The remembrance of Allah is the greatest deed ever performed by a human being. It elevates his life, brings him peace, tranquility and happiness, and enables him to fulfill the real mission of his life in this world. When Allah the Almighty describes believers in the Holy Quran, He says, those who believe and whose hearts are set at rest by the remembrance of Allah. Tonight's episode is an attempt to examine the Quranic verses and traditions which talk about and discuss the merits of Salatul-Layl, respected viewers, brothers and sisters in Islam. As-salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Welcome to the 13th episode of Life from Karbala, Ramadan series with Mir host Ahmad Ali. For the dear viewers who are just tuning in for the first time, before prior to this episode we discussed the most controversial topics which are mentioned in the Holy Quran. This is all discussed with my dear and esteemed guest, Sayyid Hussain Al-Qazweeni, who has joined me once again in tonight's episode. As-salamu alaikum Sayyidina. How are you? Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. As we get further into Ramadan, we kind of feel that we don't want it to be so close because we do feel the blessings which are bestowed in this holy month. But Sayyidina Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam states, there is no action more beloved to Allah SWT and nothing more that saves man from the evil of this world and hereafter than the remembrance of Allah SWT. If you want to apply this narration to Salatul-Layl, because as traditions say, Salatul-Layl is very highly considered to Ahl-Bayt al-Alihim as-salam and to our pious Maraja and scholars. However, sir, first I would like to talk about what Salatul-Layl is. Is it just an ordinary prayer that anyone can perform? Is it a specific prayer at a specific time? And what is significance and why do we see the emphasis on Salatul-Layl? Salatul-Layl is one of those special acts of worship that only a select few, a selected elite, have the opportunity to pray. It's not something very common. It's not something that everyone has the opportunity to perform. I could say it's a selected elite. I don't mean by selected elite as in Allah purposely allows some people to pray but he doesn't allow others to pray. But some people, Allah gives them a boost. He gives them a bigger chance because they chose to pray Salatul-Layl. They chose to dedicate some minutes of their nights to pray this special Salat. I think Salatul-Layl is one of those acts that distinguishes the righteous from the unrighteous. Or to say it distinguishes the ones that are really righteous from the ones that only do what's mandatory. There's two types of Muslims. Those that only do what is mandatory. Of course there's many types of Muslims. But I'm talking about religious Muslims. There's those that only do the mandatory things. Pray five times a day fast during the month of Ramadan. Only fast 30 days out of the month. No more. For the prayers they only do what is necessary. Salatul-Layl has two units. They do two units and then they go to bed. Salatul-Layl is four. Salatul-Layl is four. Exactly what's necessary and that's it. And then you have another kind of Muslims that, you know, the wajjabat, the obligatory worship is not enough. They still feel a need. You know it's just like food. There are some people for them, two meals a day is enough. Three meals a day is enough. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. For others it's not enough. They still get hungry. Their body needs nutrition. Children. Children, they don't have three meals a day. They have 30 meals a day. Why? Because of course they're very small meals, but they're various meals at various times because their body needs it. Some people praying five times a day is not enough. Fasting 30 days out of the year is not enough. Let's put fasting aside. Prayers. Five times a day is not enough. It's not enough. They feel the need. There's a need inside them to speak to Allah swt. To communicate. Praying puts them at ease, at comfort. We live in trouble sometimes. Life is full of difficulties. And we're always hearing about tragedies. Accidents, bombings, terrorism. We live at a time, unfortunately.   May Allah SWT remove all these tragedies. Remove all of these tragedies away from us. You rarely find someone that dies a regular death. These things, they really put pressure and stress on a person. When you start thinking about it, that I could die at any moment. We live in the age of terrorism. And the age of cancer. And the age of car accidents. You know, a human being, when he starts to think about this. This could put a lot of pressure and stress on a person. For some, the only way to remove the stress is through prayer. It's through communicating with the Almighty. The all-powerful. The one who created us and created everything else on this planet.  The one who everything is in his hands. This is one. Two. It's about love as well. Salat al-Layl is really about love. When you love someone, you speak to him or her a couple of times a day. But the most important phone call or the most important message or text is the one right before going to sleep. It's the good night message. It's the have a good night message. When you're speaking to someone, the one that you love, not a friend, not your neighbor. Someone you love. But at night you go to sleep without saying good night.  That's an insult. This is not in one culture. This is in a lot of cultures. We also have a romantic relationship with Allah. There are some that love Allah. It's not that they just obey. Do this, do that. Do as Allah says. You know they have a relationship with Allah. Of course when I say romantic, not to be misunderstood. But Allah is different. For some Allah is love and Allah loves us. Allah gave us all these things. Doesn't this mean that he loves us? Allah brought us into this life. He gave us wonderful parents. He gave us an education. He gives us whatever we want. Isn't that sign of his love? Shouldn't we love him back? Shouldn't love be mutual? Salat al-Layl is a manifestation of love.  Before you call it a day. Before you call it a night. When everyone else is tired. And everyone wants to go to sleep. You stand up in the middle of the night. For a couple of minutes. It's not a two hour ritual. It takes 20 minutes. Maybe less. Maybe more. Maybe 15 minutes. It depends on what you recite. It depends on what you recite. And how long do you like to speak to Allah? You pray. You say your thanks. You offer your thanks to Allah.  