Religion and World Politics, Part 12, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab, and some of the other great conflicts in Africa that seem to have a confessional or religious basis, or do they? This is the much-vaunted issue of religion, only one of many factors in play in these seemingly unstoppable and seemingly atrocious and unending conflicts in different parts of Africa. Everyone now has come to an appreciation in very, very general part of what's happening in northern Nigeria. The kidnap of 279 schoolgirls from Chibok provided the world's media with a very strange lens into a conflict which is in fact of extraordinary complexity. And quite apart from the 279 schoolgirls, something like over 2,000 deaths, something like over 20,000 casualties, people maimed, injured in one way or another, something like 250,000 people displaced. The number two keeps featuring in all of this, but there's an exponential sense of loss, an exponential sense of a widening tragedy taking place in northern Nigeria, occasioned only by the fact of religion. But in fact, what you've got in this part of Nigeria is not only a residue of a very complex colonial history, but a colonial history which transcends even the British era. You're looking at a legacy of Islamic colonialism and outreach of many hundreds of years before the British got there. You're looking at the existence of an independent Borno kingdom in that part of Nigeria with its own memory, its own assertiveness of independence, its own legacy of a certain identity for the people in that part which is divorced from the identity of people in the southern part of Nigeria. So from the very beginning you have competitive histories, you have competitive ethnicities, you have competitive religions. But all of these things put together in terms of the play and interplay of these factors, underneath modern conditions, in a country of incredible complexity, incredible richness, incredible poverty and incredibly different approaches to how governance should take place, the bargains made, the formal sector politics and the informal bargaining that go into what is an everyday aspect of Nigerian life that the informal bargains sometimes take precedence over formal bargains. And you have a quadrant of local issues, local difficulties, local transactions that then merge with the regional and the international. The clear lines of communications that obviously exist between Boko Haram on one side of Africa and Al Shabab in Somalia on the other side of Africa is testimony to a complex regional pattern. The linkages with Saudi Arabia, with Islamic movements of a militant nature elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, all of these things speak of an internationalism. So you have a complex interplay of all kinds of different factors and try to reduce it to only an issue of religion is a mistake. You're looking at international relations here, you're certainly looking at issues of misunderstanding where the Nigerian army has no real intelligence that it wishes to bring to play in terms of how to handle the Boko Haram phenomenon. You're looking at northern politicians who are in the government trying to use Boko Haram for their own ends, their own leverage in national politics. And you're looking at southern politicians who've got no understanding of what's happening up north in a vast country in which probably the national project from the very beginning was doomed either to failure or to vast periods of complex misunderstanding. That's the case in Nigeria. It's even more complex in Somalia, where you have a legacy of three colonial territories, French, British, Italian, coming to independence by voluntary decision on the part of these three entities as one united nation. But within which you have a myriad of different political divisions as expressed in clan affiliations and the nature of clan rivalries of clan transactions and their interactions with formal government and their use of local leverages and their use of religion as a factor in local leveraging. Aided and abetted by Western misunderstanding of the dynamics of what is going on in Somalia, very clumsy and ill-advised efforts at intervention in Somalia and totally ill-advised efforts to impose forms of government, forms of military control using age-old Somali enemies in the Ethiopians as a militant and military vehicle of trying to put down Islamist movements and panicking on the part of the Islamic court's union, which was bringing some form of legal stability to a country racked in a form of anarchy and in putting down the Islamic court's union giving rise to its most radical part and that is al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab nevertheless refuses to go away. It commits atrocities. It has a very, very early, stark, puritanical form of Islamic law and yet for some strange reason, despite the intervention of foreign armies, not only armies from Ethiopia but also armies from Kenya, it doesn't go away. It spills over borders and attracts adherents in Kenya itself. It's able to attack shopping malls in the neighboring country of Kenya. It's able to have an imprint throughout the entire country and throughout the entire country that speaks to more than simply a religious belief that is in some way simplistic, volatile and horrendous. It speaks to an affiliation that goes deeper than that. It speaks to a dissatisfaction with formal governments and it speaks to the viability no matter how difficult we find to be able to see this of al-Shabaab as an alternative vehicle of governance. Now, things must be pretty frustrating for people. We might think to turn to a group like this as an alternative to what is meant to be in place but the sheer horribleness of what is in place and the sheer desperation of seeking for something else which all the same has got to be able to articulate itself in formal terms that seem sensible even of horrendous. Point to a huge gap in our understanding of this part of the world and the interaction of religion and politics.


