We have one from our Twitter. It's Melania, who we talked to last week in Miami. She says, last week's suggestion about outlining, it was very helpful. When I begin the outline, I realize I have characters that interest me, but I do not have a clear story to tell. I felt there was no good conflict and I got stuck. What would you suggest in a situation like this? I really want to write. I don't know what's happening. Well, you've done excellently so far. You've done everything right, because Melania has done it. She had some questions. She watched the show. She tuned it in. She asked us. We talked to her. And she took some suggestions that were helpful. You only take the ones that are helpful. Number 1779. And she did some work, which was really, really, really great. Okay, so now you have some characters that you really, she really likes her characters. You really like your characters, but they don't seem to have any... What? What is it? Story. Any story? Any story. So what you can do, sometimes characters are very talkative. And they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they talk to you. They tell you everything you want to know about them. And sometimes, I say, your characters won't talk to you at all.  I'm so glad you're here. I really want to put you on my play, or my novel, or my song, or whatever. But they're like, like that. So they won't talk to you. So you have to be persistent and friendly and make conversation with them. So I would suggest all the characters that you have, make a list of them along. You'll make a list of them. And then just say, like, maybe one of them is like Jane. Okay? So Jane. And then just start talking to Jane. So Jane, what's up with you? Why are you in my play? Why do you want to be in my play? Why do you... Or I'm assuming you're writing a play, I'm guessing. Or my screen player. Why do you want to be in my work, right? Talk to me, talk to me. What's your story? What's your thing? What's your favorite color? I don't know. Do you have a bicycle? Like, oh, do you have kids? Oh, really? So do I. And you start chatting with them. Like you would a stranger on a bus, you know? Except this isn't going to be weird, right? Because if you talk to people like that, especially in Europe, people think like, you're crazy. So you just start talking with them. Ask her, ask your characters why they showed up. Why they have revealed themselves to you. Okay? Why are you here? You know, ask them that. And they say, well, because, you know, I can't even fight them. Great. Start talking to them, as if they're real people, because they are. And hopefully that will get them to reveal some things about their story.   It sounds like you're just, you know, Milani, you're just waiting to see what they have to say to you. You can take a more practical approach and you can have conversations with them as if you're interviewing them. Okay, you can give that a try and see if it works. You can do it for every single character in your play. Even the ones you know a little bit about already. And I think the conflicts or what you're looking for will reveal itself or begin to reveal itself that way. Anybody else? Hi. Hi. So this is a problem that I have and it actually just happened now. So sometimes I'll have a project that I need to work on. I have to do a dance lab or something that I need to work on. But I'll get a plot to just, anywhere like someone will say something and that'll surface my plot. And so when you said, when I lost spells playing the brother, that was my plot. And so I started writing based on that. But then I feel like what happens is I do that a lot. So I can be sitting down to work on something and then something else will just pop in my head or remember something someone said earlier. And I'll go into that. And it's like I have to get it out because it's in my head at that point. So it's kind of like I guess a question of just having like certain components for your work. Like if you have some of the, you have a deadline that needs to be done. But then that other thing that's in your head that is nagging and you've got to get it out. Do you want to make suggestions for it? Yes, yes, yes. So you write mostly on your, did everyone hear Starz's question pretty much? She's got deadlines for work that has to get done.  Whoa, that's cool. And you sort of will write on that for a minute. And then maybe you're not spending all of your writing time on the thing that has to get done. Yes. Because, right, okay. So you're not a Virgo, are you? No, I'm a Tim and I. You're over. I don't know. Put anything ahead of me. No wonder. No, no wonder. No wonder. So you can blame your Starz son, right? Yeah. Okay. It's hard. It's hard for you guys to like stay, you know what I mean? You know what I mean? But my dad, he's passed away. My dad was a Germanite.  He was like shh, like that, okay? So it's possible. You just have to be, the word gets a bad rap. You have to be disciplined. You have to be a little more organized. A little more organized than maybe. Are you a Germanite too? For instance. You guys. For instance. Okay, well you guys, you guys gotta be, you gotta find some solid ground down there to stand on. So I would suggest a schedule and a notebook. Do you only solely write on your iPad there?  I can't do it. I'm not as good as it looks. As a notebook. Yeah, I need a notebook. So, this is gonna sound weird, but I'll write, print something out and put it in a notebook. That's just a little later, but like I don't do that. And you don't have like, in the notebook, you're not attracted to any of those cute little notebooks that they made. I know what I could probably get myself back into that. Little notebooks. I would try. So I would sit, this thing. And one, have a writing period every day. In case you have that, you have like an hour a day where you write on your project that has a deadline. No, cause I'm a Gemini and I just write it. But I have to.  So it's possible. It's possible. And what he would do, he would write in his dissertation because he got his PhD and he would like go to his office and like sit in his desk for a certain amount of time. And he got a lot of stuff done that way. I was very helpful. And then you have your little notebook. Some of the most fabulous ideas come. John's got a notebook. And revisit them at another time. So you have two writing sessions. You have your one session, your sort of main course. And then you have your Stop and Smell the Roses thing going on. But then you go, okay, I think I'm going to write on Blame it on the brother. You know, that kind of thing. I'll write something about that. But you're not going to be just always, you know, following every butterfly that flies into the room. You're going to be getting your work done too. So is that helpful to get a little bit over? Because I'm also going to have that smaller than that. You know, tend to have that. So it's, you know, the size I'm talking about. A little one. A little one. A tiny one. And a little, either about, you know, this big, right? And they're cute. They can come in a cute little color. I mean, I like, you know. And then you just, right? I will get one and I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah. And just try that. And then, then you can actually be working on your project. And then an idea comes in. You can just, you have, or whatever you have, you know. And I would suggest doing that instead of having two screens. So you're not flipping back and forth between two screens. On your computer. Click, click, click. Because that, it's just light going like this. And you don't need that. You need to. Okay. And try that. Try that. Try that. And also be diligent. Be really diligent. This, I have a deadline. I'm going to finish one. I'm going to get this work done. Yeah. And you won't miss anything about this. Okay. Any questions? Any other questions? Yes. Anybody else? Yeah, Jen. Kind of like some of the, like where, because like for me, I've had a difficult time of space. Right. Where I'm able to focus and create. Right. Because I was like, you know, distractions and thinking and things like that. Right. So, do you have like a, specific space? Like a writing space? Or a writing space that you're able to like create without distractions. Or do you welcome the distractions? That's a good, this is a very good question. So do I have a writing space where I'm able to write without distractions? But this can one have a writing space where one writes without distractions. I think if you have a writing space where you can write without distractions, great. Just to give you an idea. Yeah, I said I was going to make it all about you, but we'll do it. So my right space, I have a table. Where I do most of my writing, it's a table. It's a rectangular table because I like edges. So sometimes people have problems. It's a right and a round table and they like edges. You have to know what kind of, what you're like. Okay. It's in a one room apartment. So it's another room. Also, it's a dining room table. Which means what? Which means that the five-year-old is sitting at the end of the table. Wanting to write. The letter M. Because that's his writing. And the husband is sitting inches away doing competition on a keyboard. So it's focused. It's just leaning into your, or maybe getting some earplugs. That's very helpful. You guys, anybody ever try to get earplugs? Not necessarily to earbuds, listening to music. That can also be distracting unless you can really get in the groove. But sometimes some really heavy-duty earplugs are good to put them in. And then you can sit in the Starbucks or wherever, you know, be from Maine or whatever and sit there and focus. That's really helpful. Because then you start hearing the sound of your own breath, which is very good. Okay. And just, also a timer is really good. I'm really to talk, not your phone. You know, that's right. Not your phone.  