It's an open dialogue. You can tell Allah whatever you'd like. Whatever is in your heart. You want to complain. You want to thank him. You want to ask him for certain things. You want to tell him how your day went. How good your day was. How bad your day was. Say whatever you'd like to Allah swt. And then go to sleep. This is a manifestation of love. And I think those that genuinely love Allah swt. They pray Salatul Layl. And they're addicted to Salatul Layl. They cannot stop. Ask those that pray Salatul Layl. All year long. Ask them not to pray for one night. Impossible. They won't do it. Because Salatul Layl means so much to them. It's so beautiful. They're so connected to it. And it's their way of connecting to Allah. See what's beautiful about Salatul Layl. Is that we don't have to do it. That's the beauty about it. Who's your favorite employee? If you were the owner of a company. Who would be your best employee? The one that comes on the hours that he has to. Or the one that stays over. Even when he doesn't need to. The one who might show up on a Sunday. When he could be spending that Sunday with his family. But he'll show up. Even if he's not being paid for it. Those are your favorite employees. Salatul Layl is a Salat that we don't have to pray. Yet some still choose to. That's the beauty about it. And we have narrations that Allah tells his angels. That look, this is my servant. Instead of going to sleep. And the hour of Salatul Layl is after midnight. It's an hour where most people are asleep. I've heard otherwise. I've heard that it's after sunset. After Maghrib and Aisha. No. Salatul Layl. We'll talk about the laws of Salatul Layl. Salatul Layl begins from midnight. Muntasaful Layl. Which is right in the middle of where sunset and Fajr is. It starts from there. Yes. If someone could not stay up till that time. And wants to go to sleep. They could pray it before that. But not from sunset. Salatul Layl is meant to be slept. Salatul Layl is meant to be prayed in the middle of the night. When everyone's asleep. When everyone's tired. That's the beauty about it. Also, you know, one of the beautiful things about Salatul Layl. Is that, why is it so significant? Is that you can't show off with it. You can show off with everything. With Salatul Sobh. Salatul Dhuhr. Salatul Asr. You come to the mosque.  You could show off. You could show off with your money. With your khums. With your zakat. The way you spend. You built a mosque. You can show off. You can show people. But not Salatul Layl. Salatul Layl. Everyone's asleep. Who are you going to show off to? Who are you going to show off to? Everyone's asleep. Everyone's at home. People are asleep. That's why it's so special. Salatul Layl is only for Allah. It's for no one else. You can show off with every other act of worship. With Hajj. With Umrah. With Ziyarah. You say, I did this. I did that. But you can't show off with Salatul Layl. It's only for Allah. It's a genuine act. It's a sincere act for Allah. Also, it shows determination. A person who's tired. Who's not tired at 12 midnight? You're tired. You've come back from a hard day at work. You're studying. You have to get up at 5 in the morning. Or 6 in the morning to go to school. Or to go to work. Or you have an exam. Or you have children that you just put to sleep. And they get up in the middle of the night. They cry if you have toddlers. You know, everyone wants... It's a resting time. Yes. Midnight is a time to rest. Somewhere to get up and perform a lute.  Sleep goes away. Yes. No one wants to wash their face at 12 minutes. That makes sleep go away. And you get up and pray. Especially during winter. It's cold. You want to get under the sheets and cover. You get up and you pray for a couple of minutes. That shows determination. Yes. That shows love. That shows your loyalty. Ta'Allah, Azawajan. There's a Hadith. Hadith al-Qudsih. I believe... Allah told Musa, Ya Musa. Kethaba man za'ama anhu yuhibbuni wa idha jannah aliyah illayl naama anni. Ya Musa. A person who claims to love me. Yet at night he goes and he sleeps without praying a couple of raka'at.   Isn't that too somewhat extreme? Because people do claim to love Allah SWT but they do perform various worships in the day. Yes. But yet at night maybe they're tired. But love has various levels. Degrees, yes. It has various degrees. You know, you might love Mr. X. But if he's in the hospital, will you go spend the whole night with him in the hospital? No. But his son will. But his son might not spend the night, the whole night. His father will probably spend the entire night. So there's love. A friend will love him to some degree. His son will love him to another degree. But his father will love him unconditionally. So we can say absolute love. Absolute love. Absolute love. This is a manifestation of absolute love. Allah is trying to say that, you know, I've done so much for you. It won't kill you to stand up in the middle of the night before you sleep and thank me. And pray to me. You know, Christians have this. They have salat al-layh. But it's not necessarily performing gulu and standing and praying. Right before sleep they say a prayer. Yes. They thank Allah for what they're doing. That's salat al-layh. For them, that's like salat al-layh. Can we do that too? Yes. With recommended prayers, Allah is easy going. Yeah, well yeah. If you don't want to stand, you can sit. You don't want to sit, lie down. Do whatever you'd like. You can't face the qabla, don't face the qabla. With recommended prayers, it's easy going. Allah has made it easy. Why? To say, you know, I'm not forcing you to do it the hard way. You can do it the easy way. Any way you like. Any way you like. And still, people don't take advantage of that. Still, people don't take advantage of that. You could be sitting in your car, going to work, and praying. Some people do ha'la. Some people do ha'la. I'm not saying reciting Quran. Night shift. Pray. While you're driving. For a recour, put your head down a little bit. For sujood, a little bit more. That's salam. And you'll be rewarded. Islam has made it so easy to pray. Nawafil. Recommended prayers. Yes, when it comes to wajabat, they have to, you know, they have to be done properly. Stand in front of the qabla. Stand, not sit. And so on and so forth. But with Nawafil, Allah has made it so easy. Yes. But still, we don't take an opportunity. We don't take advantage of this opportunity. Unfortunately. So, just like we, you know, if we're traveling, we call our kids, our kids, our spouse.  