As we have discussed many times by now, the first member of every P-blog enjoys a kind of special attention and our oxygen is no different. Compared to the rest of the group 16 elements, oxygen differs in certain behaviours. In this video, we will look at a few things. We will look at the multiple oxidation states exhibited by oxygen, secondly we will look at the physical properties of oxygen and compare them with our obsulfur and thirdly we will see how the absence of D orbitals affects the chemistry of oxygen and lastly and more importantly we look at a unique property that oxygen has due to its small size and very high electronegativity. We know that oxygen is the second most electronegative element and because of that it tends to show mostly the negative oxidation states which in most cases is minus 2. For example in sodium oxide, potassium oxides, H2O, water, carbon dioxide in all of these you can see that the oxidation state exhibited by oxygen is minus 2. Now oxygen also exhibits minus 1 oxidation state in peroxides like sodium peroxide and potassium peroxide as you can see here. You must be surprised to see that oxygen also shows positive oxidation states like plus 1 and plus 2. So that means it must be combined with something or an element that is more electronegative than oxygen itself right and only then it would be positive, only then it would be willing to give away its electron to only a more electronegative element and which element can be more electronegative than oxygen? Yes, fluorine right? So when oxygen combines with fluorine it attains a positive oxidation state as you can see in this case. In O2F2 it has a plus 1 oxidation state whereas in OF2 it has a plus 2 oxidation state. Both of which you can see that it has combined with a more electronegative fluorine atom. So these are the only instances where oxygen shows a positive oxidation state. Now if you look at the physical properties like melting and boiling point you will notice that there is a huge jump from oxygen to sulfur in both the cases. In general we know that the melting point and boiling point increase as we go down the group with increase in the atomic size. That means we need to provide more energy to break the molecule or the attractive forces that hold them. Now when you compare oxygen and sulfur how can you substantiate this drastic increase in their melting and boiling points? Well that's where atomicity comes into play. Atomicity is nothing but the number of atoms that are present in the molecule of an element. For example, oxygen exists as a diatomic gas that contains two oxygen atoms in a single oxygen molecule. But sulfur is a polyatomic molecule which has eight sulfur atoms linked together. So that means to break the sulfur molecule we need to provide a lot more energy than what is required to break up the oxygen molecule. Exactly. Using atomicity we can explain this large difference in the melting and boiling point between oxygen and sulfur. Another factor that affects the chemistry of oxygen is the absence of empty diorbitals. And just like in the case of boron and carbon and nitrogen this unavailability of diorbitals restricts the covalency of oxygen to 4. You see the electronic configuration of oxygen is 1s2, 2s2, 2p4 right? That means valence electrons are present in the second shell. And there are no diorbitals present in the shell. Whereas the heavier members like sulfur or selenium they all have empty diorbitals available like 3D, 4D, 5D and so on. So they can basically expand their octet beyond 4 by using these empty diorbitals. For example, sulfur can easily form SF6 by expanding its octet or by using the empty diorbitals. But when oxygen combines with fluorine you will end up with something like OF2. You cannot expect something like OF6 as you observed in the case of SF6. Now even though we say that the maximum covalency of oxygen is restricted to 4 it practically never even exceeds 2. Except probably when it forms hydronium ions H3O+, where you can see that there are two covalent bonds between oxygen and hydrogen and a coordinate covalent bond where it has donated its lone pair of electrons to a proton. So this is one of the instances where oxygen extends its covalence beyond 2. Let's now discuss the consequence of small size and high electronegativity of oxygen. Because of the small size and very high electronegativity of oxygen it can actually form strong hydrogen bonds. And this is what we observe in water. Because of the high electronegativity difference between hydrogen and oxygen these atoms acquire partial charges like hydrogen acquires partial positive charge and oxygen acquires partial negative charge. And because oxygen also has the presence of two lone pair of electrons these can further coordinate with the hydrogen of another water molecule. Whereas if you compare it with H2O you can