So that's like 13 years and seven months that I spent, that I've been there. Started from Drupal 4 and 5, 6, 7 and then 8 now. Today we are going to look at Drupal 8 bog-offs, a hitchhiker's guide to less popular symphony components. Now, buy one, get one free. We all love it baggy, right? But we all know that actually you are paying for two or three items when you buy one and get one free. But anyway, that's all we had to talk about. Well, my good friend, Nonimos, said there's nothing like a free lunch even in the open source world. So you get something free, that's usually a price to pay. And he also said all vanilla Drupal installations are equal, but some are more equal than others. What does that mean? So that means there is a slight difference between the symphony components that you get when you use Composer Create Project and when you just download Hitah Ball from Drupal.org. You've got some smaller components that get pulled in when you use Composer. And that you can easily verify with Composer Show. Now, all the symphony components in blue come with it when you get Hitah Ball. However, Composer Create Project actually pulls in the ones in green. And most of what I'm going to talk about today are the ones that compose a person. OK, yes. Now, I've sort of looked at all these lesser known components and I've classified them into four groups. Very simple, it's there, just do it. It's there, you need to use it, see what that means. It's there, do your own thing.  Now, the first one, is there, just do it. I believe some of us use something like this. Some people say Exdebug is the only thing. But Vadom is there, DPM, we use Kint, we use DSM, we use Print R. However, that Vadom component allows you to call just dump. You don't need to do anything at all, just like you do DPM, you use Vadom, you use Print R. All you have to do is just call dump. And there you get something like this. OK, so let me just exit now, I hope this works. Yeah, can we see it? I've got a super cool site here. Yeah, you can see it there, it sits there nicely, you can collapse everything, you've got the language, you've got the array there, it's super handy, I find it useful. And you don't have to do anything at all, just call dump. It's there, you just have to use it. OK, now before I go to the next one, let me quickly do something here. Let me check out this. I've got a branch here for the next. OK, cool. So, let me now refresh this sign. What happened? What just happened? Anyway, we all probably have seen that message a number of times, so I just go back. And that's what the next component is all about. It's there, you don't have to do anything special except just use it. That's a symphony debug component. How is that going to help me now? I just need to add the following two lines at the top of my settings.php. And then let's see what happens. I hope it works. So that's my settings.php, I've added those lines there before. So I just do that. Let's see whether that's going to help me now. Ah, that's better, that's better. It takes me a lot of time. And before going to the solution to that problem, you can see how the request is handled. You can see index.php is handled. And then where the magic is happening in the symphony, that's the handle method. Where is handle method? It's not there, I can find it. However, when it gets to the point of connection to the database, it says that's the problem. Access denied for user, you can see. And that's there. So let me see where the problem is. I think I know. So now all I have to do is I've got some DMC Amsterdam. And I know my... Close your eyes while I type my password. I think I should do it now. DC Amsterdam, DC Amsterdam. We are happy again, yeah? Awesome, awesome. Good. So nothing else needs to be done. Let me just switch back to my old... Because I need the others. Okay, that's better. So we can see how that small change allows us to have more information about errors, about things, and our code. Next is this one. The Finder, the Finder component. It's there. You have to do your own thing. It's not that used a lot in code or in... Whether it's the console, the Drupal console project or all sorts of things. However, I find it useful when dealing with fires. And let me just... You see? I would like to get zip files from a certain directory. And that folder is nested. And I just want to do that, right? So this code works, right? It works. But then look at the code. I'm looking for all the files. And we know fires. And here you can either be the folder or the file. So we check whether it's a directory. Then we recast back to get the zip files. And again and again, then we do path info. And then we check for the extension. And then we get our data. What about this one? That's what the Finder component allows us to do. It's an abstraction. Of course it's an object-oriented abstraction of all the functionality we saw earlier on. But you can see. You can fit up by the name. You can fit up by size. You can say I want to get fires between this size and that size. You can do all sorts of things, right? And then the output is just the same. I don't know which one you prefer. I know the one I prefer. And the output is exactly the same. So if I go to my site. Yeah, you can see that. Let me just turn that off. Let me just turn that off. I've just done something. I shouldn't be done really there. OK, that's better. So that's the one. And exactly the same thing you can do. You can see with my Finder. But when it comes to code, the one that is easier to understand, of course I know the one that I choose. OK. Is there? Nothing stops here. Now, with this .env component, there are two things that I would like to mention before coming to this one. First of all, Drupal Core includes a .env example. Right? So it allows you to store credentials in a .env file. However, as documentation says, you need to call getEnv to get the variable you set in the .env file. You don't need to do anything else apart from copy this .env example to .env. And then you can then use getEnv to get the credentials. However, I read somewhere that getEnv is not that safe. It's not a performance. I don't know what that means. However, this .env example in Drupal Core is managed by another component. It's Vlucas.php.env. And that was what the symphony guys took. They made it more object-oriented. And we can do other things, different things with that component. So what that allows us to do is something like this. Let me just show you before I demo that. What that allows you to do. However, before you can use that, you need to install it. You deal with the composer require symphony.env that pulls in the component for you. So in your settings.php you can after creating the .env object you can now load the .env file. However, if you follow the Drupal recommendation of just copying the .env example to .env in the same place you don't need this, you don't need that line. .env load. It's not automatically for you. And to make it easier you can also name space your variables there. So let me show you how that one looks like. But that one looks like. So I've got my super cool app here. I named space it DCA. This is the credential that I need, right? And to make it work with the settings object in Drupal and I'll do something like this here. I can just similar to what we saw earlier on the slide. So it's exactly the same thing. So I'm just reading my DC underscore variables and removing it so I can then set the value in the settings area. So what that means is that when I want to use that in any place it works just like any other settings then because load it automatically for you. You don't have to call .env again. You don't have to do any of that by yourself, right? So you can just do your settings normally. So you can see it's there like that. Settings get. I get API user and then you can do that. And we can see it here. I think I made it. That's what that one is called. So that's from my .env. It's not accessible from the web and that kind of thing and that's what .env is used for. There are other uses for the .env file. Now all these components were documented on the symphony website. So if you go there just type in components and you get all these all the different options. You can have different .env files for different environments and then to get automatically loaded for it depending on the depending on where you are at. Yes. So where are we? So just a quick just do it. You don't have to do anything and you have to use it. You can just use X, Y, Z and then and then if it's there you can use it as you like like to find a component or something that is there out there in the wild. It doesn't have to be a symphony component at all, right? Maybe you like how digital time is being handled but a carbon project requires a carbon and then you use it. So now there is there's another there's another thing that you can do now the Drupal console project leverages the symphony component from the symphony project and there are some gems little gems in all these packages that are not being used at all that you can use to do something like this. Let me just do something like this quickly I think my time is nearly up let me quickly do this now there's no content here, right? You can write you can write a Drupal console command to generate notes for you, right? Sometimes you would like to get a visual representation to show where you are at I worked on a project that had to handle like that was pushing pushing like 10,000 tens of thousands of files to S3. There was no way we could know, right? Whether it's successful or not we just crossed our fingers, you know however, something like this let me just say there's oh, I hope I remember this command let me just let me quickly ah, DNC okay, that's the alias Drupal, DNC look it's telling us how many notes have been created and then it tells us done so that is the progress bar class in that's part of the symphony console component and the code is simple of course you need to create the command yourself, right? and then in that command first of all you need the progress bar class, right? and then you initialize it and then you customize the output and the device is open now you can now start your processor, right? as many as you like at the bottom of the loop you advance the progress bar by default it's just one for instance if you've got chunks chunks of items to then it makes sense if you have 10 then you can then advance 10 so that's gone 10 items and then you can track the progress and then progress bar finish yeah, so that's it I think we are finished right? yeah? hold on yeah so let me just the we can see our 1000 nodes there so they were created for us nicely yeah so quick recap then yeah my friend says what happens in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam but he added something else what happened? shouldn't stay in Amsterdam so what I'm trying to say is that whether it's one little thing that you've learned over this couple of days it'll be good to take it back with you I hope one of those little gems will be something from this session thank you thank you for your show tomorrow and please take the survey thank you very much


