While we wait for it for the slides to load, I would like to note two things in the previous presentation and connect it to the some of the points that we discussed in the morning. One of it is what I had said while introducing the session that this was an example where you can see the entire research design and from the time you plan the study till you finish analyzing and conclude the results. When you saw that sometimes there could be surprises or that things may not go as you plan. For example, the equivalence between the groups was not what was expected. There are ways later where you can try to address these issues, but it is much more difficult and the data analysis was very difficult and it is also not easy or not guaranteed that using a non-equivalent group design can give you results, can give you conclusive results. So here one of the morals here was try very hard in the beginning to make sure that the groups are indeed equivalent. The second point is this was again if you thought that the study was a little complicated or you know what was that what was new in this and so on. In fact, this was an example where the positioning of the work had to be done very carefully. As Mrinal mentioned right in the beginning interactive visualizations have been are being used a lot especially in science and engineering education. There are a lot of benefits that have been shown for these visualizations. So a referee if the study is not done very carefully, the referee might say that well what is new in your work, what is the novelty aspect. So the novelty here really comes from the positioning that while some of the benefits of the interactive visualizations have been mentioned, there also are some results which say that too much interactivity can might overload the learner or maybe the benefit is not as much as one thought and so on. So the positioning of the work is to carefully look into this issue examine this issue as to how much interactivity is good for what level of content, what type of content for what topic and so on. So the value of a study like this is in the careful detailing of the points where there is a gap in the literature. So if you if your study falls in this category you really have to work very very hard to do positioning. On the other hand if you have if your idea itself or the question itself or your idea itself is something much newer, then the your paper can be there is greater chance of your paper being accepted on the novelty issue. So since now you are going from a novice ET researcher to an intermediate ET researcher, it is I thought it would be useful to share these ideas. There have been a lot of questions about some mainly about asking us to explain some technical points. So the way we technical terms like what is meant by variable manipulation and what is statistical significance and so on. So these sort of queries we look into two or three places. One is we will try to address a few of them briefly in the question and answer session if it is relevant to the topic that we are discussing, else we will post a few of these on Moodle the ones at least that you have been exposed to today. When you read research papers especially as novice ET researchers it is inevitable that you will come across these terms and initially they may seem new because it is indeed a new technical topic itself. So what you will have to do at that time is to find references, find links and actually go and find out the meanings of these terms on your own. So the fact that you are being exposed to these new terms and you do not right away understand what is going on, this is going to happen quite typically once you start reading literature and there are ways to solve that. You essentially read more to try to find out what these mean. Now I think all of you are set to almost begin your study, so here I can sense the enthusiasm that we know how to set up a study, how to measure it, so let us get on. But there is really one very important point that we all have to pay a lot of attention to before we go ahead and implement things. In fact we have to think about this during the design phase itself and we mentioned this a little bit earlier in the first session today morning and this point has to do with the ethics of research. And by ethics we mean ethics come at several stages, we are going to talk about two different aspects of ethics today, one is the ethics of ethics while conducting research which becomes quite complex especially because what we have is human subjects with us and the other part is going to be about ethics of writing and reporting research. So let us first spend a few minutes about the ethics of conducting research when we have human subjects involved. This part is something which is perhaps new to engineering college faculty or it is also new in the physical sciences because we do not have subjects or samples which are live. If you are a faculty member from the biological sciences you would have dealt with some ethics of animal research and some of the guidelines in fact do borrow over here. But for engineering instructors or engineering researchers since we do not have human subjects in engineering we do not think about this particular part of ethics too much. So the first question we want to ask is why is research with human subjects so special and why do we have to treat it at a different power than other types of subjects. And if you think of any type of research the main goal is the pursuit of scientific knowledge. So, we do research to try to understand something more deeply to try to draw inferences to make theories and we contribute back to the spool of scientific knowledge. And that is how the entire that is how the game of science is conducted and that is how the entire scientific community grows in terms of knowledge and skills. So there is a lot of value in pursuit of scientific knowledge some of it even becomes technological knowledge and it goes off into becoming inventions for practical human usage and all that. So we all know very well what is the value in pursuing scientific knowledge and what is the value in doing systematic research in order to pursue scientific knowledge. Now when you have human subjects what happens is that benefit to humanity has to be balanced with a potential problem that could be caused to the subjects. So these kind of problems might crop up because we are asking some subjects to do one thing and another subjects to do something else. So we can ask is there fairness in that? We may ask are human subjects to give us different types of information right from marks in education but we may also do things like videotape what videotape their hand gestures and their face just face emotions while they are doing some study while they are doing some task. So there is an issue of privacy that comes in. In fact if in some psychological research there is also there is that the subjects could be at more risk than what they would normally have to undertake in their normal daily lives. So there is this issue of a problem due to risk that is caused from the research and what we need to do is balance the benefits versus cause and make sure that we are maintaining fairness and we are we do not cause any harm to the subjects. So that is why this human research human subjects is a very special type of I mean this issue is very special when it comes to doing research with human subjects. So now the best thing to learn how to do ethical research is actually to read up some standard guidelines and there are several known organizations professional organizations several universities several books and articles which have been published and they all almost say the same thing. So what we will do here is just summarize some of these. This is not completely comprehensive but this at least should give you a start. You I am sure you would not disagree with any of these that scientist should not do research that puts people at risk. And this is you can understand this in the context of medical research for example because if somebody is doing drug testing at the very minimum the drug should not cause any harm to the people on whom it is being tested. So you may say well I am doing education I am not doing medical research so what kind of risk will I put subjects at and you are right to some extent that the risks may not be very high but it is still something that you need to keep in mind. For example if you ask some of your students to do the same task for 4 hours without paying attention to their comfort there is some risk involved there as in the discomfort is more than what the subjects would undergo beyond a normal day. The second guideline is that scientist should not do research that violates what we call as informed consent. So we will talk a little bit more about it in the next slide. The subjects have to