Consider it like that. Salatul layit is a couple of minutes right before going to sleep. We offer some prayers. Ta'allah. And I could say that those who start praying Salatul layit once, twice, three times, they will not stop if they pay attention, if they concentrate. Yes. They will love it so much that they can't stop. It's like the Ziyar of Imam Hussain. Those that come for arba'een once, they come every year. They fall in love. Yes. It's like Hajj. You go to Hajj once, you fall in love. You like to go every year. Salatul layit is like that. It is so spiritually beautiful. Yes. That you don't want to stop. That's actually very beautiful because we do see the emphasis which Allah SWT places on this prayer because as you mentioned, it has various blessings from Allah SWT placed in the middle of the night where everyone's asleep, yet you're up worshiping Allah SWT but if we can continue the discussion after a short break, if you will, respect the viewers. Do stay tuned after the break for insha'Allah. We'll get into the laws and what Salatul layit actually is in further detail. That's after the break. Do stay tuned. Viewers, welcome back. Hope you insha'Allah enjoyed whatever you have been presented with the break. But before the break, we talked about the significance of Salatul layit and what Allah SWT the Prophet and the Bait emphasized on Salatul layit. Back to the discussion with my dear guest, Sayed Hussain Al-Qazweeni. Welcome back. How are you Sayed? Thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining us over the past few episodes. My pleasure. Allah SWT. Sayed Nam. The first part of the episode, we talked about what Salatul layit is and why the significance, what the significance story and why the emphasis Allah SWT placed in this prayer. But scholars have stated or indicated that whatever is mustahab recommended upon the believers is somewhat obligatory or mandatory upon the prophets. Or the prophets may make it obligatory upon themselves to do a certain recommended act upon the believers. And this is known for the prophets because they've reached that cognizant understanding of Allah SWT and who Allah SWT is. So if you want to apply this to the Holy Prophet of Islam, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his purified progeny, was Salatul layit obligatory on him or did he make it incumbent upon himself? You know, Salatul layit has been mentioned in the Quran directly or indirectly in several verses. Some of those verses are pertaining to Rasulullah SAW. And we see that Rasulullah is clearly ordered to pray Salatul layit. It's an order. Thus Salatul layit was mandatory upon Rasulullah SAW. We have a verse that says She says Asa rubber, he's being ordered and from that, Tahajjud is Salatul layit and in the Sunni school of thought they call it Salatul tahajjud because they also have Salatul layit. They call it Salatul tahajjud and they call it Salatul layit. It's the same thing. In fact, if we want to look at the Qur'anic concept, their concept is closer to the Qur'anic concept. Because the Qur'an is saying that it is a Tahajjud with Laila, a Tahajjud with Laila is to pray at night. Asa Rabbuka Iyyaba, ataka maqaman mahmouda, maqaman mahmouda is a special place for usur Allah, as a result of praying Salat al-Lail. Salat al-Lail was made incumbent upon Rasulullah, and as a reward he was given al maqaman mahmouda. Scholars, they have various opinions on what is al maqaman mahmouda. Some say that it's a special place in paradise, it's a special place in paradise that is reserved only for Rasulullah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Al maqaman mahmouda is a level in paradise that is reserved only for Rasulullah. Is it not called Tuba or no? I don't know, maybe, perhaps. But Asa Rabbuka Iyyaba ataka maqaman mahmouda, others say maqaman mahmouda is not a physical place, it's a position, and that position is the position of Shafa'a, the position of intercession. Rasulullah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, as a result of praying Salat al-Lail his reward is Shafa'a for his nation. Rasulullah has the ability to intercede upon his nation. For those that are sinful, those that have sins, Allah will forgive his nation for the sake of Rasulullah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, as a reward of praying Salat al-Lail. So was this obligatory upon him? Who's obligatory upon Rasulullah? Yes. All the one that he who is covered, who wears a cloak, or a person who wears a cloak from both sides, and what do you mean from both sides? See it's a long cloak, something like this. The right portion he throws it on his left side. In the left side he throws it on the right side. So he's covered. They didn't have shirts, they didn't have coats, so how do you stay warm by wearing your cloak in that way? This is called tazammul, or al-muzammil, al-muzammil is to wear a cloak and then bring the right side over the left side and the left side.  That's called muzammil. Ya ayuh al-muzammil, qum al-layla, illa qalila, Allah is ordering him to pray the entire night except a couple of hours, qum al-layla illa qalila, nusfahu awam qusminhu qalila. Get up, half of the night, don't sleep ya Rasulullah, sleep, let others sleep, but you stand, speak to us. A prophet has to be spiritually prepared, spiritually connected to Allah, nusfahu awam qusminhu qalila. So if you can't stand to pray half of the night, reduce a little bit, awzid alayhi, if you can do more, do more, awzid alayhi, waraktilil al-Qur'anatartila, in your Salah, perform Tartila of the Qur'an, recite the Qur'an, that's the beauty, that's another beauty of Salatul-Layn, is that when you stand in the Qur'an and you recite Qur'an, because Salah is all about Qur'an, you recite al-Fatiha and then chapters of the Qur'an.


Hey everyone, welcome to Echo Calibs.  Please do answer the survey so that the devs would be able to know what we think of the game, what used to be improved, what is good already, and please do answer this because all of us will benefit from the survey and the development moving forward. So without further ado, let's start off with our cases.  She was once my top DPS. She's now the third because I've acquired a couple of SSRs, but definitely out of all the SR cases you need to focus on her if you need more DPS. She deals a lot of damage, dealing 100% magic damage.  So big damage as well. This is towards the front row, 140 magic damage to the front row, and for her passive we're gonna be dealing with Snezhana evaluates the situation. When an ally is controlled, silence, stun, or freeze, she gains 20% damage bonus for one round up to two times per round. So again, she's one of my top DPS units.  She might be your second DPS, probably your top DPS unit once you start, probably your third in the future, but definitely she's gonna stay in your lineup for as long as you don't have enough, what do you call this? Enough SSRs to bring in your lineup. Next, we're going to be discussing Ricken. So Ricken here is one of the healers in the game. So again, I'll be discussing a few healers around one, two, three, four. Four healers to be discussed. They are in the top SSRs because again, each of them have different specialties and unless if you have an SSR healer ready, you won't be using them. But definitely right now when you're starting out, you're gonna have to try to choose from either one of the four healers because again, they have different specialties to go along with their attack heal. Sorry, with their heal. Okay, so for Ricken, so she heals two random units with 77% attack. Next is what I like about her is her buff to increase all Alice attack by 15% for two rounds. This is big, especially if you have a damage oriented team. I like her right now with a team that I'm built. That is why I'm using her and for her passive, launches a normal attack, there's a 60% chance of increased healing effect by 50% for one round. So that is it. That is why I like her more for the buff rather than the healing. So again, it's up to you guys on who are you preferring in terms of your team building or what your team is composed of. Okay, so one of one of the new SRs that I've been using is Sill.  