Hey folks, it's the 4th of July, man, how fast did that creep up on us? And on today's show, we've got another corresponding segment for my good friend George Frankly. We'll hopefully be back next week with full host recordings, but for this week, we're talking marbles, UFOs, and data contamination. Enjoy the show. Hello there, I'm George Frankly, and I'd like to talk about how even the best and brightest people can make truly stupid decisions and terrible predictions and what we can learn from them. This is Dare to Be Stupid. This time on Dare to Be Stupid, the Information Disease, or the Flying Saucer and the Marble Jar.  Spoilers, I'm that weirdo. June 24th, 1947 was the first day of the age of the Flying Saucer. A civilian pilot flying over Mount Rainier reported the first well-documented sighting of what became known as a Flying Saucer. Neckos of his sighting have influenced decades of other incidents and the entire breadth of our pop culture. The common term, UFO, wouldn't be coined for another five years during subsequent Air Force investigations. Here in the summer of 1947, the Flying Saucer was entering the mainstream. Now, that much of history is an undeniable fact. Unfortunately, that fact is butting heads with a more important fact. The fact that our witness, the pilot Kenneth Arnold, never said he saw a Flying Saucer at all. The entire concept of the Flying Saucer was introduced to our collective consciousness not by sightings or experiences, but by a mistake. But let's shelf that whole boring UFO conspiracy thing for now. Let's talk about something with a bit more thrill to it. Jelly beans. It's a very, very old game and I'm sure we've all participated in it at least once or twice.  Guess the number of widgets? Actually, let's stick with marbles. It fits my depression-era street urchin aesthetic. Guess the number of marbles and the closest answer wins a prize, classic county fair and school fundraiser fodder. This little game, and maybe a stretch to call it a game, this little game can generate some amazing statistics or the exact same game can generate terrible statistics. You see, if 500 people go up to a jar of, say, 500 marbles, make a guess and then throw their guess in the ballot box, a brilliant thing starts to happen. Many will guess high, many will guess low, but a bit of a bell curve will start to form. Highs and lows will cancel each other out, outliers will get outweighed, and in the end, the mean average of all the guesses will prove shockingly close to the real thing. Those 500 people will, as a hive mind, come up with something close to 500 marbles. But if you had taken the same 500 people, the same jar of the same 500 marbles, and instead you had them all make their guesses on a dollar store clipboard tethered to the jar by a piece of string, you would get an average number that was wildly wrong. Why? In that second example, the number inevitably skews off in seemingly random directions. Rather than a comfortable few deviations away from your target of 500 marbles, it would soar higher or plummet lower by wide margins, all because you bought cheap office supplies, or as you may have already guessed, because you tainted the data pool during collection. Blind ballots in a box create a genuinely random, fairly normalized distribution. Every guess comes from a place of total independence, but a person who sees every guess that came before theirs is given an unavoidable burden. They've seen which way the wind is blowing, they've seen what everyone else thinks is a reasonable guess, and that's going to affect their own. It takes an exorbitant ego and a cavalcade of confidence to never once think, maybe all these other people know something I don't. The survival center of our brain is wired to notice movements of the herd. Our contemporaries are fleeing from something we don't want to be left behind, and if they're focused on something, on one range of numbers, we don't want to be the lone outlier. This is, or is not, what author James Surowecky refers to as the Wisdom of Crowds. In his book of the same name, he describes how large groups of people can develop highly accurate consensus when they make simultaneous, independent decisions in good faith. Under the opposite conditions, where decision-making is staggered and can be influenced by other decisions, you get the opposite result. This sort of crowdthink, where decisions are moving downstream instead of being spontaneous and independent, is called an information cascade. The first few decision-makers set the pace and, in effect, create a chain reaction on every decision that comes afterwards. Information cascades can completely override the thoughts of the people downstream, even defying what's right in front of their eyes. The final person to approach that marble jar could have deduced a count of exactly 500 marbles long before her turn at the board, but when she sees that the last 100 contestants all guessed 300 something, her own mind will turn on her. 500 must be too high. It feels too high. Her guess is weighed down by new information, literally an anchor bias. With anchor bias, there's suddenly a heavy pull dragging your independent thoughts down towards an infectious new frame of reference. My point is, there's a hell of a lot of fancy science names for the telephone game.  Human memory is squishy, spongy, and very malleable, and in both directions. Data storage, from magnetic tape to blockchains, all tends to be linear. It goes from one entry into the next. The human brain is absolutely not. We can rewrite details from our most ancient memories without even realizing we were thinking about them. We can watch something happen right in front of our eyes and then remember it completely differently minutes later. We write and rewrite memory, forwards and in reverse constantly. This is why human eyewitnesses actually make for terrible evidence. Investigators don't just separate witnesses to prevent collusion, it's to prevent contamination. Allowing multiple people to share and compare their memories leads to the homogenization of those memories. Even if they are honest people trying their best, reality is sturdy, but perception is fragile. So marbles, marbles and flying saucers. Why flying saucers? Rather, why did newspapers report that Kenneth Arnold saw flying saucers? What he saw and what he described to air controllers and to the press was a formation of strange boomerang-shaped objects. Later on he would call them crescent or even chevron-shaped. And a crescent, believe it or not, is not a saucer. It's literally not even half of a saucer. It's a crescent, what gives?  And the first reporter to hit the headlines shortened that to flying saucer. Not having any photographs, artists ended up illustrating that headline very accordingly. And then history happened, information cascaded. That phrase became part of the zeitgeist. More and more often afterwards, people witnessed flying saucers. So are all of these subsequent sightings frauds? Well, I can't say. But what I can say is that when you look at sightings by typical consumers of popular culture and then sightings by outsiders with different influences, they report very different things. Betty Hill, the first modern alien abduction from a flying saucer story in 1961, happened to be a huge science fiction enthusiast who'd seen her fair share of saucers in the media. Travis Walton, abducted by a flying disc in 1975, was also plenty familiar with the concept. But years before Arnold saw his boomerangs, Air Force pilots of World War II saw plenty of UFOs and they weren't saucers. Nicknamed fool fighters, these objects were sighted numerous times but were described as flying spheres or balls of light. Even spectators in the 18th and 19th centuries saw UFOs, but back then those were commonly spheres or long, quote, cigar shapes. There are even genuine 150-year-old photographs out there of cylindrical mystery airships. Cylindrical, never saucers. So yes, enthusiastic people started seeing saucers after the information cascade reached them. But what about outsiders, the uninfected or just unenthusiastic people? Airline pilots, military officers, and members of law enforcement are all famously reluctant to report strange sightings for fear of their jobs. But when they do, they report things like spheres, pill or capsule shapes, or often dark triangles in the sky, but rarely ever saucers. Maybe the single best case of this occurred in Socorro, New Mexico, 1964. Police officer Lonnie Zamora took a detour to investigate some kind of fireball that came