know in most studies what they are being exposed to why it is being done and they have to agree to be participants in your research study that is what we mean by informed consent. We are on slide 5 by the way we are still on slide 5. The last guideline I have mentioned here is that scientist should not do bias research that means if you know that some technique is clearly better than the other make sure that all your participants all your students get the value of the technique that you know is beneficial. Do not withhold good things from people or do not give bad things when you know that it is bad. So scientist should not have a bias before it begins. So here are some more practical guidelines those were the principles. As we mentioned earlier as researchers and scientists we should not do any harm. It is somewhat unlikely that we will do physical harm when doing educational research but I did put that there because it is important for other kinds of research and all of us should really make sure. But it is also important that we do not do any psychological harm. We should ensure fairness that is we should not withhold proven effective techniques from people. The next few items have to do with the privacy of individuals that as researchers we should protect their confidentiality. We should make sure that anonymity is maintained as far as possible. So to give you an example here if you are using students marks in some study it is better if you are if finally when your study is done and when you report the study that the student is not identified with the data point of the mark. So the marks are there as belonging to subject 1 and subject 2 and subject n but you do not know or the reader does not know which student is subject 1 and which student is subject 2. So that way you are able to maintain the anonymity of the students. As teachers the issue of fairness and anonymity in fact sometimes are conflicting with each other because as teachers we do have some control over students grades and the marks and the performance. But as researchers we do want to hear from them whether they found our course satisfying whether they learnt and so on. So one place where ethics becomes tricky becomes important in educational research is if you do questionnaires if you want to implement any questionnaires it is recommended that firstly students are anonymous at least if your research does not need to identify them and secondly you do it after you do not have any control over the mark. So wait in the final exam. If you ask a question right before the final exam as to do did you like my class and you ask students to put their name on it well guess what they are going to say. You want the good marks so they will all say that we love your class and there your research is being compromised. When you are dealing with video data again you have to be careful because people can be identified from their faces. So there are guidelines what to do when you have video data. So what I am doing here is just to raise some flags as to when you have to be careful what exactly you have to do beyond what is on the slide you will have to read up more detailed guidelines. If a participant wants to withdraw from a study at any point of time we should allow them to do so and the most important point here is to remember that when our students or other participants are agreeing to be part of our study they are actually doing as a favor as researchers. So if we have this guideline in our mind at all times then it is quite likely that we will do the right thing in terms of ethics. So couple of more points I will just mention this without saying much more because there is a lot to say once we get into it.  But in case your study involves children you have to be very careful because children are minors and getting informed consent from them is difficult, parents have to be involved, school teachers have to be involved and so on. So while writing your paper if it turns out that you have children in your study our mentors will guide you through this process. And the last point I want to mention in terms of ethics of conducting research has been mentioned in the first session today morning that do not steal others ideas. And these can be these ideas can be there simply as ideas in the first stage of research like what you are doing in this workshop or it can be in a published paper the idea can exist in a published paper also. So when we say do not steal others ideas we should not steal others ideas at any stage in their research. So what we will do now is for the rest of the session move on and talk a little bit about the ethics of how to report research and there is a word that you all need to get familiar with it is called plagiarism we will actually define it very carefully it is not a pleasant word it is not not at all pleasant if you are accused of it. So we really need to know what it means and how to avoid it and what to do in order to avoid it very often plagiarism happens unintentionally and even that is not acceptable. We have to it is not an excuse to say that I was not aware that I was plagiarizing nobody will believe that excuse. So we have to really know what this means and for the rest of the session we will focus on published research. Stealing ideas at the idea stage we have already talked about and I am sure none of us will do it but we still have to say it and make sure that we follow the guidelines. So what to do when we have published research? So what we will do now is I will have a set of polling questions and each question asks you if the situation described is an instance of plagiarism or not and you really have to you just have to say yes or no at this point and as before the coordinators can type how many said yes and how many said no. So these go on from easy to more and more difficult questions the first few ones are I think most of you will be able to get the answer right away. So the first question is is uncredited verbatim copying of more than 50 percent of a paper is it considered as plagiarism and before you vote just a moment let us see what these terms mean and then you can vote uncredited means without credit without quotation marks without a reference bibliography and so on verbatim means exactly the same way it is written. So is this plagiarism or not actually all of you can also do it because gets harder and harder looks like all of you I should not even say most of you looks like all of you are on the right track and yes uncredited verbatim copying of more than 50 percent of the paper is considered as plagiarism I see one answer that says no please make sure there is no doubt about this here the answer is the correct answer is yes there is no maybe involved here. Can you stop voting for this question because we are going to the next question. The next question ask now please answer the second question suppose instead of 50 percent you only copy 20 percent of the paper is that considered as plagiarism. So I am beginning to see a few knows here you are right because what we are thinking is that the amount that is plagiarism is not a lot you can consider think about this a little bit more and say what happens if this 20 percent becomes 5 percent. So at least let us try to answer this particular question again here uncredited verbatim copying of 20 percent of a paper is also considered as plagiarism. So let us ask a question does the amount of material plagiarized play a role in defining whether it is plagiarized or not. So suppose instead of 20 percent only 2 percent of the paper was plagiarized would it be considered as an offense would it be considered as plagiarism. The answer is yes even if it was 2 percent it is considered as plagiarized because professional bodies such as IEEE say that the amount of material does not play a role once even a little bit is copied without giving credit word for word it is considered as plagiarism. There is a question what percentage of the paper should be considered should be used for not considering it as plagiarism and the answer is 0. So I will just pause a moment at this slide the guideline the professional guideline is amount or quantity copied does not play a part in defining plagiarism which means even if you copy a little bit it is going to be considered as plagiarism. However, the amount does play a part in the punishment that is what this paragraph means. So I all these are from the IEEE publication and standards which most of us use if you go to any professional organization or any journal they have similar rules here. Now some of you are asking interesting questions what if we give acknowledgement. So let us look at the next slide actually I think this maybe should have come earlier but let us just quickly do this as a revision before going to the next slide what if I copy some small not text but what if