responsibility of the rulers has been to ensure that people are not killing each other in the name of religion. And people are not harassing each other in the name of religion or occupying there etc. And this is what the Indian system has evolved to be. Since the 17th century at least that all different kinds of religious communities can peacefully coexist and the state has to maintain an equidistance from all of them and not to be seen as supporting or against equidistance. Equidistance was the word. Equidistance was a key word at that point. And that is what the path which we chose at during when India became independent. So it is not that a new political theory was imposed on India after independence. It is a continuation of what happened in the medieval period also. There is something which I want to understand from your Rajyuddin. The making of the Muslim community in India. People who came, the invader kings or the kings who came later on. They were not the people who comprise the Muslim community today. They comprise of local people. So how did this come about? Were there elements of coercion? Were there elements of inducement? How was it that a large number of people converted to Islam? Was it because at that point Islam appeared to be a more open society, more progressive society allowing them a greater amount of egalitarian, religious egalitarianism compared to Hinduism? You see there are four or five theories regarding how the making of Islam has happened in this and conversion, Islamization. The making of the Muslim communities today historically over 700 years period also, 13th century. It happened over several centuries. One hypothesis is that Muslims are foreigners. They have come from outside and well-to-do Ashraf Muslims have also been claiming that we have come from Arabia and our ancestors have come from Arabia or Iran etc. Many of those claims are actually very dubious. Those claims are dubious because we understand that a large section of the Indian Muslim population is Indian. And they have embraced Islam. They have undergone a process of Islamic acculturation as Richard Eaton and others would also be talking about through introduction to Islam through various means, certainly through the means of the political. When a Muslim sultanate would emerge claiming it is to be an Islamic sultanate and then Sufis would also come in the picture. The Ulama would be coming in the picture. The Qazi's etc. would be coming in the picture. A small locality would then seem to be emerging as a Qasbah kind of town where it is a Muslim locality and increasingly we find especially with regard to Sufi narratives and Sufi literature and traditions which have come down to us from the middle of the 14th century onwards saying that last sections of population in different parts of the continent have actually emerged in close proximity to Sufi shrines. And there is a very close intermingling between the Sufi bhakti tradition. Exactly. Though they were also contested with each other in the sense that they appropriated each other's ideas and made efforts to win over followers from each other but there is certainly commonality in practices. You find so many numerous writings of Sufi saints of that period. Guru Granth Sahib is actually a compilation of the devotional songs etc. of a large number of bhaktas and sons from across different religious traditions including Baba. It really provides a slice of devotional thought of those actually. So there are those common grounds of devotional religiosity but also at the same time community, building and markers of very very aggressive in certain political contexts, aggressive community identities have also undergone. So basically what you are trying to say is that we cannot look at medieval history as some kind of pure black and white terms. You would say that it is not something of the golden era of the Mughal of India and the dark ages of Hindu society. On the dark age, the very interesting example that I will give to you of a historian, a writing historian, he taught in Delhi University otherwise a good historian working on the Khulji's etc. He would say that medieval India under Muslim rulers was a dark age because there was no electricity in medieval India. And there was no electricity in medieval India because Muslims were ruling and Muslims were against science and therefore electricity could not be developed. This is a completely dubious kind of proposition that is often offered and a large number of people who are otherwise ordinary. When you have people at this time who try to find every scientific discovery in ancient India so I would not blame your medieval historians possibly. That is true. Just part of the same political tradition. I deny that the medieval era or ancient Greece and ancient India, ancient Iran were not advanced civilizations. They were very, very advanced civilizations. But the kind of abuses that are made of the past in the present, in the politics of the present today is objectionable. It is wrong use, misleading use of the past in the politics of the present which is a matter of serious concern because in doing so misleading people who are just interested to know things that