see that H2O is actually a gas and like H2O which is a liquid. This is because there is no such hydrogen bonding possible in H2O because of the larger atomic size of sulphur and lesser electronegativity as compared to oxygen. So while the molecules of water associate with each other through strong hydrogen bonding no such association is possible in H2O which is why it is a gas. Now something similar existed in the case of nitrogen too if you recall. Nitrogen again is the smallest one in its family group 15 and has the highest electronegativity as compared to the rest of the family members. And because of that nitrogen also had the unique ability to form hydrogen bonds. But nitrogen forms weaker hydrogen bonds as compared to oxygen because of its larger size and lower electronegativity as compared to oxygen. So to conclude what all did we learn in this video? Well we talked about the oxidation state of oxygen and the cases in which the electronegative oxygen can show positive oxidation states. We also talked about atomicity of oxygen and how it affects the physical properties like melting point and boiling point. We also saw how the absence of D orbital restricts the covalency of oxygen to 4. And more importantly we discussed how oxygen has the ability to form strong hydrogen bonds. Something that is although not very unique to oxygen but is definitely of great importance.


Hi everyone, Joe for jaspyscasebreaks.com coming at you with a recap video for yesterday's eight box pick your team 14 Bowman draft baseball for some reason. I don't know. Maybe I think it was something There must have been like a movie that was playing on the team I didn't think the volume was very loud, but there was a copyright thing that that hid the video that muted and hid the video So we're gonna try to look up the live stream from yesterday edit out that part and try to re-upload that That is TBD. I don't actually don't know when that's gonna happen I don't have a time frame for that, but hopefully we can we can pull that video in the next couple days But for now, this is the recap video from yesterday Pick your team 14. You can see everybody's name on the list right there. These are the people that were involved Thanks for getting in Appreciate it. All right. Oh, let's turn on my camera Here we go Let me adjust that camera right there live. We're doing it live All right, I think that's as balanced as it's gonna get Alright, so here we go. So I think we we sleeved up and top-loaded the chrome twerkelsins and the papers as well Jordan Walker right there. I Like these class of 2020 card nice Zach vene refractor autograph Pretty cool I Hendrick a couple solder storms for the A's Nice color right there and Casey Schmidt There you go. So that way and I'm sure there were a ton of other Parallels as well in a nice box topper for the angels I'm sure there are a ton of parallels as well that we'll be shipping out. I don't think there's anything super There's anything super low numbered actually it probably would have been here and we pulled all the paper For these four players right there So that's the recap video for jumbo pick your team 14 apologies for that That weirdness there. We'll try to figure out a way to get that full video up. So keep an eye on our video list on YouTube and there's actually another jumbo case available as well pick your team 15 is on the site I think that's halfway there on jazby's case breaks calm So I'm Joe and I'll break that you hopefully later tonight. Bye. Bye


Hello, my name is Alexander Flores, and I am the assistant OIC to the green side over here on the 92nd AMXS. One of the phrases that we have here in maintenance is tanker in the air, maintenance put it there, and that just describes that relationship that we have with the office world. If they're flying, we're fixing. I think the favorite part that people have is the connectedness to the mission that they feel when they're out there on the flight line, troubleshooting those big issues. The beautiful balance that we share with ops is that the more they fly, the more planes break. If something suddenly breaks, then our people will jump on a van, head out, and do their best to troubleshoot it in time to get that aircraft in the air and get these missions accomplished. I think there's a certain pride working on the flight line and seeing the fruits of your labor suddenly go off into the air. Our people work hard and they get pulled in a lot of different directions, some which they might not agree with at the time, but part of our job is just having to sometimes put our head down and do some dirty work on maybe a day that you don't feel like doing that dirty work, knowing that you are helping directly with the mission in doing so, because we're 24 hours, we don't stop over here. It's not the most luxurious of jobs, but it is rewarding in its own right.