I copy an illustration or a single sentence is this plagiarism or not just yes or no yeah. So now you are all saying yes with an exclamation mark because we already defined what we mean by plagiarism. So yes even if you or somebody copies an illustration or a table in fact tables and figures do have a lot more importance than text in several papers it is considered as plagiarism. So let us look at the next question with some of you are already asking is the problem happening is this person being accused of plagiarism because he or she did not give credit. Remember that uncredited meant without quotation marks credit or reference is that the problem. So we are asking the question would it be okay if we give credit and then copy this is not a polling question it is so important that I just wanted to tell you the answer here. So there is no poll at this point and to do an example consider this. So if you can now look at the example where you give credit and you copy verbatim a paragraph from a paper. So let us say you use a paragraph from some Wikipedia article give credit cite it in the text put the reference at the bottom is this okay or is this the question is is this plagiarism. Now the answers are depends and no so the answer is not always a yes okay I am not trying to you cannot game the system think about this one. You can talk to your neighbor here okay since there seem to be a lot of people who think that this is okay that you think that this is not plagiarism let us actually look at the answer. So please stop voting you may be a little surprised to know that it is not always okay to do this because it completely depends on how the credit is given if you verbatim copy text even after giving credit. So what this means is it is not sufficient to do this suppose I do only this much this is considered to be copying this is considered to be plagiarism if I simply copy and give a citation it is considered to be plagiarism. What I need to do to be safe is to use quotation marks around the copy text and cite the original if I am copying something directly so we will spend more time on this particular point when to use quotation marks when is it okay not to use and so on but it is not a very clean answer that simply by putting a reference number here we are safe. Going back to the question is uncredited the problem the answer is yes uncredited is definitely a problem but simply giving credit and citing a reference does not solve the problem. What to do is what we will look at next let us see verbatim is the problem was the problem happening because we use verb word by word we copied things as is and here let us look at another example. So suppose a writer takes a sentence from a paper rewrites the sentence by using synonyms of the words and phrases and rearranges the sentence order let us say this is what is done here is an example is this plagiarism this is not verbatim because it is not word forward you can see that the sentence order has changed. So many of you are saying it depends some are saying no some are in fact saying yes and if you look at the original and the rewritten version what you can notice is that the sentence order has been changed the phrase after since has been has moved to the beginning and the phrase from the beginning has moved to the end and certain words have been replaced by their synonyms. So actually this is also considered as plagiarism because this comes under what is called as improper paraphrasing even when a citation is put it is considered as in so what is going on if you if you want to look at fundamentally why this is not acceptable the idea that is there in the original the idea is actually exactly the same here all that is done by the rewritten version is to change the words. So it is not the rewritten version is not really in my own words it is still the original version with a few synonyms substituted and with a sentence structure flipped over. So now we can see that it is not really that easy and how do we do proper paraphrasing how do we summarize in our own words and that is really what we are going to spend the next almost half an hour on with some activities. So I think what we can do now is we are the number of such questions polling questions are now over and let us look at how to tackle this somewhat difficult problem and the reason it is difficult is that I will come back to this ok I will come back to those. The reason it is difficult is on the one hand we have been telling you to base your studies on literature to develop a topic based on what is already been said this is the prior work but on the other hand now we are saying write something new and original. On the one hand we are saying give credit to previous researchers but now we are saying you have to make your own contribution. So we did not talk much about the last point here but on the one hand the language we use has to be similar to the language that is used in the community but on the other hand we have to use our own voice and on our own words. So it does look like these items are contradicting each other and our job as researchers is to actually solve through these issues and see how we do refer to literature how we do refer to prior work but at the same time write it in our own words. So I hope I have not managed to scare you of reading literature because I am still going to say and after in the next session again we are going to say that you need to refer to prior work you need to position your work based on what exists except you need to paraphrase it in your own words. So that is the problem has been broken down into one of using your own words to write about prior work take a time moment to read this if you like. So what should we do to overcome these challenges? By the way if you ask people why they plagiarize most people do not intend to copy. In fact what they say is one of these reasons. So it is just good to know why people say that they plagiarize sometimes you would not know how to put it in your own words or I might say that my teacher never taught me to do this or my teacher taught me to in fact rewrite it in the same words or it is not illegal in my country or my university substitute anything. Many of us think that whatever is on the internet and Wikipedia is owned by everybody so it is ok to copy and no it is not. Some of us say that I do not have the time because this does take a lot of time to rewrite in my own words they are right people who say that it does take time but there is no excuse we have to spend the time to rewrite in your own words. And the last one here we did talk about that I thought it was ok so long as I put a citation and the answer is no it is not enough to put a citation. So what should we do? And at this point we will look into each one these are some terms that we need to be very familiar with site we always have to do and site means give credit to the work which we are referring to. The way we give credit is usually by putting a reference to the article or article in a journal or article in a book or a page in a book or an internet article so we give a reference and we tell people how to find that reference. I think all of you are familiar with it we will see examples later. Most of the times try to use your own words the other word we are going to spend some time now is called paraphrase where we are not only summarizing but we are actually sticking closer to the original idea it is ok to do it occasionally and there are ways to do it you have to be a little careful about paraphrasing using your own words completely using your and converting somebody else's ideas and absorbing it into your own ideas is it is better to do it that way but you can paraphrase occasionally quoting directly it is rarely used but there are one or two occasions where it is important to do it and we look at an example. So let us look at each one of these one by one ok what do we mean by citation? The point of citing is to tell our readers that certain material came from another work it tells the reader that it came from another source and it tells them which source it is so this is what we mean by a citation or a reference so here is an example. Why should we cite? Well we should give proper credit where it is due because this idea came from this source it is the scientific etiquette in our scientific community worldwide and it is the law we must give credit when should we cite anytime you use word sentences illustrations and figures data tables or even when we use some ideas from an original source so you can think of this sentence as more as of an idea it is describing what is the benefit of distance education but this idea has been talked about in this paper that is why we should cite it. You should be careful about words and sentences but I would say you should be very careful about illustrations and data