roaring down outside of town. When he approached an overlook, he saw an oval-shaped object on landing legs in a dry creek bed far below him. Two smallish figures in strange clothes were attending to it. He got back in his car to make his way down closer but then heard the roar again. The oval object rose up on a pillar of fire and disappeared into the sky. By all accounts, Lonnie Zamora had no particular awareness of UFO phenomena. He didn't even seem to understand the massive public interest that was swelling up around his sighting. He was very matter-of-fact about what he saw, reported it, and then asked to be left alone. Air Force investigators would end up finding imprints, burnt sands, and other traces of something that very clearly blasted off from the sands outside of Socorro. Independent of the information cascade, Lonnie Zamora very credibly saw something goddamn weird that day and it still wasn't a flying saucer. Contagious or contaminated information ties anchors and places shortcuts inside our minds. When our brain sees something vague and blurry and weird, it instantly digs to our lifetime archive of shapes and words to fill in the blanks. And sometimes you can't help what it finds. If you didn't know that everybody else had guessed 200 marbles, maybe you would have counted 500 in the jar right away. If Kenneth Arnold had been familiar with swept-wing jet fighters, which the Air Force revealed only three months after his incident, those flying propeller-less boomerangs he saw might have seemed a bit more mundane. And poor Lonnie Zamora had no way of knowing that just out there in the New Mexico Desert, NASA was developing and testing the first lunar modules for the Apollo program. Some days we get to see what we really see and other days we just catch the disease. In the end, we're all doing the best we can with the information we've been given. Thanks for listening. As always, I'd like to remind you that nearly all of my illustrious job titles come with the prefix armchair. If you're an expert and you're hearing me get something wrong, I'd like to hear from you. Thanks for that illuminating look. If you have any feedback for George, send me an email at Adam at speakingofbitcoin.show and I'll make sure he gets it. And until next time, thanks for listening.


This video was circulated in error on a redacted date and has since been removed from circulation. All civilians which viewed the video have been administered amnestics. The Foundation staff responsible for the leak of the video have since been terminated. Only view the following video if you have SCP-001 Guardian Clearance. This entity can be located in a valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Note the giant wings and what appears to be a giant sword held by the entity. See also the large portal behind the entity into what we know to be a great garden. This is likely the Garden of Eden and the entity is likely the Angel Uriel. A group called the SCP Foundation keeps this secret but the public deserves truth. Long live truth. Long live the insurgency. You have been shown this video even though you do not have clearance because the chaos insurgency wants you. The SCP Foundation has no right to hide the truth of the world from civilians and we must fight back. SCP-001 Guardian is just the start. We will not stop until all the secrets are unveiled and the foundation destroyed. If you want to join us, seek us out and leave us a message. We will be in touch. Long live truth. Long live the insurgency.


he UK Strategic Investment Fund, a good investment of money. Given that there are already 900 hospital beds on the canvas, 1,200 researchers are expected to rise to 1,500 beds and 2,000 researchers within the next couple of years. Its specialist facilities have made it a leading European Centre for Translational Medical Research. Jenny Marra and Alice McKinnis spoke about the College of Life Sciences in Dundee, which I know has just received £8 million funding from the Scottish Government towards the development of a phenotypic drug screening laboratory. It too has an international reputation as a productive research institute, and it has the highest number of citations per paper for biological sciences in the whole of Europe. As Alice McKinnis said, life sciences now accounts for 16 per cent of the Tayside economy, which is a great achievement. David Stewart and Mary Scanlan have spoken about the important developments in the Highlands with the development of the Centre for Health Science at Rhaigmore hospital in Inverness and the Injacent Inverness campus of the University of the Highlands and Islands, which, as they said, is home to Johnson and Johnson's Life Scan Scotland, which two years ago announced a decision to locate their global diabetes research centre in Inverness. I know of David Stewart's long-standing interest in testing and treatment of diabetes, and I am sure that he must be particularly gratified by the fact that that is actually going on in his doorstep. Linda Fabiani spoke about research in East Kilbride, Mark McDonald and Maureen Watt, Deris Obbison, and stressed the important institutes, the Rout Institute and the James Hudson Institute up in Aberdeen. It is quite clear that there is good scientific research going on right throughout Scotland. As Mark McDonald and Mary Scanlan said, while we congratulate the sector for its remarkable success and expansion, we should not forget that we do not retain enough of our female scientists. At the Royal Society of Edinburgh report, tapping on talent talents was produced by working group chaired by a very eminent astrophysicist, Jocelyn Bell-Bernel. It quotes the statistics that 73 per cent of women trained in STEM subjects leave their profession as compared to 48 per cent of men. If we could think about what even greater success Scottish Science might have if we got the female participation up to the level of male participation in the longer term. It is still the case that concerns such as childcare, attitudes towards people taking maternity leave, the difficulty in taking maternity leave when a researcher is on a fixed-term contract and problems with work-life balance for women with caring responsibilities are still driving women out of science. I personally find that very depressing because the factors that drove women out of science at the time I left and things do not seem to be getting that much better for women since. The Labour motion also mentions the possible takeover of AstraZeneca by Pfizer, and that does not seem to be reflected in the debate. That is unfortunate, because although the headquartered elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the possibility should not be of concern to us, because AstraZeneca are major supplies to the NHS. It worked with health boards in Scotland, for example, Grampian, as Neil Bibby said, and I do hope that the Scottish Government will support Edmundleban's call for a public interest test in corporate deals such as his potential takeover. In conclusion, it is good to celebrate the success of life sciences, but many members have mentioned issues of concern that we need to address. Neil Bibby spoke of the levels of numeracy in schools. If you do not have a numeracy skills, you are not going to be able to do science. Malcolm Tism and Jenny Marra talked about student numbers in further education and life sciences decreasing. The Smith talked about the take-up of science subjects in schools and the Scottish Baccalaureate. Mary Scanlon mentioned the numbers of modern apprenticeships in life sciences, and I think that there is a general concern about the curriculum for excellence as it comes in. Is it going to be sufficiently rigorous to prepare students to study sciences at university, because science is a rigorous discipline and they need to acquire those sorts of learning skills at school to be able to go on to succeed at university? Do not even get me started on access to laboratories. I agree with what Dennis Roberts said in terms of the lab and laboratory, but to do science, science is an experimental vocational subject, and young children and young people need the opportunities to get out there and do experiments and learn from doing experiments, and unfortunately not enough of that goes on in our schools nowadays. Thank you. We now move to Arthur Alton to wind up the debate. Minister, five o'clock. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This has, I believe, been a very positive debate in the main and has focused on life sciences as one of the many reasons that we can be proud of Scotland's academic and economic achievements. Life sciences are clearly something in which Scotland excels. Many speakers have referred to that, and our contribution to global research in this area is not only appropriate for us to celebrate but also appropriate for us to think about what we can do to exceed that in the future. There were many very considered and thoughtful contributions in the debate, although there was not a contribution in this particular science debate from Stuart Stevenson. I had been looking forward to that following his Van de Graaff generator speech, which has entered into parliamentary folklore since the last science debate took place. Mr Bibby made important points about numeracy in schools. I would say that there have been a number of measures of numeracy in schools, and we are far from complacent. The PISA statistics did indicate that good things are happening on that front. I entirely appreciate the point that is made about the need for rigor and constant improvement in that area. Where I take exception was where he more than once referred or used the phrase failing education system, and I take the greatest possible exception to that phrase being used in the context of Scotland's schools. Ms Smith mentioned a number of areas around stem subjects in schools, and the work that we all acknowledge needs to be done to promote the science baccalaureate in schools. The Scottish baccalaureate was presented as an added value, because it had that crucial mix of higher and advanced higher, and it is not being taken up. Could the minister suggest reasons as to why it is not being taken up, and what the Scottish Government is going to do to address that, because it really is a key issue? Obviously, in the context of the new qualifications, the baccalaureate is one of many options for adding value to your qualifications. However, as I have indicated, that is something that we constantly encourage, not only the baccalaureate for science but also the baccalaureate for languages. Ms MacDonald mentioned many examples of international co-operation in the field of research, to which I could add the fact that the UK is in co-operation directly with countries including Switzerland, Luxembourg and the USA. I also want to mention Mr Chisholm for a very thoughtful contribution about the research partnership that exists between the research community and Scotland's NHS. It is also worth saying that, in his own city, Edinburgh College is also doing great work around the promotion of STEM subjects with a STEM academy promoting links with schools too. I will have to make some progress, but I will come to you in a moment yet. Aileen McLeod spoke about key science sectors and, particularly something that was raised by other speakers as well, an emerging science, which is personalised medicine, which holds out some truly amazing opportunities for understanding and practicing medicine in the future. I give way. I give way. Was he as shocked as I was about the 21 modern apprenticeships in life sciences out of 25,000? Can he tell me how he plans to address that, given that life sciences is one of the Government's key sectors? I would argue for the importance of modern apprenticeships, which are far from the only means of engaging young people in science and science careers, but we constantly advocate for the development of young people's skills. At the other end of the equation, we are also working to improve people's lab skills, which was referred to earlier on, and people's employability as scientists too. There were a number of speakers, and I will try to get through some of them in the time available, but David Stewart rightly referred to some of Scotland's scientific achievements in the past, including Fleming, which I take to be an endorsement of my personal practice of not cleaning my kitchen sink. A number of speakers mentioned, including David Stewart, the importance of the science sector to the highlands and islands, and the new campus in Inverness is relevant in that respect. Linda Fabiani reminded us of the importance of the application of life sciences, not least in East Kilbride, and she was right to say that we need to be ambitious in that respect. Rodd Campbell made an important point about the fact that the future structure of research in Scotland will, to a very large degree, be in the hands of academics themselves and pointed to the success of academic-driven initiatives such as research pools and Salsa. Alison McInnes rightly mentioned the importance to Dundee of the life science sector. She mentioned that it relied on 60 nationalities and 60 countries, although that was immediately followed by an argument that the whole thing relied on one country. A number of speakers, including Alison McInnes, Mark McDonald and Elaine Murray, made an important argument about ensuring that we have every encouragement and opportunity given to women in science in Scotland. I entirely accept the argument that we have to do much, much more in that respect, although, in the life sciences, it should be said that we have something nearer the quality in that respect than in other areas of science. I must make some progress now in order to come to the conclusion of this debate. I think that one thing that is worth saying is that a number of speakers mentioned that, of course, research and science are not just about traditional categories of scientists. I must make some progress, but I am about to close. I must make some progress. It is also about, for instance, the importance of technicians. I just want to conclude by saying something about the amendments. I think that the reason that I am happy to accept both amendments is because, despite some of the arguments that were built upon the inoffensive text of the amendments, the amendments themselves are positive. I believe, for instance, that on Liz Smith's amendment again, I believe that it is entirely reasonable to point to the successes of the research sector. Mr Bibby's amendment notes the important contribution of UK research councils, which I am happy again to acknowledge, despite the fact that we take different views about what the future should be. He rightly mentions the issue about the proposed takeover around Pfizer and the fact that it is worth mentioning in that context. Although neither company has a major base in Scotland, it is obviously a matter of interest. The NHS in Scotland, to pick up on a point that was made around that, has indicated that it has no concerns about its future relationship with either company, but it is entirely legitimate for the matter of debate today for us to question whether the UK Government intends to make any further inquiries about that. In that spirit, despite the fact that the debate has occasionally wandered into articles of faith and, as a result, the debate has changed its character, that was predictable. Rather, I want to end where I began and say that this sector, the life sciences sector, as well as providing employment for 35,000 people in Scotland and 650 companies and constituting, as it does, one of the great successes of Scottish science, is, at its heart, something of which everyone in this Parliament across all partisan boundaries should be particularly proud, and it is particularly useful that we have chosen today to debate it. That concludes the debate on life sciences. We now move to the next side of business, which is consideration of parliamentary bureau motion number 9566 on committee memberships. I would ask, if it is Patrick, to move motion number 9566 on committee memberships. On this motion, we will put a decision to the time to which we have come. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is amendment number 9963.2, in the name of Neil Bibby, which seeks to amend motion number 9963.2, in the name of Alasdair Allan, on life sciences, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The amendment is there for agreed to. The next question is amendment number 9963.1, in the name of Liz Smith, which seeks to amend motion number 9963, in the name of Alasdair Allan, on life sciences, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The amendment is there for agreed to. The next question is motion number 9963, in the name of Alasdair Allan, as amended, twice. On life sciences, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next question is motion number 9566, in the name of Jofits Particle. Committee memberships, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. That concludes decision time, and I now close this meeting.