Now, we're all aware of all the success that the Ravens had last season, and it was a beautiful thing to watch, especially as a Raven fan, but just as a football fan in general, a lot of people enjoyed it. Seeing Lamar Jackson become a full-time starter and really take that leap in his second year. Watching young gyms like Mark Andrews, Mark Hase Brown, just get this shine on and get plenty of opportunities to show why they are the next up-and-coming young talent in NFL. And also, even older veterans like Mark Ingram still continue to do his thing and be successful and put up very good numbers as a part of this young team and also be one of the leaders on this team. But something that definitely didn't go unnoticed in my guy Gaming Bros. XL brought out such a great point in the comment section a little while back was the reliance on Mark Andrews and the reliance on Mark Ingram and how the Ravens, they definitely, of course, you want to rely on your biggest players, but at the same time, you still want to spread it around. You want to spread the ball around and spread the targets around a lot more this year just so you can have a lot more options to fall back on. And let's read the comment that he left. It said, and it was in reply to my guy Jonathan Jones' comment when he asked, do you think Mark Hase Brown will be a number one receiver or will it be Mark Andrews? So with that, that was a really good question because some people might think, oh well Mark Andrews is a tight end. How could he be a number one receiver? Well, he lined up at receiver a lot. And when you catch the most passes and you are the most targeted, a lot of people will look at you as a number one receiver because what does a tight end do with the football? Does he run it? Well, yeah, he does after he receives it. So when Mark Andrews, a lot of people did consider him the number one receiver for the Ravens last year. But let's look at my guy gaming bro excels his comment, his response. He said, we really need to lighten the load and dependence on Andrews. Notice how our two players with the biggest workloads, Andrews and Ingram. So Mark Andrews and Mark Ingram were injured and not 100% in the playoffs and how we faltered because we depended on them too much. And when he said that, I was like, Oh, wow, that is a really, really, really good point because they were two main guys. Obviously, Mark Andrews was our lead running back. He did so many different things for the Ravens. And again, when you have a lead back, you're going to depend on him the most. But at the same time, you still had a Gus, it was there who was more than capable of carrying the load as he's shown ever since his rookie year. And at times throughout this past season two, but the Ravens just didn't give him that chance. And then Justice Hill, I don't think he got any carries that game. I don't believe, but I don't remember 100%. So that was that with Mark Ingram. And then with Mark Andrews, oh, he was just, he was amazing last year. But again, toward the end of the year, yeah, he did get a little banged up. And I mean, everybody's banged up throughout the years. It is a very physical sport, a very physical season. It is it can definitely take a toll on your body as a football player. But with Mark Andrews, he was a little nicked up in the playoff games, too. So but Ravens did still have a Hayden Hurst, but he's talking about now. Hayden Hurst ain't there no more. And while Nick Boyle got a good set of hands, Nick Boyle don't have that separation like a Mark Andrews does. But anyway, let's keep reading his comment because he wasn't done yet. He said, and just to recap it again, he said, we really need to lighten the load independence on Mark Andrews. Notice how our two players with the biggest workloads, Mark Andrews and Mark Ingram were injured and not 100% in the playoffs and how we faltered because we depended on them too much. Without Hurst, we will depend on Andrews being healthy even more. Remember the Bills game? Mark Andrews went down, then Hurst ran for a big touchdown. And it was nice. That's why it was such a beautiful thing. It was such a great, a perfect situation that the Ravens had at tight end. They had such a great situation because you had three good starting tight ends. And two of them, they got some legs on them. They got some wheels. But you had three starting quality tight ends. Mark Andrews, Nick Boyle and Hayden Hurst. Like, man, that was such a great situation. But the Ravens again, them and Hayden Hurst. It was a mutual thing. Hayden Hurst, he wanted to go somewhere where he could really be used a lot more. And Ravens are like, hey, OK, cool, we understand. We respect you, respect your game and we'll respect your wishes, too. And we got some significant stock from, I think, J.K. Dobbins is from the Hayden Hurst trade. But anyway, he said without Hurst, we will depend on Andrews being healthy even more. Remember the Bills game? When Mark Andrews went down, then Hurst ran for the big touchdown. I definitely want Mark Easter to become the leading receiver over Andrews. But Andrews will definitely get his targets. So, yes, Hollywood. That was a name that he didn't mention because Hollywood was also injured. Well, he was really injured throughout the entire season, as we all know. So that limited him, that limited his production, that limited his practice, that just limited him the entire season. But now with him not being hurt anymore, it makes it that much more exciting. But this is why it's so important that the Ravens really spread the ball around even more and don't have it to, of course. Hey, if you got you're going to have your games where your main players, they dominate and they're doing their thing, they're making all these players. So you want to keep feeding them. So you don't want to just force feed everybody else. If somebody's hot, if somebody keeps beating their man coverage or beating the zone to find a little holes in the zone or whatever. If somebody keeps making plays, hey, let them keep making plays. But at the same time, you want to make sure you get other people involved. So when that main person is taken away out of the game plan, that you still have other legitimate options that you can go to and you can count on, especially in clutch situations, especially in clutch moments, especially in the playoffs. Because you don't want it to be where, oh, OK, we only got this guy. We only got that guy. And if anything happens with either one of the two, oh, we're done. We ain't got nobody else that we go to. You don't want it. You don't want that to be the case. So in order for that not to be the case, that's why they got to approach it. That's what I got to do when they you still got Willie Snead. You got Miles Boykin. All these people, they can attribute that they can contribute. Excuse me. They can contribute to the Ravens, the offense. They can contribute really to the overall success of the team. But it's just up to the Ravens. It's up to Lamar Jackson. It's up to Greg Roman. And it's up to them as the receivers, as the tight ends, as the running backs. It's up to all those other guys for when they do get the opportunity. It's up to them all to come together and make the place because one can't do it without the other. It's going to take a group effort and it's going to take everybody really putting their heads together and their game plan together in order to make it happen. So I just thought that was very interesting. Shout out to my guy, Gaming Bros. Excel. He is extremely active on the channel. He's always in the comment section like every single video. So I appreciate it, man. Thank you and thank you for bringing up such such a great point. It was beautiful. Much love to you. I appreciate you. I appreciate all your team. Keep it clean. And on that note, we out.


Hi Cathy, this is Ashley with Oxford Toyota. I wanted to send you all a very quick video greeting that way you can see who you'll be working with and thank you so much for your recent interest in a new Corolla. I want to hit an instant you over links to our current inventory that way you can look them over before you're able to stop into the dealership. If you have any questions please let me know. I'll be happy to help. You can give me a call. My number is 5-0-2-2-4-7-1-6-6 Orchids email me back. Thanks, bye!