how to cite different ways of citation are provided by different conferences or journals all I will say is follow the guidelines given by the journal or conference and they are very clear this one here this example is a very common way of citing where you put a number put the author's names the title of the paper the year and so on. What is meant by paraphrasing? So if there is a passage or a paragraph or a few sentences in the original work and we want to use it in our material in our work we have to translate it to some extent in our own words and give a citation to the original source. So this is done when we refer to prior work you will do this a lot in your literature reviews section refer to prior work to build your work and it can also be used to provide support to your claims so let us say you found a result and somebody else has found a similar result you will have to paraphrase the other people's result so that you can support your own claims when to do it most of the times when you use actual text or ideas from the source and how to do it we will actually come back to this how to do it because we have an exercise for you here but before we look into paraphrasing your own doing paraphrase activity on your own let us actually do a pair activity. So what we will do here is they will this is the original I am going to leave this on here take a few minutes read this and then I will show you three versions you have to decide which is plagiarized which is paraphrased and which is an acceptable summary in my own words I am going to show them all together also but there is a problem with the amount of text we can put on a slide so take your time read these five or six lines okay the same text will be there on the next slide with three different versions the font size might be slightly small so that is why I am going to show if you need I will put this back again so here is the same original and here is version three versions we will look at the versions also individually later but try to at least get an idea of which of these versions is plagiarized which is an acceptable summary and which is paraphrased paraphrase is you can talk to your neighbor vote in your centers we will just you can do a self-check later it is okay if you do not show it on the chat window now okay let us look at them one by one let us look at the first one okay this was the original and this was the first version so is this plagiarized is it a paraphrase or is it a summary okay just look at this version and the original so if you read here firstly one thing you can note one quick way to see is usually the size of the original and the size of this version these two look almost the same secondly you will see some clues here it says only 10 percent of something and here it says only a tenth of the final draft then you will see a lot of synonyms here a lot of absolutely same word for word direct quotation comes here here you see direct quotation overuse direct quotation and taking notes use too many direct quotations when they take notes so you will I think all of you will agree here that this is the plagiarized version that the similarity is there in terms of the words in terms of the ideas all they are doing is switch a few synonyms once in a while okay let us look at the next one here we are saying that this is a summary because if you look at this more carefully the writer is putting in his or her own idea that the writer is saying that students should only take a few notes because of this reason it is there in the original but the writer is using their own words here and the third one is what we call as a paraphrase because what we are doing here is take the same paragraph and there are really not too many new ideas here but it is trying to be written in the author's own words a paraphrase is usually shorter than the original yeah I think there was some glitch of v1 and v3 I do agree that there was some glitch that happened it will be fixed in the final slides but use these slides to note which one is which okay let us see what is a quotation so we will come back to you doing your own paraphrasing and quoting so in a quote what you do is write something which is identical to the original using a very small portion of the original source here is an example as defined by so and so with the citation with the page number in quotation marks there is a definition and this reference is given at the bottom you would do it rarely but you mainly want to do it if you want to draw attention to the original words and when you are trying to define something this is one place where you would use a quotation or if the original words are something very important you want to say that this famous scientist has said so and so you can quote that famous scientist and how to do it you have to use quotation marks or in some cases the text is offset from the edges those styles formatting styles are given by the journal of course you must give citation if you remember you should always give sides okay so what we will do now is actually look at an activity it is going to take about 15 minutes or so what I would do here is ask you to read it and write a paraphrase of this paragraph you can do it in do it individually and then you can check your answer with your pairs the second point I want you to think of is is there any place in this paragraph where it would be necessary to quote so firstly do a paraphrase and then see is there any part which needs quotation so take about 10 minutes to write a paraphrase of this paragraph here looks like most of you have been working on this paraphrasing activity and what I will show next on the next slide is just one way of paraphrasing it since it should be in your own words each of you should come up with different paraphrases the point I want to note here is yeah you can actually just read it here note that the site is there and okay one point I would like you to note here is so I was reading this paragraph and what struck me here was while most of this paragraph talks about this is what sensors do and this is what intuitors do almost everything in the middle talks about what are sensors and what are intuitors but what was interesting to me was not exactly the differences between those two but was the fact that the last sentence here that any individual can have signs of either type and these differences are more patterns or they are characteristics so since I I found that to be more important or more interesting and you might find a different point in this paragraph so because of that my paraphrase started out with that idea so when you are trying to paraphrase it depends on what you want to get out of that paragraph there may be somebody else who wants to spend a lot more attention to the differences between the two two categories and so on let us look at one case here where quoting might be necessary again this has to do with definitions so this is somebody else's paragraph and what he wanted to do was use the definition of sensors and intuitors he needed it for the rest of his research this was in the beginning of his paper so he starts with the definition he puts it in quotes he puts italics and so on so I think for most of the times in science and engineering we would need to use quotes for definitions in humanities people use quotes a lot to say so and so set this such as Swami Vivekananda said this but in engineering and science the quotations are usually used for definition okay so this is just a summary of what we should be doing we should always cite we should try to use our own words most of the times we should paraphrase occasionally and we should quote rarely when definitions are required there are some terms that is that are good for you to become aware of it's there in one of the slides previously so I'll just flash that slide you don't need you can go and look up what these mean each of these words you need to become familiar with because your reviewer might give comments your referee might give comments using these words the final point I'd like to make there were a few questions on how do people detect plagiarism and I point is don't go there at all there are software we are I think most of you know this most conferences and journals used like use electronic software to match patterns in the text and they're able to detect things that are copied they're also able to detect even if you say that well it's an idea I change this to the sophisticated software are able to detect plagiarized versions fairly well but finally there's a human being who's making this decision that okay this is similar or this is not similar or so much percentage similar but did the author have the intent of plagiarizing or not so it's just something we need to know that there exists software which do a very good job that's all we need to know about it and we shouldn't be scared about this whole issue of plagiarism even though it people warn you a lot but we should treat it with respect that here are some guidelines we should follow those guidelines and the guidelines really are what we saw in the last slide how to do some of these you can get more guidelines in the references on the slide so if you notice that most of the slides where the ideas of the activities were borrowed from other people had a reference here a reference was sufficient in this case because in the original article it said borrow if you want but put a reference so there are some sources where it's okay to simply borrow because the author tells you go ahead borrow it but just put a citation okay so let's end this session right now