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k Stuart Maxwell again for highlighting AFLA armed forces legal advice the discounted legal service started by Alan Steele which I think is an excellent amount of work and is about to be expanded into America I'm understanding all members for their contribution and today's report from the veterans commissioner along with this afternoon's debate provides many examples of good practice and encouragement as well as an analysis of what's needed to do if we're to properly support former members of armed forces as they move into civilian life no matter how consensual our debate and how much agreement there is across this chamber however I think that it would be wrong to have a debate on veterans in Scotland in the Parliament today without even a reference to the campaign launched by Poppy Scotland and the Royal British Legion in January this year and I think that most members will have received at least one if not more letters from veterans affected and just to recap or outline the essence of this campaign veterans who were injured in service on or before 5 April 2005 received a war disablement pension those with a similar injury but who were injured on or after 6 April 2005 received compensation under the armed forces compensation scheme there is widespread variation across Scotland as to whether those injured veterans are able to keep all their compensation or whether they are expected to use those payments to pay for care having conducted a comprehensive survey Poppy Scotland believed that only a third of war disablement pensions are fully disregarded a figure that the minister quoted a few minutes ago there is also variation between the treatment of war pensioners injured before 2005 and in receipt of the armed forces compensation put bluntly an injury from the Falklands conflict seems to count for less than one suffered in Afghanistan the Scottish Government's own guidance for residential care suggests that Government take all but the first £10 a week of a veterans compensation this does not compare very well to the situation in the rest of the UK where at least the armed forces compensation scheme those payments are disregarded and it is also worth highlighting that by comparison local authorities are required to exempt compensation that has been awarded to civilians who have been injured in the workplace the British Legion of Poppy Scotland can see no reason and I have to say I fully agree with them for the disparity in the way that injured veterans and war pensioners are currently treated within the social care system and I'm sure there's no one in this chamber either who believes it's fair that disabled war pensioners should be treated differently to other injured veterans and I'm not so sure there's no one here who thinks it's acceptable that war pensioners should be treated less favourably than civilians who have been injured in the workplace this latter point in particular demonstrates that the current situation is in breach of the armed forces covenant which states that the service personnel veterans and their families should not be left disadvantaged as a result of military service I would point out on an encouraging note that since the launch of the insult to injury campaign many local authorities have looked or are looking at their own charging practices and at their own discretionary powers and I'm delighted to report that in my own local authority they have agreed to abolish any charges that they might levy on veterans living in East Renfisher it's so clearly the right thing to do Poppy Scotland are calling on the Scottish Government not just to harmonise the way that local authorities treat the two military compensation schemes but to revise existing charging guidelines so that all local authorities are required to fully disregard war disablement pensions for means tests for social care Now I understand the minister's point and also from Jackson Carlaw's contribution I can just say by the way I thoroughly enjoyed Jackson Carlaw's opening and concluding contributions I'm sure that all members recognise that military compensation is awarded as recompense for the pain, suffering and loss experienced by injured service personnel and veterans and although I'm slightly disappointed that we can't all unite around our amendment I would ask the minister if he can in his summing up to tell Parliament what progress he intends to make on this issue and perhaps when he'll report back to Parliament and in the light of his remarks I certainly hope that my Labour colleagues and I would be able to ask the Presiding Officer if we could withdraw our amendment I certainly wouldn't wish to take I certainly wouldn't wish to take any of that discussion away from the highly consensual debate that we have had and the practical steps that we can take Earlier in the debate my colleague Mary Fee talked about the importance of not discussing veterans as if they were a game of political football Now I'm going to take the brave step of disagreeing with Mary and the minister may know what's coming next Every year to celebrate Armed Forces Day which falls on the 27th of June the Parliamentary team organises a game of football against RAF veterans Yes, it's the RAF again Mr Grofford Last year Wraith Rovers were generous enough to accommodate us as part of their celebration or commemorations if the centenary of the great war Unfortunately the RAF were a little bit too strong last year and we needed to call up our own reserves for this year's fixture as a reliable right back or was it right midfield I would ask the minister if he's willing to pencil at least in the fixture we're looking at the morning of June 12 and any other members in the chamber who fancied the chance to display their talents in a good cause please let me know Mr MacArthur in particular The commissioner concluded his report by calling us to look at veterans as an asset to our communities rather than simply as people in need a point made by the minister by Dave Stewart, by Liam McArthur and many others That's a good message we can unite around and we are pleased to support the first report of the Scottish Veterans Commissioner Thank you very much and I now call upon Keith Brown to respond to the debate Cabinet Secretary we have a little bit of time in hand so I can give you until 5 o'clock Thank you I'm grateful to members for, as others have said what's been a very constructive and thought-provoking debate today Certainly given some of the suggestions giving me further food for thought and of course they will be of great interest to the Scottish Veterans Commissioner Eric Fraser seeking to take forward his work The commissioner's future work will significantly shape what we take forward either as a Scottish Government or strategic partners and members will be aware that in previous debates on support for the armed forces community in Scotland I have rehearsed what had been delivered, what has been trained what will be examined, what will be explored and developed Members will also know that I've come to the chamber and reported on progress and pointed to a contribution to the UK Government annual report on the armed forces covenant In that regard it's fair to say that our input into that document has been widely acknowledged and welcomed in the military, veterans organisations and the wider armed forces in veterans community and I should say this and I suppose I would say this anyway but there's a great deal of regard around the rest of the UK for what we've managed to achieve in terms of veterans in Scotland Members have been here longer than I have and I remember there's a very critical report I think in 2007 from the health committee, the House of Commons which was not at all complimentary of the services which our veterans received and I think we've come a long way since that time We've reported back on what we've done we've always done that against the backdrop of our 2012 policy document Our Commitments which I had the pleasure to launch at Edinburgh Castle on 5 September 2012 Members may recall that document set out in some detail what initiatives and programmes were being pursued across the Scottish Government within our devolved responsibilities Now under the day-to-day control of the Director General for Education and Justice Leslie Evans in her capacity as Armed Forces Advocate Our Commitments was always intended to be a baseline document around which the Scottish Government pushed new initiatives and work streams in support of the Armed Forces veterans and their families In that work she has been able and enthusiastically supported by external organisations such as Poppy Scotland, Legion Scotland and of course Veteran Scotland with whom I meet on a quarterly basis Of course our work is also heavily influenced by the Scottish Veterans Commissioner For that reason it's my view that it's time to refresh our commitments to give it more impetus and focus to address the range of new ideas actions and