those history support affirmative action. Here on history is here to help. We're talking about history. If we're talking about history, we're talking to Dr. Peter Hoffenberg, a history professor at UH Manoa, and we're gonna talk about affirmative action because it's all through higher education and even lower education with these affirmative action programs that were adopted by many schools years ago and are now in question within the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court, which is an exclusively conservative or worse, seemed to indicate at the oral argument two weeks ago that they favored striking affirmative action programs. And that is probably a good indicator. They probably will strike affirmative action programs. And we should talk about what that means to us. I think too many people will say, oh, oh, there's striking affirmative action. Me no care, but we do care. Or do we, Peter? What is the history of affirmative action? Where does it fit in our educational approach? Sure. First of all, I think you're right. The best that affirmative action could hope for is five to four with Roberts sort of covering himself. But quite clearly, if you look at, if you read, not just the comments, but also the questions, I think affirmative action as we know it is dead at the university level. And it's a Trojan horse for it to be dead at other levels as well. I mean, the individual who brought the suit also brought the suit in Shelby B. Holder, which dismantled and gutted the key aspect of the Voting Rights Act. So yeah, this is a Trojan horse. What is the history? Well, there's a history that's international. There's a history that's American, but I think the key sort of hit points are there regardless. Abortion as either preventing fertilization or preventing the birth of a child is as old as humanity. So are you saying that there's a parallel process here historically between abortion and affirmative action? I personally think yes, in the sense of what we're talking about is what can the government or state do? So I do think there is that overlap most certainly. It's once again, an attack on the poor and attack particularly disproportionately on people of color. I think it's also an attack as we've talked about before and I apologize to our listeners, one of the bricks of the great society. I mean, whether or not you like affirmative action as a specific policy, I think most people agree with LBJ's famous speech that you can't talk about equality if somebody comes to the race and I'll paraphrase an expensive Nike's, right, and a Bloomingdale suit and the other person comes to the race dragging change from the past. That's just not a fair race. And that he launched affirmative action essentially with that analogy at Howard University. That may also be the case with abortion.  Again, you're saying that there are rights greater than that. So I think particularly it comes to people who need to make these decisions in a really a life or death matter for them as well. And is it the right of the state to say you cannot make the decision at the same time that the court says it's okay to carry a weapon in public? It just seems to be filled with all of these inconsistencies. You know, when I heard they were gonna have oral argument, when I heard they took the case and there was a certain amount of press on this very point, I thought they're never gonna validate affirmative action, not this court. This court is way over conservative as an understatement of where they are. They're extreme, they're reactionary. I thought to myself, there's no way they're going to validate affirmative action. They're gonna strike it. And then I thought, well, what is the really core issue? This is subjective, but what is the really core issue that makes me feel that they are going to do this? And it's what you were talking about. It's racism. It's creating a social divide. It's dumping on one group as opposed to another group. It's dividing the country on the basis of race, which is a hideous notion. And really out of, you know, it's out of sorts. It's out of time. And I predicted that they would strike affirmative action from the first I heard that they were gonna take this case. And now it's true. And I think we can intellectualize it and rationalize all the reasons they're gonna come up with and the opinion we're gonna see when it comes down to that. It comes down to that, but also it's a perversion of that. You know, it's like two of the Justices, Associate Justice is saying, for example, you know, abortion is genocide against black people, for example, it's a perversion of the race card. It's playing the race card to continue racism rather than playing the race card to try to challenge it. I think Powell and other Justices put it well and it's something maybe this country has difficulty doing. You gotta put the cards on the table, you have to address the problem and then you can overcome the problem. In other words, you need to recognize racial inequality. You need to have public policies to address that. And then maybe as John Roberts says and the Justices have said, look at maybe at some point affirmative action will not be needed, but it's certainly still needed. And all the statistics show that once this goes, the number of, and remember talking about particular ethnic or racial groups, right? We're talking about African-Americans, talking about Native Americans very much, right? The opportunity for Native Americans to go to all preservation educational institutions has always been very limited. They've been sent, right? We know they've been sent to school, so not including those in which their culture has bled out of them. And to a certain degree, the Latin community or the Latin community is so diverse, right? I mean, Cubans are not the same as Dominicans, et cetera, but it is an effort particularly against those groups as racial ethnic groups. And the arguments, I think I agree with you, we shouldn't over-intellectualize, but as a public figure and a professor, that's sort of what I'm paid to do. And I did- You go right ahead, Peter, and I apologize. Let me say when they said in Dobbs that, you know, the world has changed and we don't need- Right. We don't need Roe v. Wade anymore because the world has changed. I said to myself, that is the example of a Supreme Court that's going over the edge and that is spouting poppycock. If that's what they do here in affirmative action, we don't need affirmative action anymore. It's played its course. It's done. We have resolved these problems so as we don't need those whole spate of laws and rules. I say to myself, there it is again, it's poppycock. Right, I think it's poppycock, but for a different reason. I don't see, I mean, they keep citing Justice O'Connor saying, you know, in 25 or 28 years, this won't be necessary, but they can't really say it's not necessary because when you still look at college admissions, African-Americans and I guess the term is Latinx or Hispanic culture people are still underrepresented and Native Americans are less than a cent. So your argument has to be a little different. It's still poppycock, but it's slightly different. And let me bore you for a couple of minutes to just tell you at least what I read and heard in the argument. One is that affirmative action pits one race against another. And so we're again at that sort of my rights versus your rights argument, right? Like a right to walk safely across the street is less important than the right to carry a gun. And we've talked about almost every week how somehow we got to get out of this right my rights versus your rights and understand there is a compelling public interest, right? And that's the scrutiny test was what got affirmative action approved. There is a compelling public interest, all right? So one of the ways to say that it isn't is that ironically affirmative action has promoted racial division. Okay, that's sort of one argument. Secondly, there's the argument is not quite that it's no longer needed, but that it doesn't work. And it's really interesting all of these graduates of elite universities, all of them, right? Almost all of them have gone to elite graduate law schools, many elite undergraduate, you know, Brown is the only public defender. So I mean, we're talking about generally powerful. They're critiquing their universities as being as using affirmative action for increasing their elite status, which I find really it's like elites making a populist argument against an elite university. Okay, what they're doing also is ignoring those out in the public who actually are gangbusters about affirmative action. The institution that's gangbusters about affirmative action is the armed forces. And the armed forces makes the argument that the justices made when they approved it. We need to create leaders and we need people participating in social experiences, which reflect the diversity of our society. And if we can only get that by affirmative action, then we're going to do it. And they're different. They're military. Well, they argue, and their argument actually is not just the better military, but I think also potentially better veterans in society. I mean, you're seeing part of this problem with white extremists from the military. They did not get the message, right? That you're supposed to train. We hope not go to war, so let's at least train. And if you have to go to war, go to war alongside people from cities and countryside, black, white, et cetera. And they for some reason didn't get that message. And they're actually an example of our needing more affirmative action. Yes, you say that and it reminds me of the whole notion of the greatest generation in World War II. You had people in the hinterland, shoulder to shoulder in the war, meeting people, working with them, biting with them, dying with them from the cities. So two completely different groups that had been divided by geography up to that point. And that's still a thing divide in our country, major divide in our country. Right, but it's urban world, urban, non-urban. Yeah. But World War II and the greatest generation brought them together. And it was a very positive thing that they could meet each other and they could learn to trust each other and all that. And so, and that's affirmative action, I think, in its own way during World War II. But now to strike it would, especially with an all volunteer force, would revert back. I can't, I agree with you. I'm not quite, I haven't thought through exactly what would happen, but certainly, well, I think the Pentagon would push back. I don't think, I think the Pentagon would ignore it. Just as, I'm sorry, I can't remember the head of the armed services, but several congressmen went after him for being woke, et cetera, and all of the military brass