you are telling them and you are informing them in a manner that is not historical and therefore there is a need to actually go back to the past in all its complexities. One last question Akil as we run out of our time. Over the last century at least, slowly and progressively it has been increasing year by year, decade by decade it has been increasing. Religion has become the principal basis of social identity. It has become much more than when we were children, it is much more now and the way things are continuing it is possibly going to become even more sharper in the years and decades to come unless there are counterbalancing forces. In the medieval period was religion actually looked as a primary basis of social identity or whether other identities which were actually more important. I think identities of different kinds existed, they coexisted. The plurality of identities is the take away of the medieval era. Not black and white, Hindu, Muslim, upper caste, lower caste. The communities of people with their own traditions how they were able to be managed is that the political domain maintained that distance. For scholars we call it historical distance in the sense that even if there are difficulties between communities we are not going to be as historians or rulers going to be siding with one side of people against another. And at the same time we have to recognize the secular historians had not done and the communal historians had tried to abuse by asserting that community identities existed. Whereas they did exist, the more important question is how they were managed. They were managed. That was the key, it was not becoming confrontational like now. We find that the British tried to do by intervening in our tradition and creating difficulties there and setting people against one another by saying that you have come to face this kind of question problems because other people have come and dominated you over you, conquered you and ruled over you in a manner that is so very insulting and we have come to correct you, correct that and this is for your benefit. So long as for a multi-ethnic kind of society that we have and we have it for, you know, we have 2,500 years of, you know, continuous history now and we can add another 1,500 years to it 4,000 years of continuous history on the subcontinent. There will be moments, moments of the kind now we are faced with that there will be difficulties in social relations, etc. But eventually those in the business of power have to ensure that these communities coexist peacefully with regard to each other's you know, religious sentiments and emotions, etc. and that is the day forward. Unfortunately what has been happening is that those who have been in power have been increasingly trying to utilize them for consolidating their political hold on the social and the political order. That is what we have been seeing for a long time. True, but this kind of aggressive political agenda cannot be sustained for long. You know, from our history we know that we have to have some sanity in our political system and society otherwise we are going to create a harakiri with an anarchy in the society when people will just go and kill each other the way the mob lynching, etc. is going on, this has to be checked. On the note of your hope and also on the point which you made that unless we actually put an end to this it is going to lead to very worse and worse situations. Thank you very much for coming and joining me. You have actually been able to provide a very right perspective to medieval history and not really look at only in terms of black and white not to distort the past with through the prism of the present. I think it is a very important take away. Much of our understanding of contemporary India is built on false premises. History is often difficult to accept especially if it does not substantiate our theories of the present. Much of contemporary hostility is based on false notion and wrong interpretation of the past. Medieval India has been for long at the epicenter of the political conflict in India. I hope today's discussion has provided you with a fresh way of looking at this important period of India's history. Thank you very much.


Do you want an apology from me? Do you want me to apologise on behalf of Porirau Proud, which I already have? If you want me to do it again, Patrick, would you like me to say, I litia ahoi on behalf of Porirau Proud, apologise for the term, dumbass coconut being used? And if people are offended by it, can I suggest you put it in a bubble and blow it away? Liz Taniulu says Labour doesn't like losing the Pacific vote to Hikia Parata and bullies anyone who gets out of line. If this was a non-Pacific person who said that, you know, they would have been sacked, they would have been severe consequences. An issue, the mana by-election, quite a few hiccups actually, in fact, for Labour there. Is that going very well?  Well, those things happen, but they're not important in the overall scheme of things. And if people take offence to it then, again, I think they need to put it in a bubble and blow it away. I don't think it's going to be the first time it's going to be used or the last time.