Alright, so for this one we have another Patreon requested review. This one is Crimson Tower, which was requested and written by Sarkis Avakian, and it feels a lot like an anime in written form. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So when I say this feels like an anime in written form, I mean that like the plot and characters and action even all seem very heavily inspired by anime. And in fact this one actually comes with a soundtrack too, which was kind of nice to listen to while I read, and that one also feels kind of like something you would see in a lot of anime. And that's not a necessarily good or bad thing when I say that. It just is a thing. People who are really into anime would probably appreciate that, people who hate it would probably hate that, but you know that's all just what do you think about and well okay obviously this is a review.  But just me saying it's inspired by anime isn't good or bad it just is. The story for this one it starts off and then it goes off in a much different direction than I thought it would because it starts as the main character Kai is just this rich kid you know his family is rich he kind of hates being rich though because it's stifling and so his father eventually sends him off to this university and as soon as he gets there now I was thinking there would be some sort of like mystery element or maybe Kai would get introduced to I don't know some something, but it just he shows up there and then he meets some people who can do magic there and then he's like oh yeah I'm also a magic user yeah like he apparently already knew about all this and he's already fully trained in everything so that was weird and then the story goes into a direction of demons try to get through to earth in their area and so they have to stop them and that's the main thrust of the story but it just took me off guard is all like I was expecting it to go even though I knew it was anime based I was expecting it to go in a much different direction than that but you know once I had adjusted to that I thought it was all right you know I thought that the story with the demons and everything at first it's just demons come in they fight them demons come in they fight them and it's carried a little bit more from their character interactions which this isn't a particularly long book either so I think had this been longer and the whole first half had been that I would have gotten bored of it but by being shorter it it works out better I think and then the second half as well there are some twists and turns in the story and it winds up being different than I thought it would be like again cuz you know at first I thought it was gonna be some standard like I don't know mystery or somewhat realistic thing or maybe he'd get introduced to magic but then it just like oh he's already knows about it and everything and he's just fighting demons and then the second half there's some doubt about who the real bad guy is and that there's a little bit more gray morality let's call it and so without giving too much away yeah I liked that it changed directions I liked that it took me off guard those two times because I never knew what to expect even going and knowing like okay this is definitely anime inspired and all that I just it caught me off guard and I always have to give points to something for catching me off guard even if it's not in the best way just being able to surprise me is enjoyable now the character cast in this I would say is passable for the most part like most of them are just you know anime character archetypes and that probably would have been better if there have been fewer of them but as it stands there's just a fairly large number of major characters in this who all need to get some screen time and they all need to do some things and like I said this is a pretty short book so having that many really just means that none of them get all that much development like some of them have one or two moments or aspects of their personality that stood out to me and I was like oh I remember that person but for the most part they're just kind of there and they talk a little weird like they're not even quirky or have unusual personalities or anything they just they just talk weird the only character that I wound up liking and I kind of hate myself for admitting this because I feel like I should hate him is the main character Kai and I feel like I should hate him because he's not quite Mary Sue but he is very close to Mary Sue territory because like I said he just shows up and he already knows how to do magic and everything they introduce him to demons and stuff which apparently he didn't know much about before which is odd but whatever and then he's able to fight them super well along with everyone else and he never really well I wouldn't say he never screws up but he never makes any major mistakes or anything and he gets along pretty well with almost everyone except the villains so he's definitely approaching Mary Sue territory but he's he's honestly just cool I I liked him he he has this way of approaching everything with just total deadpan like very little emotion to it and it makes him just fun to watch you know he's kind of sarcastic at a few points but for the most part he's just like yep I'm a blank slate but they made him so blank that he go that he somehow circles back around to having a personality I know that might sound weird but he's just so stoic that it winds up being weirdly endearing I think and the biggest area where that works is how he mentions how he's not at all interested in forming any sort of relationship you know not with men or women or anybody and I don't believe that the book goes so far as to spit as to outright state that he is asexual or anything but I wouldn't shock me if that were the case you know he just yeah he's not interested in sex or anything even though occasionally some stuff that I would some stuff I would classify as harem hijinks shows up but Kai just rather than freaking out about it just total stone face is like hey get get out of here I'm not interested which is pretty fun and it even gets to the point where like actual succubi will try and seduce him and he just doesn't care about it so I found that pretty entertaining as well the world building and magic and stuff in this is I mean it's anime you know there's magic some people can use it it's never really explained how it works but they just use it for fighting anyway so it's not that big a deal there's other worlds with like demons and elves and stuff which sometimes get along with earth and sometimes they don't and it's all kept secret for some reason I actually don't know why they bother keeping it secret it's just stuff like that so the only thing really left about this book that I want to talk about that actually matters is the way it's written because this isn't really written in prose it's written almost more like a script for a movie or television show or something and I it kind of works for me like it's not perfect because it switches between past and present tense at a few points which is awkward and you know most most scripts are just written in present tense the whole way through and it had it just been in past tense all the way through that would have been fine but switching back and forth feels really awkward um but that said it's mostly like for dialogue it'll just be like chi colon says this and then this person colon blah blah blah so that's the other thing and then when action comes up it'll describe like they do this and that and it it winds up working pretty well I think that had this been written in prose it probably would have been like two or three times as long as it stands now it's a much shorter more fun read and it kind of feels like maybe this was originally intended to be like a graphic novel or a show or something and if that's the case I think it would work pretty well as a graphic novel or as a manga because you know the story and everything is definitely very visual and very action oriented and those things they tend to work a little bit better when it's uh