have resisted that. They basically told the Congress members to go sit down. Woke has nothing to do with this, right? We want a diverse, qualified field, which represents what we hope would be a diverse, qualified citizenship. So I think the other arguments are interesting on both sides, okay? But among the other arguments opposing affirmative action is that somehow it violates the colorblind nature of the Constitution. And that goes back to Harlan, right? He said late 19th century, that the Constitution is colorblind, to which Associate Justice Brown made the very important argument that not only can you not find the word colorblind in the Constitution, okay? And you know how a lot of folks oppose abortion because they say you can't find the word, but she points to the Civil War and post-Civil War amendments, which were clearly intended, right? To make reparations and to protect freedmen. So they would not only not be rejected from white colleges, but only go to historically black colleges. In other words, this could lead to more segregation, right? Qualified African-Americans will go more often to historically black colleges, which is great for those colleges, right? I'm not criticizing those as well. But what we are into is a separate and equal higher education environment in that way. And then in addition to the colorblind argument and her suggestion that it was not colorblind, we continue to go back to this debate about the purpose of affirmative action. And I think we have to, as historians, you've asked me as a historian to talk about the history. So part of the history is there's always, I've always had been abortions. The idea after, I'm sorry, I apologize. No, I'm getting mixed up, I apologize, affirmative action. So let's get to the debate about affirmative action. I apologize. Firmative action initially was promoted as part of the reparations idea. That historically there are certain groups, particularly African-Americans, who the balance is just unfair and it has always been unfair, housing, employment, et cetera. If we believe the colleges are important for leadership, for knowledge, for socialization, then we should do our best to try to address that discrimination through affirmative action. And that was really the idea. And that was Johnson's idea, right? When the great society is born and civil rights legislation comes through, it's the idea that in order for us to be equal at some point, we do have to make amends for the inequalities of the past. And I think for many people, that's still a compelling argument. And also the inequalities of the future. Right, right, to try to prevent. So the argument would be, we address the inequalities of the past so that as John Roberts has said, without any evidence at all, let's get rid of racism by getting rid of racism. Okay, fine. You get rid of it when it doesn't exist, right? But what had happened? I shouldn't say, but and what happened is that along the way, and the Bakke and Post's decisions are in part responsible for this, the idea of reparations got replaced by the idea of diversity. And so when it got replaced with the idea of diversity, critics could make the argument that, for example, and you hear this in the plaintiff's case at the Supreme Court, that wealthy sons of African businessmen are treated the same way as relatively poor great-grandchildren of Georgia sharecroppers. Right, so their argument is in diversity is actually undermining reparations. That's one of their arguments. And then- Reverse, reverse. Well, what it is, is it enables in their mind certain people to take advantage of a category which was not really intended for them, right? So in 1964, when Johnson gets up, right? He's talking very specifically, right? About the descendants of sharecroppers and descendants of slaves who are still not allowed to be at the lunch table and are beaten up as they try to vote, that a college education is one of the ways to address that. Okay, I think in a way what they're also arguing besides the diversity has replaced reparations is that diversity only according to race does not produce a diverse workplace or diverse educational experience. And the problem is that that is tilting at a windmill. There's no admissions officer, right? Who says race is the only category, nobody. So what's really an issue is can race be included? Can race be included in the holistic as the Harvard guys say, holistic admissions process along with geography and... Any number of things, sure. Classes are expected to look at any number of things. Right, so I think the difficulty where Harvard got tripped up and it's kind of its own fault is the emails which said that race was not being used to add to the applicant's total number of points but being used to reduce it. So in other words, there were some emails that refer to Asian personalities. Now, if that's the case, that is wrong, absolutely wrong. Just as there were quotas against Jews, et cetera. But that's again being used kind of as a wedge issue. All right, that is a problem and Harvard should address that. But does that mean the entire algorithm and calculus which includes the grandson of a Pullman train porter? All right, so again, it's kind of a wedge issue and you're a lawyer, you know how this works, right?  The end result would be though, as you said that race cannot be included. If that's the result, the admissions committees will find other ways. Yeah, at the end there's a subjective element in choosing who gets to go to school. Right, and as Associate Justice Brown said, you can't dissect race out of an individual or community. You may decide it's not the most important thing but there's plenty of numerical correlation between race and wealth, for example. So if you turn to wealth, okay? You also should end up with a significant number of African-Americans, whose families have not been able to purchase a home. So I think her point was well taken. You guys might not like using race and I think we know why they don't like using race. Okay, and she would probably agree that race is not the only factor but identities, and not even using the clever use of identities now, just the way in which an individual integrates in society and integrates with others is so multifaceted. Right, ethnicity, religion, personal interests, size of family, where are you, I mean, they're all factors at college. On and on, if an algorithm is what it is. Exactly, and it continues to change and grow. And I think her point is if you take, if it's an algorithm or a molecule, you can't just take out the atom of race and say the molecule can function effectively. So one of the arguments has been, I mean, it's kind of the go-to argument is to use class or wealth as a determinant. But again, how are you gonna separate that from race or ethnicity, et cetera? So it sounds good, right? David Brooks makes a big deal out of turning to class. But again, you can't separate out. What are you gonna do, family wealth? How would you even determine class? You know, one thing just hearing you on this is it strikes me that if you took race out of the algorithm, it would be in anyway, right? It would still be there. I think that was that's Justice Brown's point, right. But the problem that I see is something that preceded affirmative action. And that is, so if you have a somebody making the choice and they know that this individual is black, they might rule against him or her. Very much, very much. Okay, we got his number now.  And so what you have is a reversal of the Johnsonian principle in a de facto kind of way. And that's very problematic. What affirmative action does is, yes, you can consider race, but as a positive, not as a negative, we're not gonna use it to discriminate negatively against people. And I think that's where Harvard's admissions participants made the mistake. And it's a moral mistake. It's not just a political mistake of subtracting points or allegedly subtracting points. So doing what you said towards African-Americans, towards Asian-Americans, all right. And look, again, as I said, I think we can all agree that's wrong for a thousand reasons. That's not the issue they're gonna decide on though. Exactly, and so I think you're right. And those who are able and capable of going to college, in this case, we'll go to community colleges or historically black colleges. Others may not go to college as well. Now, one possible opportunity here is to recognize that the elite universities, at least, set aside admissions or give positive points for legacy cases, positive points for athletes, et cetera. So I think if there's any sort of silver lining in this discussion, it's seeing how the sausage works. And the sausage works, if your grandfather went to Harvard, you get a much better chance of going to Harvard. That's just a reality, Stanford, et cetera. It's a reality, but it doesn't make me feel good about those schools, I'm sorry. No, no, and I'm not intending it to make you feel good. I'm intending it that the scorching light of this decision at least has put some light on the various advantage groups, right? And without a relative true has gone to the college. And again, that's not the only thing, but it's one thing. So maybe that will change in the algorithm or molecule or maybe not. And as you say, if it doesn't change and we reduce the number of Native Americans and African Americans to Harvard, obviously the legacy cases are reduced, right? And it's a Malthusian dilemma that continues. Well, it strikes me to take it to a high policy level is these schools are recognized. If a young lawyer walks into a law firm, is that just got out of Harvard or Yale, he's got a tremendous advantage, or she. And that goes across the board. Those schools have a special cachet about them. So that means that the graduates of those schools get into executive high-level positions. They are hired quicker and for better jobs. They define the future of the country in many ways. They define the country because those schools are so respected, at least at this point they are. And I'm thinking that we really have to have a system where everybody can get into those schools on an equitable basis. And we have to use those schools to, I don't want to call it to allow the diversity that exists in the country anyway. Nobody gets left, no group gets left behind. They have such power for the country, for the future of the country, that we must have policy that guides them to do the most responsible thing, the most positive thing for the country, especially them, even beyond other schools because there's so much clout in the marketplace. So to take away affirmative action is to take away that diversity. And it's a tremendous loss to higher education, not only in those schools, but the schools which will follow this decision, however misguided it may be. What do you think? I think I agree with you entirely and the record at least for prominent public universities like Michigan and University of California, which were forced to eliminate affirmative action, both report a considerable drop in the number of applicants among African-Americans and Native Americans, including, remember there are a lot of Native Americans in the Midwest. So I agree with you. I think there are a couple of things we could do to address that. First of all, as I mentioned at the start, the admissions committees will find ways, the private ones will find ways. That's not good law. That's what that is, is bad law, and leaving it subjectively up to a bunch of people in the back room, sorry. No, I don't dispute with you. I'm just saying that Harvard and Yale and Stanford and MIT and University of Chicago have a lot to gain by ignoring what the court says. So I'm saying they will find ways to reach out and find. I'm more worried about the large public universities, which are either the only opportunity in a state or really of such high quality that for less money you get a great education.  