Guys and gals Brad here for late in sports cards. We're ripping a 21 tops chrome update sapphire This is for Kerry R. Good luck, Kerry All right, we got Brock Holt A's auto rookie James Caprillion Daniel wisdom Tyson Miller Have any of you guys ever read the book the three-body problem rookie guardians Kyle Farmer Caesar Hernandez Taylor Tremel Jordan Luplo Yon Gomes Will Vast Mario Policiano I Think you're next do the Tigers insert rookie Luis Gonzalez top shelf Jonathan India Mike Minor Orange to 25 Khalil Lee Miles straw Nick Madrigal L. The Seer Hernandez Aaron Fletcher Kyle Finnegan Terry Scoobl. Yeah, I'm reading this book right now dude. So good. You got Freddy Peralta Carlos Hernandez twins Nate Pearson Do you read it all? You should read this one side by book we got Nick Anderson Cory Ray Cam Gallagher and Blake's now and there you go that does it for your box carry. We'll get them right out


soldiers to most professional armies which belong to the oldest and the largest democracies of the world, Jai Hind and a very good morning to all of you. On this bright and sparkling day in the serene surroundings of Auli, located at approximately 9,200 feet, I extend a warm welcome to you all in the lap of mighty Himalayas. We are honored to begin your land and beautiful country of India. Much like last year, we will train together, break bread together, laugh together, and drink tea together. We will do this here in the Himalayan mountains. We will build on our partnership and friendship over the next two weeks.


The latest weapons, coupled with the fighting skill of the American soldier, stand ready on the alert all over the world to defend this country. View the American people against aggression. This is the Big Picture, an official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. At no time in history has the United States had more foreign commitments than today. Through NATO, CETO, and numerous other alliances, we are pledged to take defensive action in case of aggression in most areas of the world. In the United States Army lies our main military strength on the land. Today's Big Picture deals with one of the Army's key components, a division in one of the world's potential trouble spots, Europe. From the Sea of Japan to the Caribbean, from the Red Sea to the English Channel will be found the men and weapons of the United States Army. At hundreds of widespread bases throughout the world, units are stationed to back up our pledges of aid to our allies. The United States, being a democracy bound in alliance with other free nations, cannot strike over any frontier in attack. American divisions facing armies of dictatorship must be prepared to join battle on the defensive wherever an attack may come. At war's end in Europe, 1945, United States and Soviet armies met in central Germany. Germany then lay shattered, its cities gutted, its industry a shambles, its government nonexistent. American servicemen found a national graveyard. But like the Phoenix, Germany has been reborn from her own ashes. The Germany the American soldier sees today is a nation rebuilt, re-energized, prosperous and hard-working, producing more goods than it did even before the war. This recovery was not achieved unaided. Four billion dollars of Marshall Plan funds helped immeasurably. Because of this transformation, America's role in Germany has altered too. The job of conqueror and occupier has passed into history. We no longer govern the Germans. They govern themselves under a democratic regime of their own choosing, at least in the western half of the country. The remainder is communist territory. But by no stretch of the imagination can it be said that recovery has been complete in the Federal Republic of the West. The scars of war still serve as reminders. Also, prices are high. A big hindrance to recovery, the iron curtain. The constant influx of homeless, jobless refugees from the communist territory adds a heavy burden to the economy of the West. The flow has been long and steady. Then too, the communists frequently resort to economic blackmail. The notorious blockade of Berlin is but one instance of attempted strangulation. America's response was positive. The airlift was expensive in material and lives, but it saved thousands from starvation and left no doubt in the minds of all Germans that our intentions were just. Our desire to help them, firm. For a time, the communists too were convinced. The blockade was lifted. But periodically, through barge and trucking barriers, the communist rulers have harassed the West. Backing them up are the hordes of the Soviet Red Army, the largest standing force of men in the world today, a constant threat to peace. The Soviet Air Force is probably as large as our own today. Its fighter planes as modern. Its navy has grown to become a first-class power, second only to our own in size, with a submarine fleet even larger than Americans. It is to meet this threat that we must maintain our soldiers in Germany and anywhere else in the world where our treaties and alliances demanded of us. For the Seventh Army in Europe, Germany is the frontier. Men who have completed their tours of duty