Where we left off, talking about vector fields, and so we have some F, some R in R, and this can give us the gradient vector field. It didn't really prove this, so I don't know, maybe it's obvious. So let's, so imagine that we have some, I'm going to compare these two actually, we need to put that aside. So I want to show that, not verb, so gradient of F is perpendicular to give sub what? Fx. No, next to the perpendicular symbol. So it's perpendicular, Bible set S, which contains. Oh, X naught, sorry, I just couldn't read that. So what I'm saying is, so let me draw a picture. So suppose that we have, I don't know, F is X squared plus Y squared, the easy example, and let's put it in here. Plus Y squared, which is for the contour graph, these are supposed to get closer together. Is it contour? This is Y. And the statement says that if I take any one of these level sets, I take this curve here, and I take any point in that level set. So as long as we're not at a point where the gradient is zero, the gradient here is perpendicular. Or the gradient here, this is really the same picture, is perpendicular to that level set. Now if we are in the case of a higher dimension dimensional thing, these level curves will be spheres. So here, I can't draw this contour graph, but I can sort of draw, I can't even draw that. You should imagine concentric spheres here. So any one of these spheres is a level curve. And I have a level curve, I have level surfaces. So in this case, I should have done something close to that. F of X, Y, Z equals constant. So I'll get a series of concentric spheres like that. And the gradients will be perpendicular to these spheres. So here this S is one of those.  On that patch, the gradient goes away from that patch. And it's perpendicular. So how would we prove that? Yeah? We could do is say whenever we got a vector, we could find the directional derivative of something by dotting a vector with a gradient. But we want the direction that we headed for the change to be zero. Because we don't want to go up and down or on a conical line. So in order for that to happen, we need something perpendicular to the gradient. The direction would be perpendicular to the gradient. Okay? And because that's the only way that the dot product will be zero. Yeah, so that's why the gradient is always perpendicular to the patchwork. Okay. I mean, you're sort of justifying the converse, but yeah. Right. So I mean, intuitively, it's just that, you know, if I have a level set like that, and that means this is the direction of no increase. And so the direction of maximal increase should be as quickly as you can get away from it. Now in this case, let me not draw the sphere. We just draw a piece of a surface where I have a level surface. So there's a piece of a level surface. So here, this is f of x, y, z with some constant. Then the gradient has to be perpendicular to this. So that means that, what does that mean? That means that if I take the tangent plane to this level surface, the gradient dotted with everything in the tangent plane will be zero. But it's maybe easier, instead of thinking about the tangent plane, because I don't have to worry about tangent planes and so on, is take any curve that lives in the surface. So this is some curve, gamma, which lives in certain, lives in the surface. Right. So if I take any curve so that this gamma of t satisfies of gamma is a constant, is this clear what I mean? I'm seeing a little bit of blankness here. People understand what I'm doing? No? Okay. So I have here some level surface. Here it is. And I want to prove that the gradient vector is perpendicular to this surface. But rather than trying to approximate this surface by something else, the statement which is completely equivalent is, I'll draw it on this side, it's like a right one. Here's my surface. No matter how I travel around in the surface, there's a tangent vector associated with that, and that tangent vector will be perpendicular to the gradient. That's the statement that I'm claiming here. So we take gamma to be some, so gamma here is some function from r to rn, which is my curve. And if it satisfies this, then that means that it's like one of these squiggly lines. It lives inside my surface because my surface is defined to be the stuff so that f is evaluated at that point. It's that constant, whatever that constant is. Okay? And so now I can prove this just by showing that the gradient of f, so I take some point. So let's assume that gamma of t naught is x naught. And the gradient of f at this point x naught, this pen is failing, surface with its curves in it, and here the gradient goes this way and the wrong side of nose. H is f of gamma.  And now we can just take the derivative. So if we take the derivative of this equation, so h prime of t, get about this for a minute, derivative of c, which is zero, the constant derivative of constant is zero, but also it's the derivative of this. And that we did last time. That's the gradient, the derivative of the outside function, which is the gradient of f evaluated at the inside function, dotted with the derivative of the inside function. This is the tangent vector, and this is the gradient. And this is zero. The chain rule that we wrote last time, because I have exactly this setup, right? I have gamma takes to rn, and I have f, which takes rn. And last time we talked about the composition, growing that way, from r to r. We wrote a chain rule for such a composition. Okay? Any questions on that? I guess I didn't read that. So these are particularly important. The gradient vector field, this means that I have a vector field. I just wrote it over there. It's a vector field, although something like, well, here, this point corresponds to a high point. This would be another high point here. Here, here, my contour lines are going to be like circles or maybe ellipses. This point here, and then my contour lines are something like that. Right? So this is my graph in x, y plane of the contours of that. It's going to be this. I guess up is towards the dots here, the way I drew it. So my vector field here is going to flow inward, perpendicular to this, something like that. So it will be a vector field like that. Which corresponds to, so let me just take a particular line here, corresponds to always moving uphill as much as you can. Or more naturally, if you take the negative gradient, that will be like poured water on top and watch how the water goes down. Right? So I was going to change the sign and look at negative the gradient, which is flowing downhill. But, so in physics and in many applications, this function f is called a potential function. So gradient vector field means that you have some potential and the gradient vector field is the vector field that corresponds to the gradient for that potential. And these level curves that I drew are lines where the potential is constant. And then we can have, I had green, these solution curves that I'm drawing, something like, so this is following the flow lines here, that would correspond to something like this one there. So that's a solution curve to this different, to this vector field. So vector field corresponds in some very explicit sense to a differential equation here in the plane. And these solution, these flow lines here, so also one often uses the word flow instead of vector flow. So these lines here which correspond to the curves which are tangent to the gradient to the vector field are called solution curves or flow lines. And they're solutions of the differential equation, of the, of the vector field. So I just wanted to say a couple of words about that. We will definitely come back to looking at these kinds of vector fields later in like a month or maybe a little less, maybe a couple of weeks. Not just gradient ones but ones which are not gradients. So this, this is sort of like integration in the single variable case, right? The vector field is a way of specifying something about the derivatives, finding these curves, sometimes it's called finding an integral or solving the flow. So there's a, a close relationship there. Ortho 3. Yeah, the potential function is a function which, I mean you may not have an explicit formula for the function but it is a function. So for example in, you know, you might have potential energy. And so the energy is, can be conserved in which case you move on, on level curves of the potential. What is the intuition of the potential? Well, do you want intuition like intuition? Well, I don't know about this specific one. I guess, I guess if I flip it over, if I, if I make it, these are, these are down rather than up, then I could have two attracted, they have two gravity wells. And, and, and then, I could have this attract stuff and this attract stuff. And then you tend to go this way. So in this case, this, this potential could represent the, the potential of two mutually orbiting planets. And there is a point just between them where you exactly balance out, but it's quite unstable if you move a little bit, you'll fall into the orbit of the other guy. I mean there's, there's lots of applications here, right? So I, you can imagine that, well instead of putting in a rotating coordinate system, so I have a planet here and I have a planet here, stuff near this planet just crashes into it. But, but, you know, there is a place where far away you'll come in and then you're just to one side and the other so you go that way. That's exactly this kind of thing. But, you know, in general, potential can represent anything. Yeah, it's also, it can be the height on the surface. Okay, okay, so I want to come back to put vector fields away a little bit. Chain rule. So we have a chain rule already, this one from the old days. And then we also, this is the one where we take the gradient and we got it with, with the, this one is just, right, so let's call this H. So here we have d dt of h of t is, who's on the other side? G. G prime f of t times, and here again it's a single variable, d dt h of t is gradient of z times the tangent. And that needs to be a dot product.  Now, sometimes you have to be, we just point out, you have to be, and I'm going to be, we have to be a little careful about domains sometimes. Good question? Good question. So we have to be a little careful about positions. We have to have the same kind of care, but we can have the situation where we can find on some blob here, and so this is the domain of f. This is in, so in this case this is in Rm, this is in Rm. And maybe the domain of G doesn't include that whole thing. And so G only makes sense here. So this is the image of f. And so the composition obviously only makes sense on this overlap, which means it only makes sense on part of the domain. So sometimes you have to be a little bit careful. So maybe G takes its domain on this on blob, and then this image is just going to appear. We can only make sense of the composition, right? So you have, you sometimes have to take care. I don't know. When you have more variables, it's easy to lose track of that. I just want to point out, you have to pay attention to the domain. We already have a situation where we know what the chain rule should be in this, in this set. And that's the case where, in your function, we already know how that works.  