Get a timer. I just, I don't have my timers today. But get a timer, like a kitchen timer, that only is going to count down or up the time. You set it for 20 minutes and you just said, I'm just going to focus for 20 minutes. That's good to start. You can just do that. I'm just going to focus for 20 minutes. And you train yourself to just focus and you can relax and dive with the game for 21 minutes. Okay. So those kinds of things. But if we're waiting for the perfect conditions, not that you are, but a lot of us say, oh, if I only had, you know, a residency for three months and someone to bring me lunch and a picnic basket and you let them go when they used to anyway. Or no distractions and no roommates or whatever, whatever, no children and no job. You write through the distraction. That builds your hustle. You know, it builds your right muscle. Okay. How do you know that? Good question. Good, good question. Hi, baby. Hi. How do you finish after? After. After. How do you finish? After you've written your beautiful piece. Yes. What do you do with it? Yeah. Is it, so it depends what it is. Is it a play? Is it a screenplay? It's a screenplay. It's a screenplay.  Because I see, you're free.  So, and I'll pass your name. Okay. So, it's a screenplay. And you also have some serious acting chops. So what about getting some of your colleagues to, to around and read it? Okay. Does that make sense? What about after that? So you've done that already. Uh-huh. After that. I would, maybe contact people about maybe getting a, a reading, because the next step, if it's a screenplay, you want to, maybe get a director, unless you're going to direct it also. You could.  Yes. Okay. So we should, awesome directors over there and maybe you could interest them. You know, if you've gotten the notes that you like and you say, you're like, it's in good shape. And you can say, hey, fabulous director, Joan of Arc or whatever her name is. Maybe you could take a look at my screenplay, you know, looking for a director for it. You start showing it to, you widen your circle, basically. So that's what happens. So the first circle is very, very small. It's a circle of you writing it. After that, it gets wider and wider and wider and wider and wider. So, you've already done the reading of it, which is great. And you've gotten the feedback and the notes that you've incorporated those notes, which is great. And then you take it to the next level, which is, get a director, talk to some people who do, any film maybe, or, you know, a Hollywood style film, you know, start talking to people and widen that circle. That makes sense. And also, write the next thing. While you're, because there's going to be now a little bit of a time lapse, lag thing that starts to happen. And we would want to just sit around and wait, for that director to have the time to read the script, you know, so we want to just write the next thing and have that next thing chugging along, so that you have a body of work instead of just one fabulous thing that, you know, may or not get made right away. That's a great, good question. Congratulations on this. This is something wonderful. What a good question. I know. That's why we, how do we eliminate self-doubt and self-censorship when we're writing? Right. So, you probably, you probably don't eliminate it. It's like, the perfect conditions, right? So it's always there, right? It's always there. It's just, maybe you can turn down the volume a little bit of it. So that the voice is in your head, I'm assuming they're from your self-doubt stuff, so it's from your own head, right? And what we can do is turn down the volume a little bit. And there's some ways we can turn down the volume. One, I think a really good way to do it is speed, not the, not pantheon. Oh, maybe that would work too. I don't know. I don't know. Well, that's an experiment that somebody, I'm sure, has done. Sorry, there's a tangent I was going to go on, but no. Some, some unseemly politicians have been accused of being on fast-moving, because they, it would make self-doubt and self-criticism. Yeah. It's just, but what we can do is just speed, writing quickly often helps, okay? So what you want to do, again, the same thing with the timer. You get your timer, again, not your phone, because I heard, you know, Facebook, and I'm not on Facebook, or peers that I am, but I'm actually not. Those are people who are tipping, tipping me. But, it's true, but, I've heard that these social media are very, get you down a lot, okay? So what you can do is turn off your phone, turn it face down, and turn it off, and then set your timer, which is not on your phone, and say, I'm going to write for 20 minutes, and write as fast as possible. Speed is on, you can out-distance the voices of self-doubt, okay? Also, what I try to do is, what I do is I write from beginning to end. I write a whole draft all the way through. I don't spend time fixing the first three pages too much, until I'm done with the draft. Okay? Okay? So, the third thing is that there's writing, and then there's rewriting, and there are actually two different activities.  Okay? That's where you want to be self-critical, and you want to have those voices in the light, because those are your editors. Okay? So, try to write all the way to the end. Try to have a daily practice session. Right? So, that's a lot. I'm giving like a lot of, or any of those, like, yeah. Should you have a daily writing session? Do you write every day? Yeah. Okay? Good. Okay. There you go. Should you have a block of time? Yeah. At least you'd be like me. Okay? Okay. Almost every day, as often as you can. Yeah. Okay. So, good. Very good. What is it? Yeah, yeah, sure. Sometimes I don't have something that comes to me. Sometimes I just don't want to do writing. I'm like, I'll know I don't want to do it, but I don't know how to do it. Right. And so, what do you do when that happens? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can always write down one word. Yeah. Right? And that's the thing. You can always write down one word, just one word. Even if it's like, well, that's too much.  But, you know, it could be one word. Yeah. You know? You can always write down at least one word. And that's very, very powerful to be able to do that. Because what you're doing is you're learning the spirit. And here, I'm working on it. That's, you know, I think we say last, what was it that quote we were saying last week, Chuck closed the beautiful fabulous visual artist who says, inspiration is for amateurs. So, you know, the pros just sit down and work. Putting the time is very important. Just keep working. Keep working. Keep working. Keep working. Keep working. Keep working now. Acted by one when I'm trying to work on the other. Right. And it's just become, I mean, it's, it's interesting to try and sort out people. I feel like I'm writing a scene and like, okay, that'll work over here. And then, I'm writing another scene and like, that'll work over here. And then, I'm trying to not get to the point where I'm throwing everything up in the air and it's metaphorically, how do you, do you have any vices to, the characters are now gapping away. Yeah, you're good. But, but you think there, there are two different pieces. It's trying to feel like it's here. Okay. Okay. Well, so what's the problem? The characters are talking to you and you're writing. I feel like the characters, I don't want it to turn into fan fiction and it's starting to like, edge to edge. Fan fiction?  But there's, you know, it's just, there's interest, like, I'm trying to, I have a lot of children that I can see. Right. Fifteen, at least. And all the parents are like, write us something. We don't. And I feel, like, that is sort of, starting to make me shut down a little bit and just feel a little, like, I'm just going to just develop a topic and probably maybe I'll be able to sort of recommend something to figure out. Right. But this is a totally different thing. So, wait a second. No. Okay. No, no, no.  