She deals damage, big damage to the front row for her attack. Then she also deals another damage to the front row, 130% physical damage to the front row with 40% chance of inflicting burn. So I assume that the chance to inflict burn increases, as you can see here. Burn is a is a DOT or damage over time effect.  Okay, and her passive is Sill's obsession with the sword is due to her outstanding talent gains sword domain at the start of the battle. So sword domain is transferred 20% of damage to all enemies when performing any form of attack. So again, we're done with Sill. I'm still experimenting on her, but definitely she has a niche in some of the lineups, especially if you need burn damage. And if you create a burn team, she is one of the best components to have on your team. Okay, so our next SR would be our first healer that we all got, which is Iriri. She is still one of the top healers by the way in this game. Iriri attacks the enemies and heals allies with the lowest HP for 95% attack. Then when faced, this is going to be her special. When faced with difficult situation, Iriri breaks the limit. Station of her brain conceives most appropriate recovery plan. Iriri heals front low. So she is focused on front line, front row ally healing. Okay, so take note of that when you use her, she's focused on the three in front. Iriri learns her teammates for every ally retreating. Her healing effects are increased by 10%. This effect can stack up to three times and can't be removed. Okay, so again, if you need a front line healer or a front row healer, then she is your girl. Next up, we have Yarina. So Yarina is in a nutshell a peer specialist. Her attack is she deals damage for 100% physical to a single enemy. Next is, I think, a damage to the front row, 140 damage and additional damage to the target with the highest HP. So she's kind of an assassin specialty and her passivist performs a dance of death. When she casts a skill, her pierce increases by 20%. So again, if you prefer a more piercing type of DPS unit, then she is your girl. Okay, so next up is going to be Aurora. So Aurora is one of our healers again, and her specialty is healing and shields. So for Aurora, this is her basic attack. Has a talent for healing and the agent she makes can heal allies up in her row for 53% of her attack. Aurora doesn't want to feed her friends to get hurt. So she developed a stimuli agent to generate shields. So grad 3 random allies a shield 100% of attack. So and her passive for the for compliments of Vance and Aurora worked hard to make the sacrificial reagent first time. Aurora HP falls 50% of the ally with the least HP gained sacrificial reagent. So when taking damage, Aurora restores 15% of the damage to characters with sacrificial reagent as HP. Okay, so if you need a healer which specializes in heals and shields, then Aurora is your girl.  Okay, we have Yanling here. She is a back row damage specialist for DPS. Dealing her attack is dealing 100% magic damage to a single target. Then her special is deals 133 damage magic damage to back row enemies and her passive is actually just increased. So first time Yanling, HP falls below 30. Her attack increased by 20% for the whole battle. So an increased attack for the back line for this girl. Okay, we have next is Senko. So Senko, I sometimes swap out, swap in Senko and take seal out. Both of them are good. As well for Senko, by the way, she is a specialist in row damage. So the row in front of her. So two enemies she can damage. So deal 73 physical damage to a single row of enemies. That is her attack. Her special is dealing 180% physical damage to a single row. And her passive is, when she deals crit attack, her damage is increased by five and stacking up to four times for the whole battle. So this goes up to 40. So be sure to increase her crit attack when you build her. She's a terrific addition for DPS just in case you need more DPS for your team. Okay, so for our last healer, this is going to be Iori. She actually is part of my team. She's one of the two healers that I've been swapping in and out. I've been using her as well. So for her attack, so Iori heals front row allies with 53% of attack. And her specialty is really on heals, armor resistance and also, as you can see here, shields. So there's a 50% chance to increase armor resistance by 20 for two allies with the lowest HP for two rounds. So take note of that. Her specialty is also different as a healer. And lastly, her passive is Iori's fraternity allows her to turn pain into strength. Her first time, her HP drops below 30. Her healing effects are increased by 30% for two rounds. One of the most reliable healers and no, resistance and shield givers that we have. I don't have a problem with her. She's one of the two healers that I use. And I think you guys should also invest in her too. Okay, so for the last one, last SR that we have, I have here catch. So for catch, she specialized in low HP targets and also crit reduction and attack reduction. So for her attack is damage to lowest HP, 95% magic damage. Her special is, reduces target's crit by 20%. As you level her up, it's going to include attack by 15% as well, which is a big difference guys. And her passive is going to be catch changes. Her battle strategy is the first time her HP falls 30 or below 30, her dodge increased by 15% for two rounds. So again, she is going to be more survivable as her HP lowers. And this goes down to 50% triggers 50 below 50% HP and dodge increased by 20%. Okay, so that is the list of all the top SSRs, exactly 10 SSRs that I think you should invest in and take a second look at, especially if you're starting the game right now. People are experimenting on all of these, but these 10 will definitely be very helpful to you guys. So recap is going to be SNESHANA, RIKION, SIL, IRIRI, YARINA, ORORA, YANLING, SENKO, IRIRI, and CASH. So invest in them as early as now. You'll be using a lot of SRs in the game, majority as you start this game, especially if you're free to play. And that is it guys. Put comments down below if you think my list of the top 10 is good. And if you think I missed out on somebody on the top 10, please do put them down again in the comment section. Thank you guys, stay safe, take care, this is The Warden, and I'm out of here.