challenges identified through the work of the Commissioner and our ongoing discussions with our partners Some of the suggestions are made today by Rob Gibson and others One very good suggestion I heard when over at Tartan week in Canada recently where they said that there's an app that you can have in New Zealand and Australia which if you've been in the Armed Forces tells you where all the veterans are subscribed to it around the Commonwealth so if you've served alongside the Australian Army and you happen to be in Australia you can find your colleagues from that time an excellent idea so we will look at these new ideas as well as some of the ones that have been mentioned today I've asked the officials to embark on a programme of work to update our commitments with a view to publication in early 2016 and in parallel with that I'll continue to highlight, promote and stress that the vast majority of men and women who serve in our Armed Forces with distinction and pride and they bring that full range of skills that they've honed during their service into civilian life and are valuable assets to our communities I think, like Jackson Carlaw, I thought that the way that Mike Mackenzie spoke about the qualities of the veterans that he'd worked with and also identified that very important thing of self-discipline which I think the Armed Forces are very good at instilling in people and I think it's probably the most important thing in the ethos of the Armed Forces they, as I say, veterans are employees they're employers, they're entrepreneurs and volunteers on a previous visit to Canada I also saw a very strong programme of veterans being encouraged to move into franchising as entrepreneurs and that appeals to veterans in many ways the idea of being in charge of yourself but having a structure with which to work so I'll look to our strategic partners to help us with this task I know that the military, the veterans service, charitable sector and the families federations are so helpful before and now fully endorsed that stance and I think the person I think it may have been Graham Day that mentioned families in particular, I think that's really now coming really into focus, people are realising that much of the issues that we deal with in terms of veterans really should apply in many cases to consideration for their families people have talked about veterans actually in Graham Day's constituency in four five commando to do three in four tours in Afghanistan what they don't often appreciate is that will be preceded each time by a six or seven month training period when the service personnel are away from their families and many of them will find those training periods more stressful actually than Afghanistan because they're forced to be removed from their families so we have to concentrate on the effect it has on families and just to come back to some of the points which are raised Mary Fee quite rightly raised the issues of transition I think she asked whether we've examined those up to now, we do generally and we did provide a response to the report produced by Lord Ashcroft which tackled this much of the responsibility lies with the armed forces we'd like to have perhaps a more constructive relationship with the MOD whether it's there Minister can I stop you slightly for a moment I'm sorry about that could we have the back door closed over thank you I can hear noise minister so we have looked at that and we'll continue to look at that to think it was quite a useful report that was produced by Lord Ashcroft a number of areas as I've said before I do think the armed forces should very much look at starting from day one of somebody's service career to look at housing what are they going to do when they come out of housing there are some but not enough and not substantial enough schemes for example to give support for those who want to buy a house when there are armed forces those schemes are not nearly widely well enough known in terms of education are going to future job I think a great deal could be done to structure career in the armed forces to make sure you've got the best chance when you when you come out so we've made these points in the past I was going to mention Jackson Carlaw's reference to being a teenager and watching Shawshank Redemption but perhaps it's due to the fact that I am of a similar age that I couldn't quite remember how long ago it was at Shawshank Redemption came out I know it's actually a favourite of my son and I know exactly the scene that he's talking about it was a scene when the guy that had been in prison for nearly all of his life came out and actually ended up forcing himself back into the prison because that's where he felt more comfortable and eventually took his own life because of that institution which he'd been so used to now that is not that I know Jackson Carlaw was not trying to portray veterans in any way is similar to people that are in prison but it is true to say that structure having a structure round about you presents one of the biggest challenges for our veterans I think it was Stuart Maxwell that mentioned the fire service and he was right to say I went to the fire service and the person that was in charge of what his rank was within the fire service said that he had been told early on in his career always to try and ensure there was a smattering of veterans in his force because he reckoned they provided such a stable and productive and reliable element to the fire service calm under pressure that was essential to a good fire service I mentioned a talk week we also went to New York to see the veterans affairs, veterans benefits agency in New York whilst we were there and what struck me which we don't do in this country was when they provided support after somebody left certainly, yep Stuart Maxwell It just strikes me when you're talking about the fire service and the good fit between the fire service and ex-forces personnel and I certainly share that view and mentioned it in my own contribution I just wonder if the minister was aware of any effective groups that operate so that effectively you can take very clear obvious routes into employment like the fire service, another organisation that are very suited to some members of the forces are they linking into the MOD and the forces before those personnel leave because I think one of the problems that other members have mentioned is this disconnect between the point with the leave and then trying to get them into employment and I would think that connections between organisations like the fire service and the military while they're still in the military or giving that smooth transition that we've all been talking about Cabinet Secretary Perhaps the way that I've seen the most actively produced strategies in area that Jackson Carlaw identified which is in the motor trade first bus for example have a very good scheme to make sure mainly mechanics but one of the events that we found out at the event the cross-party reception was that there's a real shortage in the country of HGV drivers in the military so just to effect that straight forward transition also in relation in fact to telecommunications and technicians telecommunications and IT skilled individuals you get many of them coming into their forces and we have a real skill issue with getting as many of those people into the workforce so we are working on that at the point that Stuart Maxwell made and it's done better in some of the countries the UK government is trying to address through the corporate covenant and we are doing one or two things here I would just say coming back to Hanzala Malik's point we don't have the intention of expanding the concessionary travel scheme in the way that he suggests that would cost tens of millions of pounds it's a very serious proposition I understand he meant it in good faith but that's not our proposal at this time the point that Christine Grahame made we have looked at this already I think we need some more detail perhaps on her about personal homes in the actual scheme and how we can make that work better for veterans there's many other members that made some tremendous contributions and apologies if I can't mention them all but just to estimate if I can underline before we finish that the actual reality in this country is that veterans are invaluable assets employers to the community in Scotland I think we had the flavour from the debate that most members, all members I think share that view although they did not want to gloss over quite rightly some of the challenges that veterans face and we should continue to provide support there but I would just ask that those members of the Parliament who have shared that view about the benefits of veterans to society do try to undertake on a personal level to communicate that whenever they can because that should really be the story it's a key plank of the commissioners report that we've discussed today and I hope that it's very much the beginning of that process of trying to put the message