Okay. So it's not just no, no, no. Okay. And there, and their parents are asking for, let's write us something. Yeah. Pretty much. No. I'm not going to write you anything. Yeah. Which is what I do. Yeah. It's, I'm just playing a sort of balance. Yeah. But well, they're paying you for babysitting. A lot of people define your, find out you're a writer and they're writing you write something for them.  And I said, ah, okay, I'll get back to you about that. Because the kids in my son's class, they don't know how, they're yet right there. I mean they're just more than I have right to me. So I'm going to wait on the conversation about writing with my son. It's probably a long time, produced, or I'll send you my novel when it's published, and you know, but it's not, I'm not writing my kids' books, or I'll let you know. I'll let you know. I'll let you know. But for your work, for your work, for your work, get back to your work. Yeah, it's... But what... It was written this way because I was definitely solidly writing a novel for my parents. Children are not good. It's not going to be appropriate. And I'm doing this, you know, I'm kind of doing the same thing. I'm like, do I self-censor? The world is always good demand. We have to say just, no. Or in a polite, kind, friendly, sweet way. You know, like I told, I mean, I think I rolled my eyes and she asked me to talk to the students, but I smiled. Rolled my eyes, but it's not. Yeah, it's gonna be next year. You know, yeah. But yeah, yeah, because, yeah, you know, it was better when you requested our last year, which was come and talk to the pre-k, pre-k kids about writer's block. I was like... I was like, really, so yeah, pre-k kids are having writer's block. And the teacher wanted me to come and talk to them. And I just said, no. The teachers have pre-k. Yo, right? Right at the end. The teacher's having writer's block. Yeah, so you just said, no, thank you. It was just super good. Yeah, I know what you're saying. Well, it's for you. You got to keep going. All the way to the end. That's really great. Oh, my God, it's great. Why do I think I can write? I mean, I'm just telling you, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. And then I think, what am I going to do? Come on. Right. We discussed that a little bit. Yeah. I mean, one of the... It's like, don't read everybody else's book. Anybody else's play. You're reading the novels and watching movies. Then you won't have that problem. Ah, it's just a joke. I'm just joking. So you heard what Lynn said, right? You watch, you'll see somebody's movie, or you'll read somebody's play, or you'll read somebody's novel, and they're like, really, really good.  You know, I'm not Shakespeare. What am I doing? You know, it's brilliant, right? Why are you writing? I'm not Gershwin or whoever you are. I mean, I don't know just what name came to me. But, you know, right? So how do you deal with that? I think every single person who's ever made anything has that feeling, maybe, unless you're on MFSC.   I mean, he's like, you know, he's really jealous, and he gotta work through it. He gotta work through it, you know? My crowds were as big as his. What am I doing? You know, and you gotta sort of find a way to get through that. We have to find a way to get through that. And the only way I think to get through it is to do your work. You know? Because, like, Bob Dylan said, like, I don't know what he said this, but the world doesn't need to know the song, right? He said, I mean, that's a paraphrase. He probably said it was more eloquently.  You're written like all the songs. Who are you to say the world doesn't need to know the song? You know? So we have to do ourselves permission to do what we gotta do. Right? Yeah. I think it's important to remember that when you're reading that, that's not its first draft. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, it's not its first draft, but it's part of the work that's quite different. Exactly. That's true. That's very true. It's not the first draft. It might not be the fifth draft. That's true, too. But even when it's done, if you still have that, you know, we all have that similar feeling. And you think, I'm gonna do my thing. You know? That's... It's... It's sort of like it's an act of will. It's just you have to just have yourself to continue. Um... And again, like we're talking with Mandy, you don't pay as much attention to the ghost of the doubt, because that might be how your doubt is manifesting itself today. Right?  Right? The next day it might be, oh, you understand. That's not how your doubt manifests itself. It's someone else. Right?  I have a day job. So that's how their doubt is manifesting itself. But I don't have enough... Oh, what? I'm a kid. I can't do this. Right? It's a block that you're putting in your way. Recognize it as that.  Yeah. We're not writing the book as you care about so much. I wasn't reading it, but it was reading James Baldwin. You're reading James Baldwin? See? I know. See? He has so much to say in the sense that it's a jail offense. He just feels my heart. But let it buoy you. Let it ferry you across. These writers, if they're worth anything, if an artist is worth anything, they're making their greatest effort to serve as a means to ferry the rest of us across. That's what we're doing.   I like plays.  And that's horrible. Any great artist, truly great artist, James Baldwin, he's writing those beautiful words to ferry us across. That's why he's doing it. That's why he's doing it. That's why all the wonderful ones are doing it. That's what we're doing. That's why Chris Barwell does it. Right, Chris Barwell? Right, fast. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Right? We're sharing our love with each other to help us get through the day, through the year, through the month, through the whatever, through the event, through the beautiful moment, through the beautiful moment, through the beginning. That's what we're doing here. So take that from their work instead of squishing like a bug because you're nothing. Oh, my God.  You're choosing to turn it into an impediment instead of a means. Exactly. This is what it is. If you look at it in the right way. No, I mean, I'll talk to you about it. I think there's a problem. So anybody who has a question, ask it now. I just, I have, because it's a, in one year, something, something, something. I'm supposed to be doing it. Anybody who has a question? Yeah. We'll have it next year. We'll be back in the following week. On the 13th, I have a comment. So, anybody? Question? I have one more. Yes. I have one more. Wait. When you have finished a piece. Yes. How do you feel the confidence in sharing that piece with other people? Right. It seemed it could go. Right. It could go. It's a good question. I usually, because it says at what point after finishing the piece do we feel like sharing? Right? And it depends on the piece. You know? But because sometimes you feel like, well, if I've got some good friends who will read it for me or with me, I feel pretty good about it. So you don't need the circle to get one more dry away. Just a little bit bigger. So some trusted friends. You know? And that's one step. And then that you can make the circle a little wider. Like that. Like that. Okay? So, you can do it right away or after the second. After? No. It doesn't have to be perfect in order to share it. Not at all. Perfect is the ending of building. Right? You get? Yeah. Ask. You know what I'm saying? It was too long for the best one. You should do it. Yeah? Right. What's your name? Louise. Louise. Louise. Where are you from? Oh, hi. What are you raised up for? Don't elect that guy. You don't know what you're talking about. Please, please. Ah, well, what can I ask? Go ahead. We'll try. Okay. Do it. So, Louise has written a play and she had, we'll just keep going. She had a one-hour shot and she dutifully and brilliantly reduced it down to the perfect size and now that she wants to put the play on you at other places, she's wondering, how do I go about making it a quote-unquote, full-length play again? It's tricky. You might have found the perfect size for it and realize that making it longer is just adding things that it never really needed. So, is there a second, is there a companion piece that you could write? Is there something new you could write for it? Because it's very tricky. If you feel like it's in good shape now, is there a companion piece you could write for it? Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah.  It's great.  You know, she's amazing doing that. You know, Sam Shepard says a play should only as long as it needs to be. So, you know, but if you want to make any kind of an intermission, you can make a companion piece. Write something new. Well done. She says she didn't need so many words. Is this, is this, is this good? Oh, please come back. Come go away.  Oh, okay. Come on. Let's go and let that guy, you know. But thank you. Okay. Are we good? Are we done? So, we, we probably won't be here on the 13 because I have a problem with the software. Okay. So, thank you guys for coming. Thank you.