well when it's visual you know they they work a bit better that way than when it's a book so I think this one is kind of being held back by the format it's in but that said I get it you know making a graphic novel or something takes a lot more work and a lot more talent and usually it requires multiple people to do whereas writing a book is just you know you write it and then it's out there so crimson tower um as with all of my patreon quests it's there's an amazon link below so if you want to check it out on kindle it's pretty cheap and you know if you're into that sort of thing I think it's worth spending a couple hours reading through you know it's not going to blow your mind or anything but I enjoyed it just fine thank you to everyone for watching including as always the patrons whose names are here and a special shout out to Apocavalanan Alex Humva Ashley Watson Ava Tumor B Quinn brother Santotis Christopher Quinten Emily Miller Joel Johnny St. Clair Madison Lewis Bennett Ronnie the author of this book Sarkis Avakian Taylor Briggs Tobacco Crow Tom Beanie Topher Wheeler Vacuous Silas and finally Vevictus you guys are all pretty great I don't think I would be able to do this sort of thing without your support so it it really doesn't mean a lot to me and if you haven't rated this video comment it on it and subscribe to my channel then hurry up and do that please I I need your help and well no that's everything I'll see you later bye


If you want me to continue with my work, it is crucial to support the channel via Patreon. Moreover, make sure to subscribe to Bobby's perspective on Rumble. All the links are in the description box below. May Allah bless you all. Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're new Manus Bobby guys, we're still in the groove and I do not want to postpone, therefore we continue with the Army of Satan series. Today it is part 12, the music industry. Before we start the video, as always guys, if you enjoy the content, leave me a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and to further support this channel. All the links are in the description box below. Please check them out. With no further ado, let's have a look. And all the people are those who buy the amusement of speech to mislead others from the way of Allah without knowledge. That could apply to music. But to anything truly, this could apply to podcasting, to social media in general as well. Those will have a humiliating punishment. And when our verses are recited to them, they turn away arrogant as if they had not heard them. As if there was in their ears deafness. So warn them of the painful punishment. Everybody likes music. Everybody enjoys music. Everybody enjoys singing and dancing and being cheerful. So why would someone say it's haram? It's very simple. To know the ruling over something, we have to go back to the Quran and Muslim. We are Muslims. We have to go back to the Quran and to the Sunnah. Do we get our religion from out of the Quran and Sunnah? No. If you go to the Sunnah, no, the most authentic book for Muslims, any Muslim Sunni, you would ask him, you would say Sra'ih al-Bukhari. This is the most authentic book on earth after the Quran. And in Sra'ih al-Bukhari, the Prophet, A.S. tells us that there will be people of my ummah making haram things halal. And they would make adultery for negation. They would make silk. They would make consuming intoxicants, khamr. And music instruments halal. Four things. The Prophet, A.S. told us that there will come people who would make these haram things halal. So the Prophet is the one who told us that music is haram. And the evidence behind it is overwhelming. There is no scholar on earth, Muslim scholar that allows you to listen to Beyoncé and Madonna and Michael Jackson and those. That is completely out because number one, it's dirty. It's filthy. For people that watch me for the very first time, I come from an Orthodox Christian background before I reverted to Islam. And in Orthodox Christianity, you don't have such a ruling where all music is haram. However, the consensus here is that music that takes you away from God that leads you into sin is haram. But music that does not do that would be still permissible in Orthodox Christianity. These are horrible, terrible. They encourage you to move your body and to shake your thing, as they say. May Allah forgive us really.  So it's a dirty industry. Ask those who are in it. It's filthy. When you hear about music, you hear about how to attract the opposite sex and all about love and all about your emotions. And so at home, you're not happy when you go to work. You see someone you're working with and you're busy thinking, the music fits exactly here. And so on. Things are happening. People are partnering with our minds. I mean, even if you look at nightclubs, what's the whole purpose behind it? They put on music that makes people sexualized and then they attract each other and they end up in bed. Or the music has on humans mind has been well documented for thousands of years. Hundreds of scientific studies have proven that music can have a profound effect on human emotions, sensory perceptions and behavior. In 1839 Heinrich Wellumdorf made a fascinating audio discovery when he uncovered this strange phenomenon of binaural beats, which are special frequencies within music that are friends that are into this stuff. They're not religious, but spiritual and they're listening to those binaural beats.  A more recent study in 2012 by psychologist Enid Schirmer uncovered that our perception of the external world can be directly affected by musical rhythm because our brain waves become in sync with auditory beats. What's most intriguing about this study is that Schirmer realized that when people move in synchrony, they are more likely to perceive the world in synchrony. This means that our mental process can be altered simply by using music to manipulate brain wave oscillations. When the brain wave oscillations are manipulated by music, your brain will become in sync with the music and this is how your body is getting controlled. You start spontaneous movements. Yeah absolutely, you move to the beat. That's correct. And they have you move in a certain way. They deem correct. As he said, you start shaking, you become sexualized. Very very dangerous man.  The beats and the notes are so powerful that you quickly memorize the whole lyrics. Those lyrics and messages affect your behavior. I have to say to this that back in the day when I was a teenager, I was listening to German rap music and that rap music transformed me as a teenager into a degenerate. I did everything those rappers told me. I started taking drugs, I started fornicating, became violent, all of those things that those rappers rapped about, I became. That's how it goes. It's very powerful. If the beats are stronger, it will even cause new section in your brain cells. Music touches the limbic system or the emotional system of our brain, which actually though slower than other parts, can overwhelm all of the other parts. Think about how we lose our mind when we fall in love. And we literally do because of the power of the emotion. That being said, the music system has been very unresponsive even to industry applied ratings. All that they had been willing to do was to put parental advisory on the outside of CDs. Yeah, how does this matter? Parental advisory? My parents came from the Balkan, they don't speak English, they don't even understand what that means. They don't understand the lyrics either. I was simply listening to those raps and they had an imprint on my young mind. Gerics in a visible place. This is complicated by the fact that the federal communication commission has strict limits on what can be broadcast over the air. And historically, the way popular music has been sold is through airplay. We can't expect a system to be put together that will perfectly protect us. We need to protect ourselves. We need to be aware that these media change us and affect us. And we need to actively understand... Yeah, everything is progressive in the society and people nowadays believe that that is a good thing. But of course it is not. If you look at music and how it progressed over the years, now we reached a point where women openly sing about their genitals. That's really what it is. Those are world hits.  If you look into those lyrics aside from the sexualization, you will find passages such as I don't cook, I don't clean, but still I got that ring. What does that show you? What kind of imprint does that leave on people? What kind of imprint does that leave on young girls? Young girls are looking up to those celebrities, to those stars and they see them being successful, being rich. And now you don't have to cook, you don't have to clean and still you will get that ring if you are a hoe.


Salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Welcome to Ahkam SOS, the show that discusses Islamic Duties and Practices by His Eminence the Grand Ayatollah Sayed Saadik Shirazi may Allah put on his life. I'm your host Mohsin Shah and joining me is sheikh Ali Maaj. Salamu alaikum sheikhna. Salamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. Waayi. Alhamdulillah. Maashallah. Sheikhna, you know, we've been discussing Jama'a Salah, we're discussing, you know, the importance of Jama'a Salah, the Congressional Prayer, how much Dawab there is in it. We discussed the conditions of the Imam. We talked about, you know, him being Baluch, Sayin, we talked about him having, being Aadid and, you know, him being of legitimate birth and other things. And we were discussing in regards to how to follow the Imam, where, you know, when it comes to the Nia, what Nia we should have, is it important to know the Imam or not to identify him before the Nia. We talked about, you know, where we should stay silent, where we should, you know, recite. And we discussed whether one could intentionally do the Tasleem before the Imam. And you said that it was, it was okay. It's better, not to, because of the Dawab, but it's okay. What about Sujood and Rocco? Are we allowed to perform that deliberately before the Imam of the Convocation? It is mandatory for the one who performs the Salah as a follower behind the Imam of the Jama'ah to make sure that acts such as the Rocco and Sujood to be done with the Imam. Or after the Imam goes to Rocco or Sujood, we go then afterwards. However, if somebody deliberately and with intention, he didn't want to follow the Imam. So he goes to Rocco before the Imam, or he goes to Sujood before the Imam. In this case, the Salah is valid. These acts are not part of the Mubtalaat that voids and invalidates the act of Salah. However, the Sayyid mentions that these are of committing disobedience. And somehow there's a possibility that you're committing ma'as or disobedience in somehow for not following the correct method or the sequence of the Imam. And that's important that we follow the Imam because you're in the Jama'ah. If you're alone and you're praying for other, fine, do whatever you want. But when you're with the Jama'ah, you must respect the sequence, respect all the parts of the Salah which is prayed by the Imam and try to avoid proceeding the Imam. As I've said in the previous episode that the thawab will be less if somebody finishes the Salah before the Imam, for example. But in these acts, there's some kind of disobedience, so we have to make sure that we avoid this at least in the Salah because the Salah is abad and worshiped. And we don't bring inside the Salah some kind of disobedience. We need to have a pure Salah from all types of disobedience, all types of filth, all types of sins and bad thoughts and habits and so forth. So we try to offer to Allah SWT the Salah with purity, with loyalty, with full submission to Allah SWT. Mashallah. Shaykhna, what about if I involuntarily do something to go ahead of the Imam? For example, I'm in Ruk'u and I go up and raise up and I've noticed that the Imam in front hasn't left Ruk'u.  What is one supposed to do in that situation? With regard to these two acts of Salah, Ruk'u and Sujood, if somebody was in the state of Ruk'u or Sujood, in both cases, when the Imam is in that state of Ruk'u, let's say initially, and you think that the Imam raises head from the Ruk'u state and you just stand and you raise your head, but you see the Imam is still in the Ruk'u state, in this case you have to go back to the Ruk'u. And that's not counted as a second Raka'a or Ruk'u. And it's not counted as adding to the key element in the Salah, because as we said, Ruk'u is a key element. Ruk'u and if you add an extra Ruk'u to the Salah, the Salah will be forgotten. In this situation, because it's Jama'a, it's not counted as second Ruk'u. So that's fine.  Likewise with the Sujood as well, you see the Imam in the Sujood and you think he's just raised his head from the Sujood, from the Turba. Again, you sit and you think the Imam is in a sitting position, you see him still in the Sujood, you go back and continue the Sujood with the Imam that has no issues with it, even if you have now three Sajda. Literally, it's on three Sajda, but it's not counted. It's not counted three Sajda, it's only counted two Sajda because you're performing the act with the Imam. What about if I did it on purpose? Am I allowed to raise from Sujood before the Imam deliberately? As we mentioned that deliberately if you proceed the Imam, that is some kind of disobedience as mentioned in the previous question. So to proceed the Imam in these acts is some kind of maqsiyah that we have to avoid. And is that the same with the Ruku as well? Same thing as well. Ahsan, Shaykhana, Shaykhana, what about if the Imam of the Jama'a he makes a mistake? For example, there's Qanout in the wrong Raqqa. How is the followers, how are they supposed to react to this? The scenario is that if in the first Raqqa, for example, the Imam mistakenly after Hamd and Surah, he raised his hands and read the Qanout in the first Raqqa. You as a follower, you're not allowed to follow the Imam because you know that he did the mistake and he didn't realize. So you have to keep quiet and silent till the Imam finishes the Qanout which was not in its right location and place. And then when he goes to Ruku, you follow the Imam, that's it. So you shouldn't do the same mistake. He's doing the mistake, you shouldn't repeat the mistake. Okay, do not follow the mistake. Just stay patient, quiet and continue the Salah when he goes into the correct position. Shaykhana, we know that in the Jama'a we have people of different capabilities, different patience and different strengths. And also when the Imam comes in praise, sometimes he prays very, very fast, sometimes very, very slow. We need to keep into consideration the people that are amongst us. Sometimes it's difficult for the elder people in the community to maintain their Wudu, especially during Salah. So is it okay for the Imam of the Jama'a to pray quickly or to pray at a very good and steady pace for those who find it difficult to stand for too long and perform Salah? It is mustahab and desirable for the Imam of the Jama'a to consider the weakest members in the Jama'a and the followers in the Salah. In other words, the elderly and the young ones. And there's a hadith, by the way, in Najil Balagh by Imam Ali, which says he advises an individual who wants to lead the Salah in Jama'a. He said, So you have elderly, you have young children as well. And I remember once read in one of the narrations that the Prophet, in his mosque, used to also speed up in the Salah because there