are replaced by well-trained men fresh from the United States to keep the authorized force unweakened. The Second Armored Division is a key component in the total strength of the Seventh Army. Privates butchack and burn, replacements fresh from the United States, or entering a strange and foreign world but which at the same time is a familiar one. Neither speaks a word of German, neither has ever been beyond the borders of the United States before. But the men and the routines they meet at the Second Division's headquarters in Bodkruznack are fully familiar. Moreover, they are joining a unit with proper pride in itself, with high esprit de corps. The room butchack and burn will share as a comfortable one. However, it will serve only as a home base for men on duty in Germany spend anywhere from one-third to one-half of their time on maneuvers or in training in the field. The Second Division is a ready outfit. For the replacement, the transition from home to foreign service is made smooth by customary army routine. Private butchack is a specialist, a tank gunner. He is acquainted with a wide variety of tanks and weapons, but his job now will be to know one particular tank inside and out. He will learn its individual peculiarities, its own special temperament. Men of the Second Armored insist that tanks have individual personalities. The good tank team knows and appreciates this. Even though the tank itself packs enormous firepower, the tanker does not neglect his own weapons. The 45 automatic is to the tanker what the M1 is to the infantrymen. Not all the men of the Seconds share the same barracks. Many of those with families live in apartment buildings in totally American communities. Throughout Western Germany are more than 300,000 Americans, the largest American population outside the United States. The needs of a soldier's wife and children are met with special facilities. Justice's own needs are met with top weapons and equipment. Servicing the civilian requirements of the defenders of West Germany are all the stores and gas stations which would be found in a typical community back in the United States. It's a pretty safe assumption that if a housewife in Portland, Maine or Oregon were suddenly transported to one of the quartermaster core supermarkets in the Bodd-Kruznack or Kaiserslautern areas, she'd be surprised, naturally, but she'd feel right at home doing the family's weekly marketing. Of course, not all the housefraus in the American community started life in the United States. It's only natural that a number of men who arrive to serve in Germany as bachelors leave with wives of local birth. Appropriately, they are married to the strains of Wagner's wedding march from Lowendrin. It's also natural that when the tankers of the Second Armored or of any other outfit receive passes or leaves, they set about seeing as much of this foreign land as possible. The average soldier is as avid a tourist as any civilian. This makes perfect sense.  In Germany, he has roaming ground that has been the joy of civilian tourists for generations. The city of Hamburg, town and hamlet, is packed with historical interest. Many of the homes occupied even today were built in the years before Columbus set sail on his historic voyage. Colorful festivals and spectacles take place the year-round in cities stretching from Munich to Hamburg. For the soldier with a taste for fine art, Germany's many renowned art galleries provide rewarding experiences. A tour here offers the viewer what else in the world. Germany and Germans have long played important roles in the history of the Christian religion in the western world. For the tourist soldier, there are the magnificent cathedrals of Cologne and Ulmen, or the simple but impressive mountain chapels of southern Germany. Here, perhaps the American serviceman on duty with the 7th Army can best reflect upon and appreciate why he serves where he does. From the outside, a church card inside may not look quite like the familiar church at home, but the fundamental character of a place of worship is the same the world over, or wherever churches are allowed to exist. Germans and Americans share a love for music. The scores of Germany's great composers are played by service musicians wherever Americans are on duty, fostering international goodwill through common interests. To some, it may seem like a busman's holiday to pick up a gun or fishing rod, but the woods and streams of Germany are bound with fish and game which are a constant lure to sportsmen, civilian and soldier alike. Familiarity between German civilians and American servicemen breeds not contempt, but friendship. Two sportsmen sharing a common interest and pleasure in the woods and fields of Germany may achieve more international accord than a dozen diplomatic pouches. In the clear lakes and towering mountains, German swimming and even mountain climbing are there for the taking by the soldier-tourist. Baseball is becoming a familiar sight, although soccer is the German national sport. Army teams frequently compete with German clubs as our national pastime grows more popular every day. For men on leave less athletically