So let me introduce David. David is the chief technologist of the Computational Research Department at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He received a BS in mathematics from Brigham Young University. His PhD is in mathematics from Stanford University. And David has published three books and over 100 technical papers in the general area of high performance scientific computing and computational mathematics. He has also published some papers in the area of science and religion. So today, David is going to talk about, if I get to the right one, in the past few decades, there's been breathtaking advances in science and technology as we've heard from some of the mentions of the approach to this quote unquote singularity. And our daily living patterns and social institutions and religious institutions have all been affected. Unfortunately, for those who dislike change, the forecast is for more of the same. It's going to be unrelenting, even accelerating change for decades to come. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and medical technology are all poise for dramatic advances. And I'm not going to read the whole abstract, but David's going to let us in on what that has in store for us as far as dangers that we need to look out for. And how can we direct these developments for good and not evil? So I'll let David go. Thank you. I mentioned here that the Berkeley lab wanted to do a promo for some of the scientists. And so I actually selected and got my photo here on the side of a shuttle bus that went between the Berkeley bar station and the lab. And so this was featuring some of some stuff by some papers I wrote about pie. So in the background, those are real digits of pie. Can I ask you to speak into the mic, please? Sure. Sure. Very much. Thank you. Yeah, OK. So anyway, that's what this is. I might mention, if any of you are interested in this, I have put both the paper and these actual PowerPoint slides on my website. So no one ever has to actually attend any of my talks. They just go to my website. You can read it. OK, so I was just talking with Catherine Haglund at lunch and we were over our sandwiches. And we were talking about this curious trend where in some academic circles over the past few decades, it was fashionable to question whether science really makes progress. And even some notable figures such as Thomas Kuhn questioned whether the science really was making any progress to fundamental truth. And this, I think, really started to get a lot of momentum. A lot of post-modern writers were involved in this. And a lot of this was punctured with this so-called hoax where this physicist, Alan Sokol, wrote an article with a lot of this jargon and actually got it that there was complete spoof, nonetheless, and actually got it published in the leading post-modern journal. But nonetheless, there's still a lot of this mentality out there. That's really surprising how often you hear it. And even like Will and Ariel Durant, some of you have that 11-volume story of civilization. And in sort of an additional volume, they wrote called Lessons of History. One of their questions was, is progress real? And I think perhaps most of concern to me is sometimes I even hear talk like this. Even in some of our church meetings, people say, oh, society's just going to hell in a handbag and nothing we can do about it. And they always see everything in terms of decline. But to me, as a scientist and a technologist, this talk like this is just incomprehensible. I can't even relate to it, much less agree with it. Because everything we see in the scientific world and in modern technology is just one of relentless and frankly inspiring progress. And what I would like to argue here in this talk is that progress is not something we should fight against. But it's something that we as Mormon should embrace, that we should not only embrace but identify with. Doesn't mean that there aren't challenges and problems. But I think Mormonism at its core is a progressive religion. So anyway, just a very brief history of the past, say, 50 or 100 years, I think we have to agree that it's been really a remarkable period. More people than ever before have had opportunities for higher education, far more than in previous decades or centuries. We have the media, radio and television, which in spite of it being a mixed blessing, nonetheless, it really helps a lot of people stay abreast of modern what's happening in the world. The computers, I still remember the time when computers were some very expensive things and large cabinets in a big room in a government laboratory. And then they started to appear, say, in some larger universities and businesses. And then finally, I remember the time of the Apple II first. And the Apple started to come and appeared in the home and the IBM PC. And now I have one in my nice Apple iPhone here in my pocket. And you might say, well, it's not really fair to compare my Apple iPhone with a supercomputer, say, of past year, because after all, my iPhone has a lot more memory than those supercomputers. And there's a lot faster, too. So anyway, all of these, the internet. And we're just starting to see now a whole new wave of medical technology and pharmaceuticals. And science has not stood still. Every week, there's some new development, some new discovery. We're pushing forth the frontiers. No one can deny that there is progress going on. And I would say there's even moral progress. People that follow long-term trends have noted that the number of armed conflicts, in spite of what we may have the impression from reading the news, is actually declining sharply. And part of it is that this phenomenon that our worldwide economic system has made warfare among major trading partners unthinkable, because it would disrupt our economies. Nonetheless, there are downsides. There's no doubt about it. A lot of people are getting left behind. We're producing trash and pollution as prolifically as we're producing products and services. And this business of global warming and fossil fuel dependency, this is really rare to said in the last few years. The internet, millions of new jobs have been created with the internet. But on the other hand, 90% of all email spam and the pornography and viruses, clearly there's just an awful lot of trouble there, too. I think it's also important to note that a lot of particularly more fundamentalist conservative religions, I'm thinking like a lot of some of the evangelical sects, have been greatly challenged, particularly by findings in modern science. They were used to thinking more of the Bible as being a complete description of the world. And they're very troubled to see scientific developments that weren't described in the Bible. And the whole business of creationism has reared its head and continues to be a challenge. These are groups that are continuing to try to pressure state legislatures to bring creationism into the classroom. So there's been a lot of downside. But what's the current hold? What will the future hold? Well, like my introducer mentioned, there's unfortunately going to be more of the same. There's recent developments in things like nanotechnology and is sure and is that this Moore's law of computer technology is going to continue unabated probably for decades to come. It's just astounding. Here in some ways, the computer processors, maybe individual cores are not getting faster, but there are more cores on a chip. So we can still get multiple times more work done. And as software starts to become written to take advantage of all of these, we will continue to see this increase in power. And certainly memory continues on this same curve. Artificial intelligence is making great strides. Just in the past few years, there've been a lot of some real great improvements in some of these intelligent softwares. I put here just a little list of some of the lingo of the modern era. How many know what all of these terms are? Ah, we have one, two, two hands, three, four. I myself just have to continually be, keep up to try to keep up with things here. I had to, a couple of years ago, I had to ask someone what Facebook was. So again, just a very brief here, I won't go into some of these developments, but things like that one time it was just thought that computers would never be able to match a human at plain chess. Well, we all know that's 10 years ago now. A world champion was soundly defeated by a computer program. In my business, scientific supercomputers, it's just up, up, up, we continue, every year there are more and more powerful computer systems that continue to press the outer envelope of what we can do with these large-scale scientific simulations. So much that many people now are saying that these scientific simulations are a third fundamental mode of scientific discovery after theory and experiment. We have so many of our phenomena that we can simulate on the computer that are too expensive or too dangerous to do an experiment with things like the Earth's climate or an exploding supernova that we can't really do at all, but we cannot study on the computer. And medical technology is really starting to take off. Some of the people have mentioned that some of the developments that they, some of the optimists are boldly predicting 100 to 120 year life spans and those are some of the more conservative ones. Other people are just boldly saying that the whole we will start extending life indefinitely. And so here's just a graph that's in my line of work in scientific supercomputers. It's called the top 500 list. It's updated every six months of the world's most powerful 500 computer systems. And if we look at the number top, the number 500, that's the center curve. And right now we just recently went above one petaflops, which means 10 to the 15th or a million billion floating point operations per second where a floating point operation is like a say a 16 digit add or multiply. So we're on this curve, it just relentlessly upward. No sign at all that that's leveling off or that we're coming to an end there. So what are some of these issues that about these developments?  