So a lot of what I've been reading is by admissions officers who are worried about the response in public will be among these groups is just to not apply to college. And that, they're talking about how difficult it's gonna be to reach out, to encourage people to apply for college when they hear about this result. Because this result cannot really be read by most people other than a racial decision. Even if to support a particular group, it's still a racial decision. That's my view from the beginning. Yeah, and so the great fear among, UC recruiters and University of Michigan recruiters and even say a place like Oklahoma, where they're not a lot of universities, okay? The other answer is, and this is an equal seismic shift, is that we really decide, we really decide to make public education a top priority. And therefore Harvard still produces what it produces, but people have increasing respect for the non-Harvards. So the state colleges are better, the community colleges are better. And that also makes sense for no other reason than for example, when Harvard graduates, six PhDs in history, they could fill the entire country with their, and their MBA program, while among the top only is a certain number. So another- How do you achieve that equality? How do you raise the other schools up? Money, money, yeah. For example, rethink community colleges, which are based on local property taxes, or rethink public high schools that are based on local property taxes. And I've been reading the educational response to this because I think everybody agrees with you, is it done deal? As I said, even five-fourths of done deal. Okay, it's done. It's over. So the question is, how do you respond? How do you respond? And the two responses are very different. Private elite schools will find a way to get those students to their classrooms. And maybe inconsistently. Right. I press the stamp for Chicago, Harvard to find ways to get the Native Americans and African-Americans who want to go there, that they want to go there. I trust that. But I'm worried, as I said, about the public schools or fewer African-Americans wanting trying to get into Harvard because of this. All right. So the other strategy is, and I mean, it's a lot to increase public education, but money matters tremendously. Well, there was a piece recently about, you know, it's all about this college debt issue with Joe Biden and everything and how, you know, the colleges have gotten really, really expensive. When I went to the city university in New York, it cost me $12 a semester. That was it. And gee whiz, I mean, you couldn't do that now in most of the country. Absolutely not. But even in government schools, you know, in state and, you know, state schools. It's $12 to park. Yeah, one day, one moment, one hour. Right. So the problem is, it's gotten very, very expensive to run higher education. I don't know why, you must know why that has happened over the past few decades. That's another, we could have a long discussion about that. But if you say it's money, money, and you say, you know, let's pour money into the non Ivy League, you're talking about a lot of money because higher education has gotten so expensive. Right. It would be good to have a discussion about the role of colleges. So when I say money, I don't mean simply pouring it down the tube, but for example, I think President Obama's idea about free community college education makes plenty of sense. Community colleges are really, to paraphrase the state's rights people, they're laboratories. There are people who work full time who go there. There are older people. There are younger people. There are people getting practical degrees like nursing. They're a wonderful laboratory and the professors there are generally devoted to teaching. That's the goal of community college. And I could see as part of the process, right? Reaching out, getting these underrepresented groups into community colleges, giving them those two years free. And if they do well, like many states, you can matriculate to the local, large, public university. So UCLA, for example. Well, that ought to be a very easy path because at the end of the day, we want these minority groups to be in charge of American industry, in charge of American government industry, all our institutions, we want them to be diverse and we want them to be everywhere. And they're not gonna be everywhere out of a two year college unless we make a path to get them to Harvard and Yale and the Ivy League where they can get the best possible jobs in that community. Well, also, I mean, if they go to UCLA or Berkeley or University of Illinois or University of Michigan, they'll also get excellent jobs. So I agree with you. We can't, the goal is not to stop at two years unless it's appropriate, right? If an individual would like to be a nurse and can get a two year degree in practice nursing, great. And the opportunity to go to the other two years could be held out for the future. But I think inadvertently, maybe you've struck at the two problems and maybe this is way for us to finish up, okay? People, many people argue against the idea of reparations, right? It's not my problem. My family immigrated in the 1930s so I'm not responsible for this. That's not an unheard of response. Again, it is in the public interest the way you describe it. And I think of, I'm probably 49.5% think of is in order to get to where we want to as a country we have to redress what we've done. I mean, we rebuilt Japan, right? We rebuilt Germany. I don't understand why we can't rebuild America. Okay, but you've struck at the fact that the reparations argument is not one everybody will embrace. And secondly, I think with the review of the stream court which lasted between five and six hours. It was a long time and all the journalists were, I mean, usually it's two, three at most. We also found that not everybody agrees with the idea of diversity. So when you say, for example, the country would be better if the board of General Motors as well as the workplace, as well as the stores selling General Motors goods were all as diverse as possible. Again, not everybody agrees with that. And that wraps the two rub up against, you know, the white nationalist replacement theory, right? I remember years ago when salsa replaced ketchup as the item to be dumped on everything that had no taste at the cafeteria, people were in an uproar, right? Somehow America has lost its soul, et cetera. And that sounds trite, the example is trite, but the message is not. So I think a lot is at stake here. And equally with the abortion issue, because abortion is about women's ability to participate fully in society, right? So if you prevent contraception and if you demand the birth of a child, you know. You're sorry, I'm sorry. You're sorry that woman from society. And that's less diverse. So fewer women around the board room, fewer women. And I think at the top, I think what we're really talking about to great degree is the top will probably diversify. I'm worried about the middle because that's where state colleges help people really get a leg up. I mean, the number of people going to Harvard is limited, right? But the number of people potentially walking through even here, University of Hawaii. I mean, the poorer kids who might have a chance to do something. Yeah, and the middle is where those kids you were talking about will say, I'm not going to apply. Yeah. Those in the very poor will just not apply. That's absolutely right. It's devastating.  Again, the wealthiest we'll find a way, right? That's why- So yeah, that's really my question to you here, is they're going to strike affirmative action. We know that now. It's a matter of weeks or maybe a couple of months, but it won't be long. And then it's going to be over. It's going to be over for Harvard and North Carolina, what have you. Right. And on all the schools that might have- Well, the North Carolina arguments and the Harvard argument are not just about the institutions, you know, as a lawyer, any institution that gets federal funding. Right. That's the way they're surfing on. That's a lot of institutions. Every institution gets every education. What effect on education? What effect on the body of students? What effect on the management of the country? What effect on the level of intellectual acuity, the level of creativity, the level of thoughtful participation in government? What effect will all of that have? It'll have the effect that we're all worried about an increasingly divided society. The best and the brightest quote unquote, we'll get their opportunities. And the rest of us in the middle and below will find our opportunities more segregated and more limited. So as I said near the beginning, I mean, I think that historically black colleges will pick up admissions and those haven't continued to have a very important role, but it now will change, right? It used to be a role where African-Americans could not go anywhere else. All right, then it was a role that they coexisted. And now in a way it's more to the plus CV Ferguson role, right? If you're a young kid and you have a chance to go there and you know that University of Georgia is not gonna include race or cannot include race. So, you know, like all public policy decisions, there are always some beneficiaries, but it just comes at a cost. So the cost is African-American kids getting a good education at those schools, but a segregated education. What about the state of Hawaii? What about UH? So I don't, to be honest, I don't know much about admissions, if anything, but UH would have, if UH includes race or ethnicity, they would have to scratch it from their admissions policy. To