out there especially even for our veterans themselves I appreciate some of the skills and some of the training that they've had and its relevance to civilian life and sometimes I think again Graham Day mentioned a point about self-esteem a very important point I think there's a great deal we can do Jackson Carlaw was right as well to say that we do have the benefits now where there's very popular support for veterans and people now are able to distinguish the service of veterans from the places they've been sent to by politicians which is very important so I think we have to continue to work on that and from my part I would give my assurance that the Scottish Government will continue to strive to do everything that we can to support those that have served our country so well so that's not just those that need our help in terms of employment in terms of health in terms of education but it's those that don't need our help necessarily but they need our support we should be the advocates for our veterans when they come back into society as real assets to companies around the country the only point of today's debate is to highlight the extent to which they continue to do that they've transitioned from civilian life and produced tremendous work in the various fields in which they go into once they've come out of civilian life we have to make sure we help those that find it a challenge but we should also make sure that we give credit to those that come out of the armed forces and play a productive role in our society thank you very much many thanks cabinet secretary and veterans to Scotland before we move to decision time can I call on Mary Fee to speak please thank you I'm grateful to be given this opportunity I think we've had a very good debate this afternoon very consensual and very positive and falling on from the very constructive comments made by the cabinet secretary to work with members across the chamber to resolve the issues around social care I would seek leave of the chamber to withdraw my amendment the member is seeking leave to withdraw her amendment does any member object since no member objects the amendment is therefore withdrawn and we will now move to decision time there will be one question to be put as a result of today's business and the question is motion 13045 in the name of Keith Brown on making the most of the contribution of veterans to Scotland agreed to 2 are we all agreed the motion is therefore agreed to and that concludes decision time and I now close this meeting of parliament


the TH3D Easy ABL Pro on the Tivo Tarantula Pro. My name's Jim, and this is the Edge of Tech. So like I said, we're gonna take this brand new TH3D Easy ABL Pro, and I love the look of this thing. It is awesome, and not only that, it performs great. And we're gonna drop it on the Tivo Tarantula Pro that I just got built. There'll be an assembly video coming soon. When I did that assembly video, I noticed that it wasn't easy to level the bed because any time I turned these knobs, the screws spun inside of it. With the new Tivo Tarantula Pros, the sticker goes all the way over the bed and those screws on the top are actually covered so you can't hold them. How I had to do that was take a small needle nose pliers, hold the bottom of the screw, and then adjust. That wasn't exactly easy. So I took off the Tivo Tarantula Pro bed mat, and I put the glass I used to use on one of my Ender 3s that has a TH3D Easy mat on it, right on top. The other reason I did this is because my build plate came warped in the center. So this actually helped that out quite a bit. I still can't get it quite dialed in because I have to fiddle with it, and while it's printing, it's very hard to take a needle nose, hold that screw, and adjust those knobs. So we're gonna knock it out. We're gonna put this Easy ABL on here, and we're gonna get that rocking for ya. Let's do it. We're gonna get rocking and rolling, and to do that, we need a few things.  Number two, we need some zip ties. This kit came with a little tiny screwdriver, so you can use it inside when we're connecting those wires. We need the mount that we printed from TH3D, a couple of M3 by 10 or 12 bolts, and the Easy ABL itself, and the wiring to give it power on this particular version. You can buy the power that goes right into here and plugs into the wall if you want. You can do that. In this case, it'll power it from the board, right from this wire, and this is everything you need. We're gonna get moving. So the first thing we wanna do is mount our new Easy ABL Pro mount right on the side, and I'm looking at the left side of the hot end here, and you can see these two holes are empty. So what we need to do is take this mount, and if you look at the back, there's some cutouts here, and that will actually sit flush just like this.  If you have it upside down, it won't work, and you'll be all angled, and that's not the correct way. So grab your two M3 by 10 or 12 bolts, and you can actually put them in. Grab your Allen wrench, or in my case, I use an Allen driver here. I like to get both in before I tighten them, but we're gonna put them both in and then just get them barely to snug. You do not wanna over tighten these for a couple reasons. Number one, you're actually screwing into this, and then there's a fan behind here. Number two, you don't wanna break your mount. So you just wanna tighten them up just so they're in. You don't have to over tighten them. They won't actually grip all the way in because they're just going through the back of a fan so you can actually just keep spinning them. Just snug is perfect because that's not gonna go anywhere.  Just remember that on the new EZ-ABL Pros, your screw is right here to calibrate your sensor. So on the old ones, it was that silver screw on the top. On the new ones, it's in the side. So remember that when you're putting these in because you're gonna need to use that orientation however you wanna see fit. In my case, you don't wanna be against this extrusion. So I'm actually gonna go sideways instead of forwards. So I'm gonna leave it like that. But it's totally up to you however you wanna do it. You could actually get it set how you like it and then loosen it a little bit and turn it if you really wanted to to get rid of that screw.  I'm just gonna loosen it up so I see it's semi-close to the hot end here and then I'm gonna put this on. But I'm not gonna do it all the way because there's no need to tighten this yet. So the next thing we're gonna do is actually get this locked into where we want it. Remember I left this nut a little bit loose there so we can adjust it up and down. Get your wrench or one that came with a printer and it should be about two millimeters thick. We're gonna lay it underneath here and then from the back, we're gonna roll down slowly. Okay, so I switched camera angle so we could see this a lot better. This is the wrench I talked about. This is your sensor and over here is your nozzle. And what we're gonna do is slowly lower the Z until the nozzle just touches the bed. Remember I left the nut over here real loose so there's a lot of play. There's a lot of play up in this sensor. See that? So what's gonna happen is the sensor will adjust itself when we get close. But you wanna make sure you leave this nut pretty loose so it can slide up and down. Now what you wanna do is take and lower it very slowly with your Z-Coupler just until the nozzle hits the bed. So that should be about two millimeters away. Now that we have it about two millimeters away, I'm just gonna tighten down this top nut just till it hits. You don't wanna go too far cause you'll raise it just till it touches here. Then what you wanna do is tighten up the bottom one till it's tight. My fingers were in the way but I tightened up this bottom one just till it gets tight. Now what we're gonna do is take off this tie wrap and unravel the cord that came with it. Pull it out, unravel it, and push it through the back of the extrusion like this just how your other cables are round. So I flipped the printer over and I'm looking at the board here. What we need to do is wire in our new EZABL board and we need to find this power in this ground and it goes way up into here. The thing is with the mount that the board is on and the frames here we can't actually get to that without taking the board off. So what we're gonna have to do is remove the board quick and there's four screws. There's one here, one there, one there, and one in here. So I got the four screws out and now I kinda got the board out very carefully.   And we're gonna use this to plug into the board here.  So I'm gonna hold the board so we don't twist or break anything. Carefully I can pull that out. These have to go in in the same spots.  