I know we both had a full day, and I'm happy we're able to bring this gathering where we can meet in a more relaxed atmosphere. As you perhaps are aware, we've just returned to New York where I address the United Nations. It's clear that our country faces serious challenges in the years ahead, but there are numerous reasons for optimism. The United States is to remain the leader of the free world. If our freedom and our prosperity be maintained, we must make certain that every American has the opportunity to live up to his or her intentions. Historically, black colleges and universities have played our way inside the world, and I'm proud that in the last two years, we've stood shoulder to shoulder with you. Today is your day, and it's declared by a joint resolution of the Congress. And I hope you won't think of the presumptuous but I'd like to think of it as our day. A proposition that keeping historically black colleges and universities a vibrant force in American education should not just be the goal of black Americans, but of all of us. I'd like to take this opportunity to offer a special thanks to a man with us today who has done so much over the years and continues to be an inspiration to us all. This distinguished gentleman, a former president of Tuskegee Institute, founded the United Negro College Fund in 1944. His hard work and leadership have meant that hundreds of thousands of our citizens are living richer and more meaningful lives. He's a man of deep conviction, yet he knows the value of business-like approaches and to achieving goals. He recognized long ago the significance of a strong endowment system to the viability of black colleges and universities, and I am, of course, referring to Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson. Dr. Patterson, congratulations. Dr. Patterson is named after a great American, and I might add a great Republican. Frederick Douglass. Well, since we last met a year ago, much has been accomplished. We set a goal of identifying and eliminating unfair barriers to your participation in federally sponsored programs. We set out to encourage the private sector to get more involved. Well, we also identified the 27 federal agencies which provide nearly all of the federal funding for higher education and made sure that they were aware of and shared our commitment to strengthening historically black colleges and universities. And I'm happy to say that preliminary figures suggest that those 27 agencies will be providing 11.5% more funds to your universities and colleges in 83 than they did in 82. Now, much of this is in the form of research grants from which historically black colleges have been shortchanged over the years. Well, we're making sure that doesn't happen anymore. These grants offer colleges and universities a chance to develop new educational capabilities while providing a needed service. There's no reason for them to be concentrated only in the larger institutions that have developed the skill of grantsmanship into an art form. I'm especially pleased that many of the projects stimulated by our initiative involve science, mathematics, and engineering. But federal research grants and other government subsidies are not at end in themselves. We must continue to work toward the goal of self-sufficiency. In that regard, our administration has strongly supported legislation which passed the Senate last week and the House today. This legislation, which I will sign this afternoon, will amend Title III of the Higher Education Act to authorize matching endowment grants to colleges and universities. These grants will promote independence and self-sufficiency by aiding and encouraging the development of substantial endowment funds and by providing incentives to promote fundraising activities. This program will help guarantee the continued viability of black colleges and universities fulfilling a long-standing dream of Dr. Patterson. Attracting better private sector support has also been one of our goals this year. Much has been accomplished in this area as well. Our project or one project underway provides a computer network in electrical engineering connecting a number of black colleges and universities and will improve the training of 1,500 electrical and engineering students at these schools. Over $389,000 of private sector contributions are involved in this. In the White House, our private sector initiative office is currently working with the National Alliance of Business to link specific black colleges and universities with local businesses and corporations. It's been two years since the signing of Executive Order 12320 and I think we can all agree that progress has been made. We can also agree we've got a long way to go. I hope that over this next year I'll have the opportunity to meet with some of you, perhaps in a smaller group, to hear your views personally. Until then, let me assure you I remain fully convinced of the importance of educational institutions. You represent a proud part of America's heritage. You're a great national resource we can't afford to see dwindle for lack of care. You offered hope to many of our citizens in a time of despair. You gave faith to many when it was sorely needed. And I can't help but tell a little story I heard the other day about faith. A fellow fell off a cliff and as he was falling grabbed a limb sticking out the side of the cliff and looked down 300 feet to the canyon floor below and then looked up and said, Lord, if there's anyone up there, give me faith. Tell me what to do. And a voice from the heavens said, if you have faith, let go. He looked down at the canyon floor and then took another look up and says, is there anyone else up there? Working together we can have faith that we will succeed and that our country will be a decent place, the land of opportunity for all that we want it to be. So I thank you all for being here. God bless you and now I'm going to sign Senate Bill 1872.


Welcome. Here we have Ralph to tell us about the value of mindfulness and how it came to Google. Give him some clap. So, have you ever been so angry at someone at work, some time that you really yelled at him or shouted at that person? Or have you ever enjoyed that slight nice experience in your body when you crashed the productive pipeline of your company? I certainly did have that experience when I still was a student and was hired my first week in a research lab to extend the image processing pipeline by a new functionality and I have to say I fucked up my first deployment completely. The entire image pipeline came complete hauled, all the batch jobs crashed and none of my colleagues, all the scientists weren't able to work any longer. So, when they came to see me at the end to see what was going on, they must have seen something like that. I was completely devastated, my stress level was at 100% percent, I was almost panicking and my inner system was basically upside down. So, what happened to me? Let's get meta, let's look from the outside what has happened. Initially, there was just one single fact, a bug. A bug didn't have a real connotation with itself, it's something we attribute to the bug. So, my fantasies I had what the consequences would be of this incident was the worst case I could get fired. At that time, I was a student, my funding was over and I had no money, I was completely broke, so that was my worst case that could happen to me. The second bad one was to be embarrassed in front of all the others. So, this is a real personal thing, so everybody has his own worst case scenario, so find your own and put them here and then you know how it feels for you. What happened in my brain at that moment? In our mammalian brain, we have a little structure called amygdala and the function of the amygdala is to monitor everything that we think, all our thoughts and everything that we perceive and give that an emotional color. That's the way how we feel something about what's going on. If the amygdala thinks that something poses a real threat for us, a physical threat for survival, then it can send really strong signals into our body and fire up the