So in this case A would need to be, who is rich, m by n is some other matrix p by n. What is df? And the chain rule is just multiply the matrices. And the composition, composition here, G of f is just, well, first I compute A of f, I compute B of that. And the derivative of this composition, so there's like nothing interesting here, of course in general. So we already saw, so in the case of linear f and G, the derivatives are just matrices. The composition just corresponds to multiplying the matrices. Nothing to do. What works in general, because we already know that the derivatives are matrices. The composition, so I need f with the mixed partials equal. Continuously different, make the partials are continuously the same thing. Continuously differentiable near x0. And I need G to be, G composed with f to be defined on some region of any, this situation where x0 is saving. The composition has one fact. And furthermore, derivative of G, I guess I want to turn it into a matrix. So I evaluated at f of x0 in the matrix C way, provided that you remember that everything inside is a matrix and you multiply matrices. And one sloppiness that you can do in single variable calculus is you can take the derivative of the inside function first and then multiply it by the derivative of the outside function that you don't necessarily work here. It may not even make sense because the dimensions may be wrong but we can't multiply the matrices together. But even if n equals m equals p, these two matrices might not work here. So it's important that we do this one first. So maybe I should do an example. And I have an example that I want to have. Oh, we do the proof first. We do the proof first.  The proof is just write everything down. Sure enough, it works. So I guess here I'm going to put everything. So in coordinates I'm going to assume, let's see, G is x1 up to xm. So the derivative of G will be partial, not of an f. If I take that and I plug in, partial of G1, G1 with respect to y. Two different letters, df at x1 and xdf. So there's the two derivative matrices. Multiply them there. Actually I'm not going to multiply them. Let's just look at what the ij guy looks like. So if I look at the product entry, this is just a sum, right? So to get ij, I take the i-throw here and the d-throw there and I'm going to get just the sum, d and ij place is just the product of the i-throw times the j-th column. So that's just the dot product of what? Well the i-throw is the gradient of G evaluated and I'm dotting that with, so let me write that as this variable when getting this column is giving me a tangent vector in the fk in the x direction, right? This is the tangent in the direction, so this is the tangent to the curve fj being fixed in all directions above 1. This is really xj. The same we saw before. So this is of G, right? Why? Why is it fj? So that's just the partial of GI. I can never keep track. Yes, it's evaluated in general with respect to xj. That's it? Yeah. So for the general, is every gradient dotted with any tangent? Yeah. Well, every tangent in each direction, right? You have a lot of tangents. So you take each coordinate and you dot it with the tangent in that coordinate direction. But I mean it's easier just to write down. So let's do an x squared minus y squared with respect to everything in sight. So the derivative of this with respect to u is v. Derivative of this with respect to v is u. Derivative of this with respect to u is 1. Derivative of u with respect to v is 1. So there's dG, df. I take the derivative of this with respect to x is 2x. With respect to y I get 2y. With respect to x I get 2x. With respect to y I get minus 2y. And let's compute the product at a point. So let's just compute the derivative of the composition at the point 1, 2. The book does 2 1. They use the same example but they do 2 1. Okay. So what do I need? I need to first figure out what is f of 1, 2? Because I'm going to need to know what v and u are. Right? So when x is 1, y is 2, then that tells me that u is 2 and v is negative 3. F of 1, 2. Why did I get 5 before? Because it is. I can't add. 5 is 5 negative 3. Right? 2 squared is usually 4 and not 1. Okay. So let's just plug in here and see that dG at the point I care about 5 negative 3 is the matrix. Negative 3 with matrix times this matrix. So that's negative 6. Yeah, negative 6 minus 10 is 4. Yeah, I got 4 last time. Negative 6 minus 10 is 4 and negative 12 minus 20 is negative 32. 2 plus 2 is 4. 4 minus 4 is 0. Question about that? Yeah. Here? Yeah, greater for the first term in the matrix. This times this. That's the row times the column. That will be negative 6 minus negative 6 plus 10. So this is negative 6 plus 10. It's the same 4 that I wrote but that's what it is. That minus 32 is not part of it. Okay? So that's, and that's the same derivative I got in my office so that's good. It means I can do it the same way twice. It doesn't mean I can do it right. Okay. So doing this guy first and this guy second. So I can, so the composition will be dt and dy here with t equals 0. I will take, so that means that UV, if I take this plug it into that. Now of course I could just do the composition and then take the derivative but let's do it the matrixy way. Here. So I'm going to call this map, have the situation r2 is just g is here, g is on the inside. Let's do df first. 2, 2, guys I get, just 1, 1, 1. And so now when I, it's easy. Those are, yeah, much better. Let's do it in two ways. We'll take the product of those two matrices which gives me in general what dx, dt, and dy, dt are. Then I use the unvaluated matrices, dt and dy, dt, the t times 2u plus 3v square, v e to the uv, u e to the v uv, 2u plus v e to the uv. I want the wrong system. What are they? It's g times. It's like, it'll be obvious. Yeah, and did I just get them backwards? Yes. I sure did, didn't I? Yeah. Yes. So this is also wrong. Yeah. But they get the same answer. Yeah. Because it's 0.1, so it doesn't matter. Yeah, okay. That's why it doesn't make any sense. That's much better. So it gives me 2u plus 3v plus 3v e to the t and v e to the uv plus u e to the t. If you don't want to mix t's and u's, then you can plug in. That's e to the t square with u to the t, e to the u is t plus 1 plus uv, t plus, so let's move on. So any questions about the same? This is saying I have some, I think just brought in terms of boxes, so I have some box here which I apply, my inner function is f for g. I guess I do f first.  It's a matrix. So it's some kind of linear m. Okay, so let me give you the geometric definition in one variable and then you'll see it's the same. So in one variable, intervals, some regions, and the graph with f has some slope here. Well, that's another way of saying that near this point a, so I'm just thinking about the derivative at a single point, near this point a, I can also think of f as taking, this is slope m. It takes the line and stretches it by a factor of m. I'm going to draw it just like a line. It takes a to f of a, but it takes points near a, at least on a small zero end is like two. So it's stretched by g does a similar thing. If I take my little ruler here, based at f of a, and I have my, my little ruler which has already been stretched, or maybe it hasn't been stretched. g has some derivative, so this is f prime of a. g has some derivative, so I apply g here, and it stretches by some other factor q. So here, let's say maybe it's some kind of, well I'll just stretch it again. So g prime of f of a is multiplication by some number q. So this will stretch this stretching again by another factor times q. So the composition, well if I first stretch by a factor of m, and then I stretch by a factor of q, I can just go directly stretching by a factor of m times q.  The same thing happens when I have, I have some grid here. I apply f to this, at least on a very small scale. f looks like multiplication by a matrix. So f, so df is some matrix A. That means on a very small scale this grid is going to be, as though I acted on it by some matrix A, just maybe going to compress and shear a little bit and get something like this. That's the action of multiplying this grid, applying A to this grid. We get it from the center spot to the center spot. If I drew a new grid here, g to it, well g is going to be just like dg is like acting by a matrix B. And so that's going to take this green grid and do something to it. Maybe it's going to, I don't know, just rotate it. So it rotates the grid. Black grid inside the green grid, it gets rotated even more and compressed like that. And the composition here, so this is, so dg is some B. The composition is just squish the thing and then turn it. If the functions aren't linear, it doesn't matter because derivatives are the linear approximations to the function. So that means as long as I look really close to this point, I can't tell the difference or I can only approximately tell the difference between the linear function which is the derivative and the actual function which is the function. So I will have a different factor at different points which is what all of this craziness is, is to account, you know, here, sorry, here I just got numbers. I just got linear maps. That's because I was looking at one point. But if I look at a different point I get a different linear map. Here I get a whole collection of linear maps, each different at different points. And you can put them all together and get some kind of a function. But I'm thinking just of acting at a point. It's linear. It does some brushing. It does some stretching. It does a little twisting. Whatever. And so the composition is just do the squishing and the stretching and then the twisting and the squishing and all of those things one after the other. So that's the geometric intuition which is exactly the same as the calculation. The calculation is just writing down how much I squished by, how much I twisted by. So far, so let's just continue that sort of a story. I mean in fact this matrix was, suppose that my matrix, let's just take a 2 by 2 case, df. I'm not talking about the chain rule at the moment. I'm just talking about a derivative. What if the derivative at some point is a singular matrix like 1, 1, well that's not the one. About 1, 0, 0, 0. So this is not, this is on a very small, I apply f or df. What's the image of that box under that matrix? It's just a line and so the x axis, the x direction is completely preserved. The y direction is the killer. So all of the stuff in the y do this line. It's singular in this direction. And of course if I put some other stuff here, so if I do something like you know 1, 1 or 1, 2 being just smashed on that line, I'll be smashed onto the line of slope 2 but still I'm smashed in some direction here. If I have more dimensions, I might be compressed in other, you know, dependent. So if the matrix is not invertible, then that means that it's going to get compressed, I'm going to lose a dimension. Maybe several