But the catch is you cannot have any wire hanging out of that port. So what you wanna do is put your red in here and then take your positive here and get that down in there too. And this can be a little bit tricky because I didn't pull this board all the way out. I can go a little bit further as you can see here but we do have to make sure that none of that wire from the new wire is sticking out because if it is, it has a potential to cause issues where if it grounds or hits anything else. So I got it in there. I'm gonna tighten it in like this, as you can see. And I'm gonna do the same thing for the black wire here on the end. And you do not wanna over tighten those but you do wanna make sure that they're good and tight and these wires aren't gonna come out. The next thing I'm gonna do is push this board back into its place carefully and get it screwed back into the mount. Remember there's four screws, one, two, three, four and we'll push those in now. Once I got those screws back in, I didn't forget to put the two cables we pulled out here back in as well. I didn't wanna miss that. So make sure you put those back in and put them in the same slot you pulled them out of. Next, with the machine still on its side, we wanna take off our ZN stop.  Grab the new board and just take the cover off carefully. It'll pull off just like this. I noticed that the bolt and the T nuts are too big to go through the slots that THRD pre-drills in here. So you can either drill one of these out larger to fit the bolt or you can get some different T nuts and some M3 I believe or maybe M4 and get those in there. But I'm actually gonna put mine right here. Now I noticed when I go up next to the machine, the legs are actually taller than the control box so it can sit underneath just fine. In my case, I'm probably gonna zip tight for now until I get different T nuts and then I'll put it on there or I'll just drill out one of these and then I'll actually screw it down that way. All right, so the next thing we need to do is actually remove one of these wires because it sends five volts back and we don't want that to happen on the new EZ-ABL board. So if you see these three wires here, there's one with X's, there's one with stripes or lines here and there's the last one up here has words on it. And in my case, it's the one that the Z label is around but we need to cut that out. We're not gonna actually use that wire. If you ever need to put your end stop back, it will work without this wire too. So there's many different ways to get this wire out. In my case, I know it's the one with the Z label on it. So I'm gonna use a little pin. I'm actually gonna push down here and that should allow the cable to actually pull out of the connector. I'm gonna do that on both sides. So it'll be the top one here. I'm gonna push down, pull out just like this and it'll come loose.  Now, like we talked about, that'll leave us and I'll put it there so you can see a little better with the one with the dashes and one with the X's and that's the two wires you need to keep when you put these back. Now, if we're looking at the EZ-ABL board here, it gets plugged in right to the white like this. Next, grab the wire that came from the EZ-ABL itself and that actually goes in the end right up here and that just pushes in. That's it. Now, what we wanna do next is take our power wire that we created and we're gonna cut, I'm actually gonna shorten it because it doesn't need to be that long just so it's about right here. I'm gonna strip the positive and the negative and it's gonna go in this side. So now what I did is for the sake of the video, I just zip-tied the control box underneath here to the bottom of that extrusion and I stripped off the power here, the ground and the positive here or the black and the red and we need to actually put that into the control box. Get the baby screwdriver that came with the kit and loosen these two right here.  So black on top, red on the bottom. Once you get them in and you get them pushed in there, you'll tighten them down with these two screws here. So now what we have is the red here and the black up here. So the red's on the outside of the board, black's on the inside of the board and if you look down on the board, it actually says plus and minus. We got those pushed in and we got them tight and I actually might shorten these and bring it to wire closer, but for now we're okay. I just want to point out this switch right here that I'm my touching here. This is actually gonna flip your Z. So in a little bit, when we test this, when it's coming down, if the Z needs to be switched, we'll actually just flip that little switch in here and that's all we have to do. We actually don't have to rewire anything on the new easy ABL Pro Boards. So that's pretty cool. I'm gonna leave the cover off for now until we test it and we'll go from there. I did say there was room underneath and if you have some T-nuts, it'll sit really nicely but I just want to show you, there's plenty of room under here to actually put that under that extrusion and it will actually hide underneath there pretty good if it wasn't zip tied like this and I think that's a really cool placed amount and on this, it's out of the way, it's not seen much and it's actually highly functional there. Next, what we want to do is clean up our wiring and we got tons of zip ties from TH3D in this kit and we're gonna use a lot of those. So first, what we need to do is create our loop. You always gotta have a loop when you're using the easy ABL because you don't want tension on this right here. So you create your loop and the next thing I'll do is zip tie all around here. So I did not cut the zip ties yet because I wanted to show you what I did with them. I did not go inside of the sheath because I think that the connector on the end is too big. So what I did was I just went around just like it is now. I added one here, one there, one here, one here, which I probably didn't need to do because there's one right here on this extruder bracket and I did one here and then I did one here but the trick is on this one, I actually looped and you can see it right here. I looped the rest at the bottom and I did it there so it can still move and it still has plenty of room on this side when it gets mounted. But this'll be able to go up all the way and down all the way and I did test that. You wanna make sure you test that before you get all your zip ties on. At this point, I'll just take my snips, I'll come through, snip all of the zip ties, that way it looks nicer. I really appreciate that they give us so many zip ties because it makes it so much easier on cleanup. Now this one at the bottom, I did not go too tight on just in case the cables in there need to travel. So just be careful with this one down here. But other than that, it's nice and clean, everything looks good. Now what we do is take the blue USB cable that came with the printer and we need to load the new TH3D firmware on this printer. So we're gonna go in, we're going to push that into that port right here. And this other side is going into the computer where we're gonna do the firmware part now. Download the latest TH3D firmware and then you wanna go down here to if you're using Windows and use this openfirmwarewindows.bat. That'll launch everything you need to do. If you have anything that you need to say okay to just allow the access and that brings you to the full TH3D firmware package inside the Adreno. So what you wanna do from here is go to tools, check your board and it's gonna be the Adreno Mega 2560 board that's already on here. Then you wanna make sure you're on the right comport and for me that's number five. Years might be different. So you wanna check that if you need to through the device manager and go to ports and check that out. In my case it's number five. Then we wanna go to configuration.h and this is where everything, all the magic happens, right? So we're gonna scroll down until we find TiVo and I believe that's gonna be towards the bottom. So I'm just looking here. Oh, I found it right here by default. In this firmware it's on line 481 it starts but it could be different on the new firmwares going forward. So what we wanna do is here's the Tarantula Pro. We want to uncomment or comment out that and it turns green. You can tell it works if it turns green and you wanna come down and you want to take this and comment that out and this just defines the Tarantula Pro OEM mount for the easy ABL mount and that's what we need. So if you want the Tarantula boot screen you can actually go through right here and turn that back on. I don't mind the TH3D one so I'm gonna keep that on there. You can actually slow down the hotend fan and control box fan here if you want to. That'll quiet it down a little bit. I might play with that later but I don't need to do that right now and that's pretty much all we need to do as far as the Tarantula Pro goes right here. At this point you're done. All you have to do is upload this and flash it to the board and to do that you just have to go up here and you have to hit upload. And this is gonna take a little bit. It'll go through, it's gonna verify everything, it's gonna compile the sketch and then you'll be good to go. All right, when this