be honest with you, I have no idea. I assume- I don't have an idea because we don't think of race. We really are racially blind, which is part of credit. I don't know if, you know, for example, there are relatively few African-Americans in Hawaii and relatively few on campus. I don't know if some of the recruiters maybe go out, et cetera. But certainly I would think it wouldn't serve anybody's purpose in the Hawaiian community. Except, except very importantly, if you allow race and ethnicity, you can have special programs for native Hawaiians. Those are essential, absolutely essential. Waimanalo, Kahuku, go out to Waianae. And those are probably in some way or another determined by race or ethnicity. And those have been win, win, win situations. They're far more native Hawaiians or people have mixed the Hapa than they were in the old days. I used to be sort of athletes. But now, so that does worry me. I mean, now you've got me worried one more reason not to sleep at night. And there were so many of them these days. But you could make an argument, but you could make an argument. Like you could with Native Americans. You could make a political argument. The Native Americans are a tribe. And it's not the Native American in them that is underrepresented. It's the tribe that's underrepresented. I mean, you could kind of waffle around it politically. And I think probably we could find something here to avoid the far right, something about, you could even use a category indigenous, which is not a racial category. So I think if we thought about it, we could find a way. Personally, after being here for 30 years, I'll use a little Yiddish, it would be a Shonda. Be a Shonda if any effort is made to limit native outreach. And because it does take outreach, it does take encouragement, right? To go to Wai'anae where kids don't really think about going to college necessarily to go out there and recruit. And for our state, it's essential. I mean, to try to heal the wounds, to try to address reparations, for all the good reasons, diversity, et cetera. So I would hope, and I'm sure people are thinking about this because they agree with you that the axe is gonna fall. We'll find some way, if not intent, the effect will be multiracial, right? If not the, you know, the leisure expression of it. And I could see finding a different kind of language. I could see finding a political language. Yeah, well, maybe this will wake Hawaii up in some ways and other states, you know, to find a way and to reject the notion of what the Supreme Court is likely to do. I think we'll reject it here. We have to, I mean, to actually go further than that. Yeah, the more outreach, you know? Yeah, I think our most difficult issue as far as the Supreme Court is gonna be guns. That's another show. Yeah, because a number of applications for Kerry have just skyrocketed.  Yeah, but I think abortion, we will protect. There's no way we're gonna deny same-sex marriage. That's part of Hawaiian law. It's part of Hawaiian history even. Multiple identities, you know, in tradition. Congress, in the next few weeks, Congress may, you know, come up with something on same-sex marriage in the last few weeks. We're trying to, the Senate will pass it, but McCarthy will have, well, he could have a majority of up to nine or 10. So I'm not sure it's gonna be the same with that. You know, I take away from this show the appropriate use of the worst, Shonda. I think everybody should write that down. I think you should put that on the final exam. Okay. And our last show, we talked about Marmalade. And this show, we talked about Salsa. So it's all about, you know, getting ready for Thanksgiving food. Food, exactly. Thank you, Peter. Peter Hopperberg, history professor at New Age. Take care, talk to you. We'll join all the holidays. Okay. Same. All right, bye-bye. Aloha. Mahalo.


Now, look, Coca-Cola's got a new CEO coming in Quincy, and I think that Moutard Kent gave them a very good hand. They've re-franchised. They're going to be a very lean company with a lot of cash. Buyback stock forever. Boosted definitely won. PepsiCo, look, I mean, it's been the best performer other than Clorox in the consumer package goods business, so it's natural for someone who want to ring the register. My problem with that is there's nothing better than PepsiCo. So as I will probably tell, we have a round table next week for Axelers Plus. It's very difficult for me to want to sell. I sold some PepsiCo for the trust not that long ago. Scott Berman and I were just talking about what we're being greedy. But to run from a high-quality company just because you think it's gone up too much when you take a longer-term view like I have for the trust, that's just not cricket. I can't do it.


The annual Back to Basics Expo in Pine River has been giving Minnesotans tips on living more sustainable lives for more than a decade now. Lakeland News reporter Cheryl Moore shows us what's new for this year's event. The client that's sure is changing. Minnesotans broke out their notebooks and pens ready to take notes on everything they learned at the 12th annual Back to Basics Expo. It's kind of your one-stop shop for sustainable living. This year, Back to Basics have more than 50 vendors and 45 hands-on workshops. I sort of like to say that this is almost like DIY live, you know, so folks go to YouTube and different resources on the internet to learn about different sustainable living topics and here they can come and learn from local experts, maybe it's their neighbor, maybe it's the gentleman from, you know, the Twin Cities who's here.  The workshops taught people how to live a better life, while the vendors saw things like homemade jams, homemade clothes, and even a homemade bicycle. We have jewelry and information, there is, gosh, anything that you might want, essentially. There's folks talking about the insulation in your house. Two keynote speakers opened the Expo with a PowerPoint and a few songs. They sing about aquatic invasive species and climate change and how we can help here in Minnesota. It's like how we use energy through energy efficient light bulbs and how we do vehicles. Do we ride share or do we buy high efficiency vehicles. So these things are very tangible things that we can do. In Minnesota, we have three laws, clean, drain, dispose.   Happy Dancing Turtle, the nonprofit that throws Back to Basics, says this year's Expo raised the bar. They're open to add even more in the future. Every year we get bigger, we offer more workshops and have more vendors. This year we had our biggest vendor area yet and folks still on the waiting list, so it's great to see. Reporting in Pine River, Shawmore, Lakeland News. If you'd like to stay updated on the Back to Basics Expo, you can head over to HappyDancingTurtle.org. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Yeah, we on boss talk one on one, one on one. Yeah, we gon' talk. Let's talk about it. So yeah, man, so three beats come out, three songs come out. So I said, let me just call this number that was in that same video. Call the video, hello? Hey, how y'all doing? You know what I'm saying? I just saw Kodak drop three songs, so I'm trying to get paid.  Who is this? Double A. Double A, okay. Okay, yo, let me get right back to you. That's Pimp. All right, cool. Hang up the phone. All right, cool. Man, I never got a phone call back. Did they block you? Nah, they ain't blocked me. So about a week, nah, call it back. Hello? Yo, who is this? Yo, I called about a week ago about the beats.  I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, bet. That was 2015. Nah, nah, it was a female. Oh, okay.  And I don't even think, but I talked to that person and of course that whole camp since then, but I don't think that they even remember that. You know what I'm saying? So I was like, all right, cool. I'ma just take that as an L, you know what I'm saying? It was, I still never got monetized on it, on those three songs at all, never. You know what I'm saying? So I get a comment under my picture, Kodak comment. He was like, bro, everything you send it hard, DM me. So I DM you. He's sending it, nigga, it's free too. And I DM to him, I DM, bro, let me see. I DM, bro, and it had to be 2015. Yeah. He ain't responding until February 2021. Woo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo. So I was like, dang, he ain't never respond. So I got a phone call one day from another producer. He was like, hey, Kodak told me to give you his number. This is 2015. I'm like, bro, I DM'd you. He was like, I ain't never see it. I was like, all right, cool. So I got your number now. So I don't care about the DM. So we chopping it up. He was like, nah, send me some more stuff. So in between time, you know, he get locked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We talking on the phone, you know what I'm saying? I'm putting money on his books, you know what I'm saying? But it's all love. You know what I'm saying? Not money on his books. I brought him a couple books, you know what I'm saying? Like, and I ain't had no money. So I had to call my cousin. You know what I'm saying? I had to call my cousin, like, cuz.  Like, buy this book and send it to this place right here. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And we built a relationship and it was, you know what I'm saying? Like dope. We did a lot of big records. You know what I'm saying? The Slade, the Boosie record, the vibing in the bed with Gucci Man, everything 1K. Wow. You know what I'm saying? Like we really like, that was like the turning point. So it came full circle, really anyway. So that's when when we did the first project, I got paid. I like that because a lot of times people think that they're gonna get the money upfront. But you got to put that work in too. And I don't, I don't know a situation that teaches me because you going through something that's giving you, it's stretching you. You learn in a lot of things as you trying to figure it out, right? I tell people this all the time, you gonna get the L. Yeah, gotta get the L. Nobody is exempt from taking the L. It's just whenever you take it, will it be a small L or will it be the big L? Give me my L in the beginning. You know what I'm saying? So I know like, okay, God, I took the L. Now it's time for me to go ahead and do what I gotta do. You know what I'm saying? So thankfully I took that L in the beginning. You know what I'm saying? So now I kind of know how to maneuver because those records was, they was cool. You know what I'm saying? But that was in the beginning of his career. Once he kind of took off, I started getting paid and I kind of knew the game and I don't know what to do. So it was cool. Got you footed in the door. Definitely. That's really what it did. That was worth more than the money. Exactly.