inclined, rest camps are maintained by the army at places like Garmisch and Bechtesgarten. These then are but some of the advantages and recreations available to Americans in western Germany. But soldiering is the proper business of the soldier, and that is what the men of the 2nd division do the year round. The bulk of the division is on duty round the clock. To keep the men on their toes, maneuvers are secretly planned to be sprung on the division at a moment's notice. Constant readiness is the key word, for if west Germany is ever attacked, there is little likelihood of warning. We want no Pearl Harbor in Europe. Troops in Germany anchor men on the NATO defense chain which stretches all the way to the Middle East. Laxity or weakness here would endanger the whole defensive network. Hence, when the maneuver notice is posted, the men of the 2nd Armored Division are ready to move. While they load their multi-ton vehicles for simulated combat, other units in the area are also preparing to play their parts in the maneuver. The tools of the 2nd run all the way from the 45 and a bayonet on the end of a rifle and a leader gun. The ability to move this power fast is important. Weeks of planning have gone into the maneuver. Now orders must be executed instantly. The Armored Division of today operates on two simple principles. Hit the enemy as hard as possible with as much as possible while protecting our men to maximum. The German border to the east is 300 miles long. Its defense calls for a lot of manpower, a lot of protection A short time after the maneuver notice was posted, the whole 2nd Armored Division is ready to roll from camp, geared for action. Among all the weapons being revolutionized for the battlefield of today or tomorrow, the tank ranks high for the tank's intrinsic qualities make its survival possibilities in an atomic attack a good bet. Moreover, the tank is highly mobile, another quality that raises its stature in the atomic age. The sight of these lumbering monsters has become a familiar part of the everyday scene for Germans living in the area. But the spectacle never fails to bring out the populations of neighboring towns as the division rolls toward the maneuver zone. Meanwhile, the huge 280-millimeter guns are converging on the maneuver scene. These guns can fire either atomic or conventional 360-pound shells. The motto of these artillery men is have gun will travel. Moving up also are the honest Johns, the free flight rockets which can be adapted to carry atomic warheads. Never before in American history has a peacetime army been so strenuously trained. Men of the 2nd spend more than half their time in the field on maneuvers like this or on training exercises. Less emphasis is put on garrison duty than in years past, but a great deal more emphasis is put on the basic job of fighting. The woods are becoming as familiar as the barracks at camp. Men who don't know from one day to the next at times whether or not they'll be spending the night in a heated room or under the canvas of a leaf-spotted tent sometimes jokingly refer to themselves as field happy. This observation contains three basic truths. The men of the 2nd know how to live in the field. They are half the time in the field ready to fight and if the time comes when they will have to fight an earnest, they will find themselves in familiar surroundings applying their weapons and training in the woods and in the fields they know so well. After a night in the field the tankers of the 2nd armored rise to face the new duties of the day. They are given no timetable on which to fight. As they go about their routines in the Bivouac area no one but the maneuver director knows when the simulated attack will start. The division may camp here another day another two days or for just another hour. Its alertness and readiness to respond will be tested fully. At the Bivouac command post the division officers study maps of the area. Intelligence reports have been coming in on the location and activities of the other American units which will play the role of the aggressors. They of course have one great advantage the ability to attack suddenly unexpectedly wherever they will. In addition to setting the time of battle for their convenience the aggressors will also be able to select the place. This is very much like playing cards with a stacked deck. Every booby trap every man dug in at an unexpected point is a marked car. Unfortunately these very same conditions would exist if an attack were actually launched against West Germany. In as many respects as possible the simulated battle conditions are made as realistic as possible. Just as they would be at a time of real alert religious services are performed for men of all faiths. All pray God that such an eventuality may never be realized. Now when the men of the second armored and the least expected the start of the attack is heralded. The aggressors atomic artillery. The defender's reaction is immediate and lethal. The honest John Rocket is sent winging its way toward the heart of the enemy's forces. Now that the enemy have revealed their whereabouts the men of the defending forces bring their own 280 