is complete it'll say writing 100%. It'll tell you how many bytes of flash was written and that it's done. So you know it's good when you get to this screen here. Now I raised this up a little bit just to show you a lot of times it's down here but I just wanted to show you at the very end it'll say thank you and you're done. You just unplug the printer and we'll move to the next step. So I plugged it in. I'm gonna flip the switch on and just watch and make sure it boots up to the TH3D splash screen along with what firmware version and TH3Dstudio.com. As you can see it looks like it booted up just fine and the next thing we need to do is test our ZN stop. All right, so the next thing we wanna do is just verify that the ABL is actually working. If I touch it here you can see this light going from green to red but to really test it and make sure that we have that switch that we talked about earlier in the right direction we're gonna hit the button, go down to prepare, go down to auto home and hit the button. Now it's gonna home both axis is the Y and the X and then it'll come back to the center and start lowering for Z. Now put your finger under here twice and if it stops like that you're good. If it does not stop like that you need to flip that little switch underneath like we talked about before where we plugged it in there's that little dip switch just flip that thing over and then test this again. So now what we wanna do is disable your steppers by clicking the button, going to prepare, scrolling down to disable steppers. Then we're gonna take our wrench and we're gonna put it right here this time under the nozzle. Slowly lower your X gantry down just so that nozzle touches the wrench. Now the nozzle is two millimeters off the bed. Then we're gonna take our little screwdriver and we're gonna just adjust this in and dial it in. So you see how it's currently green? What we need to do is adjust this so the end stop trips and it'll turn red on this side. So we go forward and just until it turns red and sometimes it can be a lot of turns. So don't get discouraged if it's not turning red yet just keep screwing it clockwise until you see that light turned red right there. So then you wanna go back out just little bit by little bit until it's green and there we go, so now we're green and then just slightly until it goes red again, perfect. Now that actually will tell it to stop two millimeters above the bed now. So now what you do is raise up your X gantry a little bit. We're gonna click the button, we're gonna go to auto home again and we're just gonna make sure that everything home's okay. What you wanna do on this case is you wanna keep your hand back here on this power button just in case it doesn't stop. It should but you never know. So I'm gonna keep my hand back here on the power button. I'm gonna let it home and when it comes down it should home two millimeters above the bed, perfect. So at this point we're actually ready to do a test print.  I think I'm gonna run a M48 test. We have not printed with this or anything like that but first I'm gonna preheat to PLA temperatures. So I got heated up to 20 on the nozzle and 60 on the bed. Let's do an M48 test. So what an M48 test does is it actually measures the accuracy of our sensor. So we're gonna hit the button, scroll to prepare, hit the button again, scroll down to M48 test and hit the button. It's gonna home all the accesses and then it's gonna go to the center where it probes several times up and down to test the accuracy of that probe. Notice it's stopping each time where we calibrated it earlier and it's gonna do this quite a lot of times here and it takes about a minute to complete. As you can see, we got a result of .001581. That is really, really good. That tells me we built this machine very good. Our excantria is straight and that's what you want. Just to throw it in there, this is all ready to go. We saw it do the M48 test. We saw the result that it could get and it was great. Anything .00 and then any numbers, that's a very, very good result. Now I did this twice. The first one I got .0015. The second time .0013. Very, very good results. Now I put a memory card in.  You'll have to put a G29 right after your G28. I'm gonna go ahead and print from SD card. We should see it auto-home and then it'll come down, it'll probe and then it should go through the full probing sequence. So this is set up right now to do a nine probe grid. Three across the front, three across the middle and three across the back. So as you can see, we got filament loaded and we got it printing. Now when it starts printing, you'll need to dial in your Z offset and to do that, you'll hit the button twice and like one and then two and it'll go to your Z offset. Then you wanna lower it until you see it printing and get the layer height you want. Another thing I wanna point out. I forgot to put the bottom panel on my easy ABL control board cover. So don't forget to do that at the very end. All it does is slide on, so we're gonna do that. As soon as this is done printing, I'll get that on there but you wanna make sure you get that done before you start printing. I mean, it's probably better that way. So that was the install of the Easy ABL Pro from TH3D on the Tivo Tarantula Pro. It was super easy. If you follow this, it probably will take you 20 minutes, maybe a half hour tops but you'll get it done and it's so awesome now. What I'm gonna do next is add the solid bed mounts and I do have a set of those from TH3D as well but we'll do another video for that. But once I get the solid bed mounts in, I won't have to worry about touching those dials. This thing will be dialed in and ready to go. I think this thing is awesome now. I hope you learned something today and as always, keep printing. Hey everybody, throw a comment below what your favorite part of auto bed leveling is. I'd love to hear it. If you liked the video, give me that thumbs up. Please click that subscribe button right here and that little bell if you wanna be notified next time we go live or put out another great video.


The Zika virus has been around in humans since 1952, when the first case was documented in Africa, a continent with close to double the land mass of South America. Why only now has it become an epidemic? What's changed? The virus may have changed, but there's no doubt that we have. We now travel more, live closer together and our planet's climate has become warmer and wetter. Born in shallow pools of water, the Aedes aegypti mosquito is a carrier of the Zika virus and others such as yellow fever and dengue. Unlike us, it only travels an average of 400 metres from where it's born. A female mosquito's top priority is to lay eggs and to do so she must feed, and so she goes hunting, biting in an attempt to find a rich source of nutrition, blood. If she's carrying the Zika virus, it can enter the fresh wound, leaving a small amount of the virus behind. The virus can now multiply, often unnoticed, triggering a relatively minor fever and rash in around a fifth of those infected. And when an uninfected mosquito bites an infected person, the virus can be passed along again, continuing the cycle. Largely oblivious to the infection, we carry on, living, working and travelling. As a consequence, Zika has hopped the globe from Africa through several countries and smaller islands until it reached South America. Here, the huge landmass and dense populations now exposed to Aedes aegypti means that infection can spread. And because most of us have never been exposed to the virus, our immune systems are unable to fight back. For Zika and Aedes aegypti, geographical borders are irrelevant. They'll continue to spread as long as population density, urban living and environmental change allow. Unless we do something. So what do we do? Well, if local communities and global organisations work together, we can share ideas that will help us slow the rate of Zika's spread. We can monitor the movement of other diseases and create new drugs and vaccines and develop other public health measures to make sure that the next time we encounter a new infection, we're better prepared.


On December 17, 2008, four 17-year-old boys were found dead in their car at an abandoned farm, 10 miles from their hometown in England near Wadden at Stone. This video contains the unedited footage from the camera belonging to one of the boys, which was also found in the car. On December 15, 2008, four 17-year-old boys from Stephen and Jeret Fortshire were reported missing by their families. Two days later, their bodies were found at Brughal Farm, 10 miles away from Stephenage, in the car they had been driving. The farm was thought to have been abandoned, yet further investigation showed signs of recent inhabitants. A digital camcorder was also found in the car. This video is an edited footage taken straight from it, which has been released with the family's consent. Throughout 2011 and 2012, three videos including the four boys have been surfaced on YouTube.