sympathetic nervous system. And if it's really strong, it can take over control over our neocortex and neuroscientists call that amygdala hijack. The way we perceive that is basically danger, so everything fires in our body and we are really ready to battle that situation. And that leads us or that restricts the choice of reactions or reaction patterns to the famous three Fs. The first one is fight, so you're trying to battle that situation. If you see you have no chance to succeed there, you turn to the second one, which is you try to escape from that situation. And if neither fighting or fighting has a chance, then the third one is to freeze. That's what a mouse does when a cat is there. A mouse does have no chance to fight the cat. It does have no chance to run away from the cat. The only chance it has not to move because the view of the cat can only see moving targets. So which one of these three is really optimal for fixing software bugs? None. So let's look at the workflow that happened in my mind. There was a bug, an interpretation, an emotion and a reaction. So where can we interrupt this cascade? In principle you have a good chance to interrupt that right after the fact appeared. And that you can do with seniority in software, if you have more experience in software development, you know, okay, I had bugs in the past, nothing happened, nobody killed me, and I could fix that within three days. That's maybe not possible when the Mars mission is three minutes before landing and your software crashes. And usually it rushes through and then you get a second chance. That's here when the amygdala gets activated but before it fires. And that is a very hard place to intervene because the amygdala is always much faster than the neocortex and it's always much stronger than that. So usually we rush through the last one, the emotion is expressed, and then we can see, can we create enough gap between the emotion and the reaction? And that's something we want to learn. And the tool or the set we can apply to that is emotional intelligence, which is actually a set of skills we can get familiar with. And emotional intelligence basically means that you're able to monitor your inner stays and you're able to react in a proper way to them or respond to them. Dan Goldman, a psychologist, has written a book which has become very famous in the bestseller I think in 2002 or 2005, where he described what the five pillars of emotional intelligence is, the five tools we should get more advanced or more trained in to deal with these kind of situations. And in that talk I will stress the first two ones, basically mainly self-awareness and self-regulation. So now we are on a Python congress, so I thought, oops, one way, we are in a Python congress, so I thought we should explain self-awareness in a Pythonic way. So let's program a class doing that. How would we start that? So we program a class human and how would we implement awareness? So self-awareness is we want to explore our inner state, which is the best library module in Python which we have at hand. Now the inspect module. With the inspect module we explore how the inner state of our interpreter. And if you look up the documentation, inspect live objects, wonderful. So how would you use that one? We started so much later. Self-awareness is basically an endless loop where you inspect what's going on inside. The inside function will become 2.8 if it ever comes, it's quite alpha, so don't expect to read up the documents on it. How would we translate that to our human situation? And there we come to mindfulness. That's the tool which corresponds to inspect.inside. And mindfulness is a practice where you direct the attention of your mind inside your body away from your thoughts into the present moment. So I announced that this talk should be maybe a little bit practical, so I would like to invite you to make a short experience with me now here during the talk. Let's practice mindfulness on the body. So the way that works is most easily if you maybe close your eyes for maybe a minute because you have less distraction, but you can also do it with open eyes. And then imagine that the attention that's currently focused to the outside, you're listening, you're hearing, it's focusing, it's drifting down from your head through your neck like with an escalator into the center of your body. It doesn't matter where in the belly, in the breast, and when you're there in your body, just let your attention float around and just see what you are perceiving. It's not about thinking, it's about perceiving what is going on.  So that's what it's meant by having the attention on the body. And that way you feel what is your current inner status, your current inner state. So since we don't have that much time, I would like to ask you to come back. But try to continue with that exercise now during the rest of the talk by keeping maybe 5% or 10% of your attention in the body while you're listening to me. And I come back to that later. So back to the code. What else is to do in that loop? Nothing. Self-awareness is just you notice what's going on and you continue with the loop. Really? Really? Nothing else to do. The problem is when challenges come up and the two main challenges are judgment and distraction. Let's continue with distraction, with judgment. The judgment is if you apply the evil eval function on your inner state. The outcome of that is either bad or good. So if it's bad, you usually try to deny or suppress what you're feeling. That really usually kicks you out of the loop. If it's good, then you're trying to attach to it and that works like a carpet. You get stuck in there. So the advice I would like to give you is whatever bubbles up from the inside by watching it, by feeling it, just watch it, don't judge it and be gracious. I mean, sometimes things come up which you don't like. It doesn't matter what air bubbles up the air bubble at the surface of the water just dissolves in itself. Now, how do we address distraction? That's a bit more difficult. You have to understand that mindfulness is not a state. It's a continuous process of refocusing, of refocusing your attention. So if you look at that graph here, you see we start with attention on the body or on the breath. Then at some point there comes a distraction. It would be a thought which carries your way. So usually that takes time until you realize that by applying meta attention. So waking up and then say, oh, I lost my meditation or my mindfulness.  And so that's a continuous process like that. You do it for a minute or two or whatever. And noticing the distraction is actually the difficult part. So mindfulness can be summarized as simpler do as we saw in our little exercise. But it's really not so easy to sustain. How would we improve mindfulness? In Tibetan there's a word called gom. And there's a literal translation of that word to English, which means to familiarize with, to get trained, to get used to something. And in European language or in English language, that's usually translated to the word meditation. Which has, for many people, strange side effects, sounds maybe esoteric or very hard to do. But meditation actually is just a family of mental practices which you apply to get used to a certain inner process. So it's really a mind training. It's not believing something. It's really applying a real training to your mind. The other connotation we have is when we do meditation, we have to sit still for two hours and are not allowed to move. And that's actually not possible. That destroys everything. A much better approach to meditation is to apply it short moments and repeat those often. My favorite training situation is a red traffic light.  