Thank you so much for staying tuned. Of course, if you're just joining us, we just wrapped up another donation, another corporate citizen making good on their pledge toward the telephone for personal protective equipment for our frontliners and the National Meals Program, Buckeye St. Lucia donating $200,000, a combination of cash and equipment, test kits for that effort. We continue this morning with an update, protocols for taxi drivers this morning, and we know that the taxi drivers have been concerned, a little critical at times with regard to the reopening of the tourism sector. And this morning, we're here to allay the fears and concerns of taxi operators here on Ireland with the rollout of the protocols for you, the taxi drivers, as well as an interview. We have the Honourable Minister for Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries, Minister of the Honourable Dominic Fede, as well as a taxi operator and member of the Taxi Task Force, Mr. Miller-Charles. A pleasant good morning to you both. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I'll start with you, Mr. Minister. Can you just speak to us about the protocols that have been rolled out for taxi operators on Ireland and what it's meant to do in this COVID-19 scenario? I think that the protocols have the safety of the taxi drivers in mind, first and foremost. And what it looks at is that the fact that we're going to be having the tourists that are coming in, and one of the things that we have to bear in mind is that when the tourists are coming in, they're coming from largely epicenters of the disease now. The United States is going to be the market where we're going to start first. Now it's not possible for us to start tourism in the U.K. and Canada, or two of the main source markets, because you have a mandatory quarantine requirement upon return, and that in itself does present a deterrent, if you will. However, the Caribbean as well, they are issues with the airlines not starting back up. We don't have any confirmation. The only place where we have an indication where the airlines are ready to fly is from the United States. But that is coupled with a very precarious public health situation, where instead of the cases of coronavirus or COVID-19 going downwards, it is going upwards. And so what we have to make sure is that at every level of the value chain as we reopen, that we have a robust and rigid plan to ensure that all of the workers within the tourism sector are protected, and the taxi drivers are no exception. So I know that some of the protocols would be increased sanitization. They would include taxi drivers having to wear a mask. They would include special seating arrangements. The last time I saw the protocol, it suggested that in the middle of the seat, there would be no seating arrangements. And the plexiglass, as mentioned here by Mr. Charles, so that we can ensure that our taxi drivers are protected and the visitors on the various transportation are also protected. It is absolutely key. We are living in a new normal, and I've seen a lot of suggestions to say, let's open. Let's move ahead and open while it's only been two days or so that Jamaica has been open and Antigua has only been open for a little over a week. And so we really have no indication as to what successes and what challenges they've had because it is really too early to tell when we are still in the early stages of reopening. So I just want to say at this time that what we have to do is to ensure that we open but we open right. Wonderful. I now switch over to Mr. Miller Charles, who is on the taxi task force and the taxi operator himself. You've had a chance to peruse the protocols looking at taxi drivers should regularly sanitize the use of masks, electronic methods of payment recommended as an alternative for cash transactions, the plexiglass highly recommended as an added layer of protection. What is, how do you feel about those protocols? I think that these protocols are very much needed and I applaud the ministry and the minister for ensuring that these things will basically be ahead too. And the safety of our drivers are basically what they place most of the priority on. There were also some other issues about the dissertification, which wasn't the case and I would like to take this opportunity right there in front of the minister so that he can assure all our taxi drivers out there that there is no dissertification program that will be going on. But all in all, I think that there is a phased approach where we all know that everything is not going to come back to normal very soon and the most that we can do is comply with all of the protocols that are outlined in the ad that everybody is going to see. We need to also be up to date with the ministry of health and the ministry of transportation. The minister also assured us that the sector is going to be regulated properly and this is the reason why he put in place the task force. The task force has already had about three meetings and we can say that we are happy with what is being achieved. We also heard from the grid vine that the taxi drivers might be getting something that is going to make a smile sometime soon. So Mr. Minister, I hope that on behalf of the taxi drivers out there, I really do hope that you are going to make a smile because we have been suffering for quite a long, long time and I will take this opportunity to say that we are the first point of contact. We are the ambassadors of the island. We are the last point of contact sometimes before the guest leaves and I really, really do think that you need to see how important the taxi, the taxi, the ground handlers and our sector is to the whole tourism sector on the whole and I just hope that everything that we as the task force are put in play will finally come together and be accomplished for the betterment of the sector. I want to take this opportunity to really thank the entire taxi fraternity for their own cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism, the zeal and the diligence with which they have come together to work towards establishing a very, very good spirited collaboration between the two departments and I think that this is going to work in the best interests of tourism. I want to also assure you that the taxi sector seen by our government as one of the critical pillars upon which the tourism industry is hinged and so therefore we will make every effort to ensure that we give you the support in every area that we can. To attain these protocols we want to assist as well in helping to meet some of the costs associated because we know that it is very difficult for you to provide the PPE supplies. You are frontliners in many instances just as the health workers are and we are committed to helping the sector to get some of the supplies so that we can keep the taxi drivers and all the tourists that are travelling on their various forms of vehicles safe so we are very excited and look forward to the reopening of tourism. So I'm very happy to hear about the PPEs but there are some other things concerning the sector that I think a lot of the taxi drivers are looking forward to. The Prime Minister's budget speech on Thursday he's expected to make a very exciting announcement as it pertains to the taxi drivers and I'm sure it is one that will intrigue the entire sector so I can hardly wait to hear it myself but I've been hearing through the grip line just as you are. And to hear it from you directly in terms going back to the taxi protocols at this time in this COVID-19 environment, how can the taxi operators obtain COVID-19 compliance at this time Honourable Minister? It is working with the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health to ensure that they meet some of the standards required for their own safety. This has never been about making business difficult for anyone but this is recognizing that COVID is a reality, COVID is a global pandemic, it is dangerous and what we have to do is to make sure that we work with our drivers to make sure that we protect them from being contracted with the virus and every effort has been made to give guidance and to lend support so that our taxis sector can reach those guidance. I want to thank Mr. Norbert Philipp, Mr. Philipp who from Southern Taxi who has been a champion of the industry and who has been a tireless voice for advancement of the industry. Whenever we have a meeting he's never shy of letting me know exactly where he stands and the various issues and it's really been very frank discussions with the sector but very fruitful at the same time which we can appreciate. I honestly can see some clarity and I think that now after this and the good news that is going through the grid line I really think it will later raise some concerns of the taxi drivers. I'm pleased to hear that. What I would like to also do is encourage your sector to apply for the income support program. I know that a number of drivers have applied but really it is to have you to apply and then as well I think that it gives you an opportunity to become registered with the NIC if you wish to become registered. This is a choice that you have but what we have seen over the years is that in the self-employed sector which taxi drivers are part of often times you find individuals get to the age of retirement and they're not able to sustain their lives because there's no social security. So what we want to do is work together and to see how we can have a very sustainable system by which the taxi drivers can be a part of and to really be part of the social security system. So I think that this is a great opportunity that we have and we hope that as many of you will take the opportunity that is presented by the NIC to get registered. I'd like to thank you the Honourable Minister for Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries Honourable Dominic Fede and Taxi Task Force spokesperson Mr. Miller Charles for sitting in with us as we go over these protocols for taxi drivers in this COVID-19 environment. During the phased reopening of the tourism sector the following health and safety procedures must be observed with the deployment of authorized taxi services. Taxi drivers must wear a mask at all times, the official COVID-19 compliance obtained and facilitated by the Ministry of Tourism must be displayed when on duty. No shaking of hands, a gentle nod or elbow greet will do and hand