were children and kids crying because there were men and women in the Jama'a. And kids were brought in the mosque crying. So he wanted to finish the Salah quickly for the parents to pay attention to the children and make them quiet. So in Jama'a, you try to speed up the Salah. If of course there were elderly and so forth. Otherwise, if they all agreed that, you know, the old young men and strong and fit to pray and prolong the Salah, fine. You can take your time and pray the Salah for 20 minutes, let's say, for example. No issues with it. But that's the base for the Qa'id, for those who wish to pray Salah Jama'a, to speed up the Salah in Ruku and Sujood and not to make people wait, especially those who have back pains, for example, special illness, to make the Salah ease for them so they can attend every day and every time. As-Sentum As-Salaam-Allah. You would assume that in Jama'a, you're all together and let the Imam take his time to gain that spirituality but no, Alhamdulillah, Islam is a religion of ease and he's saying that, look, be quick with your Jama'a Salah because people are fully strong and have full capabilities of praying together for that long, Masha'Allah. Sheikh, it is Mustahab to pray in congregation. We mentioned that. Are there any other Mustahabat in the Jama'a Salah? Yes, as mentioned here is the list of Mustahabat in the book of the Sayyid, Hafidallah, and that. It is Mustahab for the one who is male to stand on the right side of the Imam. So let's say it's between you and me only who's going to pray. So you stand on my right side in the Jama'a and I am on your left side as the Imam and we pray. That's one of the Mustahabat, of course. Also, if the Imam and the Ma'amoum, they're both female so you have the female Imam in the front and the follower is also female. It's Mustahab for them and preferred to stand in line and the Imam should not, of course, stand ahead of the Ma'amoum so they stand in line. That's for only females, of course. That's one of the Mustahabat as well. Another Mustahab that is Mustahab for the Jama'a which is done by the male mainly. The Imam stands in the midpoint of the row so in the front and the midpoint and you have the rows behind him. Oh, I see, I see. So this is quite common. So you have the first line so the Imam should be in the middle of that first row in the front and in the middle not on the left or on the right. Exactly, yeah. It is also Mustahab for those who follow the Imam in the Jama'a to organize their rows. It avoids order in the lines when they stand for the Salah and not to leave any gaps between each other. This is a big problem I see in the Shia community. There's big gaps between the Jama'a. It's so big sometimes you can even walk through them. What does the Sayyid say that we should shoulder to shoulder? The Sayyid says just Mustahab to be in the correct order so you make sure you don't leave any gaps. So when you stand next to your Muslim brother to pray then you shouldn't leave any gaps between you and him. So we don't have that strict as other sects have in terms of shoulder to shoulder. So basically you just stand next to your faithful brother and pray and don't leave any gaps between each other. Now with regard to the next Mustahab is that when the Imam says in the Iqamah but Qamat al-Salah, it's Mustahab that they all rise up and stand and prepare themselves for the Salah because that's the sign and the call for the Jama'a to be held and they prepare themselves. It's not convenient for the one to sit down with his friend next to him and the Imam says Allahu Akbar. So the Iqamah is where to prepare the mu'min, the follower for the Salah and especially when it reaches this part of Qamat al-Salah so they all stand up, make the intention. When the Imam says Allahu Akbar they would start Takbir al-Tahram after the Imam. And lastly the last Mustahab is when the Imam is in the state of the Ruku'a and somebody comes and he wants to join the lines of the Jama'a it's Mustahab of the Imam to wait and double the time of the Ruku'a to extend the time of the Ruku'a prolong a bit, just a few more seconds so that individual would join the Imam and the Jama'a with the Salah and get the reward of that Raka'a although he missed the Hamdan and Surah but you would gain the reward of that Raka'a that he just came in the middle of the Ruku'a I've seen it happen, you know, when Ruku'a and then you'll hear someone, ya Allah, ya Ali or something like that and then the Imam of the Jama'a he would start to recite extra the al-Dhikr in his Ruku'a to extend to allow people to join, insha'Allah Shaykh-Allah we've discussed the Mustahabat what about the Makruhaat in terms of the Jama'a Salah in terms of the Makruhaat and the dislikes in the Salah of course the Makruha in the Salah it means that the thawab will be less the thawab will be and the rewards will be less than those who do not practice these acts in the Salah it's Makruha for the one who follows the Imam to stand alone in a row when there are gaps between the mu'mineen so try to go and fill the gaps instead of being alone back in the line you know, some people might like to stand alone in the very back of the Musalleen so now try to find the gap and join yourself with the others in the Jama'a and avoid this Makruha the other Makruha for the Ma'moom is to utter the al-Dhikr so you are such that the Imam can hear him so as I mentioned in the Salat al-Dhikr that you can say Subhana Allah al-A'la al-A'la al-Dhikr while the Imam is reading the Hamd and Surah silently so you can make sure you don't you know, recite them aloud that the Imam and the others would hear you and that will distort the Salat and the Musalleen the last Makruha is for those who travel occasionally especially for the lectures for us for example the Muballi'een who go and travel in different cities and countries to offer lectures for example they have to basically offer Salat al-Jama'a so if they are as a traveler, Musaafr then they have to shorten their Salat like Qasr in this case the Sayyid says that it is Makruha on both sides if they are Qasr so if the Imam is praying Qasr Salat and the followers are praying full Salat it's Makruha so have that Salat and vice versa if the Imam was praying full Salat and the Ma'moom on the follower praying Qasr Salat is also Makruha for them to perform the Salat so the best thing is to find a Jama'a which they pray full so you follow that full Salat if you have Qasr Salat then you can pray it individually otherwise you can't pray in Jama'a As-San, thank you very much Sheikh Allah for today's discussion and thank you to all the viewers for joining us Insha'Allah we will have more discussions and we will see you in the next episode of SOS until then, Salam Alaikum Rahmatullahi Wabarakatuhu