I mean, when sir, your favorite sci-fi movie here, you know, it's just about anything you want to imagine from computers getting smarter than their masters to gray goo of nanotechnology running amuck. Some of you have heard this article why the future doesn't need us by this computer technologist, Bill Joy. And even some of the very more optimistic observers like Ray Kurzweil that's been mentioned a couple of times here already. Even he acknowledges there are some real dangers. We've got to be careful. We've got to carefully manage what's ahead. Unfortunately, I think everyone also agrees we can't do much to stop it.  The best we can do then is to manage the advance of this technology and make sure that it is for good and not for evil. Here are just a few issues that we, sample issues that we might think of. Like how can we encourage constructive use of technology and yet make sure that some of the bad things don't happen. Someone gave the example of a parent's wanting to design a deaf child. How can we legally and in our society, how can we have laws and regulations that would prevent this type of thing from happening? And what about this digital divide between the haves and have nots? A lot of people are getting left behind. A lot of people are being, a lot of students are being graduated without the level of education that they need to really be functional in this future society. Clearly that we need help there. Someone has mentioned how will in the future when we have intelligent computers enhanced humans and conventional humans, how can all of these three races of people peacefully and respectfully coexist? So we just mentioned education. I think this is clearly a top priority. The US is not moving ahead. It's falling behind by numerous measures. In the meantime, we are overcoming this deficit by importing a lot of very bright people from China and India. But now they have opportunities in their own countries and they are returning to their home and not coming here. So we can only use that card so long. We've got to fix our educational system. Fortunately, the LDS church has always had a strong tradition of education. Let me just mention here. I think it's interesting to note some of the earlier speakers have already talked about this idea of progress in LDS thought and how this has really been a central aspect of our religion that's really quite unique. I'm always struck by our statement of the ninth article of faith. And I was reading this book called The Idea of Progress by Robert Nisbet. And he said, mankind is advanced in the past, is now advancing and will continue to advance for the foreseeable future. So whoa, I've heard this before, but there really is a real resonance here that I think is just not widely appreciated in the church. Here are just a few quotes that I'll just go through here. Well, we have a few more minutes. Brigham Young mentioned that the great, the main spring of all action is the principle of improvement. It says that we have this principle within us to continue to increase and to treasure up truth until we become perfect. Or he says that if we have lived for millions of years in the presence of God and angels, will we cease learning? No, we'll continue. This is very much different than a lot of the traditional Christian view of what heaven is all about. And he specifically emphasized of how our religion encompasses all of the truth in the world, whether it be scientific or religious. BH Roberts, much in the same vein, he even argued that with the restoration it was part of this great awakening of modern science. And one of his writings, he just says, he really recommended, he says, to give attention to and credence to scientific research is to link the church of God with the highest increase of human thought and effort. More recently, Hubey Brown in a book that was published with some of his writings, he mentions how that we should be in the forefront of learning in all fields. And he says that revelation doesn't just come through a prophet of God directly from heaven, but it also comes in the laboratory, in the test tube and out of the thinking mind in the inquiring soul. Already, I can see a lot of us are thinking in similar terms, we've already had mention of this philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I believe is how he's pronounced. He mentions how that if we would incorporate this idea of progress into our world view, that how that this would immediately and radically put an end to this war between science and religion that's been such a problem. And to mention the transhumanists, I've read some of their writings, Mark Gettys, who's one of the leading transhumanists, he said the following, he pointed out that this desire for immortality is not only something that has been taught in all major religious traditions and through history, but he notes how that it's really the fundamental principle behind morality. Because if you know that you are gonna have to be responsible for something, you know, five years, 10 years, a thousand years, a million years into the future, then doing something that's wrong or unethical is unthinkable. And that I think that's a really interesting thought, that the immortality itself is the basis of morality. Just one more quote here by Albert Schweitzer, just a really inspiring quote. He says, to affirm life is to deepen and to someone who affirms life experiences life as its own and he accepts as being good to preserve life, to promote life, to raise it to its highest value and also to destroy life or to repress life is the fundamental principle of morality. I won't read it all, you can read it there. But just I think a very, very important principle that immortality in eternal life really is the basis of religion and to the extent that we identify this and see the progressive view and Mormonism of advancing to, that our current life is just part of an immortality where we are eternally progressing. This is just such a wonderful and beautiful principle that I think we should shout it to the world. So just in spite of the many dangers and challenges, I think there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. This is a great time to be alive and I'm really glad that I am here here and now. I don't look to the past with nostalgia. I wanna be here now, thank you. So we have a few minutes for questions. The Catholic, the state and the Church of the Groups had a very high proportion of the people of higher education and this is true, it's specific. So I'm really concerned that many of those people who've been educated are trained in this sort of Mormon culture to not question authority, not question doctrine, to really be non-creative in their thinking. So my question is, you may not know that, I'll link it to the open question. What would be the proportion of LVF people who really do creative thinking versus the world in general? I don't know how we measure that, but it's an interesting question, yes. Well I do know of Stephen Jones who's an LVF who worked at the University, which is around the same time that up on the question we're working on co-fusion, there was a big controversy about that, that there has been new sightings in journals in China and in Japan having positive results lately and so it's kind of like an example of an LVF science and scene in self-communication. Yes. Part of the response to that question from the press where you were, one of the recent studies, I'm not using it for the time being in the updates, but a decade ago or so ago, you looked at education level curses, activity and faith. And it was found that in most cases the more educated your person was, the less literary they were in their faiths. How else would the LVF define that? Yes, that's very interesting. I was pretty saying that there's a study that showed that the LVF church boxed the normal trend that higher education leads to lower levels of religious activity and faith. Yes. One of the difficulties you mentioned at the top, but didn't discuss, was the problem of keeping some of this advanced technology out of the hands of those who would misuse it. How do you do that? By other technical methods, in other words, we have to apply technology to keep technology private, or in other words, to restrict its access. And so there are no easy answers, but it's just something we have to be aware of all the time. I think if we're redesigning the internet and we may have to, we would design it from ground up for security. The people originally designed it didn't have any idea of the sort of malware, the stuff that would go on. Our ethics have not very often kept up with our technology. It doesn't take much more to clone a human than it does to clone a building. What then? It hasn't happened yet. It might, I know that's a big issue. I don't know what the answer is though. Okay, we'd like to thank David for coming. Thank you.