dimensions, sufficient for a moment. The matrix is invertible. This picture, I can undo the action. My matrix is invertible apart from this black thing and unstretch it. This means I have an inverse matrix. So near the point P, this is exactly the same as the one variable statement that says that if y equals f of x and here x is not 0 and it's defined, then x equals f. Did the sense is inverting like analogous to integrating your depth point? No. It's finding the, it's, it's, it's so, so here, right in the one variable case, focus on the one variable case for a second. So the one variable case, I have y equals x squared. And if I choose some near x equals minus one, y equals one, I know that x is the square root negative of y. I have an inverse function. So that's what I mean by inverse. So I have y equals x squared. And so here's negative one. So here, there's a branch of the square root. This is just a function. I sort of lay on my side on the other one. So here I can take this branch of the inverse and everything's okay. I need to know which of the two pieces I'm on. But as long as I just look around here and stay away from 0, I have an inverse function. And I can write a formula for it. I can't always write a formula, but I always have an inverse as long as I stay away from the place where the derivative is 0. Notice that near, near x equals 0. So I have a problem. f prime of x equals 0. And I can't make an inverse because I don't know which side to choose. I have to take both. So plus or minus square root x, this is not a function because the derivative is 0 here. I don't have an inverse. Now maybe if the derivative is 0 I can still make stuff work because maybe if you think about the example of the cube root, I'm okay. Right? With the cube. So this is sufficient but not necessary. If my function is y equals x cubed, things are still okay. I still have the ability to take a cube root and respond. This is f. This is f inverse. I'm okay. But if the derivative is not 0, for sure everything's okay. And the analog here isn't set. If the determinant is not 0, the determinant of the derivative is not 0, wow. Okay. Sorry, I'm waving high. If the determinant of the derivative is not 0 then I have an inverse. If it is 0 probably I don't have an inverse maybe kind of sort of unless I'm lucky. So let me write that as a theorem. Be the same dimension. So this is continuously differentiable. It is continuously differentiable. Here's some point p is not 0.  So then there's some region near here where I can go back by big f which I'll call an inverse. But it seems I won't.


I'm Dan Mogulov from the UC Berkeley Office of Public Affairs, and today it is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce Berkeley's next chancellor, Professor Nicholas Dirks. Professor Dirks is currently at Columbia University, where he teaches in the departments of history and anthropology. In addition, he serves as the Executive Vice President of Arts and Sciences, and also as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Professor Dirks, welcome. Thank you, Dan. Great to talk to you. So tell me, how does it feel to be introduced as Berkeley's next chancellor? I am deeply honored by the opportunity to serve in this leadership capacity for such a great university. Berkeley has been one of the great institutions of higher learning ever since it was established over a hundred years ago, and to have the chancellorship of that great university now attached to my name still, of course, in a designate role is just a huge honor for me. Professor Dirks, you've had a long distinguished career in academia, starting at the California Institute of Technology in 1978, from there on to Michigan, arriving in Columbia in 1997. Talk to me a little bit about what you've picked up along the way that's prepared you to become the next chancellor of UC Berkeley. Well, one of the great things about being at Caltech was the opportunity to interact with some of the great minds of science. I was able to get to know Marie Galman, Richard Feynman, Max Delbrook, and indeed scores of scholars in the sciences, from engineering to theoretical physics, whose work clearly was at the cutting edge of some of the most important issues in 20th century science. It was a wonderful 10-year period of my life. Going to Michigan, though, was going into a much larger domain of higher education, of public higher education. It was a time not just of great exploration in interdisciplinary social science, but it was also an opportunity to learn about how a great public research institution can both provide the very best kind of education, and indeed the very best kinds of resources for faculty to engage in research, but also have a direct public mission and a sense that what it was doing as a university spoke to the needs of both the local community, the state at large, and indeed the nation in an even larger sense. And I learned a great deal about the kinds of opportunities that were available in a great public university. At the same time, when I got a call to come to Columbia, and this was in 1996, I moved there in 1997, I couldn't say no. I was being asked to go and share the first Department of Anthropology in the United States, a department that had been established by Franz Boas in 1896, and a department that was absolutely foundational for the importance of anthropology in the United States throughout the 20th century. So it sounds just listening to you that the academic culture, that environment is something that you deeply love and deeply connected to. There's a lot of passion in when I hear you talk about that. I think that the university in some ways is the last great utopian institution that we have in our society. And one of the reasons that I've enjoyed doing all the things that I've done, whether chairing a department, setting up a program, working with students in some kind of new way, or for that matter, becoming the executive vice president of the arts and sciences at Columbia, has given me an opportunity to try to engage at every level, both the challenges, but the enormous opportunities that these institutions, these great institutions of both teaching and research, have afforded so many people in our society. You brought up one of the positions you hold at Columbia, executive vice president of arts and sciences. In addition, you're also the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. Neither of those positions have an exact corollary that you see Berkeley. So talk to me a little bit about what exactly your responsibilities are, what you're involved in, what your day job looks like. Well, it is a job that I think doesn't exist at any other institution, private or public. And the arts and sciences was created effectively as a separate entity within the university at large. The arts and sciences consists of Columbia College, of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, of the School of General Studies, of the school of the arts, the School of International and Public Affairs, and most recently, the School for Continuing Education. So it's had six schools. I therefore, as executive vice president, have six deans who report to me. I also have 28 departments with 28 chairs, around 35 institutes and centers that range across from nanoscience to the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. It's an enormous range, an enormous job. But it comes along effectively with the kind of responsibility for this unit that, as it's organized at Columbia, is a separate financial as well as educational unit. So the budget now is roughly $650 million. And it's our responsibility in my office to make sure that we balance that budget, but that we also manage to do as much and realize as many of the aspirations of the university at large with the resources that we have on hand. So you've had, sounds like, this wonderful preparation for where you're now headed, California Hall. So talk to me a little bit about where do you want to lead Berkeley? Well, it's a very exciting thing to think about, first of all. I can't tell you how excited I am to be contemplating this move across the country to California and to California Hall. And one of the things that struck me when I first started reading about the University of California Berkeley and this opportunity was the extent to which these two goals of the university for excellence and access were organized in a way that did not put them as competing priorities, but made them, in fact, the same aspiration for the university from start to finish. We all know about the excellence of Berkeley, but it also is a university that by virtue of its being public, by virtue of recent decisions that have stressed diversity, that have built in the middle class access program, that have absolutely took on board the need to recruit as many Pell Grant students as possible, has a public mission that is completely in concert with its research and scholarly excellence. So the first thing I want to do is help to celebrate and preserve those aspirations and to be as committed as I possibly can to advancing both the excellence and the commitment to access that is part of the DNA of the University of California Berkeley. Of course, there are lots of things to be done. On the one hand, I think that the new ventures that I've been reading about and talking to new colleagues about are extremely exciting. The Blum Center for Developing Economies is one of them. The new initiative in nanoscience, actually something that we've been working on very hard at Columbia, but which Berkeley is doing great things in. The new grant for and initiative in big data. And of course, the new support for computing science. And these are just a few of the many things that are taking place. And a few of the many things that I would like to be able to help provide additional resources for. So I joined with the people of this state to celebrate what the University of California is, but also to commit myself, not just to preserving the University and all of its excellence, but also in trying to find new ways to make the University relevant to the kinds of problems we face as a society. So traditionally, the Chancellor at Berkeley, by virtue of his office and the position that he holds in the context of American higher education, has been a powerful and prominent voice for public education. Is that something that you look forward to taking advantage of? And have you thought about what kind of messages you wanna convey and how you wanna use that access to the public? This is one of the great attractions of this role. And I can think of few roles in higher education that actually afford the same level of authority, but also of responsibility to make clear how important the investment, not just of states, but indeed of the general public in the future of higher education in America is. This is a time we all know when there are lots of questions being asked. Tuition goes up, both in privates and in publics. Cost of higher education, of course, seems to be exploding far faster than any other costs at a time when inflation is so low and