sanitizers should be offered to the guests prior to entering the taxi. Having a plexiglass is highly recommended as an added layer of protection. Taxi drivers should regularly sanitize their hands. Electronic methods of payment are recommended as an alternative cash transaction. And also all guests must keep their feet on floor mats and wear a face mask throughout the journey. How do taxi operators obtain a COVID-19 compliance? The Ministry of Tourism is conducting ongoing training for all taxi operators after which checks will be done to ensure taxi operators have the required PPEs that is personal protective equipment. It is important for taxi drivers to undergo the training and follow the advice from the Ministry of Health the COVID-19 compliance is required for all tourism operators. For more information on being COVID-19 ready please visit the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Tourism website or call 468-4603 or 468-4628 from Monday to Friday during the hours of 8am to 4.30pm. And the wonderful thing about it is that there is no registration fee. The process fee is free of charge. The process is free of charge. The Ministry will work with Taxi Associations, the Taxi Union and the taxi companies to ensure that everyone has a copy of the COVID-19 Taxi Protocol and undergoes training and gets registered as needed. That's all the time we have for now. We'd like to thank you so much for watching as we went over the Taxi Protocols for COVID-19. We do hope you enjoyed the remainder of your day. Stay tuned to NTN for more programming and also like our Facebook page, Government of St. Lucia. Also subscribe to our YouTube channel, Government of St. Lucia YouTube channel and click the notification button so you always know when we have new content coming from the Government of St. Lucia. Thank you so much for watching. Goodbye for now. In mitigating the possible spread of COVID-19 into our communities, the following tourism-related health and safety protocols must be observed during the deployment of taxi and rideshare services. Drivers must wear a face mask at all times. The official COVID compliance obtained through the Ministry of Tourism must be displayed when on duty. No shaking of hands. A gentle nod or elbow greet will do. Hand sanitizer should be offered to guests prior to entering the taxi. Electronic methods of payments are encouraged as an alternative to cash transactions. All guests must keep their feet on floor mats and wear a face mask throughout the journey. Drivers should sanitize hands before and after any possible contact. Installing a plexiglass is highly recommended as an added layer of protection. For more information, operators should visit the Ministry of Tourism's website at www.slu-tourism.govt.lc or call 468-4603 or 468-4628. This information is brought to you by the Ministry of Tourism in collaboration with the Department of Health and Wellness. Securing lives, restoring livelihoods.


Awesome. All right. So what I'm going to talk about today is using backgrounds. Basically designing the background is, you know, here's how we can use backgrounds to create some various interesting design effects, some of which might not be apparent at first glance as you mess with backgrounds. So let's get started with that. There we go. So I'm going to be using my personal website, mireweb.com, as the example here. And this is kind of what it looks like. It's a local test copy, but it's, so the information's a little old, but the design is basically the same. And a lot of, almost all of the design elements that you're seeing are background images or background, well, they're all background images or background colors. And I wanna talk about a few of those. So I'm gonna start with what is in some ways the most complicated of the backgrounds, but it's also in some ways the easiest to understand, which is the background that I created for the body element. So this is what the site looks like, basically, you know, without having modified anything and has sort of this textured effect, this brush stroke look to it that was actually inspired by the, what I took some of these design elements from, which is a study of waveforms that was published in Japan in 1903 called Hamantyu. And I probably pronounced that incorrectly and I apologize, but so like the waves at the top, which we'll be talking about a little more detail here in a bit, those are taken from this published study of water forms, which is in the public domain and is available online. There's actually a link in the footer of almost every page on MyerWeb to that if you wanna see for yourself what the artist created. But anyway, so the body, if I take away the body background, I mean, this is what it looks like. And it's not a huge difference, right? Like there's no body background here other than sort of the browser standard weight. And there's not a huge difference with what was there before, but I think there's different enough. So the first step is also the last background layer, which is a solid color. And the thing about if you have a layered background, if you haven't messed with those before, you can only have one solid color. Like there's only one place you can say effectively you want a background color like this particular HSL A color or red or Rebecca purple, whatever color you wanna use, you can only have it as the last of the background layers, which puts it at the bottom. If you add anything to this, it has to be an image, which is what I'm about to do. And the first thing that I added above that background color is a tiled background image, which here I've shown in full opacity. So this is, it's the same image that I created out of elements from Hamanchu. And then it's just tiled, but it has an offset you might have noticed. It's pushed over 250 pixels and then pulled upwards 50 pixels. That's where the origin image is placed. And then it tiles from there. And on top of that, I put the same image, but with no offset in its tiling. So why did I do two copies of the same image but tiled with different offsets? Because when they're combined, you get this, it's almost a complete background cover. There are bits where gaps show through. But what interested me when I did this was that this created a pattern that almost didn't feel like a pattern. And to the extent that it does feel like a pattern, I was willing to live with that because it's gonna be a body background. And also, it's not gonna be nearly as obvious in the final design. And if you've noticed, there's sort of a little glow behind the navigation links on the side. That's actually caused by a radial background gradient on that particular nav links element. Not gonna have time to explore it today, unfortunately, but that's where that glow comes from as a radial gradient in the background of that. I think it's a UL element, might be a nav element, I don't remember now, sorry. I should have put that in my notes as we did, I would say, moving on. But down at the bottom of the page, I've skipped down here to where the footer is. It really felt like there needed to be a visual transition leading to the footer rather than have this pattern like come right up to sort of this gray area that the footer has and then stopping. So did that by having an upward pointing linear gradient which starts, which basically, I mean, it starts at the bottom and then it has a solid color, HSLA 34 degrees, 38% saturation, 99% lightness and full opacity. That starts at 23M and then it fades out to zero over almost the next 20M. Now, the size of this is based on the footer size, because I know what's gonna go in it sort of has a given size, but also some experimentation. I didn't start out saying, you know, doing math in my head and saying, oh, this will be exactly 23M and it will go to exactly 42M, right?  How does 400 pixels look and so on and so forth? I wanted it to be text size, so I was gonna use Ms or REMs. I ended up using Ms, but you know, I probably started with 20M and then moved it upwards and then maybe scooched it back a little bit. That's where, you know, a lot of this stuff ended up.  You might think to yourself, why didn't he pick that exact number? Because it looked good, it looked right after I experimented for a while. Anyway, I used a similar approach up in the MAST head where, well, at least behind the MAST head at the top of the body background where I have a gradient that's coming downwards, but notice it's not quite exactly downward pointing. It actually points at 179 degrees instead of the exactly downward 180 degrees. I'm gonna change it so that it isn't 179 degrees. This is what it looks like when it's 180 degrees. And if you look, there's a difference, right? That it goes kind of right along that curl of the wave that sticks out and then goes underneath the myerweb.com as though it's almost like a baseline. But if we go back to 179 degrees, right, that it moves up in the myerweb so that the fade out transition goes behind the text a little bit and it doesn't go right exactly along that sweep of the wave, creates a more organic feel, which is what I was after. I didn't want the sort of sterile feel of having the exact 180 going to 179 felt right. I think 178 I tried and it was a little too much and I could have done, what about 179.1 degrees, 178.9 degrees. At a certain point, I got tired of experimenting. I stuck with 179 degrees, but you can use fractional degrees and maybe with a slightly different application of this. So if I'd been using a different font for myerweb.com, let's say, and that is texts, by the way, it's using a font called IMFEL, which I love. But if I were using a different font, if I were using Helvetica, 179 degrees might not look right. Maybe it would need to be 179.25 degrees or 178.5 degrees, something like that. So that's something to keep in mind as well. Anyway, now above all those other gradients that I've talked about is this one, which is too complicated to show here. That's what the dots mean. It's actually a very long gradient syntax. I'll show it in an upcoming slide, but it's just too complicated to show here. But it's also very subtle. It might not be easy to tell, but there are these sort of shadows at the sides and then it fades in. So I'm gonna change the colors. I'm gonna change the lightness actually. Literally I just changed the lightness of the HSL colors. And that's what that looks like. It goes from a shade to semi-transparent to fully opaque in the center and then back to semi-transparent and back to another shade. So here it is again, as normal. But it gives us this little bit of shadowing along the sides. And mostly knocks out that background tiled repeat behind of the text column, the main column of the page.  