This morning we're going to be touring one of the residence halls. I live in Schrader Hall. It's an all-stop for a residence hall, and that's the one we're going to be touring today. There are certain features that are the same in all of the residence halls. All of them have laundry rooms in the basement, there's full kitchens in the basement, there's study space, and then obviously you're living space too. So my room is a very typical double room in Schrader. Everyone will have a bed, we have our desks under our bed, a little bit of storage space. We have a dresser, now we are going to go explore the rest of Schrader and see what else is in the residence halls. So every floor has a communal lounge, you can see study space, and then there's couches and chairs and places for you to just hang out to. We are down in the multi-purpose room in Schrader, so there's a lot in the basement down here. There's also a laundry room down here, garbage room, there's an exercise room, so that has a little bit of weight machines and free weight equipment, and then there's also study rooms. And there's also some games, so you have foosball, there's a few pool tables down here, and there's also a ping-pong table. So you can go online to Marquette's website, you can look at all the different residence halls right down there, and see the layouts, see a little bit more general information with the residence halls as well.


President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and the Secretary of State. Today, we embark on an important journey to visit our friends in the South, in Latin America. This will be an important visit not only for the United States, but for others too. As friends and neighbors of the New World, we have a vital stake in each other's economies, security, and general well-being. This is true for Central America, the Caribbean, and for the entire hemisphere. This will be a working visit. I'll be meeting with six presidents, and I believe we have a lot to learn from one another. We certainly have a lot to discuss. The steps we all need to take to get our domestic economies back on the path to growth to reduce the threats to peace and security and to promote the continued development of democracy. This will be a journey for the cause of democracy and peace. The four countries I'm visiting have all had elections in the past year. There's a strong democratic tide running in the Americas. It's important that democratic leaders maintain a dialogue with one another and that our actions foster the ideals of democracy in a climate of peace. I've long held that one of the highest priorities of this administration would be to improve our relations with our neighbors in this extraordinary hemisphere. We are, as you know, most fortunate for this half of the globe is the source and repository of many of mankind's noblest dreams. Our Caribbean Basin Initiative is a reflection of our commitment to sustaining those moral visions or noble visions. And when our neighbors are in trouble, their troubles inevitably become ours. I'm pleased that the Congress approved the aid portion of my CBI request in September. I also attach great importance to the critical foreign assistance package for fiscal year 1983, which is currently before the Congress. But we need more than just an injection of critically needed funds. We need the long-term incentives encompassed in the trade and tax provisions of the CBI legislation. In my meeting with the Republican leadership this morning, I underlined the importance that I attached to enactment as soon as possible of the trade and tax portions of the CBI. And they agreed. I've spoken with Dan Rostinkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who recently traveled to the Caribbean at our request. He saw firsthand the positive impact that the CBI would have on the economies and the societies of this area, and he too promised to help during the final days of this session. Our trip is an opportunity to demonstrate firsthand our concern for our neighbors, whether our nations be of the north or the south. We can work together as partners to pursue the dreams we share. We will strengthen the democratic bonds, stimulate new growth and opportunity, and promote the sacred cause of peace. That's the purpose of the journey. And now I better quit talking and start walking, and the journey will be late. Thank you. Good luck.