unemployment so high. And there are many questions that are being asked about even the character of the education that we offer our students. Recent studies have questioned whether students learn as much as we claim when they take a liberal arts education. And I look forward to the opportunity to use this position, to not just explain what it is the university does, but to ensure that we do the kinds of things that are necessary in order to persuade our publics that this kind of investment is not just necessary, but important for them and important indeed for a much broader cross-section than the actual people who simply participate in the education that we provide. So for me, this opportunity which has so many exciting components, I think has best of all an opportunity to preach about what I care most about and that is the importance, not just of education, but of this kind of excellence in education for the public good. When the search process got underway for the next chancellor, for Berkeley's next chancellor, we had open forums on campus, places where students, faculty, staff, alumni could come and express opinions about what they hoped to see. And one of the things that we heard from students a lot was they wanted to know how candidates had in their professional past demonstrated respect for students and for their perspectives. And I'm wondering if there's a broader philosophy that will inform your approach to students and their perspectives when you become Berkeley's chancellor. Well, I would always hope that whatever I do, I can convey the sense of deep respect I have for the kinds of issues that make students feel so engaged and so passionate. I am always struck by the extent to which students, when they get interested in these kinds of issues and when they become active, are taking seriously the ideas and the talk that we engage in about values and about truth and about justice and about all the big issues that are part of our liberal arts curriculum, that they're taking these things seriously in their lives as students. I also know that as students confront issues that are important in their own personal and political lives, they are trying to ensure that the institution that they're attending, the institution that they're identified with, the institution that will be part of their affiliation for the rest of their lives, takes them seriously as they engage in these kinds of issues. So for me in part, it's about walking the walk. It's about taking seriously what we teach in the classroom and taking on the responsibilities that we as administrators have to engage students about the things they care deeply about. At Columbia, we've had serious controversies around issues having to do not just with Middle East politics, but in fact with the teaching of Middle East studies. And so the first and most important thing that I bring to these kinds of occasions is the need to accord every participant the maximum respect possible. But then of course, to try to find ways to establish the grounds of dialogue. At the same time that we always are seeking to make sure that students feel safe, that they feel that they aren't being personally attacked, they feel they aren't being attacked on the basis of their religion or their ethnicity, their identity in any form it might be relevant. And so the first thing that we need to do is to make respect the foundation of the way we engage issues, whether with faculty or with staff and most of all with students. And I hope that my commitment to dialogue, to negotiation, to talking with students and indeed to openness about everything that we do will perhaps be helpful in situations at Berkeley where there are sometimes passions and even tempers that can grow out of pace with the needs that we have as an institution to bring communities together and resolve our differences and our disagreements in an amicable way. You just brought up the Middle East and the extent to which it's been a source of controversy and some confrontation and conflict in Columbia, the same has been true to some extent at Berkeley. It's obviously an issue that people feel very strongly about. So I want to come right at another issue. Floating around on the internet is a claim that at some point in your past, you signed a petition calling for Columbia to divest in all things Israel. And I want to give you an opportunity to sort of let us know exactly what happened there and what your role was and what your sort of philosophy is about sort of divestment type efforts in so far as the Middle East or any other place in the world is concerned. Well, when that particular petition was being circulated, I was chair of the Department of Anthropology and in fact, at some point saw my name on a list and asked it to be removed. The truth is I do not support divestment as a strategy for the university. I don't support divestment with respect to Israel. At the same time, many of my colleagues felt very strongly about this and many of them signed a petition and it circulated widely at the time, which was 2002. And there were after that all sorts of other controversies that developed about the climate for Jewish students on Columbia's campus, about the nature of instruction and the Department of Middle East studies and indeed about the atmosphere at Columbia more generally. We felt that we needed to make very clear that we were committed to a classroom environment in which students felt that they could think anything they wanted to think about political issues that might come up in their instruction. We have students from all kinds of backgrounds for whom we have to be deeply concerned about their experience on campus. We've had students who have been concerned, for example, about the fact that as Muslims they haven't had open access to prayer rooms for the kind of regular daily prayer that is part of their religious observance. So the question of respect that you asked me about before is a question that has to run deep in terms of our relationships with students from all backgrounds and we have to be attendable so to the larger context within which the kinds of things that students experience sometimes get magnified on a college campus where there are pressures obviously on some communities more than on others on some groups more than others. So we've worked very hard to be as open as we could possibly be and as responsive as we could be. I talked to a number of students last week and said, you know, what should I ask the new guy about? And I was struck by how many said, ask where he stands on diversity. How do you think about diversity in the context of a college campus? Well, I think in the first instance the diversity of people is probably the most important thing. One of the great things about many American universities, certainly the University of California and indisputably the University of California at Berkeley is the mix of people who are there as students, as staff, as faculty and indeed the mix that's represented in the vast alumni body of the university. And it's that mix that works to ensure the kind of open debate and the kind of encounters with difference that are absolutely fundamental to the kind of education that we seek to impart in our universities and indeed at Berkeley. Having said that, I think diversity is important at every level and it's something about which one can never actually say, okay, we've done this. We've had a diversity initiative. We have these statistics in terms of our student body. We have this kind of representation in terms of our faculty and think that's enough. It's not. At Columbia, we had been engaged in a number of different diversity initiatives. We now have more students of color than any other institution in the Ivy League and we have more underrepresented minorities. We did so in terms of the faculty. After 2004, when I began my role as executive vice president, president and provost and the trustees made available certain resources and we were able within three to four years to double the number of underrepresented minorities on the faculty. We were able to increase dramatically the number of women in STEM fields. But we also know that as much progress as we made, we just started. One of the things that I hope to be able to do is sponsor a continuous diversity initiative in relationship to faculty and relationship to students and in relationship to staff at University of California at Berkeley. So you just brought up staff. We've been talking about students for a while. What's your leadership philosophy as a manager? What kind of manager are you? I think people would like to hear a little bit from you about what your approach and how you view the role that staff play at a great research university like Berkeley or Columbia. Sure. Well, oftentimes staff are the unsung heroes of the university. They're the ones who come to work every day. They don't get sabbaticals. They don't get summer vacations. They show up day after day after day and indeed both at Berkeley and indeed at my institution, their compensation has lagged far behind that of faculty and indeed oftentimes of staff in other universities where there are more resources to go around. And this can create huge morale issues that combined with the recognition of the role that they play can undermine the fabric of the way in which staff approach their work in university. At Columbia, it's been one of the great things about being in my job to get to know some of the staff who I used to just sort of see from a distance and more or less take for granted. Staff in my office probably think that I'm a soft touch and I don't want that to get out too widely, but the truth is I love my interactions with staff. And I realize how incredibly important it is that we make the university a place where the staff actually feel recognized and of course where they feel adequately rewarded for the unbelievably important work they do. You know, you refer to staff as unsung heroes and I couldn't agree more but there's another group which are the sung heroes if there is such an expression and rightfully so and that's the faculty at UC Berkeley, world-class in every way. And one of the things I think that one of the defining attributes of Berkeley is this idea of shared governance that faculty should have a hand, a role, a voice, a meaningful voice and role in terms of the operations and management of the university. Is that something that sounds foreign to you coming from a private Ivy League institution? I know that many people will think so and certainly the kind of commitment that Berkeley has traditionally had to share governance is something I think that the institution is rightly proud of. That being said, a number of years ago I was worried about a deficit of faculty governance at Columbia and so I drove a review and an evaluation of our faculty governance. I brought in an outside committee. The outside committee actually had somebody who had been very active in the Senate at Berkeley along with some deans and others. Who was that? David Hollinger, professor of history who I actually had the privilege of working