This was an early color choice. This was actually one of my original design thoughts that I ended up lightening a lot so that it actually looks like this. This is the end result where it shades in. But if you look at the top left and right corners, there's a little extra shading almost because that's where those side shades and the top shade kind of combine. And it makes it a little more paper-like in feel, which is really what I was after. So like I say, that's the end result. Now that was a lot of layers to throw into one background. And if you're trying to keep track of where they were in your head, well, let me go through them again. So let's go through those layers. First we have the color, the background color, and then the two tiled images. And then on top of those are the bottom and top gradients of the page. And then that main side to side ingredient. And then that last little bit of top shading. And that's it. If that was difficult to visualize, maybe you'd prefer it in 3D. So here's how they stack up. And yes, both this slide and the previous slide are HTML and CSS animations. And here's the code. I mean, it looks complex, but honestly, most of that is in the gradient syntax. Can be daunting, but it's pretty compact for a text description of images. And yes, I just want to make the point. Gradients are images every bit as much as SVGs or PNGs or images. They're just described in this way. I will admit I hand wrote these. I don't expect people to do that. There are plenty of gradient generators on the web that let you play around with color stops and easing and all that sort of thing, which is great, but I'm just one of those people who hand authors things like linear gradients and simple SVGs, so what can you do? At any rate, I want to talk about other parts of the page besides just the body, like those waves across the footer. Actually, I played around with these for a while. So here's the footer the way it looks normally. And here's the element box of the footer. And you might think to yourself, oh, okay, he's going to set a huge top padding and put his backgrounds in there. And I thought about doing that. But instead, I ended up using a before pseudo element attached to the footer, because I wanted there to be a distinction between the actual body of the footer, which is where you see that gray gradient that leads down to the very bottom of the footer and the waves on top. And that was just how I chose to do it this time. So let's take away the before's background, which is what I've done here, that before pseudo element. And then first at the bottom is I put in another subtle shading gradient. I was really into sort of these shading gradients when I was creating this design. I might go back and simplify some of them at this point, but that's how I did it. But it kind of creates a little bit of a shading towards the top of the footer's main body. Now I repeated an image along the X-axis. This is one image that just I did the work to blend it in Photoshop effective. Well, acorn in my case. And then repeated it along the X-axis. And you can see there's a strip where the image, the bottom of that background image doesn't quite reach the bottom of the background area because it's positioned so that it's 0.95%. So it's 95% of the way down. And then it's one and a half M tall and auto-sized width. And then it repeats X, but there's this strip. But that's okay. Because I'm gonna do another row of exactly the same image, just slightly bigger that's actually up against the bottom that covers up that gap, right? So this is, if you look at the code, the same footer wave.png file that's repeated along the X-axis. It's just the row in the back is a little smaller than the row on the front. And using that same image at different sizes, again, created sort of like with the body background created this pattern that looks almost random and organic and yet is not, right? It's actually very repeatable but it repeats over very long distances. And again, the heights of two M and one and a half M and the positioning of 95% all arrived at by experimentation really. There were bits that I set up where the repetition looked really robotic, looked really very regular and wasn't what I was after.  So that's where that experimentation comes in. And then I ended up adding a single large wave image on the left side, cause why not? It just seemed like the thing to do. Oops. And this is what the code looks like including the sizing of that before element I had to, and the display of it had to set it to display block and give it a height in this case, six and a half M and then I also have a mixed blend mode of darken on it that would let other things show through the footer's waves if placed there, but it's really not necessary for the design as it is now. It was, I was experimenting and I should probably pull that out but it's in the code, so I thought I'd show it to you. So some of those techniques get applied in different ways to the header. And this is the header with its element box highlighted. Now I didn't use the before or after pseudo elements on this particular element. I just styled the background of the element itself because I didn't, I wasn't making that distinction like I was with the footer where the footer has this very visual difference between itself and the rest of the document, rest of the page. And so I wanted the footer to have that and then I could use the before pseudo element to put in the waves. Here I actually want the header elements to blend with the overall page so I didn't need to really use pseudo elements. I just styled the background of the element itself. So if I take away the backgrounds, this is what we have which is, it's a lot of white space, but it works okay. If the image is filled to load for some reason this is not terrible. So then I add in the first which is pulled a little bit off screen to the left and then it has a vertical placement using a calc statement as you can see there. It's meant to lift the image up from the bottom of the header by a distance dictated by the width of the browser window. It's basically put your bottom edge against the bottom but then come upwards by 4.2% of the width of the browser window. Again, that 4.2% mostly arrived at by trial and error. It's also 29% the width of the overall header element and then auto, its height is auto calculated so that it keeps its aspect ratio. So then on the right put a different wave image pinned to the bottom right and 45% of the width of the header and then another copy of that left side wave but bigger pinned to the bottom left and also 45% the width of the header. So on the left side that's actually two copies of the same image, right? There's a smaller one in the back and then a bigger one closer up and there's that 10% of the header that's clear of either wave. I wanted it split like that. And I also, to some extent I wanted it split so that I could, if I wanted to, set widths that weren't percentage based and then if the browser window got really wide the waves would pull apart. Anyway, so now I've inserted a translucent gradient into the middle of that background stack and notice that the smaller wave on the left the one in the back is faded out, right? Here's that same gradient made more opaque and it actually shows how the foreground wave masks out the background wave. Let me pull that left wave out and then give it a black background. So you can see some parts of the images are opaque, some parts are not, that's the beauty of PNGs. But you put that on top of the other wave and then you put the light gradient between them and you get the illusion of depth which I really liked, that was something I was after. Maybe I was a little too aggressive with the fading of that back wave. Maybe I should lighten the gradient so or make it more transparent so that the wave in the background isn't quite as faded out but that's really easy to do. I just have to adjust a couple of HSLA colors and specifically just their alpha channels which is what I like about this overall technique of layering images and layering gradients. It's much simpler to experiment with and alter various effects just by changing a few lines of CSS or maybe just one line of CSS. So there's more to this header than I showed actually. This is the basic background setup which is applied to mobile sizes. I styled mostly mobile first. So it just has that left hand wave at mobile sizes but then when you go up to the desktop sizes you get or even really large handheld sizes you get this layered background that I was just talking about and just showing you with that sort of illusion of depth. And if I ever decided that I wanted to put in the middle between the two waves a boat, all I have to do is add an image or if I decide I want to create even more depth and more repetitions of these wave images again, all it takes is adding in a couple of lines of this background rather than having to redo the whole thing. Backgrounds don't have to be this complicated and I kind of threw you into the deep end not to use a nautical pun by going through the most complicated ones first but sometimes with just a line or two you can create a more stylish separator. So as an example, the line there that's between the main body of a post and the sort of the meta information saying when it was published and what categories it's in. That's a background image. And well it's a background gradient which again is a background image. The way it works is I've created some top margin and top padding. The padding is the important part here. There's an M and a half of top padding. You may have noticed I like to do in situations like this a lot of my sizing in M so that it's text based on the text size. Anyway, I put in a single background. This is it as a five pixel tall background gradient. So you can see it actually starts more darker, more opaque on the sides and then becomes lighter in the center. It fades in towards the center just by using different RGBA values, different A values on RGBA. And you can see it's not repeated. It's 50%, it's basically centered vertically or excuse me, centered horizontally