millimeter gun into play. To move the gun into position set it up for action low in a name takes less than 30 minutes before firing. For the maneuver of course conventional shells are used. The enormous chess game has begun. The battle has been joined. Now the problem is to force the enemy into isolated pockets of resistance and once bottled to attack him with intensified force. Regular artillery pieces are now brought into play for this concentrated bombardment. The aggressors had launched their attack against friendly troops garrisoned in the target town of Schwannberg an abandoned village in the maneuver area. The mission of the second armored will be to cut off the town and route or destroy the aggressors. The tankers must approach Schwannberg over an open plane which provides no cover for the vehicles. Soon a position above the town has been secured. Now personnel carriers bearing the foot soldiers are ordered up. These new vehicles bring the infantryman right up to the front with maximum safety deliver him fast and untired from a long hike. The combination of simulated atomic bombardment and conventional artillery fire leads the town to ruins. But experience has shown that some of the enemy will survive until they are wiped out or captured and the land controlled neither the battle nor the war can be considered won. This is the job of the foot soldier and Schwannberg proper is the most ticklish part of the maneuver. Overconfidence on the part of the officers directing the attack underestimating the strength of the aggressors still dug in in the town could lead to costly casualties. As the infantry move in under cover of the protecting tanks the individual units learn to operate swiftly and efficiently as members of a smoothly functioning team under battle conditions as realistic as possible. Here the lessons of cover and concealment are instilled forcefully. The wisdom of taking advantage of existing obstacles is learned through experience. The occurrence of atomic tactical weapons and military arsenals does not alter the basic fact that only ground troops using the old proven techniques of firepower plus mobility are capable of taking and holding the land. Ground blasted by atomic firepower must still be physically occupied by troops before it can be considered secure. And of course if atomic weapons are not used on any future battlefield these basic facts are all the more important in application. And once shaken by heavy fire the aggressors troops and positions must be cleaned up before the enemy can recover. Even after the battle the enemy's troops are a continuing problem. Those who have not been wiped out must be driven into the open and disarmed. The taking and handling of prisoners of war are important techniques which are learned as part of the total operation. The performance of every tank crew, platoon and company in the division is carefully evaluated throughout the maneuver. Mistakes made now can be pointed out and corrected before a later slip up which might prove fatal to an individual to the division or to the seventh army's strength as a whole. The respite after battle is welcomed eagerly by the tired and thirsty tankers and infantrymen. But the pause can be only a brief one. Vehicles must be cleaned. Any damage repaired and the vehicles returned to combat readiness. No one knows when the next surprise maneuver will come or a real battle should the communist forces of the east decide to annex the new federal republic by force of arms. West Germany today is building up an army to protect itself. But the day of complete military self dependence is still in the distant future. Therefore we must continue probably for some years to come to support armed forces of greater strength than ever before in our peacetime history. Through units like the Second Armored Division we are offering both our allies and our potential enemies, firm proof that we stand ready to back up our pledge to maintain peace with military might if attacked. For the men on duty with a typical US army division service in Germany as we've just seen can be an interesting and rewarding experience. But more important their very presence west of the Rhine has undoubtedly brought rewards to every American citizen in the past by helping to safeguard our national security at home. Moreover we hope their presence will continue to bring the same rewards in the future. Now this is Sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us again next week for another look at your army in action on The Big Picture. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the army at home and overseas produced by the Signal Corps Pictorial Center presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station. You too can be an important part of The Big Picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped the best trained the best fighting team in the world today the United States Army.