Good evening. Welcome to the 6pm press conference here on the CZU lightning complex. My name is Jonathan Cox, Deputy Chief for Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz unit and line officer on the incident. As always, if you could just keep your cell phones muted, take any conversations outside of the press conference area and wear masks at all times. We will have a moment at the end of this press conference to ask individual questions of the speakers who are up here. As always, just a quick update on the incident. As of 6pm this evening, the CZU lightning complex is 84,338 acres. Containment went up to 33%. There are still 9,374 structures that are threatened by the fire. And unfortunately we can confirm that 1094 structures have been destroyed. Of that 1094 structures, 20 of those are in San Mateo County, which includes six single family residents. In Santa Cruz County, 74 structures have been destroyed. Of those 720 of them are single family residents. Over 40,000 people remain evacuated and there are over 2,100 firefighting personnel now here on the lines. On an unrelated note today, we had a structure fire and vegetation fire in the 10,000 block of West Drive in Lompeco. That was an unrelated fire that completely destroyed one structure and about a quarter acre of vegetation. With that with an update on the operations here on the incident, Operation Section Chief Mark Brunton from Cal Fire Incident Management Team 3. Good evening. So another really good day with our fire suppression efforts. Today a lot of the activity up in the north zone in Branch 1. As I've been saying over the past few days, the fire has been progressing down towards our lines. And today we ended up doing a burning operation to try to expedite that. It's been kind of a slow process. So we wanted to kind of get that cleaned up so we can reduce that risk to the fire lines and that threat to the fire lines. So a lot more active burning there today, especially before we start getting into that warmer and drier weather and change in our wind pattern. So we wanted to institute that tactic so that we could mitigate that risk. Moving down the coast, still a lot of heavy mop up along the Highway 1 corridor and that's going to continue to be that way for the coming days. Davenport with some of the repopulation and so forth. We had a good burnout operation yesterday in 7th Centai Canyon that really sealed up that part of the fire and rendered it safe. So that's looking really good down there. Just again, a lot of mop up in that area. South end of the fire is looking very good, holding very well and a continued mop up. Moving up the Highway 9 corridor around the Camilla Fulton is looking really good and repopulation going on in those areas. And then moving up the Highway 9 corridor and continuing to establish those control lines up along Highway 9. That's going to render that more safe. Again, a lot of difficult terrain, the steep terrain, the fuels, the heavy fuels. We've had a couple areas that again had the sloppovers due to the burning in that duff and through the root systems that we experienced throughout the days and will experience moving forward up in that Branch 1 area where they did the burn operation. They had about a 10 acre able to control that and incorporate it within our burn operation. And then down in just Boulder Creek, a very small one that we were able to pick up. We have active patrols of our personnel in there as well as the continuing line construction. So they made good work with that. Again, Bonnie Doon, a lot of hard work in there and continued work still ongoing and it's going to be an ongoing challenge for us in that in that area. As we get more resources, we're plugging them right in and they're going to work and mitigating as they go. Our air program. Again, the weather didn't really cooperate as much so we couldn't really time out our aircraft. But we did have a significant amount of flight time when we could get them up. A lot of water dropping missions.  But some of the others also various parts of the fire targets of opportunity and so forth with the weather coming up about mid to later week. We're starting to see as that pushes off and off. About Wednesday, Thursday, we're looking at drier weather, hotter weather and a change of our wind pattern to a northly pattern. So it gives us a few more days to continue strengthen our lines, put in our control efforts and mitigate any potential for any more spread of the fire or any sort of slopp over of our lines. Speaking next from the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office is Chief Deputy Chris Clark. Good evening. Another good day today. We we welcome back the folks in Felton and Davenport. I know they were anxious to get back home and and so we were we were happy to to assist in making that happen. And as I've said before, you know, it's kind of a day by day process right and getting people back home. But I just want to also preface that there's a lot of the county that still that still has a lot of it's still very heavily damaged. And and that's really the Boulder Creek and Bonnie Dune area. So I want you to know that progress is it's it's going on. It's a daily, daily effort in making sure those roads are safe that utilities are there. So for the folks that live in Bonnie Dune, really the heavily affected fire areas while while these folks are going home, I want you to know that and we want you to know that that things are taking place in those areas. And they're moving as fast as possible because we want to get you home. And so I just want to let you know that there's a lot of people working very diligently to make that happen. In other positive news or no arrest or site or citations today. We also had no burglaries. And so I think that's that's also something to note for people that are at home. Is that so far we are not necessarily at home but people that are displaced from this fire is knowing that is that so far, you know, having our police presence in the area, we haven't seen any burglaries yet. And I hope that continues. And so that's something we obviously are in the area looking around patrolling and trying to make sure that that your property is safe. And so with that 71 people today is the as the number of staff we had driving around ensuring security the evacuated areas 40 of our personnel nine from in County 22 mutual aid from over the hill tonight. We're gonna have 45 deputies and officers that'll be patrolling 21 from us eight from in the county and 16 mutual aid. So again, just we couldn't do this without without our other partners here in the county and over the hill and we definitely thank them for their assistance in this. In terms of calls for service, we've had we responded to four suspicious people and one welfare check. We still have just the one missing person. And again, as I mentioned last night that that person was reported missing. They haven't seen the person hasn't been seen since before the fire started but was recently reported missing. So our detectives are telling us that they don't believe necessarily this person is going to be a fire victim but nonetheless, we want to make sure we find them on another topic. So there was an incident a couple days ago with regards to some pipe bombs that were located in the Boulder Creek area near the golf course and 100 block of Lake Lake Drive. And so yesterday our late yesterday afternoon, our detectives arrested 34 year old Andrew Pace. There's a Boulder Creek resident for that. And so he faces charges of manufacturing explosive device. And so he'll be arraigned and obviously go through the court process with that. Something else that came up today and it came up yesterday a little bit too. And I just want to kind of reiterate this. So route, when you're when you're coming back home, and again, we want you to get back home in the most efficient manner possible.  And we want to get you home as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And so part of that is just planning a route and really knowing where those those CHP hard closures are. And so I just want to reiterate CHP's CHP Santa Cruz's Facebook page. They have all of the hard road closures. I hear Cal Fire is working with with ways to populate those road closures within ways. I have heard that they do they are somewhat popping up in Google Maps and Apple Maps, but I checked earlier, and it didn't seem as consistent. So I think if you're going to plan your route back home, if I if that was me, I would be looking at CHP Santa Cruz's Facebook page, and then taking a look at where those hard closures are and then planning my route from there. And then in terms of traffic, lastly, just understand to that if you're coming back to Felton, coming back to Davenport, you're going to see still a lot of emergency vehicles. And so there's still a lot of traffic that's going to be in in and around that area. So just keep that in mind. There's this fire is still not 100% contained as you heard 33%, which is great. But there's still a lot of work to do. And as I said, especially in those areas that were heavily impacted by fire. And so just please please be mindful of those emergency vehicles. And then lastly, just also in the conjunction of that, in terms of the fire, just paying attention to Cal Fire's website and making sure that you understand kind of what's going on with the fire because any things could change, but but keeping a prize of that and what the fire is doing will only keep you better informed and safer. Thank you. Next, from the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office is Detective Blankswood. Good evening. For San Mateo County, we have deputies driving around with Cal Fire to do damage and inspection evaluations. They're going to be identifying the damage properties. As you heard from Chief Cox today, we did jump from 11 to 20. And that's just due to these teams going out there are actually in the field and doing these assessments. So we will continue to work with public works to identify any roads or infrastructure that need repairing. And also any trees that are unstable in the area of San Mateo County. County parks close the gate at War Road and Old Hole Road. So be cautious of that. Additionally, Portola State Park is also closed. We're going to continue to assess areas outside the burn zones to determine whether or not people who were evacuated from these areas can soon return. That's going to be ongoing for the next week or so. So your patience is definitely appreciated. We continue to do safety and security checks over the past 24 hours. We've had 44 personnel going around doing the safety and security checks. 