with as a colleague in the history department at Michigan many years ago. But he along with his colleagues on the review committee made some recommendations that we took back to our faculty that we worked with various committees to both refine and develop. And then which became the basis for major reform of faculty governance at Columbia which is now much more like Berkeley shared governance than it was before. And I found it to be really transformative in the way in which my relationship with faculty is conducted on a regular basis and the way in which the business of our office has now become open to both the advice and the regular scrutiny of standing faculty committees who have the kind of data, the information, the context and background to participate in the decisions that we make. And it may sometimes for administrators seem a rocky experience, but it's absolutely critical. So as we take this tour through sort of the major stakeholder groups that a university has, students, staff, faculty, there's obviously one more extremely important group and that's alumni. And particularly now for Berkeley where we rely to a greater extent than we ever have on philanthropy, building and sustaining those ties that bind alumni to the campus has become even more important. Talk to me a little bit about your own engagement with that stakeholder group at Columbia and how you see alumni in the context of the broader campus community in terms of roles and responsibility. Indeed, well, one of the things that I have also enjoyed about the role that I've been playing at Columbia has been the extent to which I've gotten to know alumni who care deeply about what we do at Columbia. They've been thrilled to be participants of the university and they have shown this sense of investment literally by sometimes supporting, providing resources for new kinds of programs for financial aid for other things that we do in ways that have been unprecedented. And I've also recognized the extent to which this community of alumni help us think through some of the things that we could do better as an institution. It's been really, I think, very eye-opening for somebody who came out of the faculty to go into administration to realize that we have partners across the alumni base that are absolutely critical to our capacity to do the things that we hope to do and even to develop a better sense of what we hope to do. So I look forward as I come to the University of California at Berkeley to get to know as many alumni as possible, to having as much of an opportunity as possible to connect with different alumni groups, to hear from different alumni voices, to have the opportunity to recruit alumni to a sense of greater participation in the institution to help us think through the challenges that we face. I don't think there is a chief executive in higher education that doesn't have to get involved in fundraising. And obviously to say that holds true for the chancellor at UC Berkeley. Is that something that UC is sort of a task will have to be tolerated? Or do you have a different perspective on that key role that chancellors have played at Berkeley as well as presidents at institutions across the country? We started at Columbia a capital campaign in 2004 and it's silent phase and then went public and noisy in 2006. And in this campaign, we have had unprecedented success in raising funds across the institution. We started off with a target, again, one of the highest targets in the history of American higher education of $4 billion. We're now closing in on $6 billion. And I've learned during this whole process that fundraising is an extraordinary opportunity to connect with people and provide opportunities for them to support things about which we share a deep and common commitment. Fundraising is not like getting on the telephone and calling people and disturbing them from dinner and saying, you know, will you give something and being hung up on. Fundraising is about a relationship. It's about a relationship with a common commitment to an institution. I'm struck in our discussion about the extent to which really important values and principles such as diversity and equality and engagement, participation, equity, access, they're right there for you. They seem to have informed so much of what you do and what you've done. Where does it all come from? Well, you know, I'm going to revert to my parents because I think they play it a very big role in shaping me as somebody for whom these are commitments that have been part of my life ever since I really remember having a public position on anything. You know, my father was the son of immigrant, immigrant Germans who came to this country, homesteaded land in central Iowa. He grew up on a farm, unable to speak English until he went to school, and he only left the farm because he had a very bad heart, which meant that he couldn't be a farmer. He went to college to become a minister. It was the only thing that was understood as a possible thing to do outside of farming at that time. He went to college, he went to seminary, he went to graduate school, he taught for many years at the Yale Divinity School. And while he was teaching theology, he took me periodically to Battelle Chapel at Yale while I listened to the sermons of a William Sloan coffin who had just returned from Selma, Alabama, who was reflecting the both, the issues of the day, but who himself was deeply committed to questions of social equality, to the end of racial discrimination, to the kinds of questions that, of course, he addressed throughout his long career. And I felt deeply influenced by both my father, by coffin, and of course, at the same time, by the fact that my mother, who was teaching in a high school and had a much less public life in that respect, was herself, somebody who, in her everyday life, teaching in inner city schools in New Haven, Connecticut, teaching home economics to young girls at a time when home economics was still taught in schools, but with an eye towards thinking about their futures as she thought about her own, as moving beyond the traditional relationships of gendered stereotype, all of that together, I think probably made me the person I am, and I will take this opportunity to thank my parents for anything I do that's right. So now we're gonna venture into up close and personal territory, if you will. We've been talking mostly about your professional life, past and present. Tell us a little bit about your family, about the rest of the picture, if you will. Well, my wife, John Aki Bakle, is an associate professor of history at Columbia. She grew up in Bombay and went to college also in Bombay at Alphaston College. Came to the United States first to do a graduate career at Temple University, then had a career, in fact, in academic publishing before returning to graduate school and starting her new career as a historian of South Asia. We have a son who is 13 years old. He's been wearing for the last several days only sweatshirts and sweatpants and t-shirts that emblazoned Cal on them. He's a six footer and I've heard that Sandy Barber is already tracking him as a potential recruit for basketball. I also have a daughter from my first marriage. She was a graduate of Mills College and then came to Columbia where she did a degree at the Columbia Journalism School and she now works for Iowa Public Radio and can be heard periodically on all things considered and morning edition as she's been in Iowa covering recent events with a certain kind of bird's eye view that has been unique and wonderful for her. Sounds like family is something really important for you. Well, of course it is. And one of the things about these jobs is you don't get a lot of off time. So it's been very important to be able to carve out some time and space where I can simply hang with my son, talk with my daughter and be with my wife. We have cherished weekends together where we've gone hiking and walking and biking and sometimes boating. But most of all, where we've simply been together, cooking, watching football sometimes, but always just being sustained by each other's company and love and support. What else do you like to do for fun? There's a rumor going around you're a bit of a fitness fanatic? I don't know how these rumors get started, but it is true that the athletic director at Columbia, Diane Murphy, wonderful, wonderful colleague, has made sure over the eight years that I've been in my job that whenever I need to use elliptical number one on the top floor, it's reserved in my name. No, I do like to go to the gym on a regular basis. I used to like to run until I had to get a new ACL, but even so I will become a regular member of the Berkeley gym.  And I do know that Columbia has a large and robust intercollegiate athletics program and obviously so does Cal. What are your thoughts about the appropriate role of an intercollegiate athletics program at a university like Columbia or Berkeley and the benefits, both tangible and intangible, that accrue to an institution as a result of the presence of that sort of program? Yeah. You know, it turns out that Columbia has as many intercollegiate sports teams that it supports as the University of California and Berkeley 29. It's exactly the same number. And it turns out, of course, that while Columbia has not always been as good in some rather public sports as some of its peers, it's had a very robust sports program across the board. And it's been very important as part of the student experience at Columbia and indeed as part of the whole alumni experience. We believe at Columbia, and I'm sure that I will join many colleagues who will believe with me at the University of California at Berkeley that if you're going to do something, you do it well. And if you do something in an excellent university that has the kind of distinction that Berkeley has in areas ranging from science to law, that you also aspire to excellence in your athletic programs. That is not to say that you do things that would in any way compromise the academic integrity of the programs or for that matter, put athletics above academics. But I look forward to joining my new colleagues and alumni and students with as much enthusiasm as I can muster in supporting the teams at Berkeley and in helping to support the general program and athletics as well. I don't want to put you on the spot, Professor Dirks, but we're going to need to hear a Go Bears. Go Bears. Not bad for a first time out. We'll work on it, but not bad at all. I really want to thank you for your time. It's been a fascinating conversation. I know that people who are watching this, who've watched this are going to feel that same sense of excitement that I have right now about what lies ahead for the campus and also a deep sense that we're going to be in really good hands. So thank you and we look forward to your arrival on campus. Thank you, Dan. This has been a great conversation for me and just the beginning of many, many wonderful conversations I look forward to. I am so excited to be joining you at the University of California at Berkeley. Thanks so much.