The US Food and Drug Administration has been monitoring the arsenic content in foods for decades, yet despite the well-established science describing the health risks associated with arsenic exposure, no standards have been set limiting the amount of arsenic allowable in foods in the United States. In 2001, the EPA adopted a new stricter standard for arsenic in drinking water. In 2013, the FDA proposed a legal limit for apple juice, yet there are still no standards for arsenic in food, despite the fact that food sources are our main source of exposure. China has standards. As of 2014, China set a maximum threshold of 150 parts per billion, stricter than the World Health Organization limit of 200. In the US, a 200 limit wouldn't change the cancer risk much. Now at 150, if we had China's safety limits, that would help produce cancer risk up to 23%, or even 47% of the limit of 100, but that could seriously affect the rice industry. In other words, US rice is so contaminated with arsenic, if you set a safety standard that really cut down on cancer risk, it would wipe out the US rice market. But with no limits, what's the incentive for the rice industry to change its practices? Setting arsenic limits would not only directly protect consumers, but also encourage the industry to stop planting rice paddies on arsenic-contaminated land. But those cancer estimates are based on arsenic-contaminated water studies. Maybe the arsenic in rice somehow has a different effect? You don't know until you put it to the test. Yes, rice has lots of toxic arsenic that urine studies show we absorb into our body, but to date, there weren't any studies that demonstrated deleterious health impacts specifically of rice arsenic until this study. They figured, hey, arsenic causes bladder cancer. So let's just see what kind of DNA mutations the urine of rice eaters can have on human bladder cells growing in a petri dish.  Yeah, but they used pretty contaminated rice. Only about 10% of the rice in certain parts of Asia might ever reach those levels, though a quarter in parts of Europe might, and over half in the US, making for considerable public health implications. So there remains little mystery surrounding the health risks associated with arsenic levels in rice. The remaining mystery is why long overdue standards for arsenic levels in rice have not been set in the United States, but that may be changing. Last year, the FDA proposed setting a limit on toxic arsenic, at least in infant rice cereal. Infants and children under 4 average the highest rice intake, in part because they eat like three times the amount of food in relation to their body size, so there's an especially urgent need for regulatory limits on toxic arsenic in baby food. Pediatric nutrition authorities have recommended that when it comes to rice and rice-based products, arsenic intake should be as low as possible. And hey, how about as early as possible? Approximately 90% of pregnant women eat rice, which may end up having adverse health effects on the baby. You can estimate how much rice the mom ate while pregnant by analyzing arsenic levels in infant toenail clippings. Specifically, an increase of a quarter cup of rice per day was associated with about a 17% increase in infant toenail arsenic, indicating that rice arsenic can be passed along to the fetus. What might that arsenic do? A quarter cup of rice worth of arsenic has been associated with things like low birth weight, increased respiratory infections, and above that a 5 to 6 point reduction in IQ. So based on the FDA's findings, it would be prudent for pregnant women to consume a variety of foods, including varied grains, which is all code for cut down on rice, saying eat less of anything after all is bad for business. Then once the baby is weaning, what's apparent to do? To reduce arsenic risks, consumer reports recommend that babies average no more than a serving of infant rice cereal a day, relying on other grains instead, which are much less contaminated. As the American Academy of Pediatrics has emphasized, there is no demonstrated benefit of rice cereal over other grains, such as oats and barley, all of which have lower arsenic levels than rice cereal. Reducing consumption of infant rice cereal to just two servings per week could have an even more dramatic effect on reducing risk. The proposed limit on toxic arsenic in infant rice cereals would end up removing about half off the shelves. The FDA recently analyzed more than 500 infant and toddler foods, and the highest levels of toxic arsenic were found in organic brown rice cereals and toddler puffs. Based on the wording, though I can't confirm it, they appear to be this brand. Not so happy baby if they suffer brain damage or grow up to get cancer. A single serving could expose infants to twice the tolerable arsenic intake set by the EPA for water. I contacted the happy baby company and was told that they were not able to provide any comments on the FDA's results. Eliminating all rice and rice products from the diets of infants and small children up to 6 years old could reduce the lifetime cancer risk. 6% lower chance of developing lung or bladder cancer later in life if infants stopped. 23% lower chance of young kids stopped. But switching to other grains is a move described as drastic and dramatic, creating a huge crisis for the rice industry, presumably and therefore evidently not feasible at all.