and pushed down one M vertically. And then it's 100% wide and five pixels tall. But if we change that five pixel to one pixel here it is and that's it, right? Rather than using an HR or having a PNG or an SVG that I have to load or in the case of an SVG embed I literally just have one line of CSS. And if I ever decide that I wanna make it darker or lighter I just fiddle with a few alpha colors. If I ever decide that I wanna turn it into a rainbow I just change the color stops. That's really all it takes. Now, we can take this and sort of combine all of these various ideas to make separators fancy as opposed to simple. And they don't really involve that much more code only a few more lines. So this separator, this is based on an HR element. It literally is an HR element and I'm showing it here without any extra styles, right? I just, there's literally an HR in the markup which is something I use occasionally in my markup but an HR element is an element, you can style it and CSS does not care what you think an HR is supposed to look like, you can do whatever you want. You can size it, you can add margins, right? So here I've added some margins to it and also gave it a height of 2.33M. So now it's a box because an HR is really a zero height box with some borders. So if I take away those borders the HR becomes invisible until I add a background to it. In this case I have a one pixel gradient that fades towards the sides. It's actually more opaque in the center than it is at the side. So it's sort of the reverse of what I did with the other separator. And then I can add on top of that a thicker, a three pixel thick gradient which fades out more quickly but it creates this effect of the gradient getting thicker towards the center, right? So not only does it fade out visually but it also fades out in terms of thickness. This is the visual effect that's created here. Then add a couple of images similar to the way that the left and right waves were added to the header and then one more in the middle. And now any HR element that catches these styles will be extra fancy, right? Create a little more visual punch and you can do all kinds of things. You know, I wanted this to be centered. At one point I was putting the trumpets as I call them the two things on the sides of that disk. I was putting them on the ends so that there was a disk in the middle and then this line that went out and then had these trumpets on the end. And I liked this better. But who knows? Maybe someday I'll just reposition those trumpets and have that effect instead. And anyway, here's the code which I realized as I was formatting the slide could be a bit simpler. You notice, you might notice every background image here every single one of them is set to no repeat. I'm repeating myself, right? Every time.  I could take all of those out and add a single line of CSS to cover all of those repeats by just pulling them out and then having a single background repeat, no repeat which will apply to all of them. So, you know, like I said, there are a lot of different ways to combine these things in block quotes. Here's another way of combining images and gradient lines which is what I did for the block quote here. There's a one image in the top left and then there's another one in the bottom right, right? And then a gradient line across the top that looks like the quote image has some kind of halo around it. That's actually a visual trick. It's the gradient fading out before it reaches that quote image. Same thing on the bottom, right? It does that same fade out trick that makes it look like I did some kind of fancy filter or something on the quotes but they're really PNGs that don't have fancy glows. I'm just faking it. And what I like about this technique is that if those quote images failed to load for some reason like maybe the image directory gets moved somehow, it's still an interesting looking style. It still sets this apart visually from the rest of the text. It's just, it's missing a little extra decoration. But anyway, here's the code. And for the linear gradients, the two stripes at the top and bottom, I used current color, which is a key where it basically says what's the current color of this image, right? So whatever the text color is, that's what those gradients are going to use. We're used to borders taking that sort of thing automatically, but these aren't borders, they're gradients. And I have to give them a color, but here I can say whatever color the text is, use that. That's, use the current color. So that if I have a block quote that I decide to style red, those two lines will get shaded red, although the quote images won't, I think that's okay. And if I really thought that they needed to be changed, I could probably come up with ways to make that happen. So one more, I promise, and then it'll be time. So sometimes you can use backgrounds as masks. We saw this a little bit with a header image without one wave that has some opaque bits. So for my, for these links, these extra special links that let you into a new place, I decided to go with this presentation. And if I take off the background images and just leave a background color, it's a little, it's very subtle here. It'll be more obvious in just a minute. You can see that there are these rounded caps on the ends of the link, which is, which I created with a border radius. Oh, that'll be on the code in just a minute. But anyway, once that's done, I put in top and bottom gradients.  But here, I didn't want to set borders and then have them curl onto the sides. I just wanted the top and bottom stripes that would get cut off by the border rounding. So gradients made sense. And then added a couple of images, very similar to the fancy horizontal rule or to the header where there's one on the left and one on the right. These, this is actually the two images which I put next to each other. But if I split them apart and bring in a background color, you can see that they're actually sort of negative space and they have this light mask almost, the opaque parts of them create a mask. So when I put them back on here, they mask out the background, that red background. But they also, you can see some of the body's background, if you look closely, through the part where the images should be, right? Where that opaque mask was.  This is, I just inverted. I used filter invert to invert the link. So you can see where things are masked. And it all comes together. It's not perfect. It really, I've considered using actual masks but the support for masking images wasn't great at the point I was doing this and I'm not sure it's gotten much better. Whereas this is very, very widely supported. Anyway, here's the code. You've got the right end cap and the left end cap and they don't repeat in a couple of gradients. Okay, they don't go to exactly the same colors but they're very close. And then underneath all of that is that faint red color which is FED, then then five is the alpha. So that expands out to FFEEDD555 representing the alpha value for this particular color. And then there's that border radius. It's one M wide and then 50% of the link height. You know, there's a great deal more I could say that I could talk about when it comes to backgrounds. I mean, honestly, to some extent, I only scratched the surface here. It didn't get to radial gradients, for example, which you can do very interesting things with. But I think I've probably gone on more than long enough. It's been about half an hour. I'd just like to say I'm very honored that you would have an Angmo like me come to share some of his knowledge with you. And I want to close by offering my deepest respect to the organizers of Singapore CSS for all that they've done over the last five years. Any meetup is difficult to sustain. Five years is a long time. So, you know, heartfelt congratulations. Thanks in respect to all of the organizers of Singapore CSS. And thank you all for joining me today. I hope it was interesting and I hope you had as much fun as I did. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric, for such a great talk. I don't know what the others think, but for me personally, when you revealed and built this design of your site, I was like, how did he do it? And now that you've spoken about it, it's really nice to see how it was done. Hopefully it can inspire other people to pursue these sort of like relatively more interesting and artistic designs as opposed to, you know, going the minimalistic route, which is great, but you know, kind of boring. Yeah, so I asked for questions, but in general, folks around here don't really ask questions. I only had one question that wasn't very relevant to the actual talk, but Ed has asked, do you have a reset.css for 2020? If I had one, it would basically be the current version, except it does need a couple of images added to it, or sorry, a couple of elements added to it, not images, elements. I think it's missing main, for example, and it is something I should probably reevaluate. What I find interesting is that there are a lot of what I think of as reboots, reboots.css, so normalize.css is an example of this, where it's not just a reset. The idea of the reset was to strip away all of the sort of, all of the, what we think of as no-style styles, but there's a lot of no-styles, and then build on that. So the idea was that you would take the reset and then modify it so that it started from the point that you like. You had your favorite body font and your favorite heading fonts and your favorite color combinations, which is what normalize.css is for the creator of normalize.css, and a lot of people love it, nothing wrong with that. I've seen others as well. The names are escaping me. But I would say, anyone who's thinking of using the reset.css, grab it, modify it as you need, and then keep that as sort of your launching off point, and then over time you can modify it. One of the weirdest things about reset.css is that it just got used in WordPress themes, like the default WordPress themes for many years, just had it verbatim. They didn't edit it, they just put it in, and then overwrote it, and then overwrote it. So that instead of altering some of the basics, they would just override them later. And so a lot of people assumed that that's how it was supposed to be used. That was never actually the vision I had for it, but as William Gibson once said, the street finds its own uses for things.