Sharp ends is the opportunity to see the Kessel Run. It's uh, it's just a delight. I don't know how you made it this far.   Hey guys it's Leigh Ann and I'm here today to talk about Sharp ends by Joe Abercrombie. Sharp ends is the collection of short stories that take place in the world of the first law and no you cannot skip it and no you cannot read it first. No you cannot read these books in any order other than publication order. I said what I said. But Sharp ends is a delight to read if you have read all of the books that come before it in the world of the first law because this book delivers both new characters that you have not seen before in the world of the first law. They're totally new, brand new, but also has plenty of opportunities to see characters that you have met in the world of the first law in other books in settings that you're not used to or seeing them do things that you heard about because it's part of their legend, part of their reputation, some event kind of like the Kessel Run that Han Solo is famous for having done or achieved or whatever. I've never seen the movie solo but I believe you see the Kessel Run in Solo which makes sense. So the Sharp ends is the opportunity to see the Kessel Run for like all the characters that have one. So for example is this more than I'm going to tell you? I don't think so. As we know Glockta in the first law trilogy is is heavy duty crippled because he was captured by the Gherkish and tortured as a prisoner of war. But you hear about how he was this like amazing fighter.  And he had just an ego that was off the charts and he was obviously extremely humbled by, well it's humble makes him sound like he's like now Super Zen. I mean he's just been brought low and he frequently reflects upon how he used to have all these things.   But all that to say in Sharp ends you get to see Glockta pre-crippling back when he was the bee's knees which is just it's amazing to it's not like it's the most amazing short story by itself but because you know Glockta so well and you've heard so much about how what he used to be like to actually see what he used to be like it's just it's just fun. And then you have Logan nine fingers who again you've heard plenty about his reputation from before the events of the first law so you get to see some of that in sharp ends. There is I always say this that like my example or my the reason I give the example for a reason for why you have to have read the books that come before it is that in red country there is something that going on in red country that is the reason that is we have a short story in sharp ends is the result of that. I don't know how to say it it's not spoiler is it spoilery? I don't think it's I feel like I can say this it's not very spoilery because it doesn't say anything about like what happens but anyway so there's somebody in red country that is like writing down events and so one of the the short stories in sharp ends is what he wrote down. That may not sound very interesting but I promise you it is especially if you listen to the audiobook because this is once again read by Stephen Pacey except for that story. That story is read by Joe Abercrombie. It's uh it's just a delight. There are also characters that are brand new that are doing things and interacting with things that are familiar if that makes sense so they themselves aren't characters that you've heard of at all or seen before they're not like minor characters that are now thrusting at the spotlight they're new but they they're paths cross with characters that you have seen in other books so the character that's familiar to isn't the focal point of the story but they like pop in and it's just it's overall it's just a good time if you enjoy the world of the first law and you just want to like beep up around and just experience little snippets of things going on in the world of the first law be they before the events of the trilogy after the events of the trilogy etc etc it's just it's almost like fanfic I guess like I've never really been a person to read fanfic and I've never other than the fanfic I read for a video that was first law fanfic I've never actually that I can recall actually read fanfic I don't think that I have I feel like the enjoyment that people derive out of fanfic like the reason fanfic exists being that people just kind of like want to see more of their favorite characters just doing things it doesn't have to be like a whole 300 500 700 page arc it's just like I want more snippets of scenes opportunities for these characters to interact or for two characters that never had the opportunity to interact to finally see them interact um and it's just I mean it's written by Joe Evercrombie so it's not like the shitty pale attempted version so it's just an opportunity to to basically have the author say oh you want some more it's like an encore if that makes sense like if you've gone to like a music performance and you know you want an encore and he's like okay you know I could do you a few more so that's what this kind of feels like it feels like he's written all these long books like the trilogy and then all these standalone that are very long and involved and it's a whole plot arc and sharp ends is like the encore you're like okay like I can do you a few more and it's just it's great it gives you the opportunity to see these little things that like there isn't anywhere that they would necessarily fit in a larger book there's nowhere that you could put this stuff that it would make sense to have it in a full book but it's never the less fun to see it it's great to see it and we love to see it I think my favorite short story is that's hard I mean obviously LACTA is my favorite character so I mean the first time I read this I was the most excited about seeing LACTA young and it's still um really fun to see but I think I still derive the most just sheer enjoyment just like delight from the short story that is the one that Doe Abacame reads that is inspired by or like a spin-off of Red Country even though Red Country is my least favorite book but the short story in sharp ends is worth the time of reading Red Country 4 I just it's a good time I that's all I can say about this like what else can you say about it I mean this might be my favorite short story collection that I've read in general but it's helped by the fact that all of this does take place in the same world so most short story collections you have to like you're introduced to a whole new setting and situation and characters that you have to orient yourself in and then get through the story and then the whole the next one is like a completely new again and it's very jarring and disorienting and that's one of the reasons I don't like short story collections but this has the benefit of all taking place in the world of the first law so it's not like each one is jarringly like whole different world different situation different characters that you have to not figure out it's all in the world of the first law so it's just there it's great it's it's I didn't give it five stars because I just I don't feel right giving someone like this five stars because it doesn't feel like it required as much of the author or of me as the reader as a full book that has taken me through this whole plot arc and this whole journey and this incredible character study but even so like as I've said many many times character Joe Abercrombie's character work is what mainly shines in his books his ability to write three-dimensional characters that leap off the page um but once so it's once again impressive that the characters that are brand new that aren't like glocked a young the ones that you're meeting for the very first time in sharp ends that in such a short period of time he has once again managed to write fully fleshed out three dimensional characters that you're that already feel like you know them probably as well as you know the characters that are from the full novels and again you cannot skip it because new information is told to you in sharp ends it isn't all just like let's see glocked a young there is new information that you need in order to read the new trilogy yes you can read the new trilogy without reading anything else before but why would you do that when it is so much more interesting and so much more rewarding when you've read everything that came before it just why why would you so I can't say too much more about sharp ends it's just it's great it's short if you like this world and you like his writing style then you're gonna have a good time so don't skip it if you don't like this world and you don't like his writing style I don't know how you made it this far and you're thinking that you want to give his writing a go by just trying out sharp ends and seeing how you do with that before you read a full book don't do that because this won't make a whole heck of a lot of sense to you because you'll be like okay so this glocked guy seems like a prick why do I care you care because you ran the first long trilogy so yeah let me know in the comments down below if you've read sharp ends if you like sharp ends if you dislike sharp ends if you went against every bit of advice that I would give you and you read this first or if you read it in some other kind of random spot in the order like you read the late itself before they were hanged and then sharp ends and then back to last argument of kings I mean like what why so if you did that feel free to let me know so that I can chastise you for it um whenever you want to let me know I post videos on Saturdays other random times as well but I think Saturdays so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you bye