Natural selection is a process in which if there is a trait which has an advantage, meaning higher chances of survival, then automatically it gets more passed on because more chances of reproducing and over generation, its number can start increasing. And this is one way in which evolution can happen. And we'll get back to this in a second. But in this video, I want to talk about a different way in which evolution can take place. And this is called genetic drift. So let's find out what genetic drift is. So I like to think of genetic drift as evolution, evolution by luck, evolution by luck. And you'll see why I say that, okay? So let's get back to our story of beetles. So in a previous video, we were focusing on these group of beetles which were mostly red in color. But then due to mutations, some beetles were born differently. Some had green color and some had blue color. And these crows were an important part of the story because they eat on these beetles. And this is where the green beetles had an advantage. They are hard to see, even in this picture, they are hard to notice, right? Which means less chances of getting eaten, more chances of their survival. And so more chances of them reproducing and passing on those genes. And so as time passed on, their numbers started increasing. And that's what we call natural selection. And of course, this has been explained in more detail in our previous videos on evolution and natural selection. So if you need more clarity, definitely you can go back and watch that. But in this video, let's consider a different scenario. Let's say before natural selection has time to kick in, some calamity strikes. Maybe there's a fire or an earthquake or lightning strike or cyclone or something like that happens. Let's consider something simple. Let's say some animal comes in and stamps it and goes, that can totally happen. So let's say an elephant stamps on it, thud. And this kills almost all the beetles, only a few ones over here survive. What happens next? Well, a couple of things can happen.  That's one scenario. Another scenario could be if they survive, they can start reproducing and repopulating. But now what's interesting to see is there are more blue-colored beetles, okay? That means as time passes by, there's a good chance that more blue-colored beetles will be found. And if we compare this with the previous situation, what do you see? Well, earlier the red beetles were more in number, which means the genes responsible for red color, they were more frequently seen and more frequently being passed along. So red color, genes had a higher frequency, right? But afterwards, see what happened. Now blue color are in majority. That means their genes are more frequently seen, the genes responsible for blue color, right? And so that's in high frequency now, which means, which means our beetles have evolved. That's the definition of evolution, when the gene frequency changes over generation in a population, that's what we call as evolution. So the beetles have definitely evolved. But think about what caused this evolution? Did they evolve because the blue beetles had some kind of an advantage? Absolutely no, they have no advantage compared to red beetles. At least in this scenario, they can be easily spotted. It's the green ones that had an advantage, right? But the only reason this happened, this whole evolution happened to blue beetles is because in that stampede when the elephant stomped the group of beetles, they just happened to be in the right place at the right time purely by luck. And so they survived. Most of the red beetles perished. The green beetles also perished. And it is for that reason they evolved this way, right? And that's why I like to call this evolution by luck. And it's called so. It's called genetic drift because in this disaster, most of the red genes just drifted away, meaning they just vanished because they died. The green genes, the genes responsible for green color, which would have been naturally selected, they also vanished. They just died, drifted away. So most of these genes drifted away because of some calamity, some disaster. That's why it's called genetic drift. So evolution can also happen. So this is evolution. Let me just write that. This is evolution, but it's not caused due to natural selection. It's not because they have an advantage, but it happened purely by chance. And so the basic moral of the story here is that in certain populations, you might see certain traits which are being passed along, even though they have absolutely no advantage in that environment. And that happens mainly because of genetic drift, meaning some random event caused all the other genes to just vanish away. Now, before we wind up, one question for you. Do you think genetic drift happens in a large population or in small population? What do you think? Okay, let's see. So let's imagine this was a large population of beetles, say thousands of beetles, okay? And the way I'm gonna show that is I'm just gonna take that same elephant foot and make it smaller, okay? This does not mean that the elephant has become smaller. Think of it as, since we're dealing with large number of beetles, they are occupying a much larger area, so I'm zooming out to show you this. And from that perspective, the elephant foot looks smaller. Think of it that way. Now, in this situation, do you see that there's a very good chance that almost all the genes might survive? Even if the elephant stamps multiple times, think about it. Because they are more spread out over here, when that stampede happens, maybe definitely a lot of red will survive. But maybe there were some of these greens were in this corner. Some of the greens were in this corner. Some of the blues maybe have been that corner. So because now there are more in number compared to before, it's a very good chance that all those genes might survive. So yeah, beetles will die definitely, but all these genes might still survive. And if they survive this particular catastrophe, then it's the green one that will get naturally selected. So what does this mean? This means in large population, we don't expect a genetic drift to happen. Genetic drift only happens in small populations. So let me just write that down. That's super important. We would expect genetic drift to happen in small populations, small population. That's pretty much it. So what did we learn in this video? We learned something called genetic drift. It's a process in which random events can make certain genes just drift away. And then automatically, the genes that survived that random event will get more passed on and ends up becoming majority in that population. Because of this, in certain population, even though certain traits have absolutely no advantage, they might still be found majority in number. And remember, genetic drift happens in small population, smaller the population, more chances of having genetic drift.