10 of them were volunteers, 14 were deputies, 10 were CHP Redwood City officers and eight were support staff. So thank you to Redwood City CHP for assisting us with that. Again, we're still asking people not to visit the coast this weekend. As you heard from Chief Brunton, we are expecting drier weather later this week so things could rapidly change on the coast side. And we want to leave these roadways open for people who actually live and work there for everyone's safety. Thank you very much. That's all we have. Speaking next from the Cal Fire San Mateo Santa Cruz unit is unit chief Ian Larkin. Good evening. As you heard today, we're making some more success. 33% contained. Cruiser out there working very, very hard to make progress on the fire as we move through this process of trying to get the fire contained. The collaboration and cooperation that's going on with all the resources and the agencies on this fire is just insurmountable. It's just it's a feat that I'm proud to be a part of. I've never seen anything like this in my career of having this much cooperation with with really little issues that have come up. So we continue to work through that. The obviously the structure loss our damaged inspection teams are out there working diligently. There are still certain areas of the fire that are too dangerous for them to make access as we continue to move forward making that more safe for their inspection. We'll get those finish up that report for that and we're approximately 79% of that effort is is completed. So we'll continue with that as we move forward. One thing we mentioned, we started repopulating more areas of the county with felt and mean repopulated. There's more cars going to be in the general area where we have fire apparatus and law enforcement working diligently out there to protect the citizens. So please be cautious. Use a good judgment when you're driving on the roadways and pay attention for those large vehicles that are going to be out there. It could be a dangerous situation for yourself if you're not. So please be patient with us as we work through the final phases of this to get everybody back home and start that recovery process even more so than we are now. So thank you. Our final speaker this evening is from the Santa Cruz County EOC and it really is important as we transition from the mitigation phase of this fire to the recovery phase to really start to highlight the work that's going on at the emergency operation center specific to how people can recover from this emergency. So I'm happy to welcome from the EOC here in Santa Cruz County EOC Pio Jason Hoppin. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Today we are very pleased to open our recovery resource center. It is a multi jurisdiction multi agency one stop center for people who have been impacted by the fire so that they can begin the recovery process. It will be open 11 to 7 daily. It is located at the Kaiser Permanente Arena in downtown Santa Cruz at 140 front street. That's the Santa Cruz Warriors Stadium. So we're very thankful to them for offering that venue to us. And I just want to give you a partial list of some of the agencies that are there so far. We have FEMA, Cal OES, Contractor State License Board, Department of Insurance, Second Harvest Food Bank in case you need to sign up for CalFresh or other benefits. Assessors office is there. Obviously a lot of homes have been damaged or destroyed. So there's going to be a change in your tax situation. Human services, public works, planning, environmental health, which is very important for the debris removal process. The resource conservation district is there to give you advice on the property management after a fire. American Red Cross is there, Employment Development Department, DMV, Vital Records. All that stuff is there. If you need any services come down.  You can move from one table to the next and hopefully knock off a lot of your needs. I also want to point out that we have set up a lot of these services online. So if you go to Santa Cruz County dot US, look for the tab. There's a fire recovery tab. Click on that and you'll find a link to the virtual recovery center. So a lot of these services are available online and you can access those there as well. I also want to point out that we have set up a hotline. We have several hundred residents still in a program that is offered by FEMA and managed by the State Department of General Services. They're staying in hotels or evacuees. The hotline number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. If you're trying to get into the program, we're asking you to go to a shelter and fill out a form. Our shelters are also available on our website. But if you have been, if you are staying in a hotel and you're in a repopulated area, you have 24 hours to check out.  But they work on seven day reservation cycle. So if you're nearing the end of your cycle, we ask you to re-up and call that number and get some information on how to go ahead and do that. Lastly, I want to just note that we're starting to step down our donations process a little bit starting Monday. We are still taking donations, but we'll be doing it at reduced hours from 10 to 4. You can still bring by water, sleeping new clothes, new blankets, things like that, non-perishable food. One drop off location is our warehouse at 1082 Emmeline Street in Santa Cruz. And there's another one at 114 Walker in Watsonville. I believe they're also unofficially helping people who arrive at those warehouses with goods if they need them. But if you need to pick up something, if you've been impacted by the fire to show up at one of our shelter sites and you can access some of those donations at those places too. Thank you. All right, with that, we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Is there any sort of time frame of when people would be able to go back? Yeah, so the question was related to is there a set time frame for returning to the areas that are still evacuated? And we don't want to give anybody false hopes or false promises. And what we can say right now is it's day by day the evaluation of all of these zones. And it's, you know, the intricacies of orders going on up there at the moment between utilities, roads, power lines, trees. It would be really inappropriate for us to speculate right now on what that might be. So the best answer we can give people is it's day by day the evaluation based on all those criteria and safety. And just to stay tuned for for when that information comes out. Randy Gordon, KBCZ, Boulder Creek Community Radio. Can you give us any information about the mail and what people can do about what they should be and can be doing about getting their mail? Sure, I think, and Jason, I don't want to put you on the spot with this one, but if we don't have the answer, we can definitely follow up with that as far as how people can get their mail and where they can get it redirected to. We'll follow up with you on that. If you live in the valley, they're asking you to go to Watsonville to pick up your mail. They were asking people in Scott's Valley, which has been repopulated to go to Santa Cruz, so I don't know if that's really relevant before. My understanding is they're holding packages over so people should be prepared for that.  But you can pick them up at Watsonville Post Office. Jason, do you want to come up here and just give that to Kim? My understanding is that the post office is holding mail for people that live in the San Lorenzo Valley at the Watsonville Post Office. So you can go there. Give yourself a little time. I understand there's lines, but they're holding mail at this point. I don't think they're giving out parcels last I heard, and I have no information from the post office on when that's going to start or how that's going to be managed. But if you are looking for your mail and you live in the San Lorenzo Valley, please go to the Watsonville Post Office. And if individuals don't want to pick up their mail, will their mail automatically be delivered to them once they're repopulated? I do not know. I'm sorry. I don't know the answer to that question. It's a post office issue. I'll try to find out. All right, so just to reiterate, I think it's really important what Jason's brought up tonight is just how vital that recovery website is and the resources they have in the county. As we continue to reinforce and build the lines out on the fire, the focus really is now transitioning to what recovery looks like and what the community needs for as far as resources. So with that everyone up here is available for one on one questions. This concludes the six PM press conference. Thanks for joining us.


Welcome everyone to the sixth meeting in 2016 of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee. Everyone is reminded to switch off their mobile phones. Apologies have been received from Stuart Stevenson that he's unable to attend this meeting. The first item on the agenda is the appointment of an EU reporter. Paragraph 4 of the paper outlines the role of the EU reporter. In addition, paragraph 5 outlines a proposed expanded role for the reporter in relation to reporting of the committee on issues that arise from the Brexit vote that are relevant to the committee's remit. That is the reason for the reporter and I'd like to invite any nominations from members for a reporter. I would like to nominate Mike Rumbles. I think he would be an excellent EU reporter and I would put his name forward. Richard, I'd be more than happy to second that. So are members agreed to the nomination? Peter, Richard and all the members just to make sure that I will work closely with the convener and all the members of the committee on this project. So that concludes the public part of today's meeting. At its next meeting on 26 October 2016, the committee will hear from the Minister of Transport and the Islands on issues relevant to the committee's remit. I'm now going to suspend the meeting to allow the committee to move into private session.