And in Germany it's not even allowed to use a mobile phone. So you really can take that 30 seconds, keep your eyes open. So you see when the light turns green. And just feel into your body. You can do the same thing in an escalator going up or when you wait for the bus. These are excellent situations where to apply it. You don't need extra time, extra space, you don't have to dress red like me or whatever. So it's just that nobody sees that. It's much more difficult to apply mindfulness when you work on a computer. At least I find that. It's hard to find the moments to remember that. And the good technique I found is a Pomodoro technique. So in principle, you have an alarm clock that you set to 25 minutes. And then we're going to task. And then after 25 minutes you put a break of five minutes, practice meditation, practice mindfulness.  And then you have, in a natural way, have moments of mindfulness where you recreate also your system during your work. You can see the details on the Pomodoro page. So a short reminder who still keeps presence in his body while talking. And you can see a few of them. Okay, great. So what the heck is that good for? Just to feel well. With that question we come to the second, the list of then-gold men from self-awareness to self-regulation. And self-regulation is the outcome of being aware of what you perceive. So if you don't know what's going on, you cannot regulate it. Self-regulation is extremely important when it comes to strong emotions. The strong emotions have the problem that we think or we identify with them. We think it's really existential. I am angry. I am sad. We don't get any distance to what's happening. So with mindfulness you will be able to see an emotion as a physiological event going on in your body, which you can watch actually. And that helps you to create a little distance between what's going on and how you feel. And that will allow you at the end to regulate down from your neocortex the amygdala, which again regulates down the physical expression in your body. And that's actually the way to really respond if something is going on in your current situation. So at the end that leads to that you are going to respond to triggers, instead to reacting them. Reaction is fight, flight or freeze. Responding is to make a decision of what I want to do next.  And so Google initiated a program in about 2000, which was driven by Jadimeng Tang, a software engineer working there from the early days on. And he understood very quickly, he was a Buddhist, but he understood quickly that all of that doesn't make sense if people just have to believe something. They invited neuroscientists and psychologists to see what part of the Buddhist techniques can we take into an environment which is really science driven. And so they assembled a curriculum that you can go there and learn that and study with them. And that ended up in this, and it's completely written up in that book Search Inside Yourself. It's a 10 euro book. It's absolutely worth reading. It collects everything and goes much further on what I have been now explaining. So I would really recommend getting a copy.  And he explained in, I think, in 10 or 20 minutes sessions all different chapters of that book in nicely viewable sections. So definitely have a look at that. Who's using that in industry? There are a couple companies who have applied or are applying these kind of techniques in their company. And I'm one specifically stress SAP because I personally know the two trainers there. They have been sent a couple years ago or two or three years ago to California, really to Google to run through that program, and become a real official trainer. And now they are running courses at SAP in Heidelberg for 100 or even 1000 people in a regular way. So it's a part of the business strategy in the meantime. Who still remembers the exercise? Great. So the mantra I would like to give you home as short moments repeated often. That's the easiest way to apply mindfulness during the normal day. And it will change you and it will possibly change your life. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Rolf. Who has questions? That's far. Don't stumble. Hi. First the comments. I'm really, really happy to see this talk here because it seems like the employer always have an assumption that we are all grown up emotionally stable human beings. So this is a great contribution. I wanted to ask you in the practices of applying mindfulness at work. How does that... Is there like a dedicated place for beginners or how does the company encourage its employers to be mindful? Oh, that really depends on the company you're working on. I'm doing that right on my desk. Or I leave my desk and that's usually what I recommend with the Pomodoro technique.  So I would recommend stand up, walk a little bit around, have a breath at the window. And if your company doesn't provide real rooms for that, which most companies don't do, then you have to really find your own solution. I don't know SAP if they have meditation rooms. I mean, I started a project there on Monday for two months. So I will definitely get in touch again with these guys and see from inside how they are doing that. But I don't know today. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you for the great talk. I'm wondering, when you talk about getting distance from your emotions so you're not angry but you understand that you have anger, does that make you less happy because you can't be happy as a person? And does it make you harder to experience happiness? Happiness is something really special. I didn't touch that here because it's not so easy to explain. All the Buddhists talk about there's something in you which is called happiness without reason. So if we get free of all our fears and all our tensions and all our sorrows and really settle down our mind, there's an instance in us where the happiness comes out from the inside without you doing anything. And that's something you also can just realize or recognize, but there's nothing to do with it because it doesn't distract you from anything.  Happiness without reason. Thank you. But I'm also thinking about other positive feelings, maybe excitement which maybe aren't just natural but are positive. So again, I come back to the Buddhist point of view and they say nothing is persistent, everything goes away. So if you attach too much to your excitement, then at the end you will be disappointed when it's no longer there. So they say, okay, feel the excitement, see that it's there, but don't attach too much to it. That was one of the loops I programmed. So detachment is the problem to it. You can feel it, you can have it, but you don't cling to it. Any more questions? Meanwhile, could you please put the slide for the video? I didn't catch the slide with the video for the meditation. Ah, okay. I have two questions. This one? The first one is when you are meditating, but you were previously working on fixing some bug and suddenly during meditation you have idea how you could fix it. Then what you do? This is the first question and the second one, because the practice is of religious origin. Have you had any issues in the company?  So the first question was, I have a great idea while you're meditating. I think that happens quite a lot because when you're meditating, your mind settles somehow. You don't know these snowballs where you can shake, there's snow all over there and thinking is a constant shaking of that snowball. So the snowflakes there inhibit a clear view.  So that happens quite a lot. Usually I trust that I remember that after my meditation. If it's really necessary, put a piece of paper next to you and just write it down quickly and then let it go again and continue your meditation. That's what I would recommend. The second one is to be called religious when you start with mindfulness or something like that. I mean, that risk has also been here for me on that conference. I think it's depending on the way how you present it to your employer. The Search Inside Yourself book, I think it's a perfect way to suggest how that could work for people who are really rational thinking and what we all are, but don't really like having a religious color to it. So by reading that book, I think you will find a lot of arguments to go for this subject without touching the religious part. So that's what I would maybe suggest to you. Is that answer your question a little bit? Unfortunately, we have no more time for questions. Be mindful of the lightning talks. Thank you, Ralph.


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Who is this woman outlined in silhouette against these panes of glass in this house, this average suburban house on the outskirts of Denver in Colorado? Take three photographers, one of whom was instrumental in redefining modern landscape photography. The other was breaking down gender barriers by being the very first female photographer of Magnum Photos and the third, well, she started off as a printer for Man Ray, was instrumental in rescuing Eugene Adjaye's prints and ended up being a hugely influential photographer in her own right. Put them together and what do you get? How's it housing? And welcome to the letter A. Yes, this isn't an episode of Sesame Street, but it's a series of short introductions to three photographers throughout the alphabet. As always with these videos, I will link to more information about these photographers in the description box below. There is a name in photography that isn't particularly well known. That name is Alexei Brodovich. Now, he is possibly one of the most influential figures in modern photography. He was responsible for mentoring Irvin Penn, Gary Winogrand, Richard Aberdon, and our first A photographer, Eve Arnold. Eve Arnold is probably best known for her photo essays on celebrities like Marilyn Monroe.  She finds intimacy amongst the people whom she's photographing and almost treating them like friends. And of course, this lends a far more of a great depth to her photographs because it feels like we're not just observing, say, Marilyn Dietrich, you know, singing, but we are going behind the curtain. We're seeing the real person behind the common facade that they want to show to the world. And that's what makes her photographs so compelling that she treats everybody from Chinese peasants through to world famous celebrities with respect. Throughout her work with Magnum, Eve Arnold travelled the world photographing for various publications. And if you are interested in photo essays and photo journalism and what have you, then she would be a fantastic place to start.  When you subscribe to the channel, YouTube takes that as a sign that you like this kind of content, content that talks about the why of photography.  So we're going to find you more content like the photographic guy that deals in the why of photography. So get rid of the cat videos, hit subscribe, and you're going to get more of this fantastic kind of content. Bernice Abbott is one of those names that is a bit of an enigma, certainly for myself, and I'm going to hold up my hand and beg forgiveness for my ignorance because it took me so long, like so long between first hearing her name and actually being able to put a photograph to that name. And that's a huge failing on my part, but I have rectified it and hopefully for some of you out there who may have heard of the name, you're now also going to be able to rectify it. She got her start printing for Man Ray, that very famous surrealist photographer who does all the glass tears and the solarizations and what have you. And it was while she was in Paris that she also met Eugene Ager. He was that very famous French photographer from sort of the turn of the century whose work is very celebrated now. And I believe it's only really because when he passed away, Eve Arnold through his estate bought all of his negatives and his prints and kept them for posterity. After this she became very much an influential photographer in her own right. And you can see her photography in this 1930s New York is extremely reminiscent of Ager's photography. It has this kind of a very straight aesthetic, which is interesting given that she must have picked up quite a lot of surrealist pens when working for Man Ray, but you look at her photographs and they are as if you took Ager and put him into a modern context. I don't think that's necessarily saying that she is a copyist because of course she certainly isn't. She is making photography in her own right. It's just a great example of taking something that speaks to you just as much as obviously Ager's work spoke to Abbott and then she translated that into her modern world and so too can we. In addition to this straight urban landscape photography that Bernie's Abbott was creating, she also produced some rather interesting portraits in sort of the 1920s and 30s of great artistic and literary figures. Now they're not mind-blowing portraits by any means of the imagination, at least to me. I mean you may have a different perspective on that, but I do think that that's kind of something that is interesting with a lot of these, as I say to say older photographers, is that they try their hands at a number of different genres and so should we as photographers in the modern age. We shouldn't feel that we must only photograph one set thing. Who is this woman outlined in silhouette against these panes of glass in this house, this average suburban house on the outskirts of Denver in Colorado. Whoever she is, she is instrumental in introducing me to one of my favorite photographers of all time. There has been a lot written about Robert Adams. Part of the New Topper graphics movement, his work changed the way that landscape photography was perceived in kind of the 1970s or so. I could sit here and talk for ages about all the stuff that has been written about New Topper graphics and the way that the photography has discovered the things that have been lost and yet replaced with things that have been found and the way that man changes and shapes the landscapes and what have you. And that's fine, but that's not really what this channel is about. This channel is about finding photography or introducing you to photography that hopefully will move you, not inspire you to read a thesis. Robert Adams' photographs move me because they're quiet because they have a solitude of stillness to them. It is interesting to see houses being built and the landscape being altered and changed before our very eyes, but that's not the core of why I like his photographs. I love his imagery because it has that quietness. It has a dryness to it. It communicates so clearly with us how it must have felt for people growing up around that time. Seeing the landscape that they had outside their window change and evolve within the space of a few years from being the sweeping almost unending world of huge skies to becoming this closeted and closed world of suburbia. The reason this has so much meaning and input in my own way that I interpret these photographs is because it's much like the world that I grew up in, the felt that's across from the house that we lived in initially in South Africa is now a giant shopping mall. The river where we used to fish for crabs and stuff is long gone. It has all been swallowed up and maybe that's what I like about these photographs is that they appeal to my sense of simplicity, of minimalism, but also they remind me of a time in my childhood. They take me back to that dustiness and and worlds populated by construction sites and giant hoardings telling us that if you lived here you'd be home by now. If you've enjoyed this episode then click here and just move out the way to see other inspirational photographers.


What's up everybody? Jayce here for JaspiersCaseBrace.com. We just sold out the last RMB we needed to do to unlock Spectre basketball 21-22 This is a random number block for the Raptors Grizzlies Nick's Heat Wizards, and again you get a piece of these teams For the fraction of the price of course and again guys we only sold eight spots So instead of ten we sold eight so we're gonna give away two free spots for customers that bought in again If we hit any hits for these teams here, they're gonna go by serial number Everybody gets assigned a number zero through nine There's your examples there and for any and all redemptions go to spot zero one-on-ones go to spot one And if there is any non-numbered cards, they'll be randomized to the group. So here's the dice roll Here's the customer name So we're gonna randomize dice roll here with the customer names first top two on the list after the dice roll get free spots We're gonna paste your names here, and then we're randomized with the same dice roll names and numbers Here we go roll 246 times good luck one two three four five six and Carl after six times two and a four congratulations. You want both spots? You did have the odds Congrats buddy So there you go now. We're gonna go six times here on the names and numbers one two three four five six Carl the top down a Cody now, let's go six times here now numbers one two three four five six six times four down to three So Carl you have four as well six zero two and one Cody with seven Carl with nine five eight and then Cody with three So there you go guys. So coming up next is the break itself good luck to everybody Here and let's pull some big hits


In preparation for next month's governorship election in AKT State, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has commenced mock accreditation of intending voters. The bimodal voter authentication system, supervised by INEC Chairman Professor Mahmoud Yacoubo and other management staff of the commission to certain its effectiveness saw the electorate submit their voter cards for authentication while their fingerprints and faces were captured. Professor Yacoubo, who monitored the exercise and the communities expressed satisfaction as the process saying it showed the readiness of INEC for the coming election. Okay, this is part of the objective of visiting AKT ahead of the governorship election. We said that we are going to do a mock test in a few local government areas to further test the functionality of the machines before the election. And so far, so good with the mock. We have visited one of the polling centers in Hado, we are here in Ikere. From here, we'll go to Erepo-Dunifelodun, local government for the same reason. An overall assessment is that we are happy with the functionality of the machine. That is one. Number two, we're also here to look at the readiness of our facilities for the election. As you can see, we have renovated the Ikere local government office just as we have done with many other local government offices. These are not administrative facilities, they are also electoral assets. Because on election day, we'll do the RA collection in our local government areas. So far, so good. The third leg of the assessment is for us to see how far the PVCs that we have made available to voters have been collected. Remember that PVCs, citizens cannot vote on election day. And 74% of the PVCs have been collected so far, which is very, very encouraging indeed. With about three weeks of the election, that is very good.